Interview with Mary Ball

Kristen: We’re interviewing Mary “Mickey” Ball. She was born June 26, 1926. She served in the US Navy during the Korean War. Her highest rank was Junior Grade, and we’re recording this on April 22, 2008 in Arcadia Museum and we’re Kristen Shields, Megan Lee, and Steven Luong.

(to Mary) Um…Where were you born?

Mary:  I was born in a little town of about 6000 in Pennsylvania called Brookville.

Kristen:  And what was life like for you growing up?

Mary:  Oh, it was sheer heaven because my dad was a school teacher, and … ah … he was a very important person in town because he was a school teacher in a little town like that … and … ah … he taught history and his problems of democracy and economics and so right away I became a … a student of history and economics and problems of democracy. 

Kristen: So did you have any siblings?

Mary: Yeah, I had one sister; she was two years younger than I.

Kristen: Um… so what inspired you to join the Navy?

Mary: Oh… well I don’t know how much of an inspiration it was. Ah… the young man that I was dating had joined the submarine reserve unit and one night he said, “The Korean War has become so entangled that they’re drafting all our reserves and the officers are  instead of spending one night a week at a reserve meeting are down there three and four nights a week.” And I wasn’t very sympathic, I said “Well, What you need down there are some waves.” And he said, “Well you’re talking big,” and I said, “I don’t want to the Navy but I can hunt and peck and file things.” I’m a pretty good school teacher so I’ll oughta be able to do that much. So I went down and they put me in recruiting. So I gave tests to … ah … aspiring reservers and corrected them and set them up to get their shots from the doctor if they passed. *laugh*

Kristen: So what was your main role in the war then?

Mary: Well, I was with the reserves unit and they said you gotta join because you get 14 dollars every time you’re in a meeting. laugh And school teacher pay wasn’t really high. So 14 dollars sounded pretty good and I went ahead and joined. And I was just an enlisted person then. And the, the captain of our unit was having trouble getting recruits to …ah …. Try and learn to be sonar men. And he said, “If we had you down there. They’d say ‘Oh … a woman can do it, I can.’ But they were all afraid that their hearing would be affected if they were working on sonar. So I became a sonar striker. And then the lieutenant in charge of …uh… recruiting and sonar …ah… said, “I’ve heard from a friend of mine in Washington that I’m being called up for active duty for the Korean War. So you can get up to Detroit and get your officer’s commission so you can take over the whole recruiting division.” So I did, but when they got to the point where they said, “Do you want active or inactive duty?” I thought, “Well that boyfriend was getting a little too serious… I, I guess I want active duty”; to get away laugh and after ….ah … I went through officer training, and it was in Providence, Rhode Island in October, November, December and it was coooold giggle they sent me to Washington D.C. and I spent three years there in the Bureau of Naval Personnel where they assigned in my section officers to their stations.

Kristen: Um … What did you do during training?

Mary: Oh, heavens I we spent eight hours a day in the classroom and we had to march and drill and those who didn’t know how to swim had to learn how to swim and I got to teach them, giggle … Ah, I don’t know, that was about it; we had to be in bed lights out at 10 o’clock. So with all the studies we had everybody was just throwing a towel across the door way and another towel over the lamp so we could study until we got done. And … ah … we had somebody on the look out so officer of the day who was coming around and checking on everybody wouldn’t see our lights. We’d turn them off until they were done and then we’d turn them back on again. And one morning I woke up and put my feet on the floor and there was two inches of water and I was on the second deck and heard been a storm during the night and the water waves had washed clear up the second floor of our barracks. So we all got up with brooms and mops and towels laugh and swept it all back into the bay.

Kristen: You mentioned before that you …ah… were a sonar striker. What exactly is that?

Mary: Well, sonar is the detection device that they use on submarines to detect other submarines and it also can locate the reefs or underwater … ah … obstacles that you might run into as a submarine. So it was , it was, radar underwater. *giggle*

Kristen: What ship were you on?

Mary: No…no, when I was a wave, unfortunately, they didn’t let you go to sea. In fact, they wouldn’t even let you out of the country until you had served four years …uh… Stateside and then they would let you have a billet somewhere in the Pacific or over in Europe. But you were not allowed aboard ship. The only women that were allowed aboard ship in those years were the nurses to bring back injured personnel.

Kristen: Okay, so where were you stationed then?

Mary: The whole time in the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington D.C. The first … ah … year, I was in charge of a classified mail … ah … confidential secret and top secret mail concerning officers’ positions where they would be assigned and in the second year I was manager for the head of the waves. I was her office manager and … ah … because there were not enough waves, it’s … we didn’t, we weren’t entitled to an admiral, so the captain was the highest. We had one captain in the whole waves at that time and … ah… she did not have … ah... an aid the way an admiral would have had an aid, so when she got called someplace to meet with all the admirals I got to go along as her aid … laugh … I’m designated but as her aid.

Kristen: So was anyone else in your family ever in the military before you?

Mary: Yeah, my father was in the army during World War I. The third year I was in the Bureau Naval Personnel they moved me outta the captain’s office because she retired; and the new captain who came in brought her own friends with her to the office and they assigned me to …ah… a desk that answered congressional mail about the assignment of the enlisted personnel. So we had senators and congressmen and presidents and … ah … embassy officials writing and saying , “How come this young man can’t get shore duty? His father just died and his mother has to take care of his three younger siblings. Can’t you give him shore duty?” And you have to write back and say, “We’ll do everything we can but he’s not entitled to shore duty. He hasn’t been in the navy long enough.” And then you’d get somebody that wanted a CB …ah… who was an engineer in the navy …ah…assigned stateside. CBs aren’t entitled to stateside duty until they have served thirteen years – can you imagine? Can you imagine?

Kristen: So what was the most interesting thing that you did …

Mary:  Meet my husband.

Kristen & Mary: *laugh*

Mary: My husband was in charge of the …ah…the naval reserve desk. And my captain sent me down one day to find out the address of a retired wave … ah … doctor. And she … they wanted to recall her because they were going to open …ah…a billet…ah… and a base for waves in Guam. And they had to have a doctor with them if they did.  So they were gonna call he back to active duty. I went down to my husband’s office and gave him this reserve officer’s number so I could get her address. He couldn’t find it. And I said, “Are you sure you looked? The last two numbers are zero, zero.” “Oh,” he said, “You only told me one zero.” But he eventually looked it up and gave me the number and walked out. Ah… his secretary said to him, “I think you liked that wave. You’re too mad laugh about being misinterpreted.” *laugh*

Kristen: So what did you do most often when - ?

Mary: sigh I was always a messenger I guess; I was always running an errand for the captain …ah… “Run down the head of the Marine Corps and ask him if he can give us some …ah… man to protect ‘cause I have to go over to the air force space and I would like to have some protection. “So I would have to ask for protection for the captain or she’d send me down to see the head of … the wave who was head wave assignments and say ...uh “I saw a wave last week who’s hair was down over her shoulders. You get after her so she gets a military hair cut.” Or she had me write letters for …uh…a trip she was taking to Guam to set up the wave section over there. It took me about three weeks to get all the letters straight the way she wanted them. So I had to compose them. We had a typist that would type them up.

Kristen: Did you like your role in the war?

Mary: Oh, I loved it. I would’ve stayed in but my husband had been in the navy for ten years already. And he wanted to get out. So I had trouble getting out because he was naval reserve by that time. He’d been in World War One as a regular navy and when he got out, they made him a naval reservist and called him back for Korea. I came in Korea as a reserve officer and after two years they said “Would you like to …uh… switch to regular navy?” And I said “Oh, yes, I would love to do that.”  “Okay, here’s two hundred dollars.” I said, “What? For just signing my name, I get two hundred dollars?” And the chief said “Yeah isn’t that nice?” And I said, “No, I don’t believe it. Next year they’ll change the rules and they’ll want the money back!” laugh He said “Oh, please ma’am sign the paper or it’ll take me another two days to get this all straightened out.” laugh I said “Yeah, but I’ve had this happen before, where the people have tried to give me a bonus and then they recalled it.” But he said “I promise you, if they do, I’ll pay up myself” laugh So I signed and became regular navy …and…ah… so I had trouble getting out when Korea ended. They let all the reserve officers go. So here was my husband a reserve officer and they were discharging him …and  here I am, a regular navy offer and I’m not entitle to a discharge. So they tried to find a billet for me here on the West Coast because my husband was from Pasadena. And they couldn’t find anything so they gave me a hardship discharge. It was a hardship because I couldn’t be with my husband. *laugh*

Kristen:  So what was the difference between a regular navy and reserve?

Mary:  And a reserve …

Kristen:  Yeah.

Mary:  Ah … there was no difference in pay. That was one of the reasons I wanted to join the navy. Teachers, male teachers got a pay more than female teachers and they said, “Because the males have families”. And I was putting my mother through nursing school and my sister through college. And I thought, that’s a family too. But they paid them more than they did the females, but the navy paid you all the same. They didn’t say “If you were female, you got less money”. So … um … that was never any difference. The reserves could be sent home anytime. The regular navy live for the rest of their life in the navy.

Kristen: How long were you with the navy?

Mary: Four years. A year with submarine reserve unit in Cleveland and then four years in Washington D.C.

Kristen:  Where were you when the war ended?

Mary:  Pardon?

Kristen: Where were you when the war ended? What were you doing?

Mary:  Oh ... well, I was in Washington D.C. They tried to get my husband to go as an interpreter with the admiral who was setting up the peace with Korea. Because my husband spoke Korean … and ah … when they got him off his destroyer and over to Washington D.C. he said, “I only speak street Korean, you need somebody who can speak embassy Korean.” So they did find a marine that had …ah … that kind of a background. But since my husband was off his destroyer and there in Washington D.C.; they assigned him in charge of the reserve officer dance. And he couldn’t wait to get out ‘cause he had been in it for ten years. He wanted to be back in California. 

Kristen: So, how did you feel when the war ended?

Mary: I worried because I knew they would send all the reserve officers home and I didn’t want to go home. And I was regular navy and I knew he was gonna get sent home and I thought, “Now what’s going to happen?” laugh I don’t want to leave and he’s eager to go home.

Kristen: How did the war affect you?

Mary: Well, it got me away from my mother and my sister, I was from Cleveland and …ah … they relied very heavily on me … and I felt that they should both step up and take charge of their own lives a little more. And so they still had me there helping them financially and …ah… I would go home every two months for a weekend to visit them. But they became much stronger people because I left … and I became … I don’t know, I was always … ah … an egocentric person… I guess laugh …ah… I never was afraid of anything, so the only thing I really would have liked was to have gone to Europe.  They were going to send me to Natoe until they found out I was engaged to get married. But I don’t think … meeting my husband was the biggest change I guess in the war.

Kristen:  How old were you when you enter the war?

Mary:  I was 26 when I went in and I was 30 when I came out. 

Kristen:  So was it easy to readjust to civilization life then?

Mary:  Yes, except I came to California where I didn’t know a soul, except my husband and his family; and they were wonderful to me. But they lived in Pasadena and we lived in San Bernardino. And … ah… I wore out all my navy clothes … if you see my uniform in the back, there is no skirt, no shirt. I cut off the slacks, and made shorts out of them and the skirt hasd pockets on either side. Oh, they were heavenly to wear ‘cause you could always stuff things in the pockets. So I don’t have any – I don’t have a complete uniform back there.

Kristen:  So what was life like when you were in the navy then?

Mary: It was heavenly, it was heavenly. They paid your … they didn’t have enough …ah…. quarters in Washington D.C. for the officers. So they paid …ah … for your …ah... apartment or whatever. And I was rooming with two other waves and so we split what the navy gave us, three way so we had leftover, which paid for our food. laugh We had two uniforms: you put one in the cleaner’s every week and …ah… started out with five white shirts; as my friends left the navy, they kept giving me their white shirts, and I ended up with twelve. laugh So I loved every minute of it.

Kristen:  Did you make life long friends?

Mary:  No, I didn’t. What is strange is all the friends I had …ah… got moved around all over the United States … and I wrote to them for years and sent them Christmas cards, but eventually some of them were married and some even moved out the country. So, ah… but my husband still has friends that he …ah… wrote to and now that my husband is gone, I send them Christmas cards.

Kristen:  So was it easy to keep in contact with friends and family when you were in the navy?

Mary:  Well, I gave them money and they sure like to keep contact for that laugh … ah… but also I felt responsible for my family and …ah… I had grandparents that were still living so I wanted to visit them. I was very active in the Cleveland Red Cross and their swimming program …and …ah… so I liked to keep in contact with people down at the Red Cross headquarters.

Kristen:  About how often did you keep in contact with people?

Mary:  I still am in contact with …ah… one friend of mine from the Red Cross and two friends who live in Cleveland that I taught school with. I taught school at Shaker Heights in Cleveland. I still write to two of them and … ah… my mother and my sister are both gone now, so I don’t have anybody in … well, I have a niece and …ah… niece … two nieces … a niece and a cousin that both live in Cleveland. And when I fly back …ah… there… I visit both of them.

Kristen:  So were you in the Red Cross before the war?

Mary:  No, I was a volunteer with the Red Cross.

Kristen:  Is that before the war or after?

Mary:  Yeah, that was before the war. Yeah!

Kristen:  Did that affect your decision to go into the war at all?

Mary:  Well, um … I’ve always been a swimmer and I taught swimming in high school before I join the navy. And the Red Cross had me out …ah …ah… teaching amputees to swim, mentally handicapped people to swim … and I gave blood at the Red Cross. I had a real good friend there, and …ah … so she kept me informed whenever they need some help. So when I got to the navy, the first thing they did was to teach the whole crew to swim. *laugh*

Kristen:  Do you feel as if you accomplish something during the war?

Mary:  Yes. I did because there was so many things that they wouldn’t let women do and to be a woman who was able to handle everything they asked from me to handle, and to come up with suggestions and innovation on how they could make things …uh… more secure or …ah… logistically  more effective …ah… I felt, yes, that I had paved the way because …uh… now the waves have so much wider …uh… range. They send them over seas. They keep them in when they’re pregnant; they’ll give them an elastic skirt. They …uh… still pay ‘em as much as the men even. Heck, they’re captaining ships now. Not only can they be passengers, they’re …ah… in charge of the ships and sails. 

Kristen:  Were there many women that worked in the navy when you did?

Mary:  No, there were not very many because that’s why we didn’t deserve an admiral. There were fifty five in the class that I went with …ah… for officer’s training. Two of them were aviators. I would say at least half of them had their master’s degree. My wave roommate had study in the Sorbonne in France and had her master’s in French …ah… They were just …uh… a wonderful, wonderful interesting group to be with. And they all had a good sense of humor. So if you know … if something went wrong, they just kind of shrugged it off and say, “That’s the way it is.” *laugh*.    

Kristen: Would the women work with men?

Mary:  Yeah, they usually had …ah… well… I would say in the officer assignment division they have three waves …ah … but then in another division …ah…ah… maybe in the aviation division they may have another three. So um… we were pretty well scattered throughout Washington D.C. and anybody that had done well in … in radio communication was probably sent to a naval base and one of mine roommates had been at a naval base set in Norfolk, Virginia for two years before they moved her into the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington.

Kristen:  Did you feel as if men treated the women differently?

Mary:  Oh no. They were, they were so great. I never had anybody make …ah… a nasty remark or look at me sideways or …ah… fail to assume I could do what they asked me to. No, they made you feel like you were part of the team.

Kristen:  And do you consider yourself a hero?

Mary:  A hero …no… I’m a, I’m a pioneer but not a hero.

Kristen:  Do you consider any of the friends that you made in the navy a hero or did you see any thing heroic?

Mary:  Yes, the lieutenant that was in charge of my reserve unit in the submarine division was killed in Korea. And …ah… two of the young men that I recruited when I was in the submarine unit were killed. One was a young man working with a doctor, ah…I considered my own husband a hero. He took a ship out to sea during a hurricane while they were stationed in Korea. The captain was ashore and he was left in charge. The hurricane came up and he just ordered the ship out to sea, which probably saved it.

Kristen:  What ship was he on?

Mary:  I don’t even no the name of it. He was with a destroyer group and he was probably on three to four different destroyers in the Pacific and then they moved it to the Atlantic eventually.

Kristen:  Do you have an advice for future generation about what you did in the navy?

Mary:  Well they’re so – seem to be so afraid of sending woman into combat. But I think you get so rived up, so eager to get the help and do just what everyone else is doing. You’re part of that team! And so you shouldn’t have any fear ..ah… about going into the arm services. And …every country in the world has to have an army and a navy because they’re always hot head or people who think they know better. How the world should be run, than the way your world is being runned. So you need a defense.

Kristen:  What do you think of the war now?

Mary:  I’m horrified laugh I – I think its …um… I think its unnecessary in Iraq, but I think it’s necessary in Afghanistan where the Taliban is coming back into power and Pakistan just freed the …the head of the Taliban. So I feel very strongly that we’ve gotta be able to protect ourselves. But not just because they’re a different religion than we are. Not because they have a different economic situation than we have, but only because they’re harboring fanatics that would like to harmunize things. Af-after all the United States was formed not only to give the people here freedom, but as an example to the rest of the world that democracy could work. And we have seen a lot of democracies formed since American, because of our example. And I would hate to see this prime example destroyed.

Kristen:  What were your feelings about the Korean War?

Mary:  I felt unhappy about it, because China was in such throes of change and I didn’t necessary feel that Communist China was bad, because …ah… the Royal China was so horrible, that …uh… maybe Communist was a terrible step they had to take before they can move forward. But you see, they were …ah… fostering North Korea and …ah… they were trying to …ah… move in on South Korea, which was a democracy developing. And I just felt like America being the prime example of a democracy has to help other democracies.

Kristen:  *whisper* We have to stop? not whispering Is there anything else you’ll like to add?

Mary:  Only how much I have enjoyed meeting other veterans here in Arcadia …um… I’m especially trilled that Mary Young, our former mayor was a wave and …ah… I have never had enough opportunity to talk to her about her many experiences and – I do have a real good friend who was a retired school teacher who was a wack in World War Two. The two of us liked to give talks to other retired teachers’ organizations here in California about out experiences in the service.

Kristen:  Um… Well, Thanks very much

Students:  Thank you!

Catherine Lin, Haewon MacFarlane, Han Lin

Period: 6

Herman Ramirez Script

H- Haewon

R- H. Ramirez

H: Okay, so this interview is being conducted with the Veterans’ History Project at the library of Congress and we’re interviewing Herman Ramirez born on August 18^th 1950, who is in Vietnam War and served in the army. Umm, receiving, umm, E4 Specialist, and today is August, oh wait, what’s…May…A… April? laugh April 22^nd, 2008, and we’re in Temple City. So, Umm, where were you born and can you describe your childhood?

R: First of all, I was in uh Bogotá, Columbia on August 18^th 1950, umm, I had a good childhood. We uh lived in the Bogotá, Columbia for seven years. My parents decided to migrate to the United States. So we sold everything and uh bought some airplane tickets and flew to Miami and bought the uh Ford Station Wagon and drove to LA. So uh, growing up in the… I learn English pretty easy; I don’t seem to have trouble with it. Uh… my childhood was a happy one.

H: Umm so, how’s your family or life like before the war, did they know people who were in the war?

R: Uh just the… there was a… prisoner of war in my wife’s family. We know him already at that time. Uh… and about the only person that we knew I had a… my, my sister’s boyfriend went into the army. He was a supplier over in the… Danang at the… at the bay of harbor there. He was not common, he was just a support. Uh…and uh… basically, that was it. I didn’t know too many people in the service at the time.

H: Did you know about the war?

R: Uh… I was aware of the war. I was at East LA College at the time. I’m still in the Fermat. And they started the draft, I was number hundred forty four. Uh… I was uh… the reason actually got drafted in a way my own fault because that in February that I got my classes, and uh… I went to get my deferment in a big line up. So I said I’ll go tomorrow. And then uh, I went back the next day and there was uh another line up so I said, “Oh well, I’ll come tomorrow.” Before I know it, I didn’t get my deferment, so I was in the army. So, I was pneumonia syndrome.

H: So how did you feel about that, being drafted?

R: Well uh, I was in Denise. I wasn’t the one that’s gonna join. But after the fact, it was a good experience. So, it did me good. And uh, probably, you elaborate on some questions on how it did me good.

H: Yeah, so umm, what was your attitude like towards the war and how did your family react to this news about you being drafted?

R: I was sort of indifferent. Uh, didn’t really make a big deal out of it. My family kinda went along with it. There was only couple choices, you know. Run off to Canada or refuse to go and go to jail or going. Basically I just chose to go. And my family uh, pretty much uh, went along with it. They didn’t seem to, you know, have any mixed feelings about it. Not that I recall. But uh, they accepted it.

H: Uh, so how did you adapt to your military life.

R: Uh, slowly, *laugh*. Uh, one of the, one of the funny moments I remember is going through uh Santa Barbra when they’re taking us up on a bus as I think it took off from Brochette Boulevard, where the induction center was, and uh going to Santa Barbra, uh it was interesting. A lot of hippies and stuff were demonstrating, you know, with the banner and stuff while the buses can’t go through there. Not with the for door where we’re stationed at. And uh, that was kinda a memorable moment seeing the people demonstrating and here I was. Kind of going off to war thinking oh my goodness, this is really happening. Uh, or at least I’m going off to the military and I didn’t know I’m going to Vietnam at the time.

H: Um, so, how long were you in war?

R: Well, basically I was in training and I was in the service at March 1971, that’s when I started my basic training. And then uh, I went to a dense infantry training for the second two months. Uh, studied motors, basically I was what they called a Charlie. And uh, that was my field, I study more motors and uh, I study the tackled graphic maps and uh, that did pack into my life ‘cause I love geography and uh reading maps and stuff. And I think that was my foundation, but uh, there I got my orders to go to uh Vietnam. Actually it’s an interesting story there, I actually wanted to sign up for jump school for 101^st Airborne, and my parents made such a big deal out of it that I did go along with them and I backed out of it and gotten orders from Vietnam. Now all my friends went to uh to jump school and went to Germany, they never went to Vietnam. So, that was kind of a interesting thing. I always blame my mom for that. Umm, what was the other part of the question?

H: Umm, what was the first time you were in battle?

R: Well, basically we landed in a…Cameron Bay. We…I flew to a uh Fort Louis, Washington. That was where we took off to Vietnam from. And the first time we landed there, we were on Cameron Bay. And uh, there was…they bombed that base we’re at. We had to uh bell and the alarms went off, we went to the bomb shelters. They were bombing some ammunition depot. And I thought, “Oh boy” *laugh*, “I’m in trouble now.” At the first night we were there. So uh, few days later they flew us to a place called uh town called Chu-Lai, Vietnam. Where what’s they trained for uh for guerrilla warfare and being in the jungle whatnot. And, we’re there for six days, and while we were there, they shot two Vietcong, which I think it stands for Vietnamese Communists Guerrillas. Uh and they tried to shoot the compound with the explosives. So that was one of my experiences in combat. Not, not personal but, you know, it’s going on. And from there they flew me to my home base which is in Danang. And we landed there and I thought we had some kind of a, you know, period to adjust but uh, the same day we landed they said, “Alright, companies were out in the jungle” so they flew us out in the helicopter to where they were stationed. And the first week we’re there, uh, we encountered uh, village, their illegal uh… we called them the bush of the jungle which reside the edge of Danang. And uh, basically we gathered up the children and hailed them overnight so we can uh fly them back to the base. And, we didn’t find any man, so we flew up to the…this little town, the village they had up there. Uh, actually, the most combat I saw in Vietnam was about the first two weeks I was there. I was kind of scared of it. My reaction was a bit of…a bit fearful about it. It’s serious business, but after that it was, was pretty uh…easy. Seems like most of the combat I have were the first two weeks I was there.

H: So what did you do during the combat?

R: Well, the way it works in the ten yard of the jungle is they send you in the jungle for three weeks and they would bring you back for three weeks. While we were in the, they called the weird area, the rear battalion area, we would do guard in the local area, the hospital, the air force base where we called the ridge line of the map that separates the jungle and the city of Danang. Uh and uh, we were basically uh 24 on 24 off, we would always go to the clubs. We had clubs and entertainment, watch shows and shopping. There was always shows and different kinds of stuff. A lot of rock bands from Korea. So um, and we played a lot of cards, and just sat around and wrote a lot of letters.

H: Um, so, what were your opinions on the Napalm chemical?

R: Uh, I saw them using in a distance. They were dropping these huge fifty five garan…gallon drums on the hillside, and then the helicopters would shoot a rocket into them and blow them up. So they were just basically scatter through the hill and, you know, take care all the….the….vegetation. Uh, I, personally in our company, never used napalm. But I saw it used far away. Uh, we also saw them spreading the um, agent oranges, which is a big issue then, too.

H: Um, so what kind of friendship did you form?

R: Had some good friends. Uh, had a lot of Latinos actually, then I kinda lost my uh, I was losing touch with my language, so I start hang out with some Puerto Rican friends, and some friends from ____. I started practicing my Spanish, the desire to speak it again. And ever since, I’ve been studying it. So uh, I kept touch with some of the friends after I came back, but uh after a few years I lost contact of any of my army friends anymore.

H: Um, so what was your most memorable moments?

R: Well, one of the most things I enjoyed was going uh what they called R&R. ___. We had a one year of duty we were there. And uh, we uh, I went to Hong Kong twice. And, that was probably my most memorable moments. And, I did have another uh what they called, R&R, for eight days in a town called Bon Tao. And uh, thanks to the Vietnamese, I learned how to serve and water ski. *Laugh*

H: Um, did you have any funny moments, or moments that…?

R: Uh, well, there was a few funny moments. Like I said, we used to go to the clubs on our off time, and uh drinking too much. And I remember once drinking too much falling into the _____ wire and cutting my hands up. And that was uh, kinda funny. There was a lot of kidding around with the fellow soldiers.

H: What did you do during Christmas and New Years?

R: I was only there for one Christmas; actually, we’re out in the jungle at the time. And, we were suppose to get flown in, ‘cause we’re suppose to catch the Bob Hole Show in Danang. But it was storming at night and the helicopters couldn’t go off so we basically listen to this on the radio while we’re in the jungle. So probably not seeing Bob Hole was one of my sadder moments.*laugh.*

H: Can you describe more of the military life?

R: Since I was drafted, I had some kind of a bad attitude. I wasn’t too conforming to the regulations. So generally speaking, people who were drafted they kinda left them alone. They would do KP, which is kitchen patrol, and other kinds of duties they more or less duties they picked on for the drafted people. ‘Cause they knew they had somewhat a negative attitude they were forced to be there. But uh, I was uh, a little bit of a rebel, but not much. I got along with everybody.

H: What was your favorite part of military life?

R: My favorite part of military life was probably traveling and uh cultures, uh, having friends that were from different parts of the country. I got along good, I had some friends*laugh*.

H: How did this change about your life for now?

R: Well, one thing I always talk about, was a positive influence. The fact that before the military, I was somewhat of a unorganized person. Maybe many young people don’t have discipline yet. And uh, the military made me more organized as an individual. And in my business I do kitchen and bathroom remodeling. And then, my tools and everything have to be pretty neat. So I think that was probably my biggest influence from the military was the fact that uh they made me a organized individual.

H: Um, so how did you adjust when you came back to normal life?

R: At first you feel a little bit awkward. Because uh you’ve been away for two years and back in civilian life instantly, but it didn’t tale long, takes a few weeks to adjust. For right away, the first thing I started to do is to grow my hair and my beard because it’s for my rebelling for being told uh to get a haircut and listen up for two years. So uh, I let my hair grow for couple of years. I looked like a hippie *laugh*.

H: Um, when you surrounded the women and children, how did you do?

R: Uh, I didn’t have too much experience. I wasn’t a experienced soldier so I basically was left on the perimeter of the village, uh, doing guard duty. Um, there was no mistreatment of the women and children. Uh, you hear a lot about that, but uh, we were, you know, we were pretty proper. Uh, we basically destroyed the village though, ‘cause they said it was illegal. Because it was sympathized with the Vietcong, so we brought in the women and children uh in the next day. But uh, they were very cogent to them, um, I remember they were blowing up this tunnel they were crawling into, there was a lot of bricks flying in the air and I was scared that one of them is gonna hit me in the head. But you have to look upward ‘cause bricks go way up in the air with the C4 explosives. Uh, they…I kinda…they killed all the animals, didn’t like that too much, it was kinda bad. But I guess that’s what they had to do. So they wouldn’t come back.

H: How long were you trained for?

R: Four months, and then uh over in the Vietnam, train for another week. So, I could say I have…I had about uh nine to ten weeks of uh infantry training.

H: What was the major impact on your life during the war?

R: Uh, it kinda made me see what the others parts of the world are like, and also the fact that I’m from a third world country. Uh, made me realize ‘cause I went to Hong Kong, went out to my way to see the slums. You know, basically away from the center of the city, the tourist areas. One of the big impacts is that I do appreciate this country immensely. A lot of negative talk, even with my own children who were born and raised here are more negative about this country because they don’t realize that what they have here, and uh I think that would be my biggest impact is that I learn to appreciate no matter how bad it is I realize by seeing other places that are worse than other places.

H: Uh, so what would you tell to future generations about war?

R: Avoid at all cost, that’s for sure. I’m not too crazy about the Iraq War. And uh, I don’t know all the facts about it but there’s something I do know that I’m not too happy about it, the big money spending and uh whatnot. The big thing I tell the young people is that uh…you know, as far as careers…their lives and careers, what they’re gonna do with their lives is to seek something out that they really love to do. And do something similar to it and stick with it. Don’t change; don’t go from one trail to another to spend all your life looking for, you know, what you really wanna do, so avoid wasting a lot of time. My advice to a lot of young people’s always been uh just, you know, learn what you like and stick with it. Do something in that field. ‘Cause now it’s a big problem now, these people hate their jobs, I think that’s a bad thing in life. That’s why I do, I study uh, I was gonna be an accountant studying business administration, I hated it. And, but I start what my hobby was which is uh construction. And, that’s what I end up doing.

H: Um, so when you’re uh in the military life, how often did you contact your family?

R: Well, it’s not like nowadays when you have a cell phone. My cousin in Iraq calls all the time on his cell phone. Just a lot of writing, we have a little kit, that ammo box, and that’s where I keep all my stationary. And we wrote a lot, I got mail just about everyday, even while we’re in the jungle everyday, they’ll send a helicopter with probations, water, food, mail, uh, pick people who are sick, drop people off who are been sick and going back out again, so it was, you know, we had good support.

H: Um… Um… Can you talk about maybe after the war?

R: I basically went back to college. Before my military service I study business administration. Uh, and I came out changed a bit. I kinda had a different likings of music. I went in and kinda warm up. Soul music, hip pop kind of stuff, and then I came out of the military. I discovered uh rock and roll and sidyllic music and I came out more or less. Uh… went to Real Honda College and study for photography, study botany, which is my passion in life…if you look around my house, you would see fruit, trees everywhere. Uh, so that’s a positive impact, and one of the reasons I went back to school is to collect the GI Bill, so that was a motivating factor, they paying you for school. And uh, also I study art. And basically uh, soon after that, bought a liquor store and did business for ten years. And then after I sold the liquor store in 1983, I’ve been in construction ever since. Though uh… been self-employed for most of my life.

H: Were you in any major operations?

R: Like I said, I only saw a little bit of combat. Um, Vietnam, at the time 1971, was pretty much winding down. Uh…our main purpose there was to pull a guard duty for the air force base and the marines are pulling out. And uh, in our main purpose in Danang was when they send us up to the jungle was to keep the Vietcong from setting up more recent bombings in the air force base. Few scary moments, our main fear over there is the boobie traps. I actually walked through, uh what they called a claymore one of our own once, I tripped the wire and luckily it didn’t go off. Another time we got… what we call an incoming, which was bombs coming in, motor rounds, and one came in within forty, about forty feet, that was kinda weird in the bunker, kinda scary. Realize what the impact and the concussion was and going off is, got to experience that. Uh, the main fears over there was boobie traps and sniper fire, and uh also living in those elements, uh… living in the jungle is miserable. It’s very hot and very humid in Vietnam. The mosquitoes are on you all day long. Leeches will get on you, and they… just living in the jungle, is uh battle, and it’s so humid you’re twenty four hours a day. People get jungle rot, it’s called jungle rot, when your skin starts to scab up. And also you get this condition called prickly heat that’s like a current go up your back from not bathing for three weeks at the time. So uh, bottom of my biggest memories is of uh… of Vietnam is the humidity and the moisture and the rain, and impacted my life that I’ll never live in a place that’s this humid. That’s why I love California so much, ‘cause it’s, most of the part dry.

H: Did you talk about the war with your family?

R: I never really dwell on it, not much. Pretty much only talk about when somebody is really drilling me, wanna ask me questions, you know, I have no problem talking about it. I didn’t come home with any phobias or uh… and for the fact that I didn’t see any major military action or um, you know, blood and gore. That, was mostly jungle, guerrilla type warfare, where you don’t see the enemy. Uh, I wasn’t impacted and I don’t think it psychologically affected me. I worry a lot about my cousin’s husband, he’s coming back from Iraq, and I think he probably seen a lot of stuff, and I wonder how stable he would be. That’s something to be seen ‘cause lots of people do come home a little on the crazy side when they seen too much killing. I was fortunate not to see that thought.

H: Have you witnessed any injury?

R: There was a killing on an ambush at night I witnessed. That… that was kind of…turned my stomache. I didn’t like seeing that, I’m not what they called a gun-hol. Gun-hol is somebody has a life to fight, you know, I wasn’t like that. So I did see four bodies once… Didn’t like it.

H: I guess that’s it? Would you like to add anything?

R: Not really much, I think we pretty much talked about everything. Like I said, one of the biggest memory in Vietnam was uh, is uh humidity and the bugs. Everything’s extra big over there. Uh…I enjoyed about backpacking in the jungle, everyday we move about a mile, and everywhere we went never walked on an existing trail. Always got to cut a new trail, and there was always somebody up front cutting with the machete. Like one of the biggest wound I ever got was cutting with a machete and hit a wasp hive. It bit me in the back of my hand like five times. My whole arm sore up immediately, and they took me back to the rear in a helicopter ‘cause I had bad reaction to it. So that was one of my big combat, *laugh*. Other than that…I enjoyed Vietnam people, I have Vietnamese friends in the temple city tennis club, I play tennis, we have Vietnamese friends. And I seem to have a bond with them, hanging out pretty good with them. I reacted with the people very well over there. Friendly, and we laughed a lot.

H: Um, how come you want to be a jumper, can you explain a little bit?

R: well, airborne is just a people who jump off a plane with a parachute. Uh, I just want to do it for the excitement, experience. And uh, like I said, it wouldn’t go along with my parents. They got so scared that people are sent out to war zones. So they were so…they thought I was insane to sign up for that and convinced me not to go. And I always kid about that, my friends did go to Germany and I got straight to Vietnam. I enjoyed flying on the helicopters a lot. We sit on the side of the helicopter, and every time we went to the jungle they would take us out there. I got a air medal for a hundred hours of combat in air. So uh, I got a medal for that, and, few other medals. I got one for honorable discharge, and uh, I could say it’s a good experience. Something I didn’t ask for ‘cause I was drafted. But after the fact, I think it was a good experience I’m glad it happened. I got to go to Hong Kong twice, I would have not ever been there. I enjoyed that.

H: Okay, thank you.

R: You’re welcome, thank you for interviewing me.

Mrs. Finke: I am now 88 years old, I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Interviewer: And can we get a name.

Mrs. Finke: Oh my name is Helen Finke I was when I was in the service, it was Helen Cornelius.

Interviewer: Why the change?

Mrs. Finke: My husband died so remarriage

Interviewer: So before the war started what were you doing?

Mrs. Finke: I was doing nursing.

Interviewer: So you always wanted to be a nurse?

Mrs. Finke: Um, Pretty much so.

Interviewer: When you were growing up what was your life like before you started to learn to become a nurse.

Mrs. Finke: You know, when the depression hit in 1930 at least that was when it hit us, we moved from Minnesota to Oklahoma because my father owns some property down there and we lived there for 6 years and pretty much lived off the land had a couple of cows, chickens, and lots of garden and fruit trees and then in 1936 we took a little trip and a he found a job in Durango, Colorado  as a superintendent of a flour mill and worked there until about a year and he came back and got the family and I graduated from high school in Durango, Colorado and then I went to Fort Lewis College which was out of town about 13, 14, 15 miles south, something way out, but it was 2 years that were really important in my life

Interviewer: How were they important?

Mrs. Finke: Well, I learned I think how to study and it gave me the desire to go on and complete my education but right then I couldn’t afford to go to college, I had a brother that was going to start, the nursing school was pretty cheap compared to going college so I applied and went with a girlfriend and start in nursing school and that took 3 years of it not too much in the way of money

Interviewer: So in high school did you have any friends that you know now, that you went to the war effort with?

Mrs. Finke: High school, no, some of my college friends, one of the, you know, my roommate didn’t.  Pretty much, I went into service by myself and got acquainted with new people

Interviewer: Um, so did you decide to enlist or were you drafted?

Mrs. Finke: There was no draft there never was, I got word that my husband was missing in action so I thought well there is nothing I can do for him he was supposed to be coming home and didn’t so I maybe I could help somebody else’s son, brother, husband, father, whatever if I could be in the service so that’s why I went in, and a, what else that you wanted to know

Interviewer: Yeah, you answered it.  So how old were you when it started

Mrs. Finke: It started in um ‘40, let’s see, ‘41 wasn’t it so at that time I was 21 and I was starting my second year of nursing school and by the time I got through nursing school and went in, by that time I was 24

Interviewer: Um, so a, when you joined the military, where were you stationed?

Mrs. Finke: I went to Camp White, Oregon for basic training, lots of marching, lots of shots, um, gas mask training, a, we would whack out in the tents, it rained but we learned well, our tents didn’t leak, it was really strenuous but we made it and then I was sent to Letterman General hospital up in San Francisco which no longer is an Army base at all, it was a really pretty location there I can look out the window and see the Golden Gate Bridge and watch the ships coming and going when I wasn’t working of course, got to see San Francisco, ride the cable car, it was, we were busy, you know, but then you always have some free time when you can go in town and see a few things, so we went in and a, I think it was April of ‘44, and before Christmas I was in England.

Interviewer: So when you were working at San Francisco did you work on military personnel that were sent back from overseas?

Mrs. Finke: Yes.

Interviewer: So what were you…

Mrs. Finke: Or if they were from around there and they in need of care.

Interviewer: So what was your specific task at the hospital?

Mrs. Finke: It all depended on what was wrong with the patient I took care of one patient who had polio, I took care of a female patient who had a mental breakdown I guess you can call it, a, you had broken bones, you had all sorts of injuries, you never knew what was gonna come in or where you were gonna be assigned

Interviewer: So there was no like special thing that you had to know or like you just knew everything

Mrs. Finke: No we were just general duty.

Interviewer: So you just helped out the surgeons and…

Mrs. Finke: Well if you were assigned to work in surgery, but I wasn’t, so I just took care of them before they went into surgery and after they got out of surgery and likewise there were casts for broken bones or something um, surgery was not my strong point I still don’t care to work in surgery, I’ve done it but it’s not one of the things I like.

Interviewer: So how was England, like what were your memories of it?

Mrs. Finke: Well we were there from about 6 weeks or something like that, um, cold, very cold, um, we had K rations, C rations, the only fresh something we got was brussel sprouts and they had in an abundant crop I think, maybe they always do but they always start cooking brussel sprouts in the morning and we wake up smelling them and we get them by the evening meal anyway, um, we didn’t have any work at that time so we had to go for hikes everyday with our backpacks and our boots and combat gear and, um, Christmas came, we got, that was about the time we got our first letters from home and we made decorations out of the, some of the envelopes had gold or silver or red paper, green paper, and we’d make rings like little kids make and decorate the Christmas tree and somebody got a metal cutter to make some ornaments out of the tin cans that food came in so and we sang carols and tried to keep from being homesick and lonesome and I’m not particularly fond of what I saw in England I’m sure it was not like what we saw it

Interviewer: What was England like during that time?

Mrs. Finke: What was it like?

Interviewer: Yeah, like…

Mrs. Finke: Well they had all that bombing you know, but to us in the area where we were and I never got to London which is the capital of course, so we did go across the cow pasture sometimes and there was a little country club out there where they sold ale I think that is what the British liked to drink and we went to the pub and had a drink and we sat and sang and we interrupted the people who were throwing darts that seems to be a national sport.  They didn’t like the noise we were making, but we had a good time.

Interviewer: That’s good, so what did you do after you were stationed at England?

Mrs. Finke: Then we went to France, and France again was cold and muddy, it was wintertime.  And it was very, very cold but that’s, we landed in La Ha then went to Renan and then waited to do something and they sent us to New Chattel and again it was cold, we had a barracks and a couple of pot-belly stoves, and the shower, well if you were lucky enough to be the first few in line, you could have warm water, I didn’t like cold water, not many of us did so we got snow in our helmets and melted them on the tops of the pot-belly stove and took sponge baths, spit baths whatever out of our helmet, and, that was a few weeks, I don’t know I’ve lost track of just how long things were from there we went down to Pin Rue except we weren’t in the town we were about 3 miles out of town and it had been a French hospital that we sisters had operated and there were a few of them in a building on the property but the hospital itself and our nurses quarters and the officers quarters and the enlisted men, it was a big place and we were all quartered there and that is where we operated our hospital until after V-E day patients either went back to duty or were sent home and they sent us down to Marseille and we got on a troop ship and went to the Philippines.

Interviewer: So how were the Philippines like, much warmer I would expect?

Mrs. Finke: Well yes, it was warm but again we got there monsoon season and we got there August, September, October lots of rain lots of mud, but I still kind of liked it

Interviewer: What did you like about it?

Mrs. Finke: Well, for one thing, the English people I’m sure spoke English they’re kind of English but we never really got to meet them but we did get to meet some of the Philippines people and they spoke English which was after France it was nice too and they were really friendly to us the end of the war in France, they would say yankee go home, they didn’t seem to want us there anymore and so I don’t know I just, kind of like the Philippines.

Interviewer: So the entire time you were moving you had to work the hospitals right, so do you remember any of the patients that you had to help?

Mrs. Finke: Not really, you had a big ward like 60 patients on one ward and the nurse was in charge, and then they had the corpsman and they were enlisted men but they were well trained and they were always so helpful.  They did a lot of the work so we did a lot of the paper pushing and um, I really don’t remember too many of the um, patients I remember the lady in San Francisco who thought she was gonna clobber me and I remember a young man in France that was almost 9 o’ clock and was supposed to be lights out and I warned him that at 9 the lights were gonna go out and then he a, was rather angry but I have no idea what his name was but um, it was hard, you had lots of people with frap, um, shrapnel, you know people with pieces of their skin blown away or muscles or whatever that had to be repaired we had psychiatric patients you had people in camps, and whatever it was it was on the ward they assigned you to that’s what you took care of.

Interviewer: So after the Philippines, were you shipped somewhere else?

Mrs. Finke: No, that’s when I came home, I came home as a patient myself.

Interviewer: So how did that happen?

Mrs. Finke: Well they said I had arthritis so they had me in the hospital as a patient then they sent me home on a plane loaded with um, patients.

Interviewer: So is this before the war ended?

Mrs. Finke: No, we got there just about the time the war ended with Japan and in fact VJ-day came when we were in Cason City I think so there was really no fighting in the war but we heard shots at night sometimes and we’d sit there at the desk and the light was on your desk and you’d hear this shot and you’d think, well it didn’t get me.  So we never did know who or what was shooting at somebody I never had a patient brought in after I heard the shot so I have no idea. 

Interviewer: Do you have any memories that you specifically remember about the war?

Mrs. Finke: Well I remember how happy some of the soldiers were when they got to the hospital because they had been hit and survived when a lot of their buddies haven’t and so they were happy to be there you’d think they had been kept in a 4-star hotel or something after being in the trenches and out in the cold but there was a lot of sadness because they’ve seen their buddies right beside them hit and no longer alive so it was heartbreaking to see them suffering and know what they’ve gone through sort of, you never know when you’ve never faced that but it was sad and I was glad that I was able to help them in a little way

Interviewer: Do you have any friends that you still have from the war?

Mrs. Finke: Well I did, I had about 5 different nurses I corresponded with and some of them I got to see but um, but there maybe 2 of them still alive that I no longer hear from and the others are gone.

Interviewer: Um, so what did you do after the war was over?

Mrs. Finke: I went to visit my family and then I came out to national city down by San Diego to um, see my husband’s family and I got a job in the health department down there and worked for a year and then I came up to UCLA to get a degree in public health nursing because that was one of the condition of my employment that I do that so um, I did and worked down there for a while, then I remarried and went to um, where did I go, Colorado and then to Oklahoma and eventually I ended back out here to go to UCLA again so I move around a lot it seems I’ve been here for about 30, 31 years that’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place

Interviewer: So how was coming back from the war like?

Mrs. Finke: How was…

Interviewer: What was your initial reaction?

Mrs. Finke: I had mixed emotions, in some ways I didn’t want to come back in other ways I said how just let me get back to the states and I will never complain again about the taxes or anything like that because I would just be so happy to be back so I think overall I was glad to get back but there were some I don’t know what to say but things have gotten, coming back and not knowing what I was gonna do.

Interviewer: Was it something you guys in general looked forward to or was it not so much?

Mrs. Finke: Look forward to coming home?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Mrs. Finke: Oh, I think so this is our country and after you’ve seen the places we’ve been, and I’m sure that they were not what they would be in peacetime you know, we saw them out of the rear end of a truck or a train with no windows in it or something and it was cold and it was wet it was not like being a tourist so, I just thought o boy there is no place like the USA and there still isn’t it has it’s faults but I’m still really happy to be here.

Interviewer: How do you think the war changed you?

Mrs. Finke: Ooo, um, I don’t know I suppose I matured a lot after seeing it, certainly I’ve developed my own ideas about the futility of war I feel that nothing is proven by it, and don’t know any way we could have stayed out of that one, but still it is not something that anyone  would wish upon anybody I just pray that there could be peace in this world but I fear that there won’t there hasn’t been down through history it’s been war and war and war here and there and someplace else but I would love to see the day when people could wake up and learn that there are better ways to settle things than violently.

Interviewer: Do you ever regret enlisting for the war?

Mrs. Finke: Oh no, I was so glad that I was able to go, I never would want to do it again but I was glad that I did it was the thing I wanted to do it at the time and I’m still glad I did.

Interviewer: So when you were helping these soldiers, were you ever awarded medals or given honors for your work?

Mrs. Finke: I got medals but it was just a, you got an ETO medal and you got a Philippine medal and you got something else for just being in the area, I didn’t get any special awards.

Interviewer: So what is the ETO medal?

Mrs. Finke: O, European Theater of Operation for when we were in France.

Interviewer: You said you wanted to be a nurse to help other people, was that your main driving forces, was that your motivation when you were helping them?

Mrs. Finke: Yeah, of course you go into nursing because you want to help other people and at that time there were not too many of your classmates who were still home, you know the large majority of the people you knew were gone army, navy, marines, whacks, waves, nursing, something, they were all in and um, you wanted to be a part of it, you wanted to do your share.

Interviewer: So when you wanted to become a nurse, was that before the war started?

Mrs. Finke: Yes.

Interviewer: So you planned on helping people in the states?

Mrs. Finke: Yes, I just you know thought that I would be working in a hospital I didn’t know about other things that were available to nurses and I just thought okay that I could work in a hospital and help people and that was what I wanted to be.  And then after I got out of the service and found out about public health nursing instead of taking care of the people who were sick and in the hospital, you do preventive things and you teaching them about immunizations, about their diet, about their weight, communicable disease control, that sort of thing. And then because I had two children um, it seems a better way to go was to school nursing because I had the time to be with my children in the summer and during their vacations and weekends which didn’t somewhere else so I ended up working for 25 years for LA city schools as a school nurse and you’re still helping people.

Interviewer: When you were stationed in Europe or in the Philippines, were you ever stationed near the frontlines?

Mrs. Finke: No, frontlines were quite a way away from where we were, now there were nurses up in those field hospitals and evacuation hospitals that were close to the frontlines.  I was assigned to a general hospital so they had already been one through one of those other hospitals and had emergency first aid, bandages, stop the bleeding, I don’t know what had already been done for them before they put them on a train and sent them to us but we were not the first line of defense.

Interviewer: On average, how many people would you help?

Mrs. Finke: Would I help, well one time I remember that I had 60 patients, but I wasn’t doing all the as I said the corpsmen were doing all the work, but you were in charge of the ward and seeing that they got their medications and treatments and so on and I did go around and rub a few backs and talk to them and they always seemed to be really happy when they can even have somebody to talk with and they liked to be able to see not just me but the American women because they had been at the frontline with all of these men and here there were some real American gals and they kind of liked that.

Interviewer: So how were, like when you were off duty, what were those times like?

Mrs. Finke: Well, when we were off duty it was out in the country, there wasn’t any way to go into town some of the guys walked in but I never did and um, there was a movie theater in there but I don’t know what movies they had there, I never bothered to go but um, we always had to go on marches with our backpacks and so on when we had day off or time off, and I wrote letters, I read, there was a chaplain well we had a Catholic chaplain, a Protestant chaplain and I think a Jewish chaplain with the unit so there was church services and my roommate and I sang in this little choir when we could be off duty on the Sunday the morning we can go, you had to wash our hair, take care of your uniform, polish your brass.  So I don’t know, we didn’t do anything real exciting mostly, we did get passes to places after the war was over.  My roommate and I got to go into Paris, was it 2 days and then we also got to go, Nice, France on a pass for, I don’t know 3 days maybe or 4?

Interviewer: Did you stay with this roommate throughout your entire service?

Mrs. Finke: Well there was a time in the Philippines when she was in another group, I think she worked in um, some other duty or something so I was with a different tent group but we were still friends and then after we were home I got to go up to San Francisco once and see her and by that time she was married and had a baby and we corresponded all down through the years, talked on the phone until she was gone. 

Interviewer: So during your stay in the Philippines, did you get another roommate that you were really close with?

Mrs. Finke: One of them, and she’s dead too.

Interviewer: I’m sorry.

Mrs. Finke: It’s um, that’s what counts as living so long I guess.  They drop off one by one.

Interviewer: So you said you got to go to Paris and Nice, how was it there, was it more like vacation this time?

Mrs. Finke: Well, sort of, we got to go to the follies and it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it was gonna be, and I think we took a bus, or was it a bus, or was it, um, I don’t know how we got around but we did get, o and we got onto the Palace at Versailles and got to tour that but I had expected it to be furnished I guess and mostly they were empty rooms, when you’re expecting maybe to have bombs land you protect what you can so a lot of the things, the artwork and so on had been put into storage, preserved, so I’m sure it would be much more spectacular now if I had seen it again but I was there, and in Nice, I remember only one thing that was different, they had what they called pedaloes and I don’t know if you know what a pedaloes is but they are some kind of a boat-type of thing and you ran the things with the feet and they make them go around on the water so we got to ride on a pedalo in the Mediterranean.  I just haven’t forgotten that and then I got to go through the Panama Canal on the way from Marseille to Manila and I had studied about the Panama Canal as a child and some how that always fascinated me so when we got to go through the Panama Canal they had a guide get on the ship on the east side and go all the way across and explain things, the scenery and the, and I still remember the huge chain they had across in front of the gates that lower and you know let the water in or out and I think the man said that each link in that chain weighed, I thought he said a ton but I could be wrong, they were just huge, great big pieces you know but you had to be pretty strong to keep those ships from ramming the gate you know, and to watch the water going up or down, I can’t remember which side was high but they fill up and they let it out then the ship would go on down to the, well it was the same level and then they let it down, I think there were 3 gates if I’m not mistaken.

Interviewer: So your trips to Paris and Nice were all government funded?

Mrs. Finke: Uh-huh.

Interviewer: Because you were helping out…

Mrs. Finke: It was something they gave us while we waited for something else and then they sent us down to Marseille and we were in barracks and waiting again until they assigned us to a ship to go over to Manila.

Interviewer: So when were you decommissioned?

Mrs. Finke: It was I think, April of ‘46.  I in just a little over 2 years.

Interviewer: So you were in it for, in the front I guess for 2 years.

Mrs. Finke: Well I was in the service anyway, wherever they sent me.

Interviewer: Okay, um, I was just reading through your memories that you typed up during the war, and it said that you received some certificates and some medals, do you want to explain what…?

Mrs. Finke: Do you want to see them, my medals, some of you saw them but I have.  I can get those medals out again, they’re nothing special everybody got them, um, I didn’t get any, anything special.  And commission in the Army of the United States officers who served in World War II and that was signed by Major General Edward Whitsell, Dispatched General.  And here is the General Gordon that was the ship we went from Marseille to Manila and they gave us a certificate and it says, “May you hold pleasant memories of this sea journey which began in Marseille, France July 24, 1945 ended in Manila, Philippines on August 31, 1945 after traversing some 15,000 miles of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.” And it says, “To you go the thanks of the Commanding Officer for your good sportsmanship and your fine supportive cooperation, in true Navy tradition, we of the Gordon salute you and say glad to have you aboard.”  And then here was an International Date Line certificate that we got.  And there was a letter from the President of the United States.  Now let’s see, Second Lieutenant Cornelius, to you who answered the call of you country, Harry Truman.  So that was husband.  That’s all I have in here.  Oh, the book, let’s see I have another book that had a few pictures in it, just a minute……….Those are the medals, and then these stripes you wore on your sleeves, each one was 6 months or something of, overseas.  And that’s one of my dog tags, and that’s a cadusas that we wore on our uniform.  And let’s see, this little speck was me, they had a grand parade and our whole unit was there and they presented me with Hue’s Distinguished Flying Cross; that was after he was already declared dead so it was, let’s see and that was our unit, you can’t see any individuals, but they were there.  And these were some pictures taken in the Philippines, they’re not very clear.  I didn’t have a camera so any pictures I have are some that somebody took and gave me.  And this was, when I was Brun’s General Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico and that was myself and these were two other nurses I have no idea what there names were.  And these were up at Camp White in Oregon that was our instructors and this is was when we had our gas mask drill.  Anyway, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  And that’s one of the ladies in our nurses quarters in France and this is and there is another one and there you see a view of it.  And we had about 85 nurses in our unit, and then 3 Red Cross physical therapist, and an Occupational Therapist.  So as I said I didn’t have a camera, oh, this is the castle we lived in when we were in England, it’s quite an establishment but it was cold, very cold and again this is our whole unit and this was some us playing in snow when we were in France.  That’s at New Chattel before we went down to set up our hospital.  I don’t have much in the way, I don’t have uniforms like this but one of my friends, and that’s what we wore when we were off duty in France.

Interviewer: So um, both times when you were in France and England it was winter?

Mrs. Finke: Uh-huh, well we were, it was England and France the same winter and the next winter I was in the Philippines. And that’s the clothes that we wore everywhere except when we were on duty and on duty, these were our uniforms, they were pin-striped sear suckers.  I don’t know if she has some more in here.  She had a camera so she took more pictures.  That’s getting ready to go somewhere on a ship, I don’t know which one.  This is boarding the General Gordon; that was the one we went to the Philippines on.  So it was quite an experience.  That’s about all I have to show you.

Zach Keirstead

Period 6

Mr. Beckwith

Honors U.S. History

Greg Bell Transcript

Where and and when were you born?

I was born September 1964 Los Angeles, CA in a little bitty hospital called queen of angels that is now owned by a cult AHAHAHAHAAH. Uhhhhh If you drive down the 101 freeway and uh go north out of downtown LA there’s a big white building on the right side

What were your parent’s occupations and what was the number and gender of your siblings

My dads and attorney my moms a nurse. She’s also a flight instructor and an l8ibrarain over the years. Uhhh let me see I've got four brothers and one sister. And uhhh got one older brother I'm second and then everybody else is younger

What were doing before you entered the service?

Uhhhhh just you know a whole lot of nothing I was managing a burger king and uuhh you know when I turned 21 you know what am I doing with my life and said you know lets go figure out what I want to do and figured out military was what I would like to do

Uhhhh were there any other family members that served in the military

Yeah umm my dad was a marine uhh back in 50 or 61 uhh my brother Bryan was an infantrymen with the first Calvary division and served in the gulf war

Alright and uhh how did you enter the service?

By raising my hand and saying I solemnly swear. I went down to the recruiters office in Covina uhhh Saturday and place looked deserted the person that was in there was a captain and I was like can I join the army and he says yeah sure turned out he has never enlisted anybody before and I actu8ally got him his recruiters badge hahahaha

Umm if you were enlisted why were you chosen for the specific branch of your service

Say that again

Why did you…

Why did I choose the army?

Because they could guarantee me a job.

As opposed to the other services you know you so through boot camp and they tell you what you’re gonna do and you pick your job upfront uhhh they also offered more college money uhhh umm enlistment bonus and I got to pick my duty station upfront.

Alright, how was the departure for training camp and the early days of training?

Ummmm I left Los Angeles in September of 1985 and yah know LA is fairly dry at that time. It’s about 90 degrees and wheeze and the humidity was just unbelievable.  They shove us yah know a couple hundred guys on a bunch of buses and it was dark out but it was still 90 degrees out and it’s 10 o’ clock at night and uhhh the windows in the buses were just running with water from all the condensation. Ummmm they drove us down to Fort Benning which is about two hours south of Columbus, Georgia and took us to a reception station where uh you’re gonna get your hair cut and your shots, issue you your uniform and that’s about five days before basic training.  When they move you over to the basic training unit and yeah that’s a shock umm I’m an infantry man and it’s a bit different from the experience guys have if they’re going to be a supply clerk or yah know going to be a uhhh an Arabic linguist or the Air Force it’s a little bit more laidback uhhh they took us all outside loaded us up on buses uh three men to a seat, your bags piled up on top of you. We pulled up in front of the barracks for basic training, doors opened and this guy, this drill sergeant, a big black man, about 6’7”, 270 pounds, sticks his head in the bus, “You motherfuckers got about five seconds to get off my bus and four of them are gone!” and it was just a mad rush to get out and everybody’s got their crap out on top of them and everybody jams the aisle ways.  Guys are diving out the windows and stuff like that, bags get thrown out the windows, and emergency exits got pushed open. We got off, they put us into a formation and they dropped us and we did push-ups for about the nest 45 minutes. Welcome to the army

Was there any specialized training at your boot camp that you underwent?

Uhhh yeah actually I was part of an experiment that took back in the eighties the uhh cohort? Program and cohort did was you take a company of soldiers and they did this with infantry battalions uhh you take an entire battalions worth of soldiers and you put them through basic training and infantry training together and then you move that whole unit and it becomes a regular army battalion and then you drop in the NCOs and officers who are already in place and move you lock, stock, and barrel, and keep them together for three years. The problem is that about 90% get out after three years and then you have to do it again with a unit that doesn’t know each other.  We were light infantry and that’s interesting because we literally had to walk everywhere.  For miles. All we had were LPCs yah know it was just A LOT of walking.  It took 20 miles to get there, it took 20 miles to get back and we walked. But hey, I was in the best shape of my life.

Alright well adapting to military life, how was daily life?

Living in the barracks is kinda interesting. Well in general it was a shock because it’s you and 64 guys in a room, one giant room and you either fit in or they make you.  You get to know guys really well and there is only one locker for your life to fit into.  No privacy, no large personal belongings.  It creates for some amazing cohesion between soldiers and camaraderie.  Absolutely nothing is your and private, the only thing that’s private is your head because everything else is just open game.  Food, I came in as cautious, started phasing out starting with MREs and they were absolutely horrible.  Nothing could be worse.  They did not only bad taste but fatal, they had dehydrated beef and pork patties.  If you eat it dry it’ll suck all the moisture out of your body.  A marine had died from dehydration because his last meal was a MRE

Wow

So the food was bad but the mess hall was a mess hall.  Breakfast was great and lunch and dinner were a hit or miss.

So the comradery was good?

Oh yeah it was amazing. Some of the best friends I ever had. Down at Ft. Benning, Ga. There was a group of us who saw a concert and ended up becoming a makeshift family to this group of girls we tried to pick up on. Ya know it was great to have that creature comfort of a family that was there for you when you’re umm far from any real family that you have. So yeah the comradery was great.

Now where did you serve?

I was stationed in Ft. Benning. Got out in1988 joined the National Guard took at will time post during the war on drugs watching the borders in 1989 – 1990. I then spent the next three years in Germany and missed the Gulf war and went to Germany and lived in the snow. I was in charge of training guys that had been dispatched out but had gotten called back to active duty. Our job was to ready these guys for departure to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I was then transferred to Ft. Hood Texas. 194 I went to college and in 1988 moved back to Los Angeles and joined my old unit and have been with them ever since. I went to Philippines and went to Iraq and I am going back in the summer.

Was there any action you witnessed and were there and duties on the frontlines?

I was an infantrymen specifically a moratarmen. My unit first battalion one eighty fifth-armor headquarters company. We were just south of Iscandio, Iraq and we were bombarded continuously because of the way the camp was set up. Uhhh there were four towers on each corner each of which you could see for miles because the terrain was so flat. Uhh umm because of this it made us an easy target and day in day out we relentlessly were being shot at by insurgents until I had finally spotted where these fuckers were and I was giving the order to fire upon them. Umm the coordinates . . . the ones we had inputted to suspect the closest proximity were so uhh precise that the first mortar shell landed about a foot away from the first Iraqi insurgent. Anyway our post at one point had been under Hussein regime as a radio outpost. When we arrived at the outpost we had relived a company that was camped there previously. I stayed here until I was shipped or umm transferred to convoy support center outside Diwahen. I had kept saying that these towers were an ugly eyesore target and somebody is gonna get killed. They kept saying we had to leave them up until one day the Iraqis aiming was dead on and killed four men from our company. The next day the towers got taken down by direct orders. May 25^th 2004 was the day that those young men had dies. They died because someone had made the genius decision to keep the towers up as aiming points for the Iraqis and our question of “does somebody have to die before we take the towers down and you know what we got our answer. And ya know it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Once I finally made it to Scundi I was living the good life . . . great food, nice chow hall, Internet, insulation, ice cream, air conditioning. The job of mortar men is unique . . . uhh when rounds are being fired at your position everyone drops and takes cover except for us. We uhh stand up and try to locate the threat so we can eliminate it. Doing that has quite, what we call the pucker factor. A very high pucker factor. It makes your asshole tense up real tight. But nothing really happened and we came home in February 2^nd 2005.

How did you stay in touch with your family back at home?

HAHA! Well I'm an IT guy in my civilian life. So at Fobkatsu I, well me and about three other guys set up and paid for a broadband Internet connection. SO it was very easy to stay in touch. On Christmas Day 2004 I called my mom from my bunk. Haha so yeah we stayed in touch pretty easily. Uhh letters. Letters were important. Being in the Armed services and on active duty you can send anything for free without any postage. Se we would write on a napkin about a sentence and an address and it’ll get sent out. But just about every camp had Internet, cell phones, satellite. So we were living the tough life out there.

How was the readjustment to civilian life?

Did you know that a late model Honda accord when you slam the door sounds a lot like a mortar round hitting the ground? I came back in February 20054 and got my hearing checked. So I got it checked and when I cam to Bob Hope airport and I remember grabbing my duffel bag, stepped out of the terminal and hear “THUMP” and I just hit the ground in front of about eight hundred people. So yeah it was kinda embarrassing at first but I eventually got used to it. So yeah it took some getting used to. Noises get to your head when people were trying to kill you. Adjusting to overall civilian world is difficult. Uhhh you know you never really realize what you take for granted when you have to fight for you life. It’s amazing to see what some people waste and discard and you know just plain not care about daily necessities that are commonplace for us but luxuries to most everyone else in the world. I’m not married. I don’t have kids so I didn’t have to go through what a lot of guys had to go through dealing with that. So it could be worse.

How did the wartime experiences affect your life?

Well I’m about to go back but uhh so far so good. We’ll see what this next deployment has to offer umm yeah it’s put some strain on my relationship with my girlfriend. It’s hard to say goodbye and dismiss that all on command. But ya know it’s just something you have to just deal with. Personally it’s messed up to think that in this day and age we’ve gotten ourselves into a war we can’t get out of. And uhh something’s gotta change cause there are other threats. There are other countries that pose a real threat to us like those with nukes like INDIA, CHINA, N. KOREA, PAKISTAN and so on. Each one could literally destroy us with a push of a button.

Do you . . . Were there any life lessons you learned being in the service?

Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Haha sorry I love the movie the princess bride ok life lessons yeah . . .anything you do, anything you don’t do can get you killed. Umm if your time comes it comes and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Umm your life is the mindset that everything is a mission and must get completed period. You can’t get too worried about the little things. Camels are stupid stupid animals. Seriously though appreciate your family and those that take care of you and love you. Tell people that you love them. No matter what do something to show that you love those that you care about because you never know what is coming for you.

WC=Wesley Chen

GT = Grady Talbot

WC:  Today is May 8, 2008 we are interviewing Grady Talbot, a veteran from the Korean Viet.. Vietnam War born on November 30, 1935. He achieved the rank sergeant in the Marine Corps and captain in the Air Force. My name is Wesley Chen and I am doing this interview at the veteran’s residence with the help of Lawrance Chung, Christine Chen, and Nina Castro. This interview is being conducted for the Veteran’s History Project of the Library of Congress. Mr. Talbot, could you please tell me about your background, your.. where you um where born, where you grew up?

GT:   Before I entered the service?

WC:  Before you entered the service.

GT:   I was born in Los Angeles, uh stayed there a couple years and moved to Central Valley and was raised in Fresno, graduated from high school.

WC:  What kind, um, your family, who was around you, your mother, father?

GT:   My real father and my mother were divorced when I was about two. Uh, and my mother supported my sister and myself um by herself, living in the tail end of the Depression. And in early 42 she married Faye Talbot who uh was my stepfather but I’ve taken his name and he raised me.

WC:  What about your real father?

GT:   Um don’t know much about how him. He uh ended up in the San Jose area somewhere. I saw him one time in later life.

WC:  When did you first decide you wanted to join the marines?

GT:   I was probably around 15, I was one of those dissatisfied high school students. And uh looked for my emancipation by joining the Marine Corps., which I did immediately upon graduating from high school at age 17.

WC:  Did the depression affect this decision at all? That financial aspect of it?

GT:   Uh the Depression was before the war, uh World War II, and uh Faye Talbot always was employed so we were, you know, not a destitute family.

WC:  When you joined the marines, what were you looking for?

GT:   I was 17, I’m not sure I had a clear idea; I suppose to get out on my own, see the world. Maybe some adventure, I’ve always been sort of adventurous anyway. So, I suppose all of those things woven together.

WC:  When you joined the marines, where did they first send you?

GT:   We went to uh MCRD which was a Marine Corp Recruit Depot in San Diego from boot camp, uh completing that I was sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in the fall of ‘53 and attended demolition school in uh graduated from that as a demolition specialist. Following that, I was assigned the first marine division and sent to Korea, the division then being an occupying force in Korea. I arrived in Korea in February of 54 uh and stayed there for one year. Uh returning when our whole division came back to… to the states uh and we returned to Camp Pendleton, California where I completed my uh status at the Marine Corps.

WC:  And in the Marine Corps, during the training, was there any event that influenced your life?

GT:   Uh nothing particularly, uh it was just training, and you know I did it, I did it pretty well and graduated.

WC:  Standard. Um after basic training what did you do in the Marines?

GT:   I think I just told you I was a demolitions specialist.

WC:  Oh

GT:   I uh, it’s a person whose skilled on use of explosives. And uh, I was assigned as the demolitions specialist and weapons company of the second battalion of the Marines, which was one of the three regiments of the first Marine division.

WC:  And did you ever see any combat when you were in the Marines?

GT:   Uh, no uh things were still fairly active uh in the lower level in Korea. Uh I heard gun fire uh I never saw the reason for it or was involved in anything. And it was, you know, residue hostilities from the war.

WC:  After the marines where did you go?

GT:   After the marines uh I went to junior college for two years worked a year and then I ended getting my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Cal Poly St. Luis Obispo.

WC:  Um and then you went to join the air force correct?

GT:   Well after graduating college I worked for US Electrical Motors uh in Los Angeles uh for almost a year. And uh it was a job I wasn’t satisfied with. Engineering was fun to study, it wasn’t that fun to practice I uh enjoyed contact with people more I wasn’t working for a boss I particularly admired. And I was looking for somewhere to go, and uh basically the three options were to get a Master’s degree in engineering which I applied for and was accepted to the University of Arizona, uh to uh get a job with another firm somewhere and I had uh placed my name with the head honorary office, and the third option was joining the air force which came about because of a date one night between my wife and I with friends of ours. And we went out and saw the missiles display and ended up talking to a recruiting officer.

WC:  Why the marines? Uh why the air–– pause––. 

GT:   Why the marines is an interesting question. My youngest uncle on my mother’s side, he was in the Marine Corps. in World War II. Uh early on he was in Guadalcanal and a number of campaigns in the Pacific. And he was my favorite uncle, and I ‘m sure that that’s the primary influence that directed me towards the Marine Corps.

WC:  Why the air force?

GT:   Flying and because it was a Air Force missile display and we started talking about flying. If the Navy missile display was talking about flying, I would have probably been in the Navy. And uh the flying aspect really appealed me.

WC:  Wh.. So what was your interaction to the recruiter to the Air Force?

GT:   Um recruiters have a job of getting more bodies. And they get ranked on filling their quota and so they get trained on recognizing likely candidates. My friend had been talking to the recruiting officer while I was looking at all the missiles. And we were both enduring grads and missiles were interesting. Right after I toured the missiles, I went over there and stood there listen to him talk with the recruiting officer. And I casually asked the recruiting officer, mentioning that I had been in the Marine Corps. I said uh “what’s the chances of getting into flight training?” Or, “what would my pay be in flight training?” And I think he sensed that he had one on the hook and he whipped out his book and looked up, got my information, looked it up, and if I were the second lieutenant beginning flying officer in the Air Force, my rate of pay would have been 150 dollars a month more than I was grocing as an engineer. And I’d always wanted to fly since I was a kid and that just sounded really great so he talked me into going into Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino to take the flight physical and the Air Force Officer Qualification Test. Uh which I did and he called me up a few weeks later and said they were the best scores he had ever seen and that I’d been selected for the class beginning in August. Uh and with further training and pilot training, so I ended up signing on and choosing the Air Force of those three options.

WC:  Once you joined the Air Force, what kind of training did you undergo?

GT:   Initially, I went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas for Officer Training School, uh OTS as its called and its basically a three month course that uh makes a uh person come out as a second lieutenant. It’s a commissioning program. Um, all the people that go into that program are college graduates, it’s a requirement. Um, completing that, I went to Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas for flying training, which was a year long program consisting of two parts. One part being primary training the other part being basic training. The uh the training was in all jet aircraft right from the start and completing the uh the training there, I was sent to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona where I was trained in the F-100 ground attack fighter, basically. And then once I completed that training, about a nine-month long course. I was sent to the England Air Force base in Alexandria, Louisiana.

WC:  You were assigned to the F-100, is there a name for this plane?

GT:   It was uh officially known as the Super Saver. It was the follow on design to the Korean War F-86 Saver that were both made and manufactured by the North-American Aviation.

WC:  Could you give us some background on why it had this name and what kind of aircraft it was?

GT:   Uh it was a single engine, uh, single seat firing aircraft. Uh, it was originally designed as a daylight air superiority fighter designed in the late 50’s. It was the first level five supersonic fighter craft in the inventory, but the um Air Force mission at that time in the Cold War was basically nuclear response rather than air superiority, so it became redesigned into both a ground attack and a special weapons delivery platform, special weapons being a euphemism for nuclear weapons. Um, the uh trainer we had had very strong emphasis on air-to-ground gunnery and special weapons deliveries.

WC:  And after your training, your officer’s training and your flight training, how were you assigned to this aircraft?

GT:   When you, uh, and just the typical, I believe of all the services, certainly the Air Force, you go through as a group and a class and at the completion of the studies, those who graduate from the class whatever that number is there is that number of assignments that come down. Um, the selection for those assignments is based on your class standing, so the person with the highest class standing is going to get the first choice uh lowest class standing gets the last one left over, whatever it is. In our uh pilot training class of 55, we averaged a little over 4 engines per pilot. Um, B-52s, B-47s, uh C-130s KC um 105s or KC 35s I guess they were. Um there was four direct assignments for people who had previously been navigators, there were sent to backseat the F-4’s, there were uh six slots to F-100’s. And I graduated 5^th in the class and got in one of those slots, there was about four slots to become an instructor pilot in pilot training, and the rest were various cargo and bomber, one guy went to helicopters.

WC:  And when you started flying the F-100, your first mission was the um USAF first US strike in North Vietnam?

GT:   That was my first combat mission.

WC:  First combat mission.

GT:   Um, it, you know, I’d flown missions daily in the United States and wherever you are that’s your job. Uh, in October, I was assigned to Inda Air Force base and to the 615^th tactical air squadron. The 615^th at the time was tasked to man uh the uh what they call the Salbot detachment. It was a detachment of uh eight pilots and five airplanes in Tocklee, Thailand. In the squadron, I’d just come back from a three month deployment so the new guys got to go to Tocklee and I was one of those new guys. When we arrived we were uh in early December, supposedly for a thirty-day stay. It was two weeks later when we were told it was going to be a three-month’s stay and the tensions in the Far East were beginning to heat up. The Gulf of Tonkin incident had occurred and uh planning was in the stages to supplement Vietnamese forces with American forces both air forces and ground forces. Uh, President Johnson, at the time, decided that we needed to retaliate against North Vietnam for the attack on the.. um I think it was the Maddox, it was the destroyer by the PT boats out of North Vietnam. And at top the air base in addition to arson, the Salbot Detachment was a detachment from Canada Air Force Base and something New Mexico called the 428^th tactical firing squadron. They were detached to make the strike on the base and our Salbot Detachment was to fly support for the post-strike bomb damage assessment uh for the reccy (short for reconnaissance)  aircraft. So the 428^th made the strike and then thirty minutes later we were to come in low level and floweret the target one pass so that the RF-101 could take photos to see what the damage to the site was and I uh I flew on that mission.

WC:  Were there any casualties?

GT:   Uh the 428^th, I think, lost one bird uh we had uh 4 ship to go along with the uh the photo reconnaissance aircraft to fly flax oppression, it was an inlet for the bay and two ships were going to fly down one side and the other two were going to go down the other side where all the guns would be of course uh dropping CPU bomblets uh in the idea that dropping these at a level would suppress the flack giving the photo reconnaissance aircraft a better chance to survive uh the pass through. We came in on the way to the target uh the number 3 aircraft had a radio failure and he and his wingman had to turn back so just Lee and myself escorted the photo reccy airplane. And uh we came in off the water uh we’d gone about twenty-five to fifty feet above the water going about as fast as we could go better than five-hundred miles an hour, and as we approached the shore, we did that to keep under the radar, as we approached the shore, we had to pop up the tuner feed for the bomb release altitude two to three-hundred feet. Uh and the photo reconnaissance aircraft actually ended up being out in front of us, it was two-engined and a bit faster. And he got in front of us, and we went down the shoreline dropping these bomblets. And the amount of antiaircraft fire that I saw was just incredible. The sky was full of streaks of orange which were the tracers, and that was scary enough until I remembered that every fifth bullet was a tracer. Four more out there I couldn’t see for everyone I did see. Uh there was a very thin overcast over the city, over the inlet, at about 700 ft, and uh as we were about two-thirds of the way over the target, my leader called out that he had taken some hits. And I had already expended the uh ammunitions and so he directed that we uh begin a climbout, and we did and adjusting the empty pods and popped through this thin layer. Uh and we were through it fairly quickly because it was so low, which means that they… the gunner didn’t have anyway of targeting us at that point. Uh I turned back towards the sea following the RF-101. And um Lee turned back also and Lee turned out, he went left while we turned right. Uh, we turned back, got out over the water, and we were separated contact with Lee. He had damage to his left air arm and his rudder. And he had to divert into Da Nang Air Base in North Vietnam. And uh through radio calls we located each other uh for reference purposes and then were able to get a visual, and the RF-101 accompanied the leader back to Da Nang and I flew back to the base on my own to the tanker to get refueled which took me about seven or eight tries to get refueled because I was a bit nervous. And uh, they had a policy that if you had a hot mission, you could kind of beat up the base when you got back, make high speed, low altitude passes. So, in bound I got within I range, I called the command post made the post strike report and requested the high speed, low altitude pass and they gave me permission.  I’m still a really inexperienced pilot at this point, but this was one huge adventure and uh as I came into the base, I came in too close, too high. And so, to get down to the ground I had to really had to dive off and uh, in doing so I picked up a huge amount of air speed, I was just below mach one, the speed of sound. And I came across the end of the field at about fifty feet high, just smoking and I lit the afterburner as I passed the end of the runway and it uh lit about hm a quarter of the way down the runway. And then I pulled up into a forty-five degree bank er climb and laid the stick over and started doing in-around rolls and I just held it there and as far as the people on the ground were concerned, I disappeared from their view doing in-around rolls. And then I finally rolled out at about twenty-five thousand feet altitude which is five-thousand–– five miles of height. And about a seven or eight mile sight range, so I know… I know I was out of sight. And I relaxed and the aircraft was trimmed for six-hundred knots, but now it was doing two-hundred knots. And when I rolled out, my first thought was, “Oops. I did the it wrong way I’m upside down,” and so I rolled one hundred-eighty degrees and then stopped and said “No no now I’m upside down.” And then I rolled back and finally seeing that blue’s the sky and that’s up on top and green is down below. And I was grinding off in the distance for about a minute to, I think, organize, basically hanging in the shoulder strap because the aircraft was trembling because I was down to pick up air speed. So I was like squeezed up into the edge of the canopy like that, I can barely reach the trend button on the stick and I thumbed it and it… as the G’s came back and I settled back down into the seat, and it took a minute or two to kind of get oriented, to figure things out, then I turned back down and this is about one hundred-fifteen or twenty miles south of the base. And on the way back in, the tower called up and asked if I was okay, ‘cause they hadn’t heard anything about me. And I said that I was and I came back in and requested a tactical landing which is a specialized form of landing. Uh, you come in very low at three-hundred knots, you cross into the field, you pull the nose up into a climbing turn, you pull the throttle back, and pop up the speed brakes, and so by the time you get turned around and you’re a thousand feet you’re going the opposite direction for downward then you just lower the landing gear and flaps and just keep the turn coming, and come back and and land. Basically you come back in, you roll out briefly before you touch down. This maneuver was designed to get on the ground as fast as possible in case you’re under attack or something. Uh, I did one of those tactical landings and it was like perfect. It was just so cool because everything worked out just exactly right. And I rolled out, and I was so excited, you know, it sure had been an eventful day. And I didn’t raise a canopy, uh it was hot in Tocklee in uh February and uh roll out drop the drag chute and have the guns de-armed, came back in a parked aircraft and the canopies were sold out. My crew chief was so proud, he almost ran me into an… a ground power cart. Funny, he gave me this motion to stop and I did and he moved out of the way and he motioned me forward and I parked, shut it down, and I raised the canopy and the canopy got this far and a ladder came up, you know a hook over it, and was up another six or eight inches and the beer came in uh and followed by the crew chief’s head saying “Best damn show all day, sir,” he was really proud. So it was quite an exciting mission.

WC:  You’re um, you’re excited after the mission happened because it was an eventful day. How were you uh how were you feeling before the mission, preparing for going on this?

GT:   Um, pretty nervous, the night before, uh the flight surgeon gave us uh sleeping pills so we could get some sleep, you know you want to be alert and thinking and be rested so we took those sleeping pills uh to get a good night’s sleep. And this is sort of typical on every mission uh that I flew afterwards where I knew there was going to be antiaircraft fire. Um, you are, you know, nervous and tense up until it’s the time to perform, and then you start thinking about what you have to do and that concern or tenseness goes away. You just think about making the strike the best you can, doing the right job, and getting the bombs on target so...

WC:  Then your next mission was Operation Rolling Thunder, correct?

GT:   Operation rolling thunder was a contained series of missions, I’d flew about a total of seventeen missions in North Vietnam and Laos together. Um, flew over Dieh Niem Phu, which was the famous place were the French were kicked out of North Vietnam by the… by the uh Ho Chi Minh. Paralugia Pass, which was a gap in some cursed mountains that a bulk of the supplies for the South Vietnamese troops came through there, we made strikes there. Um, the squadron made a strike on uh Thanh Hua, which was a bridge, um near Ha Noi area, it was a really tough, a tough ridge and uh one of my classmates ended up getting shot down and killed on that mission. And I didn’t go on that mission; I stayed home from that mission because we had more pilots than airplanes.

WC: How did you feel when your, umm, when your classmates where shot down and heard about that?

GT:   Umm he had started with my F-100 class and about half the way through he was in an auto accident and pretty serve one some drunk had crossed the road and hit him head on. And so he was delayed for a couple classes and he was assigned to our squadron after we had got into Vietnam. His name was Craig Smith and you known I have known him maybe longer than that and known him by the squadron and I volunteer to be his umm not summary official but is the guy who basically collects his personal effects and packages them up and filters umm out any data that might be damaging to the family like for example if umm if he had a letter from a girlfriend, he was married and we threw that letter away, this is short of standard procedure.    So that there will be nothing embarrassing for the family, and I guess this is called a summary officer. And I did that job and so I reminiscing on a lot when I was doing that job buy  I think all pilots short of take it to  well that wouldn’t have happen to me, he must had made a mistake of some short. Because you think of it, at least I didn’t, and nobody I talked to, thought in terms of their jeopardy being increased because a friend or a squadron mate got shot down.

WC:  Was there any, out of the 17 different missions you few, was there any certain missions that stood out in terms of what you, your objective or your umm

GT:   There was one city close to the DMZ, demilitarized zone, umm it was close to the last of the 17 and um on that mission we had done some target sighting beforehand and we had photos showing the targets they wanted to hit and so we memorized those the best we could. Umm and the idea was that when your trying to roll in you would pick out the latest still standing after that. On each mission the anti-aircraft fire seem to increase, become more intense and more accurate, originally we were starting out doing what we call dive bombing which is a 30 dive angle releasing 3000 ft above the ground which is a fairly accurate way to deliver bombs of that era, they we not like smart bombs today. If it got within a 100 ft it was a pretty good bomb but as the missions went by we increased the release attitude and dive angle to always make the job tougher for the anti-aircraft gunners. On that mission we were up to 45 dive angle and 4500 ft release and umm I was number 4 on the flight and we came into short of a wagon wheel fashion around the target and I think we were the third flight... (Cell phone Rings) Anyways I was number 4 on the flight and each aircraft dove in on the target in turn so basically we were presenting the gunners with one airplane to shot at which I don’t think is a very good tactic. But thing at the thinking at the time was if you had  multiple aircrafts diving at the same time they were likely to fly into each other’s airplane or bombs or create some hazardous someway somewhere deeded that was less hazardous tactic for attack. Anyway I rolled in and there was a large warehouse complex still standing and I uh I rolled in on that and dropped my bombs and did my recovery and usually the recovery procedure is too roll wings level and go full throttle and pull straight up. And once you get upper bound get into a turn to avoid antiaircraft fire and I had decided that I was going to tear out a bit further and so I released my bombs and instead of starting the recovery right away I kept the nose down and I lit the afterburner to get increase speed for probably another 4 or 5 seconds which lower me another 1000 ft further down the path and then I started the recovery and I pulled into a hard right turn and as I was pulling up I could see this anti aircraft fire on my left, exploding about where I surmise I would have been so in my mind I think I dodge a bullet that day. We got, we didn’t lose anyone on that mission, we got back and about two days later they posted the photo from the post strike mission, the post strike photo reconnaissance mission, and I had completely taken out the warehouse, it just wasn’t there. It was a before and after photo on the wall, and it was just gone. And one little shot off the side, was about 1/3 there and you could see the flames on that so I figured I had been successful with my drop. Because there was nothing there, it probably was an empty warehouse and it wasn’t that military that important. Um no other missions out north stand out particularly, one mission we were out there, it’s interesting because, we were over Laus, and it was very severe thunderstorm activity. We were pretty heavy laden with bombs and we were at High altitude trying to conserve fuel; we were pretty close to 40000 ft. and our flight leader which was the squadron commander took us to the top of a thunderstorm, we don’t really like to go through tops of thunder storms and we were all in close formation. And as soon as we go into the thunderstorm, I imminently lose sight, complete sight of number 3. My wing was almost overlapping his wing, I was in very tight. So I executed a lost wingman procedure and broke off. Radio called 4 is off, 3 is off, 2 is off. And about 10, 15 seconds later we popped out of the thunderstorms and there were airplanes all 4 of us were scattered around and there was about a quarter inch of clear ice on my windshield and had we stayed in that thunderstorm very much we would have been very loaded down with ice which makes the aircraft all the heavier and lees aerodynamic o that was short of an interesting sight. We got back together and continued our mission.

WC:  Did any, did you suffer any casualties in the mission that was either yourself or anyone you personally knew?

GT:   Uh on no flight that I was on every one did we lose anyone but one time we did come close to losing me. This was in South Vietnam and we were on a ground attack mission and I was carrying napalm and the target was a little hooch. A little storage hut and I suppose it was a rice storage area and my first pass on it, I released just way to high and the bombs missed the target by a lot. It was kind of embarrassing so on the second time I came in said myself “I’m gonna get that sucker” and I really pressed in, this time way too close and I release the napalm palm, and we carried four, two outboard station, two inboard station they were dropped in pairs. So the second time I dropped the second I started the recovery and that’s when I realized that the hooch was on the top of a 70 ft hill and I was going to be a lot closer to the ground than I though I went between 2 palm trees. And my though was well, my thought this, that I wanted to let them know that I wasn’t shot down and that I messed up so I pushed the mic button to say something and all that came out was “god damn” you know I tried to be intelligent and just a visceral response came out. And I pulled straight away and the wings were rocking and I was so shook up from doing that I was having difficulty keeping the wings from rocking on; I wasn’t paying attention to flying as I was thanking god that I survived that pass. And I seen several of my squadron mate do much the same thing I, uh, saw one guy I think he came even lower than I did. It’s just the hazard of being in air ground attack if you are going to push it; you’re liable to mess it up. In fact tree strikes by aircraft was so common that a message came down from the  7^th air force commander that the next wing commander that had a bird strike a tree, he’s going to get fired. There was an f-4 that came back and he has coconut husks in his wheel well and my like squadron operation officer said “the coconut husk, there in the middle of the tree.” So they stuck that one in the hanger and scaffold to hide it from view and then they replaced the parts that were bashed up bit by bit wherever they could find, cannibalize other parts. Somebody came up with metal damage they would claim battle damage to the gear door and put it on there. Its just one of the hazards of close air support ground attack.

WC:  And then after your um continuous Rolling Thunder missions then you umm became in-country ground support.

GT:   Yes um my tour in Vietnam was (Phone Call)…

WC: Pause one sec. Then you um proceeded on to the in-country ground support, could you please talk about that?

GT:   Sure umm, my tour was really broken up into two parts. The war part started off in Toklee and in March of 65 we moved to Vietnam er to Da Nang, Vietnam until June and the squadron came back and in January of 66, correction, July of 66 the squadron returned to Fan’ an airbase in South Vietnam, which was 20 miles south of Kalong bay. And the second half of our time in Da Nang as well as the 2^nd 6 month tour was basically spent in missions in the south sometimes on alert to be there for group troops in contact, sometimes on missions to destroy enemy infrastructure or supplies, storage or truck routes and things of that nature. One mission was just north of what is now called Ho Chi Minh City, it was a stronghold of the Vietcong and the plan was too kill all the trees by defoliation, which they did and then go in with bombers and fighters and drop napalm and basically burn everything down – burn all the trees down and thereby tribes denied that area to the enemy. It was full of tunnels and one thing or other. The mission was partially a success and that the defoliation worked and when we went on a strike uh it was in the portion of the year where the air is really damp, high humidity and the fires and the bombs basically created an updraft. And the updraft created a thunderstorm and the thunderstorm dumped water and put all the fires out. It was successful in terms of polluting the area like they wanted to. Other than that the most missions pretty much melded together in ordinariness, your hitting tree lines or bunch of trees where trucks were suspected to be underneath them or things of that nature. Generally we could not see the target we would have a forward air controller who marked the target with smoke rockets. And then direct our dropping bombs and weaponry in relation to the smoke. While he might say, you see my white flash of smoke rocket, uh drop your bombs two meters to the right of that and you know it was all jungle, jungle canopy up to 300 ft of height. So whatever was down there the forward air controller would know about because he was down there and could see partly through that but at our altitudes we couldn’t tell what was there, so most of the time it was missions without much feedback in terms of how well we were doing. The mission that I got the Distinguished Flying Cross on was a popup mission where some Vietcong were discovered crossing a lagoon area in boats. There were about 6 boats. And we were on the way into that or to another target area when that target popped up and we were diverted to it and we caught them out in the middle and basically destroyed them. There was over 30 confirmed kill of the Vietcong and that mission everybody on that received a Distinguished Flying Cross. The mission was distinctive in that we actually something that we were shooting at and making an attempt to make precision weapon delivery, which apparently we were successful.

WC: Was there any feeling of remorse for the enemy that they suffered so many casualties?

GT:   You know I never did suffer those kinds of feelings. Um war is hell. They’re the enemy; that our job is to destroy them. It’s not personal because I didn’t have to see somebody’s face. I don’t have to have hand to hand combat which would personalize it more. It’s really standoff or as far as a pilot is concerned. So you know that’s the way it goes. We had lots of people killed they had lots of people killed we all took part of it, that was our job. I did my job the best I could.

WC: How did you earn the, first, what is the air medal with the 8 oak leaf clusters?

GT:   The oak leaf clusters are just a subsequent award, the air medals were award for missions. 20 missions was one air medal. So 8 oak leaf cluster means there was a total of 9 awards so I was on at least 180 missions.

WC: What is the nuclear alert, um…?

GT:   If I said nuclear alert, it was in Aviano air base, Italy. Aviano is in the north eastern corner of Italy, uh probably about 70 or 80 miles north of Venice. And our mission there was to set nuclear alert in case war began with Russia or with the Soviet Union. We had four birds on five minute alert, meaning that from the time the order was given, those birds have 5 minutes to there wheels on the well, airborne, heading towards the target, carrying atomic bombs. Sort of interesting because one day, and I was doing some planning, and found that I was, my target was an airbase near Budapest and it was a secondary recovery airfield. And I was the 4^th weapon on the target. There was an Atlas missile, a Bowmark, and something else and then finally me and so I thought to myself if the air order does go up and ever start a war, maybe I just take off, drop the weapon in the water and see how far south of Africa I could get before I had to bail out. Because I figured that if I was going to be the 4^th on the target, there wasn’t going to be an income home to America, it was just going to be messed up. One sort of weird thing is they gave you an eye patch to wear so on this mission if you went to war you put the eye patch on because if a bomb went off near you were blind in this eye. Now you can switch the eye patch over and still have a good eye.It’s sort of goofy but that’s what they did. That was a 3 month tour over there. It was a really fun tour. Visited 8^th places, got to go to Rome, Venice couple times, Florence, Torino, all over Polar valley, neat place, enjoyed the air there.    

WC: When you’re off duty do you remember any specific event that stood out, being in Venice or uh.

GT:   We were right at the very base at the Alps, I mean; literally, out the back door the hill started upwards about a 45 degree angle. And there was a road that goes up there, a winding-ese road and at the top which is a ski area. And I rented the special services ski and I went up there right at the ten of the season and I was the only one there and I didn’t have a clue how to ski. This one guy, he was really he was really being nice trying to help me and I go “sssh-plop, sssh-plop” And I wasn’t being very successful skiing but it was lunch time and they invited me in and I had lunch with his family, they didn’t even charge me for it. Uh15 to 20 people sitting around this big table I was trying what little Italian I had. They could speaker better than I could so we um we enjoyed each other and after the meal I decided I probably didn’t want to ski and drove back down the hill. It was kind of fun.

WC: When you were near the end of your service, where was the war?

GT:   When I got back from Vietnam second time, I became an instructor pilot at F-100s at Luke air force base teaching fighter crews how to fly in formation, gunnery, and so on. That was in early 67 and I finally got out in October of 69 and the war was going out hot and heavy throughout that time, a number of people that came through the yard, I hear stories about, were killed or lost in action. Several of which I remember pretty closely.

WC:  Were you following the events pretty close?

GT:   I’m sorry.

WC: Were you following the events closely?

GT:   Oh yeah. It’s sort of a special adrenaline kick that you get when you’re in a combat area. When we got back to the states, it was like the world wasn’t exciting enough. You can read about something, it wasn’t the same thing as being there.On Easter morning in ‘65 I was standing our there in front of the squadron, the squadron offices, which was deep in the hanger and the ammunitions depot on the other side of the field blew up. It was a huge explosion! And the shockwave wiped like past life and some crews they were unloading some bombs and, the whole trailer full of bombs blew up. Probably 10, 15 thousand pounds worth of explosive went out there. And they didn’t find anything of the trailer or the guys that were working there or much else. I think they found a couple bolts. After that they did a walk down the runway to get the metal parts that might have gotten on the runway that blow tires and cause accidents. They walked on the runway to clean that off and they found enough material to make a pile maybe this deep on a picnic table. That’s all they found on the runway. And I, one of the pieces was a bolt from the trailer and that was all that was left of that. So there’s uh during the night time there would sometimes be attempts by the insurgents to reach the boarder or, not in my time I’m saying after, rocket fire ended in the camps. Well you’re in a war zone and life was exciting. I was in my twenties and full of adventure anyway ways, so it was kind of a thrilling time to be there and to come away from there and come back to the states was almost like a let down. I’ve never done drugs but I suppose it wasn’t that it isn’t all that different from a druggie withdrawing from using dope, it’s physiological and you can feel it. And I wanted to get back there.

WC:  Did you ever try to get back?

GT:   I did, um, again I had several options. One was, they were pressing me to go to the air force institute of technology which is an air force program to send you through civilian colleges to get a bachelors degree in engineering. I didn’t really want to do that. I also wanted to get on with the airlines and uh my first chance to get on with the airlines was coming up. And I chose that option. But I did put in an application to go back if I can be in a certain unit. In flying up north in the f-100s it was called the Misty’s; they were basically fast foreign air controllers. Uh. But I was denied that and I was told to go back if I wanted to fly F-4s. But I didn’t want to do that so I opted to get out and try for the airlines. Unsuccessful. (Paper sounds) That there is my fire training class.

WC: Can you repeat how many did not survive, again?

GT:   Four of them did not survive. They were subsequently killed. Only one was killed in Vietnam. The others were killed in training accidents in the air force. In my squadron we lost 4 pilots out of our 20 that were there so that is 20% of our squadron was lost in the year times I was there. They were all lost to ground fire, well not all. One guy flew into the ground. He just made a mistake and flew into the ground. It was really a shame too because he was an air force academy grad. He was just a really sharp guy. And he just screwed up. But had he, he would have made general had he stayed in the air force. He was highly thought of, he was very personal; he was an excellent pilot. His name was John Squirrel. And in the late 70’s there was a cover in time magazine that came out and it showed the Vietnam War memorial. It showed a section of the panel in the wall. Excuse me. (Coughing) It was… really emotional to see it but of course I can’t visit the wall now since I’m getting all tear’ed up.

WC: …Emotional because you knew him personally?

GT:   He was a friend.

WC: Thank you Mr. Talbot.

GT:   You welcome.

WC: Come on pause! Thank you for your time.

GT:   You’re welcome, I hope your project is a success.

Mr.Earl Alberts – Vietnam.

Rachel Song : first of all , thakn you for giving us your time to do this interview, so first of all, some biographical details. Where were you born?

Earl Alberts: Born in Glendale

RS:Did you enlist or?

EA:Yeah I enlists, I tried to avoid as much as I can, but we all knew we were going to go anyways, I received my notice to report to army’s phyical in oh probably march of 1966 and on my way

RS:What specific branch of service did you serve/

EA:Uh. Navy

RS:Why?

EA:Uh, the least chance of me going through the mud. You had to go to 4 years rather then 2 years but it was worth it

RS:How was it like adapting to the army

EA:It was pretty easy to be perfectly honest. My boot camp company was about 60 people and the average about 24 and 3^rd year in college, and we were quiet iconic classic group according to military standards, so it wasn’t that bad, our boot camp was nothing like my grand daughter just got out of the army and she just got out of the boot camp and what she went through is nothing like what we went through yeah its nothing like how it is now. And boarding ship, yes uh, it takes a little bit of adjustments for 30 people in a compartment with half the size of this room; yeah it takes a little adjustment.

RS:What was the navy sea going mission

EA:The most obvious one occurs to the pilots of the carriers. John McCain was a navy pilot but as far as, I was on a destroyer first time and there were three things we can do. Theres what they call it the pile rails, which I honestly don’t know what it was. There was also search and rescue we follow a carrier if the plane goes down we go, and the third one was the navy gunpowder support, this is what started the whole Vietnam War. In 1964, there was operation sea dragun. The destroyer would back up to the shore land and then as they are picking up, they shoot they received fire you can figure out why, because the president Johnson got the permission to go into Vietnam and so when I went for the first time in 1966 I didn’t do navy gun, but back in 1969 that’s all we did. I know you talked to Mr.Glasco earlier who was attached to the river well we would go up the river and spotter pilot will tell you what your mission was and you just shoot, at that time I advanced to Second Class River. Which is equivalent to a sergeant in the army so I was the officer in charge of what what they call upper handling level of the guns. It was down the magazine and all the way down.  The five-inch powder case was about this big and weighs about 11lbs. The five inch shell is about this big and It weighs about 55 lbs and so the handling room takes them from the magazine and hands them around and when we have permission we shift their things into the place that takes them up to the gun that takes up about 22 rounds per mission per gun. And you come out of there just absolutely covered in grease.  It was fun. And sometimes you just get called if they need you. Sometimes we had something call nightlife harassment. It was absolutely effective it harassed us completely because you shoot one round every hour and no one got to sleep. And then you would have gal- illumination fire which is what you shoot during 4^th of July. And that was what we did

RS:Can you tell us more about your specific duty

 EA: My specific duty, I was the second-class storekeeper. What storekeepers do is we keep records; we keep records of the ships store in conjunction with ship’s servicemen. We kept the entire repair supplies and equipment supplies for the ship. We had everything that had to do with ship. That’s what I did. And my military duty was I was on the guns, I was not happy about that but I did 3 years on guns and im paying for it in some manner. When I went to the second command and was actually a head storekeeper in charge. We only had a senior chief over me and it was a quite relief that my general quarters was down in the store rooms drinking coffee, having a cigarette and if somebody felt like having me go get a part and I was oh dang it and I would run down the hall and give them a part. I loved it

RS: Can you tells us about your experience in Vietnam

EA:I only spent 6 hours in country. One time we were having a harassment bar so we had chance to send half the company short. As far as living in, we would be out 30 days out of times, we didn’t get to experience what the inland solders did. We actually would during the day we did whatever we did and only at night only under the red light   we would replenish the ambinition we had the ship would come and we had to put that back into storage and we would just sit there. We had taken 20,000 case of white case of … we can actually just sit there on the ship drink a soda pop and watch bombs go on. They had lights all around the ship to keep swimmers to swim up and put a. you know. But we also had these sea snakes. This is a true story. These snakes would come up the ship and each of the case had cap that screws up. We had a first store keeping guy was a crazy guy. He would take these caps and throw them down at the snakes and the snakes would try to come up the ship and try to get you. They were very aggressive. You did not want to want to go swim there.

RS:How big were they

EA:Well they were like 3 feet long. They weren’t going to get us. We just. We really living aboard the ship on the gulp were easier then crossing. You don’t have bad weather. We didn’t have a bad weather at all. We did not go through what the in land people did and I was always really thankful for that

RS:Did you have any injuries or anything happen to you?

EA:No I didn’t have personally, we had one big injury and two near big injury and they were both preventable. We were coming back from the gulp from the Philippines and it was a heavy weather and for some unknown reason some of the guys were sent out on a deck to wash salt off the walls, totally unnecessary and one of the guys just fell overboard. Totally unnecessary. I was not happy. The second one was so stupid. Our top technician was on the top working in the landuary and at the same time the guy that was working operating the steam press it was the guy we called dumb Dennis. We didn’t think he was very smart. He was working and he turned around and he saw the technician didn’t turn off the power and he had his elbow on the wall which was on the metal rocking back and forth and Dennis went and un plugged it and they got him back and he was fine and we never called him dumb Dennis again. All of the and most of the incident were preventable. It was sad. It was sad.

RS:Can you tell us about some friendship that you made with some of your mates?

EA:Ah. Ahaha, you never noticed it. You never notice it. You have to get along such as we were the store keepers were natural enemies of the electronics guys cause they always had to come during a middle of movies and come down and say hey Albert I need this part and we had to go down and get them for them. But we were friends and then afterwards we would go out and get a drink together. Yes you do make friendships. Infact theres a man in the pictures in my division Larry Harrison. Right right here. And I still correspond with him. And the chief called me about 5 years ago. He got my name off of from the union party and we talked for a quiet a while. He and I really didn’t get along didn’t well. He was the chief and I was.. yeah yeah. You always bump heads but he called me and he was, quiet interesting so yes you do develop them. I haven’t gone to any reunion but we do have a very active reunion. Yes you do build very deep friendships.

RS:Can you explain this picture for us ?

EA:Im sorry?

RS:Can you explain this picture for us?

EA:Okay. That is probably shortly before I got out in 1970. That was right at the door. Just as you come to the store door it was in the missile ship. But in the turn I didn’t go to Vietnam. I went to Korea. You people don’t know the Soviet Union. But it was quiet active and we would curies up there in circles, cold in winter in Korea ready to shoot any Russians planes I wasn’t happy but it was my job. So that was where I was that’s my compartment, that’s me, probably after I smoked a cigarette ready to go on liberty. I probably have no more than month left. Because I got out of the navy full received. That’s what that is

RS:How old are you in this picture

EA:I am 24

RS:24, how long have you been in service

EA:1,405 days . It was one month before 4 years I went in July 29^th 1966 and I got out June 9^th 1970.

Rescan you tell us how you stayed in touch with your families and friends?

EA:Letters, letters. I think the most places the telephone service was pretty bad. But if there was a emergency then they can ring you,. They could do it but they didn’t do it often. You wrote, that’s all you got. But the mail service was pretty good it took I think 7 days for back home and forth. It was pretty good.

RS:Did you have any recreation or any activities you had on board?

EA: Recreation on board on a destroyer was … it moved we did have cookouts, we didn’t have much room. But we had like maybe once a while football throws, but ours it was mostly movies, hooking up, and cookouts. And enjoying yourself in the tropical you know.

RS:Can you tell us a little bit on the actual action in the war?

EA:On the second cruis, what we would do is we would. I honestly. I had a secret … I was technically the nuclear weapon storekeeper and the secret was if we had it on board or not. So I didn’t have a need to know anything including where we were. But we would go up the river and they would, plane would go over and give us an assignment and tells us to start shooting. But don’t know I was down there, I was down below so I occasionally heard some stuff, cause they would come and report it only if they felt like it but id idnt have that much, I didn’t have in contacts with any injuries or enemy killings or anything because we don’t shoot people unless they move our supplies or, but yeah that was about the action we got.

RS: Where were you when the war ended?

EA:1973… 1973. I was in Pasadena. Working at the auto shop.

RS:Was it weird or hard at all the readjust to the civilian life?

EA:No , no I was never a sailor or, you can read my evaluation they always say excellent this and good leadership that, but as far as uniforms alters and here, forget it

RS:So can you tell us about the organizations that you are involve in now as a veterans?

EA:Uh . VFW is the one im in, VFW Sierra Madre. I joined in 1971 and I am a life member. That particular chapter is still in existence but they have no post. Because the veterans organizations are starting to fade away. There are not many veterans which good a good thing. The fewer vertans there are. But they are still necessary. I don’t know if you heard this but they are just trying to pass the GI bill. And this is the type of things that vertans organization groups that they really get behind or about the medical insurance for the returning vertans. I personally go to the vertans hospital down in los angelos and its fabulous. And that’s what we do. You really try to explain to the new vertans what their options are. Because there are plenty. But I am not that active any more

RS:How has war time effected your life

EA:That war?

RS:Uh huh.

EA:Well I don’t have any post war traumatic or anything. But you do have I personally do have that theres karma that you did invade someone’s country but you do went there for reason. You shouldn’t have bad feelings. It was a good cause. You didn’t go there to hurt any body; you went there to help them. And I believe that and I still have that idea but you also have the idea that you invaded somebody’s but other then that nothing much.

RS:Is there any lesson that you learned from being in service?

EA:I learn to stick with something. You can ask Mr.Glasco I really didn’t have a lot of I wasn’t very solid but the 4 years of navy teaches you you have to be do something with your life just kind of like highschool. But with a little more consequences.

RS:Are there any last things about war?

EA:About war?

RS:Yes.

EA:No not really because didn’t see much. But yes, yes I am glad I went. When you go to a place for a veterans I am very proud to stand up when they say USS Navy. For me there are no bad memories but only good kinds. The good ones.

RS:Well thank you for having an interview with us

EA:Well thank you.

Mr. Donald Johnson

Birthday: January 19, 1924

84 years old

Highest Rank: Captain of the US Air Force

4/15/08

Interviewer: Vicky Choi

Assistants: Andy Hsiao, Mandy Cheng

This interview is being conducted for the Veterans History Project for the Library of Congress

Vicky Choi: Can you tell us briefly about your childhood?

Donald Johnson: I was born in Richmond California. My mother and dad are from Michigan. They come out and I have a brother at six years older than I am. He is, well all my family has passed away except for me. I have two sisters. They are four and two years older than I am. And I was my father was a worked at the wholeman company in Richmond, California. And he is a veteran of WWI. He was in the uh infan well not infanty, artilitary over in France. But uh he settled in Richmond and we grew up there and uh went to Lincoln Grammer School. Long fellow uhh I guess it was Roosevelt High School, Roosevelt Junior High School and then Richmond Union High School and afterwards I uh started work ah I worked at Marra Navy Ship yard for about a year and then I enlisted in the army air force. Argh err army air cord at that time. And um. I was sent back to Colorado where I met my life Betty fit simmons and Uh I was in the county working on air planes for the advanced training base. I then uh saw these young fellows flying these planes and I thought that “well I could do that”. So I signed up for it, passed a written test and a physical test. And they put us through a college training detachment at the University of North Dakota. And we were out there for a couple of months and then they shipped us to Santa Ana where I uh went through few flight and took a lot of tests and physical and coordination tests and I passed that. And then they sent us to Rhinefield at two sound Arizona for primary flight training and then to Calaro in Ontario for basic flight training. And then to Williamsfield Chander, Arizona for advanced training and I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot single engine and but they sent me to instructor school to land all fields texas and I became an instructor for basic flight training. And I was sent to mirranda air base in Arizona taking out of two sound Arizona felt that time felt that war in Europe was coming to a close. And they have a lot of pilots and they sent us to uh uh now we went to Roswell in New Mexico and I started flying B-17s and then they sent a group of us to Albertcurky at Curtainfield and I was flying B-24s up there. And I finished flying those for transition while I was sent back to Roswell. And they had B-29s there, and they had a whole base full of pilots and I asked if anyone wanted to be a co-pilot and so I signed up with as a co-pilot and took training in B-29s in transition, then went to Golfport Mississippi for uh phase training and we did a lot of flying there but then I when we finished phase training we were shipped over seas but when we got to Hamilton Field near San Fransisco, they drop the a-bombs over in Japan and so they stopped all shipments at that time and and so we stopped going over and we then were shipped down here to uh march field out of riverside and we were going to tour Europe in B-29s but uh I was recalled to uh Roswell for a bikini bomb project. I was the second lieutenant and got there and I was in a bomb squad as a co-pilot but a lot of the air force personals was trying to get into the bikini bomb project and so I got bumped out of the co-piolet seat by a major. I went to photographic squander and got bumped by lieutenant kernel. I went into the instumentous squander and got bumped by another lieutenant kernel but I met major Charles W. Sweanu who dropped the second a-bomb on Japan and became friendly with him and he asked me if I wanted to be his adjutant and so I said sure, so I was his adjutant but for the bomb group I, well while they were over there dropping the bomb on bikini I then uh when they dropped the bomb I got out of the service and I started to in school at santa rosa junior college up over in Rosa and I had to make up some of the high school deficiencies and then I went up to Oregon state college at Covalas Oregon. I was in civil engineering up there and I was recalled back to the Korean War and I was transporting group in Oregon and got checked out in C-46s which was a two engine transport and then I was shipped over to Japan and I was in the 86 troop carrier squander staging at Tachikawa in Japan then I flew over there for about 11 months and I was flying transports and actually through all through Japan and Korea through a lot of moving equipment and after the forward bases there and food and supplies and dropping paratroopers and uh then after 11 months while I was sent back to states and I was stationed back to Mitchel field in NY and I instructed in C 26s there and we’d get a lot of dropping of paratroopers training then on outta uh dropped from air planes and so then I got a discharge and went back and I had one more year of schooling to go through at Oregon state college and so I went back and finished up my schooling and went to work up at Portland for a steel company. I became a structural engineer and I lived up there for o about 6 years. 2 years with the steel company, 2 years with J.H.Baxter in Portland and 2 years with J.H.Baxter and Eugene and then they transferred me down here and I was with Baxter for o about 7 years down here and then I left them and went to work for a contractor pile driving contractor and I worked for them for o about 6 years and then the company was purchased by foundation pile in the bay area and then I worked until I retired when I was 68 and so since then I have just been enjoying life; traveling, and traveled all over the country, world. We have an RV and traveled into Canada and up to Alaska and all over so, is there anything else that you’d like?

Vicky Choi: Where were you when the war ended?

Donald Johnson: Uh, the war in Europe, I was at Roswell um and uh I was when they stopped the WWII I was at San Francisco on my way over and there was a pilot on the B-29. Do you still keep in touch with your close friends during the war? Did they die? I have had some friends that we still write to uh the pilot on B-29 Dick Mathews, we still fly back and fourth and he lives in Michigan and we stop one time when we took the RV back there and got a chance to see them. Some other pilots that I’ve knew, we’ve stopped to see them uh. A navigator or radar man that was on our B-29 group, he moved to Seattle and so we talked to them when we lived in Seattle. We keep in touch with a lot of our friends. We have a lot of friends here that are in the service I have uh a lot of fellows who are in the marines and we have the group over at the church uh that meet and go out for dinner and we have uh uh a lieutenant general who uh is in our church group and we gather with them quite often. But we keep in touch a lot.

Vicky Choi: Was it hard to adjust to the life back home.

Donald Johnson: O, no. It wasn’t? Uh, I had a lot of studies, and I had to go to college and I had to do a lot of studying and it was it was a little tough, but, because when you’re gone from schooling for 4 years why it takes you a little longer to get back in to groove and do studying. I did become a registered structional engineer, but I never did do any practicing on them when I worked for contractor, but the steel and wood industry.
Vicky Choi: Do you have anything else to tell us as an elder?

Donald Johnson: As, an elder, well I um, I teach a lot of young kids uh I was a manager of uh little league baseball and my son was in the team. I did a lot of managing in it and he has taken up the a hobby up with his son. He has been managing uh a little league for a while. His son is in junior no high school now and he’s playing baseball, hardball and uh so he’s managing, helping the coach at the school, uh teach the kids how to play baseball, so we’ve had a good time with the little league. Our daughter, she went to school here in arcadia and she went to long beach state and also Perkins School of Theology. She became a Methodist minister, got her doctorate in ministry and uh but unfortunately uh in 1999 she got cancer and breast cancer and she had mast detchomy and both of her breasts were removed and the cancer came back and she died in 2000. And she has a husband and one daughter who in fact who just got through her back in Arlington Texas. She is graduating from high school this year and she is gonna go to the University of Texas and she’s on the honor roll there so she’s.

Vicky Choi: That’s great!

Donald Johnson: and she’s doing real good so is my grandson up in Sacramento.

Vicky Choi: Would you say the war was memorable for you?

Donald Johnson: It educated me, it convinced me that war is a..it’s not pleasant.. um when I was over in Japan, I did a lot of flying, bring men who didn’t survive the war back to graves registration and it was very sobering thing for us. Uh but that was our job and my job and flying the material up there and dropping paratroopers. War was horrible. I had a brother who went in and he was a bombardier on B-24s. He was in the service before where I was and he sunk two Japanese traitors, dropped bombs on them and psyche them, and he was a gunner also. Uh, on B-24s nose gunner and he’d been my wings on me when I got no wings there’s 6 years of difference between he and I. My sister married a coast guard, uh not a coast guard, a national guard man and he was a major. He was over in Europe. He had his driver killed. Uh. His jeep was attacked and he was in the Battle of the Bulge. Wars are not very pretty. Its but at the time, that’s what the young men had to do, just what the young men are doing right now. We lost a lot of men. I lost a lot of kids that I went to high school with. Um. They ran the marines and went to the navy. One of them was killed in the Arizona. Every time I go to Hawaii, I go see The Arizona and make sure that I give a prayer for Charles Springer and uh, we have a lot of friends, high school mates that were in the war, but wars are not pretty, but you have to do what your country wants you to do.

Donald Johnson: For long range bombing, for bombing Japan, uh from uh the bases over in the Pacific at 4 engine it’s a high pressurized cabins. It had a crew of 11 back I think it was more like 13. Excuse me, we had six officers and 7 crew men and it was a good airplane. Um. It was used for dropping the A-bomb on Japan and uh I wanted to tour Europe but I got out when after they dropped the A-bomb on bikini to test over there I also uh my brother flew B-24 as a bombardier and he has since been deceased. He died about 4 years ago. So uh I think wars are not pretty but sometimes you have to do what’s best for your country.

Mandy Cheng: Do you have anything else you want to share with us during the war?

Donald Johnson: I met my wife, when I was in Colorado and we’d been married 64 years and it will be 64 years this July; and July 6^th.

Andy Hsiao: That’s my birthday!

Donald Johnson: That’s your birthday, well good, and she and I have been together quite a while and she followed me around when I was flying and in fact she had a job at the air base at Miranda and she followed me around in Mitchelfield, New York and we uh had a great life together. She knows what it is to be a soldier’s wife. Uh I donno anything else I guess.

Donald Johnson: you come out and sometimes you save yourself sometimes. It was good and I had a lot of fun with the students. You want to give them the confidence that they can do the job that they are in trained to do. But anyhow, met a lot of good people; lost some friends; a lot of friends…high school, but wars are not pretty. Wars are bad and um, in fact we had a power breakfast this morning and the minister uh had a diary of his great great grandfather who is in the Civil War. And he had his log and diving that went on and it was very interesting. He said they had a lot of trouble with people being shot and infections and back then, they didn’t have the medicine to heal and uh there is uh an article in the magazine today that two legs were amputated on one of the marines in Vietnam and he was a football player, and now they are telling them that “you’ve gotta strive, you’ve got to work hard to make sure that everything is done to uh do the best job that you can do” he was a football player on the Giants team and he has won the championships last year, but um I got out of the air force, and I’m not sorry that I did, uh. I’ve had a good life and I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be around but, uh, it was a good life. Good experience.

Official Transcript

S: uh…I am sitting here today with Dean Johnson and he was born January 11, 1925. And he served in WWII in the Navy Air Corp. Umm…the highest rank he achieved is aviation machine mate third class.

D: Machinist mate, third class

S: Machinist mate, third class. And today is May 1, 2008. We are in Arcadia, California. My name is Sarah Cheng and present is my classmate Louis Lin…I mean… Louis Yin. laugh Um…this interview is being conducted for the Veteran’s History Project at the Library of Congress.

Ok…so….uh…can you tell me where and when you were born?

D: I was born in uh…Compton, California

0:52

S: And umm…what about a few family details? Like your parent’s occupations?

D: My father was um…worked for Edison company. pause And my mother was a housekeeper.

S: And…um…your… um… the number and gender of your siblings?

D: what?

S: The number … umm…how many siblings did you have?

D: Uh…let me see…my mother had.. uh…total she had five sons and one daughter…didn’t she? yeah

S: okay…umm

D: I was the second one in line

S: oh...uh did any other family member serve in the military?

D: yes…my older brother served in the army

*murmur from Mrs. Johnson*

Oh yes…but not in World War II

S: Korean war?

D: yes right…I stand corrected

S: um…so...how did you enter the service?

D:how did I join?

S:yeah

D:uh…well…of course pearl harbor you know…pearl harbor happened, December 7^th, ’41…uh…it was coincidental I turned 17 one month after pearl harbor you had to be 17 to join…

S:’kay

D:um…me being a patriotic young man, I thought well…what the heck…i’ll just go ahead and join and uh be a hero as a young man

*laugh*

So quite by coincidence, war started, I immediately went down to the recruiting station…raised my right hand…and I was officially in the navy and away I went

S: laugh umm…so…why did you choose the navy?

D: I don’t’ why…it just sounded more exciting

*sarah laughs*

and more venturesome…just didn’t’ sound fun to me to be marching around with a rifle over my shoulder

S: umm…hmmm

D: and uh…its sounded like a greater life

S:um..hm

D: and uh…a much better chance to see the world

S:uh..so…did they put you …did they place you as a pilot or did you sign up?

D:uh…I never was a pilot…

S:uh

D: I was a crewman on a plane

S: ok

D: uh with a pilot assigned to me…but before this all took place…there’s another…another part of my navy career where I didn’t go to the navy and started flying

S: ok…so what happened when you first started

D: uh…when I first started…they sent me to aviation machinist school…for six months in San Diego ...and ..then they assigned me to umm…an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic …uh…but I still wasn’t flying…at that time…let’s see…(I’m going to go get comfortable) umm…there was quite ..umm…a scare with the German submarines…umm

S: the u-boats?

D: the u-boats! You heard of the u-boats? O! good for you!...well...I was very instrumental in fighting the u-boats…and it was quite interesting because it was uh…at that time…with the war coming on so rapidly…they needed some defense against the u-boats so…uh…the united states took the umm…ships that were intended to be other ships and aircraft carriers and just put a flat top on them and  there were officially aircraft carriers but much smaller…in fact… I have pictures I have here to tell how much smaller they are…half the size of an ordinary aircraft carrier…ordinary aircraft carriers are about 800 and some feet…these little guys were 400 and something feet…what a job they did…and ..in destroyed those German u-boats and it was just an incredible battle going on…there was one ..one aircraft carrier and three old beat-up destroyers assigned to enormous convoys and ships taking supplies between Northford, Virginia and Casablanca, Africa. And umm…honest to god…should I go up at night upon the flight deck…and just watch those u-boats picking off our ships…seeing explosions…explosions…explosions. But during the day…the u-boats would all go below water and go very fast to get up ahead of the convoy …this convoy…’cause the convoy had to go real slow…6 or 7 knots…it was about 10 miles an hour

S: wow…that’s really slow

D: and…uh…so the u-boats would get way up ahead of them during…during the day…and at night…they would come up and start sinking our ships so our aircraft carriers and the planes assigned to them was assigned to sink these u-boats

S: so…how did you sink the u-boats?

D:pardon me?

S:how did you sink the u-boats?

D:uh…with what they called, depth charges. Primarily, depth charges...it was just like a bomb . it’d see the submarine under the water and they dropped these depth charges and just shoot concussion …it was just blow these submarines apart…they either did that...or they would use bombs…but primarily...it was depth charges and these planes that…uh…sink…they can carry as many as four depth charges and uh...they…it was just a miracle how well they could …how these strategic situation of the united states was so well done…that they ..they had the ability to fight these u-boats…’cause bear in mind…Hitler was no dummy…he knew was he was doing...and he knew that he had to curtail these supplies in order to win the war. And he was well on his way to...to…winning the war by curtailing these supplies. But one thing that happened that I though I would tell you about…that was rather exciting…these old world war destroyers…they were…bear in mind…that these men manning these ships were just heroic men. And uh..and this destroyer injured a submarines…where he had surfaced…he couldn’t no longer stay under the water…uh…and so this mumble leader of the destroyer…tried to train his guns where he could sink the submarine where it was surfaced…he never could maneuver his ship well enough to …to sink the submarine…so…in desperation…he said ‘well I’ll just ram him”

S:oh

D: so…here’s the submarine’s floating up on this surface and so  the destroyer captain says, ‘full speed ahead’ …and he slammed right in to the submarine but he didn’t sink him…he went right over the top of the submarine and they were stuck together…*sarah laughs* yeah…and uh…so there the submarine crewman came up from there submarine and they were shooting up and the destroyer guys are shooting back down on them...and finally…the submarine Germans surrendered and they took them aboard the destroyer and eventually moved them over to our aircraft carrier and we had accommodations for the German sailors

S:oh

D:okay..i didn’t mean to make it a long dissertation

S: no…that’s good!

D: good

S: um

D:but anyway...i’ve got quite a citation for that…uh…it tells a little bit about how I got a presidential unit citation for my involvement …and…it talks a little bit about a vigorous offense was largely responsible for the complete withdrawal…withdrawal…withdrawal of hostile u-boats from this valley supplier…uh...and later when submarines returned with deadlier weapons and armed men with anti-aircraft defenses, heroic task unit by striking, damaging blows on the onset of the renewed campaigns. That’s only initiative enemy before actual perception of preventing large-scale attacks. It’s in…it’s distinction performance on a difficult and hazardous missions and turned it materially to victorious achievements by our land forces. clear throat here is a…here is a picture of the old U.S.S. Card.

S: Oh wow…

D: yeah

S: Oh is this the first aircraft carrier you were on?

D:ahem…yeah

S:oh

D:but bear in mind, I wasn’t flying at that time…I was a crewman and just keeping the plane in good shape, loading the bombs and that sort of thing

S:oh yeah…so…what year was this, when you were on this first aircraft carrier?

D:that…that was the first one I was on, yeah

Mrs. Wilma Johnson: what year?

D:oh, uh…let me see…I would have been on there in…in fact I think the date is on this thing…*clears throat* I think I was on there before…I was on there 1942

S: oh, 1942?

D: uh huh

S:um, so uh, right after pearl harbor, you signed up?

D:um…well…bear in mind…you see…I went to a…I went to San Diego for Aviation Machinist School for six months. So that put the date into July of ’42. So I was probably on here…probably around August of ’42.

S:ok, so back to your umm...so did you have to go to boot camp or training camp?

D:uh, yes. All I did there…I did all this before this took place.

S:okay

D:the very first thing I did when I went into the navy, I went to….I went to boot camp in San Diego

S: So it’s at San Diego too?

D:uh huh

S:okay, uh, what did you do at boot camp?

D: uh…it was very strenuous.

S: *laugh*

D: they taught me how to be a man

*both laugh*

There was no fooling around. They taught me to…that I better learn how to fight in combat, and I wasn’t there to play games, I was there to fight a war

S: so it was a special train…or boot camp for those in the navy? Or was it a general one?

D: It is a special boot camp, for navy

S: um is there anything specific that they did in there that was…say like….the marines

D: yeah…it was considerably different than what it would have been in the army. ‘cause they were, they trained us to be…to be able to man ships in various types of…see…there different kinds of ships. There were destroyers, there’s cruises, battleships, aircraft carriers. That’s was interested me. And because I wanted to be involved with flying. So uh, yes, they did train me in specifics…to be a sailor…uh…but not only a sailor…to be a um… sailor involved in flying  

S: um…so…how were your early days of training at the boot camp?

D: uh…how were they?

S: um…were they…do you remember anything special like events that happened?

D: nnn….yes! other than…one thing that I thought of was ‘what have I gotten myself into?’

*both laugh*

‘Why didn’t I give this some serious thought before I did it?’

*laugh*

S: What made you think that?

D: uh… well! You know I had an easy, care-free life before then. Of course I was…I was your…I was just a few months older than you! Uh…are you sixteen now?

S: yes

D: yeah, well I was…I had just barely turned seventeen! Can you imagine you doing…you doing something like that?

*laughs*

Of course not! Well, uh…but you know…I guess I threw caution to the wind and you know…I’m a man and I could handle this. But they taught me that uh….that I’ve maybe got in something over my head …and…I did! I got in over my head by far. But they taught me…it didn’t take me long to…to learn how to be a good sailor…be a good man…be a good…um…what I went in there to do. And um…so I figured I did an adequate job for the job that I was called to do.

S: So how long did training camp last?

D: Uh…let me see…I think training camp lasted about two months

S: two months?

D: And then they immediately put in this aviation machinist mate school for six months…so that took about eight months of first…uh….part of my navy career.

S: So what happened after the eight months?

D: Then, then I went to this…um… U.S.S. Card.

S: So you went immediately there?

D: Uh yeah…I went directly there. I can’t remember how I got…how I ended up from San Diego to the East Coast where I got…I guess they flew me to…uh…Northford, Virginia…uh… where the Card was sailing from Northford to Casablanca, to Northford to Casablanca…back and forth. ‘Cause they were taking these convoys.

S: Uh… what was your duty on the aircraft carrier?

D: Uh… I was…I was…uh…assigned to one particular airplane and was…uh… and in fact, I have some literature here that…they nicknamed it the ‘Pregnant Goose’ because it was so ugly that…uh…I have a picture of it… uh…*shuffle*…somewhere...

It was sort of an ugly looking airplane whether it was in the air or not!

S: Well, what do you mean by ugly?

D: uh…I’ll show you in just a minute…

S: laughs okay!

D: uh…if I could find it…a picture of it…one of the designs of…here’s a picture of me in my youth…*shuffles through papers*…well let me see…oh here! Here’s a pretty good picture of what one looked like.

S: Oh! This was the ugly…plane? *laughs*

D: yeah. Uh…there…there’s a better picture of…uh…

S: okay…so you were assigned to…uh…

D: Just to maintain it; load, unload the bombs; and keep it clean, keep it serviced, and help the pilot…help the…help with anything and everything that I could possibly do to keep that thing flying and keep it assigned to what it was meant to do! And that was to: sink ships, and…and sink submarines, but uh…I only did that for a short bit of time before…I didn’t particularly like that part of the service…so I wanted to fly.

So, so I…uh…through my…pulled strings and all…I finally got them to assign me to uh…to fly as a crewman. And so I flew…I flew in this little bubble right here…

S: laughs uh so…you flew as a crewman?

D: uh huh…

There were…there were three men in a crew: the pilot in the front…here’s the pilot…I flew here…and we had a radioman down here. I had a 50 caliber machine gun here…and there was…uh…operated hydrolytically.

This radioman had um…a 30 caliber machine gun here.

And the pilot had four guns in the wings…50 caliber machine guns in the wings. And we could use strafing and that sort of thing.

And the plane was capable of carrying two thousand pounds payload …uh…he had uh…he had bomb bays down here at are those opened, closed hydraulic thing. We could either carry one torpedo which weighed uh two thousand pounds or the equivalent thereof: four five hundred pound bombs…or we could have one hundred pound bombs. ahem Sometimes we even carry…uh… propaganda material.

And we would fly over enemy territory and throw…uh…propaganda material

S: oh really?

D: uh huh! In fact, I have some of the old propaganda stuff here! I wish I could…uh…I wish I could interpret that!

S: oh, are they in German? Or…

D: That’s in Japanese. shuffle I got them here somewhere…here’s my discharge papers…

*brings out recruiting poster* there was one of the…one of the posters back then…

S: wow…oh! As in recruitment?

D: yeah!

S: oh okay!

D: um…the one we…the one I flew…um…bear in mind that I was stationed on um…this fleet…VT-81 which stood for …um…torpedo squadron eighty-one…and we have this memorial book. We named it ‘Prep Charlie.’ ‘Prep Charlie’ meant…um…’prepare to land.’ So just chose to name, to name the book ‘Prep Charlie.’ And um…here are some pretty interesting memorable things in here.

*pause*

Here’s um…here’s a picture of me…

S: oh…oh!

D: want me to read what it says about me?

S: okay!

D: Well my nickname was ‘Red’ right? I had red hair back then before I lost it all. ahem now bear in mind that I haven’t moved very far from where I joined the navy…I lived in Monrovia, then…I just moved across city lands.

So this says:

“Red, who hails from Monrovia, California, who is one of the very few who had some previous sea duty before entering the squadron.”

The previous sea duty was from the when I was on the U.S.S. Card, fighting the submarines right?

S: uh hmm…

D: um…”…before entering the squadron…he has the Presidential citation for service aboard the U.S.S. Card. He had to wise up our many land-lubbers...”

That was the nickname of the recruits!

S: *laughs*

D: “…land-lubber!... to solid the life aboard ship. As a turn gunner, he is definitely tops. With his good nature and pleasing personality…”

S: *laughs*

D: “…it is easy to understand why he is so well liked by all hands.” And then here’s a picture of my radioman, and here’s a picture of my pilot. Uh, one thing I want to make sure I mention to you is the different battles that I…that I was in. I was involved in um…the Battle of Iwo Jima. You’ve heard of the big battle of Iwo Jima.

S: uh huh

D: and uh, and George…oh! Oh here’s the propaganda stuff that I had.  

S: oh, actually…can you read Japanese??

L: If it’s like mainly in kanji…

D: Oh! I wish you could! I wish you could read that

S: *laughs*

L: I’ll try…

D: Okay…if you could read any of that…

L: see? Kanji!

S: Is that bad? *laughs*

L: Umm…

D: I’ve got to get that interpreted by somebody

*pause*

L: oh…it just says like its…Japan is doing bad things except like during the war…and that they are going to fail eventually…and stuff like that

S: so…um…you threw these out over enemy territory?

D: yeah! Yup! I ended…the last mission I made was over Tokyo…we take a lot of pride, in fact, that we were the first navy planes that bombed Tokyo. The army had already bombed it. But we…the navy went in…and so I was quite honored to be one of the first navy groups to go in.

But going back to Iwo Jima…um…I was up at the same time as George Bush Sr. George Bush Sr. flew in the same type of plane that I flew in and *mumble*. And he was shot down. And he…his…bear in mind that it was plane that handled three people…him and the pilot and the gunner and the radioman.

S: oh was he the pilot?

D: He was the pilot. But he was the only one saved out of the three. The other two were killed. So…I take some pride in the fact that…uh…I was up at the same time as George Bush was and I survived and so did he. I was involved a lot in…uh…kamikaze…

Well, you’ve heard of the kamikaze. Umm…I’ve seen a lot of that…I’ve seen…uh…the aftermath and the destruction. I was up on the flight deck one day, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I just thought of the blue, I heard an airplane off in the distance and it got louder and louder…

We were actually at anchor. We thought we were safe in this anchorage. And it turned out that we weren’t safe at all. At least these Japanese planes found us and this kamikaze just came in and crashed right into the flight deck of the ship…right next to where I was! You know, I was just sitting there in a total shock and stunned. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And um, and then Tokyo Rose! Have you ever heard of Tokyo Rose?

You’ve heard of her? Yes?

Well, she is what you would call a propaganda for the Japanese. And she would…uh… she would get on our radio bands and talk to us sailors, “oh yeah…I know…we know you’re coming! We know. We’ve got a little welcoming committee for you! And she would try to break down our morale. And she would do a pretty good job in doing that. And you know, you would listen to all that stuff and you’d think…’oh, who do you believe around here?’ You know, and she did…it’s amazing how much intelligence she did know in regards to our actions as a fleet and as a navy. And she was an American citizen that had defected to Japan and turned into their propaganda machine.  

S: oh, we are going to switch tapes, uh…switch CDs right now, so we will continue this on the other CD. Okay.

Interview with Christopher Marston

Haewon: Okay, do you want me to like, sit over here so you are facing…

Marston: Oh, sure…okay.

Haewon: Okay, so today, April 17th, 2008, we’re interviewing Mr. Christopher Marston, who served the U.S. Army in the E4 Specialist Group. Okay, so, where and when were you born?

Marston: I was born in Austin, Texas, on July 8th, 1963.

Haewon: Okay, um how was your child like, childhood like?

Marston: It was a fun childhood. I was born in Austin. My father was in law school. Ah, at the time I uhh, I don’t remember much of that we moved to Houston when I was…four. My brother was born, uh, we, I was raised all the way through school then I went to an all boys Catholic high school, about seven hundred kids. Uh, and then I uh applied colleges on the West Coast. I was accepted at Pacific University, uh, up north in Stouten, and I went to Pacific between 1983 and 1987.

Haewon: Wow, okay, umm…how was your life um, like before the war or how was your family like?

Marston: Umm…my family life would be what you call, fairly simplistic and um boring, I uh you know, my father worked. He was in the turnery. My mother was a stayed-home mom, uh nothing she watched after both my brother and I, uh we went to school we were involved in sports, uh pretty much, uh nothing it was uh…it was just kind of regular. Played, tried to play football, and uh played, played a little bit of soccer, and some other things.

Haewon: Okay um…did you know people who were in the war? Or any family members that were in the war?

Marston: Uh…in the panamey and in our war, or any war?

Haewon: Um any war.

Marston: Well, my grandfather was in World War II, actually both, my mother’s grand, my mother’s father and my father’s father, were both gonna be in part of the Japanese land invasion. Uh…my, my uh, my mom’s father was uh, in the same group of__ service as Douglas McArthur, and he would have, he was uh regulate the same McArthur under that. My other father, other grandfather was in Hawaii, awaiting orders to, if they were, because at that time, before they dropped the atomic bomb, they were um, they were debating on whether land invasion was gonna happen or not. So right when he was…very relieved, there were a lot of people that were relieved once they found out that they were not gonna have to go to Japan and fight a, a major land um.

Haewon: Umm…so were you drafted or enlisted?

Marston: No, in eighties there wasn’t such a thing as draft, so I, I enlisted on my own. I graduated from college and didn’t really have…uh I had a fairly low grade point average, so which is the reason for you to work very hard, chuckles so please do. And um, I didn’t really know so I was asking my father. My father said, “well, maybe you will join the service.” So I tried to get in as an officer through…there’s an outside selection process where you put in paper work and they look at you and they, these __ officers uh look at all these packets together and they determined who they gonna let in, and uh, I put in, I went through that process once and was denied and went through two more times and then I was denied both times on that. And so after three times, I decided “well, if I go into the army as enlisted, I could have a much better chance uh, as being coming an officer because I have a college degree you know, once you are enlisted you want to utilize your. So I was going to go to ranger school to range battalion and get the range __ and then go to uh, go to ran-go to officers candidate school from, from that point, so that was my plan actually.

Haewon: Um so how did you adapt to the military life?

Marston: Well, there’s a lot of screaming and yelling, you know. You uh, heh, you learned to move quick and uh, people screamed at you all the time and yelled at you. It, it was fun. I enjoyed it. Some of the movies are correct the way they do that, but the reason…there’s a method to their manners. They, they train you in a very specific way. And the reason they train you that way is that so when you uh are put into a combat situation, that you do, you react instead of questioning. And when you react, uh you just ultimately react and so it’s uh…it worked and I saw that happening and it was something that was very, very uh important, so uh that’s why, that’s why they did it.

Haewon: Oh, okay, um…can you, do you, do you tell what happened in Panama?

Marston: Sure, uh…we had been practicing. Uhh…we had been um…usually what happen is this, they condored kit conduct this is uh this um…there’s no major…when they do a major conflict like this, there’s always a lot of training involved, so what they do is that the superior start getting orders to you what you need to train for this. Uh, rangers are uh, insertionary in any kind of environment. Desert, um uh umm um desert um, and phebian and mountainous, any kind of train rangers are fit for it. Now um…Noriega had actually been an allied of the United States before and you probably know that from your history, and that he had, we had been actually paying him for information and he be-basically became greedy and turned on us when they shot the officer down there, we’re inhibit voting rights, that’s when we, that’s when we became, so they, we started to train uh actually, I was…there’s a CQ Desk, which was uh, uh that’s where all the phones come in for each, I, I was in headquarters company, in the range battalion, second range battalion, which is Fort Goast, Washington, the only one on the West Coast. Actually, there’s three range of battalions in the entire country. One at Hundunartphy, Airfield, first is in Crunarphy Airfield, second was at Forgoest Washington, where I was, and the third one is at uh, Forbinning at Georgia, along with the regiment. So, together total there’s probably about…between fifteen and nineteen hundred rangers if you include all of them, all three battalions and regiment, uh…everybody so um, what happens is…is we are, the rangers are of part of what we called USSOS, or the United States Special Operation Command. Uh…that includes Delta Force, SEALs, uh, Marine Force Recon, any of those specialized units, uh like that, where they do that. And so what happened was, we that the, the, the there had been a lot of training going on and uh, the battalion commander called us, and I remember this because I was about to be in a wedding and, uh in September, and uh, he called off and said “okay, I can’t let anybody else have any leave, I, I, you know, we’re getting nervous about this situation in Panama, you know, they are starting to look at us. Uh well, you know, we’re start to doing some things.” And so uh, what happened was that uh, we started to train. I had to call my friend, he was going to poop me in his wedding, and he said “I’m sorry”, you know uh what can you do you know, when the top commander said that you can’t do it. So um…we stopped, uh we were, we were training quite a bit, I remember because I was telling the CQ story, because what happens is they alert the unit, and ranger battalion has eighteen hour sequence was called. The president calls, calls the regiment of command or the commander, issues are all cleared and says, “okay, there’s an eighteen hour sequence” so they make the call, and trickles down from the higher arps you know the curnal ones then the commanders. And everybody knows, so I was working at the desk the night they tr-they had uh, uh, a fake drill, where they brought everybody in, to test them. And then I was working at the desk the night the actual alert happened. And, my girlfriend kept call me, I was on the phone, and uh this lieutenant was screaming at me, “Get off the phone!”…kept like, you know, yelling at me. So we had to get off the phone, and I was, at that point what you do was you monitor all phone calls in…sergeants and everybody, ____ the call and so uh, we, we got alerted about…I think seven in the evening? Seven or eight in the evening, and from that time we were all in __ wear, you get your MO, you get uh, you get briefed. Everybody has it in what to do, is basically you are in an airplane, wheels up, I, uh, our battalion was out at the army airfield. Uh, we took off, we were amotialing or we were all gathering at, uh Fort Binning, Georgia, and so we landed in Georgia and now, a bunch of us get sick because in Washington in December of ’89 was cold, very cold. It was very cold and rainy out there, and uh, a bunch of us, we got, we were getting over there and then Georgia was terribly hot in the summer time, in December, terribly hot. And so a bunch of us really got sick because uh the temperature extreme was way too much for us, and um a bunch of people got sick. When we landed, I, I’ve never seen, we flew on C-130 cargo planes, I’ve never seen so many airplanes on the airfield, at that time, and we were all sitting around and waiting and…it was uh…it was pretty amazing site so we knew that it was a big deal. And uh, two of our dependent many from authority we flew over the tip of Florida and basically flew an almost kind of a, uh, kind of a wide angle down at Panama, so the radar wouldn’t pick us up. Cause our mardar was about thirty planes with two, two thousand rangers on them was a pretty big deal. So what happen is they loaded up all the jeeps. They loaded up all the specialized little birds, which the helicopters that they do, it’s uh, helicop-portible helicopter they can put onto uh, onto a plane. They take it off, wheel it up and then it sits like six men. It has like a mini gun and things like that. And I was actually on my plane. I was responsible for ordering a radio, so when we first uh, when, they had, we had a parachutes on our plane, too. All the guys had parachutes so when the plane made, when we got to Panama, first group went through. They jumped everybody off. Everybody jumped off. Now, I was part of the land invasion so I was going to stay with the plane, when the plane was going to land, and then I was going to uh, to uh, run off and meet with my people. Okay, so I, the radio comes, uh the call comes, my guys all jumped off, I called the head day call guy, I said, “Okay, everybody is off my plane.” I get off the radio, um I’m with my group from head quarters company. Now, when you run off, it’s very, you know you have three guys from third battalion and guys from second battalion so we were all mixed up in this long line. And we were supposed to run off to the right, you now, when, when we land, C-130 has a rap down, so when you run out you just run off the plane. So we were think we were supposed to run off to the right, and follow somebody of the guy…he was in charge of us. He ran off to the left, *cough*, and we followed these other guys and we missed him on marshalling point, so the first three days of the battle, we were out, following these other guys, and not wherever we were supposed to be, so they thought we had been shot or whatever. And we eventually got back to where we were supposed to be. But um we, where I went into, I went into Real Hotto uh Dropsong, that was um…a range specialty securing airfields. So, so what you do is they secure the airfields so other transportation can come in. If they, if you don’t secure the airfields, you are dead meat because then all the planes can come in, they’ll just shoot them up. So there was very harsh resistance, fifty caliber machine got fired and uh a lot of other things, but in the first three days, once we got on the ground and we quall that, then it became a ___ and the Delta Force was there, and Navy SEALs was there, and all these other units that basically were looking for Noriega. And the only reason the conflict lasted as long as it did was because the intelligence wasn’t as good as what it should’ve been. Um…if they didn’t known where he was, we could’ve got him in five days. But they didn’t find him till about eighteen days later. And he was hidden in church, hiding, and when you see those pictures of him being pushed into that car by those big guys with U.S. flag…those were Delta Force guys who were, who have got him because they are, they are the hostage people that’s the big enforcement. Uh I was uh oh, um my assignment, I was part of the battalion casualty collection point, so anybody who might have been injured or killed would’ve come to where I was, but because of the, the incredible survival rate, there was only one guy that got killed and very minor injuries, and everybody else was uh, we didn’t have anybody that we are tending to.

Haewon: Okay, um…so what kind of friendships did you form? During the army.

Marston: Uh…it’s almost like a brotherhood uh when you get through that. And the harder the training and, because it really is you have to be able to trust who you have on your left and your right, and uh my unit, I was with the pack people, which we did, we handled finance and all those kind of things with people, and um, we trained enough to wear and we ran together and I trusted the people I was with. And if I did, had to die or gotten one of those guys uh killed, I would’ve uh…hopefully I would’ve done the right thing and we have word for each other, but they were like brothers to me.

Haewon: Oh, okay, so what did you do on your free time?

Marston: Got away from the battalion…*chuckles*…yeah I got, I got, I got out of there because uh it was really hard and it was a lot of hazing going on for initial people when you get in there, uh, especially the infantry, troops they train, haze you…it’s like a fraternity type of thing, and uh…I would go to the mall, or just drive, I had a car, so I would just drive somewhere far away…and just enough so I could get…you know, go buy a dinner or somewhere you know, where I wasn’t there the full time. See a movie maybe, just to get away, and then I had a buddy of mine, we came in together and became good friends. We would drive together, sneak off and come back, things like that.

Haewon: So how did your family react to what happened?

Marston: Uh they were scared, when, when the news came uh my girlfriend I think either called my mother, I think that based on what my mom told me, everybody who almost knew me from when I was a kid called my mom, because they were all like, “oh god, is he okay? We know he is not...” Cause my girlfriend knew when the guy screamed at me on the phone where I was going, we had talked, and I said this may happen.” And so she was aware and she knew, so they used to bug the phone at the battalion, so I would make calls from outside the pay phone…cause I don’t like when people hear me and I don’t want to be responsible for…doing something and it’s, you know, call me in there and I get in trouble, so I would let her know outside, and we go make the calls outside. And the phone was tabbed, you know when the phone’s tabbed you can hear the “teh teh teh teh teh” so it was a really bad wire. I mean they didn’t even try to do it. It was “teh teh teh teh teh” so you just be very careful what you said, when you were inside. When you were outside at the pay phone, you can go…wherever…they were scared, and once I was able to make a call, I think like ten days out, uh ten days out I think when we were in these ten days. I was there basically uh…the operation started December 28th, 1989, I was there till January 10^th, uh 1990, so I was there for twenty days. And at that point, they were starting to send us off because eighteen to nineteen days they had found Noriega, it was just the way ___ to get them out.

Haewon: Okay, um so what are some memorable memories or events that happened?

Marston: About the war? Or about…

Haewon: Like…any…

Marston: Well, I miss, I don’t miss like, during the war, it’s a historical thing and I teach history now and retrospect to be a part of event like that was really, really amazing I mean it’s…to see everything that I saw ____ just to be there and to be thankful that I came back in one piece and not in that…if was gonna die with somebody, at least I would’ve been with a unit of really highly skilled soldiers as opposed to somebody who may not care in a hole next to me or I may not even know the guy. We were pretty tight unit and, uh but, if you ask me overall military experience I really miss jumping out of aircraft. It’s crazy as it sounds…uh that was something that was really a memorable experience. I had about twenty eight jumps over a four-year period. Basically, you had to jump every three months, so every once in a while you jump at night, which is really scary. And then uh, you jump, but it, it was, it was, it was fun I mean we didn’t uh…you know I caught one time we went to Texas, gees, and uh, we jumped out of the uh…aircraft and everybody, it’s really hot down there. And so we…there’s a lot of…you, you, you jumped out and you think you are gonna fall. You fall but it’s not…I mean it’s, it’s, it’s like being shot out of a bullet. You jumped out the door…it’s like “poohh!” the chute opens and then you, you float down there. Now, sometimes, you carry your bag, you roxide, this is how they call it, tight your knees so you pull these cables in it and falls down on a 20-foot rope, so, as you’re falling down, that ultimately pulls you down because your package is uh, is, is heavier. But you, you sway it down that way, and so what happened was I caught…what was, it must’ve been a thermodraft because once you, once everybody’s out of plane, you can see it, it’s like a row of parachutes. And, everybody was descending lower than me and I was just hanging there, like there was this hang that caught me. And everybody is getting lower and lower, and I’m just hanging there, and I’m going down a little bit, a little bit, and…I swear, everybody else hit the ground and it was like five minutes, before I came down. I don’t want, can’t explain what it was, I don’t know, all I can think of is I caught in a thermodraft that enable me to just kind of float there, uh, which is uh, amazing. And so, I uh, that was probably the most memorable…and when we jumped in water, I jumped in a lake one time too, which was pretty amazing, that’s…and your clothes get about as weighed as heavy time and you like…have to __ thing under your wrists so you don’t get…but I miss jumping. A lot of other stuff I didn’t miss, like all…there’s a lot of “hurry up” and “wait” in the military. “Hurry up! Hurry Up! Get over here! Wait! Okay, sit down! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Okay, hurry up! Hurry up!” and, and you know, after a while doing that, you’re just like…”oh god, can’t you just tell me” but it’s, that’s just the mentality of the military, and you, you know you signed up for it, they own you for four years from the time you sign up for it, and you have to do that, and so, but, but, you know, it’s part of it, uhh…you know, I don’t regret it. It was one of the most…I wouldn’t be who I was today if I didn’t have that experience. And it really, it really was something that define my character.

Haewon: Umm…do you have any other stories or funny moments or?

Marston: Well, I when we first got out, I, it was…when, when, when we were in Panama, I, I, hey, because there was no showers I wore this same uniform for the first six days. And as gross as that sounds, I, you just don’t have…guys were I mean they don’t like females going to combat because it was a ____ issue, guys can stay for four, five days, and not take a shower, but…I remember strictly because we were point securing on this cookie factory, and I smell, all you smell were like this Panamanian cookies. It, it’s like this…it’s kind of like bread, it was like this sweet kind of smell, and we, we were there, and uh…uh you know the units around me got all like…alpha company were the ones that, that were blurring the, the, the, the, the music on the embassy, so when you read about the, the, that was a big thing, I was in a part of that, I was going house to house, there were, you know I was doing that. Some buddies and I went over to an arms room and stole some swords that I eventually got, and I should show that to you, it’s a sword that has um…one side it has, it was, it was a battle sword, you know like a dress sword, you know from a military officer. It has the Panamanian defense crest on one side and it has um…Man Noriega, his name on the other side, and uh, I kept that uh…for my buddy helped me smuggling it on the plane. Um one other story that I had was interesting was um, when we were um, we were down there and we had, we, we, we had been pulling security on uh, a group of people, and we ran a baseball stadium. It was, it was one of you guys, it’s like this one up on uh, if you go down to Longden and go down to Longden by the church that little league stadium down there. It’s kind of like that. Small, or what you see in middle school, it wasn’t like a big stadium so I want to make sure, it was just like…but we were under this cover, and they had a group of them, like on the first base side, like I was up…almost like what you’d call behind home plate, and the guys were down there at the, the, the, either the interrogate or whatever they were, were down at these tables, and they’d take these guys from the first base side and they’d take them down there and interrogate them, and then if they didn’t want them anymore, they’d stick them up at the left base, third base side, so they were doing this switch for three, four hours. We were just there, watching, you know, make sure that the guys doesn’t get up and run off. And I’ll never forget this as long as I live, they, they bring a channel helicopter, that’s the one with two blades, it’s the long thin “tu tu tu”, and it comes right down in the baseball field, blown dust everywhere. And we were, we were looking at that, and, all you saw is every one of those guys’ eyes just became about the size of like, like just, they were “urghhc” And, they took about eight guys and they put them on that helicopter and they took off. And everybody, they were all like “Oh my God” you could just tell. They were freaked out. What are they gonna do. Because, Vietnam, we used to take those guys out and we’d tie, tie them to the core and dump them at the back and run them to the jungle and…because they were torturing to get information. And you do that to first guy, and second, if the second guy doesn’t talk, you do it to him until one of the guys talk. It gives you information that’s ___. So, they didn’t know whether the guys were you know, and I didn’t know either, they could’ve, all they could’ve…we don’t do that to people now, I mean we do, but you just don’t know about it, we take them, we could’ve probably, probably just took them around for a long trip, and did something …but everybody, the effect of what that did to those people…I’ll never forget those faces as long I live, they were so scared it was…but it was, it was memorable.

Haewon: So um, how did you adjust when you came back from…

Marston: It was a hard adjustment, apparently for me because uh, it’s very, very intense. Well, you have to be intense to be part of that. Uh, you um, there’s a lot of cursing. There’s a lot of cursing going on and it took me about nine months. I got out in January of ’91, and it takes uh, it was saved on my leaving got out, and then uh, uh there’s this, uh, you get back and people were, like, looking at you and like, “We’re just not that hardcore here. You just need to mellow out.” So, it took me about…you know, like I said, I finally just kind of eased back into it, and now I laugh at guys that come back from the military because you can tell what they are going through. It’s a good training process. Just…you have to go through it to appreciate.

Haewon: So how does this experience affect yourself and your family?

Marston: You mean in long term?

Haewon: Yeah.

Marston: Like, like I said earlier, it really define my character and it gave me a sense of uh, obligation, and ____, and you know, I was able to do something for my country at that time that I thought was extremely uh, viable, uh, I was in, even though it’s not, it wasn’t a battle such as World War II, it’s more like a conflict, you know, it’s worth a technical term of this. But, I was able to be there, and I was there, and can say I was there, and it really, you know, and I did it, and I got out, and I came back and I said, “okay.” I mean it, you know. And then…it was good. I mean it was a sense of…fulfilling an obligation, I know, how, nobody wishes to go to combat. Some of the people around me, when we were going, were like “Yeah, I’m going to kill somebody, yeah!” And, you know, I am a normal guy, and I thought that that was fairly…but you know, you need to have that mentality when you go to war because war is not, uh is not pretty, and they say war is hell, and it really is. You have to adopt the mentality of becoming an animal to be successful in war. Thank God we didn’t, you know, that’s why people in Vietnam, they were successful, when they come back, they were psychologically unbalanced because they have become something else, and they, and to come back from that, something is very difficult. And when you talk to any Vietnam vets, you will know…but.

Haewon: Oh, what about your family? Did they…

Marston: They were, I think, very relieved that I was out. Uh, it’s hard because I wasn’t relieved because when you sign up for a four year military term, at least back then, you have to do what you called, four years active and four years inactive, so you do the active part, but your name stay on the list, where they can call you back. And I was scared because at that time, Bush had started desert storm. I was supposed to get out, and they were back logging the people. It was February of ’91, and they, and they were stopping the ETSs, the Exit Term Services, when you get out, that’s what happens. And, they were stopping it, and they weren’t letting people out. And I was like, okay so we getting into March and April and I’m starting to get scared. So I’m going to fall into this, and they are going to backlog me. Thank God, something happened, and he, because he thought he might need reserves from people, and what he did was they a decision, say no ___ and all these people that had been held up were let go first and then they got it, they got it back to the normal flow, and then…by the time my six months came, there was no backlogging. It’s whoever now was able to go. So I uh, yeah.

Haewon: Uh…do you, uh do you have any suggestion or do you want to tell something for later generation?

Marston: Well, anybody that wants to join the military should uh, the most, best, most beneficial thing I can tell you is two things. One is to get your education first. Uh, if you are a college student, uh you want to go, you should look in the ROTC program. That is a very good program, it guarantees you uh not to do what I did. Uh, I hin-hindered myself with my grades, but that’s my own thing. But as a lesson to young people, please go to college and do the officer, become an officer and do it that way uh, if you want to be enlisted that’s fine. Uh, do it from high school, but uh, uh talk to a veteran or someone, or find a teacher, relative, or somebody. Don’t just talk to a recruiter. Find an outside voice, but you can talk…not the recruiter is not good. They are looking from ____. You have to find somebody who was actually in. They can help you, and tell you to prepare you, because if you go in without it, you will need to have uh, a fair working knowledge of how they do things to help you understand.

Haewon: Okay, we don’t have any more questions. Okay, well, that’s it.

Marston: Okay.

Haewon: Thank you so much.

Marston: You’re welcome.

Nina Castro

O. Beckwth Period 3

Junior Honors U.S. History

May 18 2008

Arcadia High School Veterans History Project

Interview #2: S. Sgt. Catrina Clifford

S. Sgt. Catrina Zielinski

There are programs for each military branch, but they’re all different so I can tell you the ones that we have, but I can’t really go in-depth on what the other ones have. I know one program that the army has is going in as a junior, between your junior and senior year that summer, going to boot camp. We don’t do that. You have to graduate high school, ‘cus what do we do if you’d go between your junior and senior year and you decide to drop out?

Christine Chen

They’re always talking about they- they fund your college—

C. Zielinski

—like the Platoon Leaders Course.

Christine Chen

Yeah.

C. Zielinski

The Platoon Leaders Course is a program where you join as a reservist, where the part time- the one week in a month, 2 weeks in the summer—and you, while you’re training you do in that one week, you go to school so that the two weeks that’s in the summer are between your semesters, so you’re not missing any college, but they’re going to send you a check every month for that. And I think write now it’s two hundred and seventy-eight dollars a month, which isn’t a lot but it’s more than what you have if you’re not working. So it kind of helps out a little bit.

Wesley Chen

You said something for National Guard, which is like sixty thousand, and you can take two years of college. That’s a pretty big deal.

C. Zielinski

Sound like a good deal.

W. Chen

Yeah.

C. Zielinski

Honestly some things that sound to good to be true usually aren’t. *laughter* Just so you know.

C. Chen

Yeah, ‘cus my brother’s friend actually went to the air force, and there’s no program like that for the air force, so he found that out later, like “oh, the army has a program that pay for your full college,” and then they send you in, he’s like “I got screwed!”

W. Chen

Christine, it’s a privilege to be in the Air Force and— and drive- have—

C. Zielinski

The Air Force is—

C. Chen

—he’s not exactly, like, in the Air Force.

C. Zielinski

The Air Force won’t take Marines.

C. Chen

Oh.

C. Zielinski

If you’re prior marines they look very, very hard before they will accept you to leave the Marines to come in the Air Force, ‘cus they think we’re crazy.

All

*laughter*

Sgt. Nikoline Clifford

The Air Force is like civilians in uniform.

C. Chen

Yeah.

C. Zielinski

But we love them anyway.

N. Clifford

They’re very chill.

C. Zielinski

Now one thing that you were talking about in the college. Now I’m active duty and I work, in depending on the week doing the job that I do now as a recruiter, I work anywhere from-from twelve to twenty-one hours a day. From the time I get up, drive to work, work all day, and drive home ‘cus I live forty-four miles away, and I still am taking an online class, but because I’m active duty they pay for the whole thing. So, they’ve put about eight thousand dollars into my college so far, and I haven’t had to pay for any of it. All I have to do is maintain a C and continue to work.

And then when I get out I have another thirty-seven thousand—right now it’s thirty seven thousand, it goes up every year, but it’s thirty-seven thousand right now and I have up to ten years after I get out to use for school again.

C. Chen

Oh, um.

W. Chen

Are we done? Okay.

Today is April twenty-five, two thousand and eight. We are interviewing Sergeant Katrina salinzki, an Iraq war veteran. Born on May third, nineteen seventy-nine. My name is Wesley Chen and I am doing this interview at arcadia high school with the help of Lawrence Cheung, Christine Chen, and Nina Castro. This interview is being conducted for the veteran’s history project for the library of congress.

Miss Zielinski, could you please tell me about your, uh, background and your heritage, where you were born, and your family?

C. Zielinski

Okay. Um, I’m originally from Kansas, and I was born in Newton, Kansas. Um, I have my mom and my sister as my immediate family; my— the rest of my family were pretty big on my dad’s side, and we have a few military members— none on my mom’s side, actually, that’s not true, we have two, uh, Air Force people on my mom’s side, so there’s a military history there. We have, um, my three nieces now, so we’re very family oriented and I keep in touch with them and they’re all wondering what I do and, you know, where I’m at different times.

Um, I’ve bee a marine for almost eleven years, and I absolutely love passing in the area.

W. Chen

When did you first decide that you wanted to be a marine?

C. Zielinski

I was, let’s see; I graduated in ninety-seven, so it was in ninety-six I joined in august of ninety-six, and it was in the late entry program, as the program that I went into as I joined before I graduated high school , and so that whole period from ninety-six to June of ninety-seven in that program I would exercise and get ready for boot camp, and then in June of ninety-seven I left and went to boot camp for three months . Left my family and my friends, and everything behind.

W. Chen

Why the Marines?

C. Zielinski

They’re the best. My, um, I found out after I graduated boot camp that my grandfather was a marine and actually fought in Iwojima, and, um, was awarded two purple hearts and sigh penantinion. Up until the day he died he never talked about it. He lived through all of that and never told me he was a marine.

W. Chen

You went to boot camp at Parris Island?

C. Zielinski

Yes.

W. Chen

Was there any experiences over at boot camp that really impacted your life? Changed your life?

C. Zielinski

I think the whole boot camp experience changes your life, because you’re going in without, the marines are the only branch that’s separates their males and females for training. Um, other than gym class, where you can kind of hide yourself, that’s probably the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to change: get naked, take a shower, do everything in front of 15 other girls, and knowing that they’re from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different religions, different races, and taking them all and putting them into a melting pot to get along and teach everybody to work as a team is definitely a life changing experience.

W. Chen

Was there ever any, um, disputes between marines? Because you said you took all these different races together; and did you ever have any conflicts?

C. Zielinski

There’s-- it doesn’t matter what you do or where you go there’s always going to be conflict with some people, and one thing about, even at boot camp before you’re actually marines, and even after boot camp when you’re a marine working with other marines. Um, there’s conflict, but you—it’s a love-love relationship. You can dislike the person for one reason or another, but, but because you know what they’ve been through you’re still gonna get along, and It’s the same thing in boot camp: because you know what everybody’s going through, everybody has an opinion, and people clash sometimes, but you still find the happy medium where you get along with everybody.

W. Chen

After Parris Island, where did you go?

C. Zielinski

After parries island i was actually stationed in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I went to camp Geiger for marine combat training, and that was throwing grenades and firing the big weapons, and that was probably the most fun that I had. And after that I went to camp Johnson for my job school, which is also an—it’s an administrative clerk, which is the, um, kind of office job. A lot of people think that an office job is just “bluh, it’s just an office job,” but it—but its public relations, records, pay, so it’s kinda cool.

W. Chen

And then you were relocated at

C. Zielinski

Port Hueneme, California—Indian Princess. Port Hueneme, do you know where that’s at?

W. Chen

It’s in California.

All

*laughter*

C. Zielinski

Do you know where Ventura or Oxford are?

W. Chen

I think I know w Ventura—

C. Zielinski

—Northwest. About an hour and a half.

Um, it was named after an Indian princess—it’s actually an inspector/instructor unit, and for the longest time I wouldn’t figure out how to pronounce it.

But I finally figured it out, and had to relay into my family, and I’m gonna tell you a little story how I got my grandma to remember how to say that:

She said, “How do you say it?”

I said, “Hueneme.”

She says “how the heck am I going to remember that!?”

I say, “Hue-ne-me, I didn’t do it!”

She goes, “ah, I got it!”

So that’s kind of—I like to tell that story ‘cus I’m an association-type girl, so she’s like, “aw, I can remember that!” But that was actually the command that I was at when nine eleven hit. It was about six o’clock in the morning. I come into the office and they have the news on, and I look, I went, “that’s fake!,” and I look again and, “crap, that’s not fake,” and we sat there watching the news for about thirty minutes, and it turns out that that unit—that reservist that was actually one of the first unit to mobilize to train to go to Iraq, and so I had to get a hundred and eighty marines ready with the rest of my staff, with all the gear. I’m getting paid because there’s extra money that comes between reserve and active duty, so I had to make sure that they were paid right, I had to make sure that all of their family members were in their record, um, get all their gear, issue weapons, um, find transportation down to camp Pendleton where they train for six months before going over to Iraq, so they were down actually—and we do this  everywhere, it doesn’t matter what we do where we’re going, you always train first. Safety is paramount. Everywhere. So, we go down to camp Pendleton and train them for six months to make sure they know exactly what they do in any situation. And that was February fifth, two thousand and two.

W. Chen

And was there anything that you did that was out of the ordinary? Any experience that changed your life?

C. Zielinski

Um, I would have to say the one thing that I did at Port Hueneme had absolutely nothing to do with the actual marine core. Um, I volunteered my time for the young marines for the whole three years and that’s actually what this ribbon is for, an Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. Did graduations, barbeques, um, teaching them how to march, mark there uniforms, teach the girls how to put there hair up; definitely, definitely a unique experience.

W. Chen

You also have other medals, um, one medal for world war on terrorism service medal. Could you explain that one?

C. Zielinski

There’s actually for, um, for the Iraq campaign, there’s actually two. The one that I have, the service medal, is saying that I was at the service at the time that happened and the on that—the other one is for the actual campaign over in that area. So the one that I have is just saying that I was in the service at that time and have no been over there.

W. Chen

You have one where—merits unit citation?

C. Zielinski

Meritorious Unit Citation. It is something—it is an award that they give out to a unit, granted a given period of time. Mine was actually for, um, recruiter’s assistance. So was helping my recruiter put people into the marine core.

W. Chen

And how do you achieve your rank of sergeant?

C. Zielinski

I achieved my rank of sergeant with time. Time…it’s—we have a—we have a time period that we go through the ranks, but once you hit a certain rank it goes, it’s different. So from, from the first rank of private to PFC—Private first Class—is six months, after that six months and you put on private first class, you know nine months later you’re gonna come out lance corporal. Then from tat point you look at the rightful score of the physical fitness test, um, we have what we call MCI, it’s correspondence courses that are actually with college credits. Um everything tat we do as a marine is looked at and given on a point system, and that point system, headquarters marine core will look at how many people they need; they’ll look at your scores and say “we’re going to promote up—this is going to be the score because we’re going to need this many people, this is how many have it,” and that’s how they do it for corporal and sergeant, and once you pick up sergeant, trying to pick up staff sergeant, you actually have a group of board members that looks at every sergeant in the Marine Corp for every different job and picks out the ones they think are most qualified for that.

*Pause*

W. Chen

Going back on the medal, you have one for Navy Unit Commendation. How did you earn that one?

C. Zielinski

The—the Navy Unit Commendation is also the unit medal that’s given to the whole unit by the secretary of the navy, and…I can’t really remember what I did for it ‘cus it’s been a long time, but, um—sorry *laughter* sometimes there’s a lot going on and you get into—I don’t want to say complacent—but you own ‘em for so long and you just forget what they were for until you think really hard back on it

W. Chen

Let’s help you remember. Has the marine—has the Marine Corp. unit you’ve been with ever, um, interacted with the army or any other branches of the navy?

C. Zielinski

The station in Port Hueneme was actually—it’s a—it’s actually a navel base, and it’s mostly see seaweeds, which are construction workers, the builders. So what they do is, when we go in deployments…so deployments are when several different, you know, all-live branches go on a ship and go somewhere and those guys practice settin’ up on the showers and the little Quonset huts, and put in the air conditioners while we’re sitting out there sweatin’ on a little field exercise. So that’s what they do, they—we, the seaweeds—is who I worked with up there…very closely.

W. Chen

And because the navel base—did they treat you women any different?

C. Zielinski

The…they treat us different because we earn a different rank, we carry ourselves differently and earn a different type of respect. So when—if I was to walk through the exchange in my uniform, in what I’m wearing now, people would actually move out of my way, and open the middle so I can walk down the middle.

W. Chen

Um, elaborate. Out of respect? Out of—

C. Zielinski

Out of respect for me being a marine because everybody knows the uniform. Being a marine knowing that I’ve done the longest boot camp, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been in it just matters that they know what I stand for and how I carry myself and the pride that I have in myself that it’s kind of, uh, and awestruck-look, and like—and like “oh, let me move over so she can get through.”

Does that clarify?

W. Chen

Um, yes. Thank you.

C. Zielinski

Oh, okay.

W. Chen

Is there some sort of personal feeling behind being a marine and just walking through? I mean, you’ve what all the other marines could generically feel but—about their personal experiences, anything you want to reflect on?

C. Zielinski

My personal experience, my personal feelings on being a marine is that I would never, ever change anything that I’ve done as a marine. Um, I have a very, very, um—I don’t want to say I’m cocky, but I’m very confident, and that’s—that’s something that sets us apart. I mean you’ve got the other branches; I’ve got two cousins that are in the army that have both been to Iraq twice and are getting ready to go back. Um…it’s a—they even give me a different kind of respect because they know what I stand for and they know how I feel about it, they know that I love serving my country and that doesn’t matter where I go or what I do, I’m here for my country

*Slight pause*

W. Chen

Um, under special duties you have inspector instructor staff, what is that?

C. Zielinski

Inspector instructor staff is the reserve unit in Port Hueneme, and basically what I was is I was the active duty staff for the reserves when they came in one week in a month and two weeks in the summer, so I made sure that if they moved, if, um, if they were missin’ pay, when they came in a drill that they got paid, that everything was running smoothly while they were not there.

W. Chen

And has anything ever happened? Any problems?

C. Zielinski

A problem with…?

W. Chen

Just someone not getting their pay, getting frustrated, taking their problems to you?

C. Zielinski

Yes there has. Um, one in particular is, um—he’s out now, he’s medically retired. This young man, um, I told him, I said “do not close your bank account,” because when we have the opportunity to—whenever we want—we have to have direct deposit, because everything goes directly into our accounts. So he had one account open and wanted to change it to a different bank. Rule of thumb for administration: if you open another account, you wait to check those in there before you close the old one. It took me a month to find that paycheck and he kep—he called me every day, “Did you find it? Did you find it?” and I’m like, “you’re the stupid one that closed the account!” He works up at Port Hueneme now as one of the gate guards and we get him pretty good. So that—it wasn’t just a bad experience, it actually brought us closed together, not only as marines but as friends.

Nina Castro

Um, you said that, um, you were very confident, um, do you feel that, like, what has the marines brought to you? How have you changed because of it? Like, there’s anything, like, besides you changing for the marines or, did—providing something before that you also brought to your position?

C. Zielinski

One, one thing that has definitely—that brought out my courage and, and my confidence is boot camp. Um, the things that we dot here, you know, the swim qualification, you know, you have on full gear, um, rubber rifle on your shoulder, you do things that, you know—I didn’t know my pack would float, so I learned that as long as my pack is on my back, and I lean back it’s going to float, so all I got to do is move my arms and get half way across the pool where I need to go. Um, jumping off a repel tower, I had—I’m scared of death of heights. I would probably shake—shake the screws right out from where their hooked in, but I did it. They have to actually: the one where you walk backwards down the wall, and the other one is the heel; it’s kind of like bungy jumping but not as high up, and that actually gave me the courage to go out and actually bungy jump; I’ve done that twice since then. Um, have you heard of the crucible?

N. Castro

Oh the…

C. Zielinski

The, the crucible is the—is the final test of being a marine, and it’s only been around for, um, almost eleven years. I was the second female platoon to go through it. So, to know that I can accomplish working with a small or a large group of people and go through food deprivations, sleep deprivations for fifty-two hours and still do everything that I have to do, and still work as s team and get along is a great accomplishment. It gives you confidence that you can do anything.

W. Chen

Was there anybody close to you that couldn’t get past the crucible?

C. Zielinski

The one thing about the crucible is because it is the, the final test on team work, you don’t leave anybody behind. One thing about the marines is whoever you came with you’re taking home. So the, the few that didn’t have the strength to go on, ‘cus I mean the—the last portion is a nine mile hike back. That’s a long hike. And I know I’m always dragging a thirty pound pack on my back, and—and I actually  got to me the commandant at that time, John Krulak and the people that start to fall back, you-you take their—one takes their rifle, another girl takes the pack, and another girl will put their arms around them and will help them into the end. As long as they finish, you know that you’re a team and you can work together with anyone.

W. Chen

In—you, um, said that people take each others packs and is that just a cooperative team work effort, or is there ever some sort of bragging rights that accompany taking on another.

C. Zielinski

Um we don’t really do bragging rights it’s—it’s a team work thing. It’s, um, if I can’t…if I can’t carry my pack because I’ve got blisters on my feet and I can barely carry my own weight, then one I of my other marines would carry it for me, but maybe next time they’re going to have blisters and I have to carry theirs. So, it’s a whole team work thing where we work together, in asset to finish what we have to do.

W. Chen

And on the crucible you said you met…

C. Zielinski

General Krulak.

W. Chen

How was that experience for you?

C. Zielinski

That was a very, very good experience. Um, the nine mile hike on the crucible is the, when you finish, that’s the first time they put the Eagle, Globe and Anchor in your hand, and…the eagle globe and anchor is our symbol, so they—that’s the first time you get it ‘cus at boot camp you don’t wear a name tag, you don’t wear any sadirons, you don’t wear anything. So you do the nine mile hike, they put the Eagle, Globe and Anchor in your hand, and that’s the first time they call you a marine. So mine actually came a little bit earlier. Um, I had no idea who he was, ‘cus I had never seen a picture or anything. Um, I had blisters on  my feet carrying a thirty pound pack, carrying a weapon, trying to help people out, and I was draggin’, I was draggin’ hard, and he was probably about five foot three, five foot four, and I’m five eight. So, I’m draggin’ and I feel this hand come up over my shoulder, from my left side up to my right, and he says, “come on, you’re almost there marine,” so I got a couple miles earlier there than all the rest of them, so it was kind of interesting, and he has since retired. So that’s history. Been through, round the third—third commandant since then.

W. Chen

Did you have any other concierges with him down the road?

C. Zielinski

No sir I didn’t—I didn’t *laughter* those are the—we have the enlisted side and the officer side; the enlisted side usually sticks with the enlisted for any personal reasons, and the officers hang out with the officers unless it’s business, then we’ll interact.

*pause*

N. Castro

Oh, the name of your symbol, I forgot exactly what it was called again, um, where did it come from—like the origin of it? Like why—how did the marines choose that?

C. Zielinski

Well we have, um, we have some cadences that we—when we run cadences, or when you run you sing, that have their stories, but I don’t think they’re true. *laughter* Um, the eagle is, um…oh, crap, I forgo what all of it meant too—the anchor is because we’re actually a department of the navy, and the—the globe is for world wide service, the eagle I’m forgetting right now, and I can’t—

W. Chen

Freedom.

C. Zielinski

The nation…to symbolize the nation. Yay!

W. Chen

Okay, thank you Miss Zeilinski.

C. Zielinski

Thank you.

Jason Hsin

Joseph Liao

Eddy Yang

Transcript of Bob Novell

5/2/08

J = Joseph Liao

B = Bob Novell

J: Hi, what is you name?

B: My name is Robert Edward Novell.

J: And how old are you now?

B:  Sixty two years old.

J: Sixty two years old. Umm, so what was life growing up like?

B: Life was…actually life was…I grew up in Pasadena and it was easier to grow up then because I could pretty much roam all over Pasadena.  I had a lot of freedom to do things.  I grew up in a neighborhood with lots of kids. Umm, the schools in Pasadena were very good and I have great memories of all the things that you could do.

J: Okay umm, what did you originally want to become when you were younger?

B: A basketball player.  I wanted to be a great basketball player.  Hahahahahahahaha.  And then I stopped growing.

J: So what inspired you to join the military?

B: At the time I went to college, I graduated from high school in 1963 and started college in the fall of 1963.  I went to a college called Claremont Mens College which is now called Claremont McKenna College.  At that particular time, we were beginning our buildup and the president advised the incoming freshmen that it would probably we wise to enroll in the ROTC.  ROTC stands for the Reserve Officer Training Core and that was a program in college.  You attended summer camp and upon graduation you were commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army.  Actually there was a choice…I didn’t…I knew about the military but it was a question of whether I was going to go in as an enlisted man or as an officer.  I choose to go in as an officer.

J: Okay, so what type of training did you guys undergo before joining the military.

B: In out particular case, when we went to college and took a military science class and on Monday afternoons…umm…we actually had training where we marched into different activities on a sports field.  We learned how to use…carry the weapon…umm…ultimately after four years you start out as a young guy and at the end you were perhaps the battalion commander…I wasn’t in that particular case…and between my junior year and senior year all the people in the western states including those in Hawaii…umm… we met at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington, to attend a camp where we learn to shoot with live weapons, learn how to use compasses, and work as a unit.  At the end of that time we actually had been exposed to what most people would get if they were drafted into the army.  In our senior year we made decisions about…umm…what part of the army you could go into.  You could go into the combat branch, infantry, the artillery, or armor. Armor stands for tanks.  You could go into a non combat branch.  In my particular case, because of my eyes, I was not combat qualified.  I choose to go into the transportation core…umm…they also asked you your senior year where in the world…now Vietnam was taking place…where in the world you wanted to be stationed.  My first choice as to where…umm…I wanted to be stationed was the Caribbean.  I second choice was actually Turkey.  My third choice was Europe and in my particular case, I was assigned to Germany.  I was stationed in Germany for a two year period.

J: So initially…umm…how did you feel about just joining the military?

B: There wasn’t a feeling…hahahahahaha…we were going in.  It didn’t matter unless you had some sort of medical release I think for a while if you were married and had some children you might be able to get out but everybody knew that this was just a part of being a young man growing up and we accepted it…umm…people ahead of us had done it and that was part of being an American Citizen. 

J: So did you act out of duty…like did you feel like the country needed the support…or is it more of the because everyone you knew joined?

B: Actually I think it was a little bit of both.  It made sense on our part that we had to give something back to our country.  Giving something back could have been to the Peace Corps or something within our community, or it could be military.  The vast majority of us choose the military.  That was an obligation of growing up in America. 

J:  Umm…so what types of jobs have you picked up in the military?

B: As it turns out I choose to be a transportation officer and it turned out that I graduated one day and all of us were commissioned officers and in the afternoon we actually all graduated and for most of us, we went home and waited for our orders.  My orders came within a week.  I was to report of Port Hustis, Virginia and got basic training in my particular branch in the transportation core.  It could have been intelligence…it could have been military police…it could have been a whole variety of things.  I reported to Port Hustis and there I took classes and part of that training had all the various types of assignments  and then we had people like myself coming in from all over the country.  From Texas Christian to Notre Dame… well all trained together and worked together as a group and upon completion we were assigned to different parts of the world.  Ninety percent of the people in the Transportation core were assigned to Vietnam.  The other ten percent went to either Korea of Europe.  I was assigned to Europe.

J:  When you were first deployed, how did you feel and did you sense any particular dangers?

B: No, in my particular case the danger was in Vietnam.  As just kind of a side note, I had close friends who were helicopter pilots in Vietnam who lost their lives.  I spent college years which some of them.  The ROTC program was a six year program: two years active duty, two years active reserve, and then two years inactive reserve.  You knew that you were always going to have two years in active duty and after you completed your service you had to report to reserve unit and then finally you had two years of inactive in which if something happened you could be called back.

J: I understand that you have been to many interesting places in the military, so what cities exactly have you been to?

B: Actually, I think the more interesting thing was the United States.  Going from California and traveling…umm…back to Virginia in the south…going through Texas…and finally ending up in Virginia…and realizing that America is not the same.  The west coast is different from the east coast…and just being in Virginia was actually very interesting.  The people back east thought that the people in California were different.  We had a reputation of drugs and very active sex lives…hahahahahaha…California with the subcultures and Berkeley in the 60’s had a bit of a reputation that did not necessarily  apply to people like myself…in Europe I spend time in Germany, Switzerland, and in Austria as well.  But my primary duty was in Germany.

J:  So…umm…I know that you meet a lot of people traveling to so many places…how did the general people treat you knowing that you were serving your country?

B: The US people were fine and the foreign people...particularly in Germany were fine as well…maybe I can explain something…I had a transportation unit for umm… a community and had probably fifty people working for me.  Almost all of them were foreign…it was as if I had a civilian job…I was probably the first and last officer to learn German and to communicate with them…when I went into the Military I was twenty one years old…I had graduated from college when I was twenty one.  By the time I had completed my military training I was a transportation officer for an area probably half the size of southern California…and probably had hundreds of people working for me and at that time had hundreds of people working for me…and because of my tennis skills…umm…I played competitive tennis in the summer time…and so I was fairly fluent in German and fairly comfortable with what we called the local nationals..

J: While you were in the transportation core what were some interesting encounters that you had.

B: In general it wasn’t very exciting…in what we were doing was we were providing commercial transportation for areas that we were at.  We would provide the school busses for the children to carry them back and forth.  We would have tow trucks and sedans…and umm…when I started I had a belief that for one I would not use a translator…so I taught myself German every single day and studied at least an hour and then I told the local German who was my chide supervisor that I could not as anybody to do something that I could not do myself.  I told him that I needed to learn how to drive the busses…hahahaha…so I only drove about two feet or five feet…but I did learn…umm…I learned to take responsibility and learned how to motivate and I learned that…umm…umm…that even though you’re the person in charge, it is often the people beneath you who are the key…and you have to help them rather than expect them to help you.  I probably had the best unit in the transportation area in Europe and was not because of me…it was the way the people would work for me.  I think the only thing of excitement was in 1967…1969 actually…in Czechoslovakia, the Czech’s decided that they wanted to be a little bit more independent and the Russian’s came in and decided that…I forget who the prime minister was back then…they took him out…and umm…the Russian’s had so many tanks that we knew if they wanted to keep coming, they would…we prepared for them to advance but it…umm…never happened…but we realized that we weren’t very far away from perhaps seeing some action ourselves.

J: Okay so umm…can you umm…describe a typical day umm…in the transportation core?

B: A typical day was I worked in the office…I had people who were involved in moving baggage for of the people who were living in the area…I had people who were drivers…umm…I had supervisors.  A typical day was just about dealing with particular problems…we had the Vietnam war and dollars were just going to Vietnam…we found that we were driving vehicles which had probably a hundred thousand miles on them…the question was how do you keep that equipment going…you weren’t driving new equipment, you were driving old equipment…I had a sergeant who was working for me…Sergeant Simmons…he was a little bit of a drinker, but he could scrounge… and scrounging means to go out and get stuff…and he would sometimes come into my office and say, Lieutenant Novell, I’m going to drive into Frankford…do you want to know what I have to give up to get that…I say Simmons, I want you to do everything you can to get that part and what ever you have to do, you do it.

J: What sort of stuff do you get out of the military?

B: Coming for California…coming from southern California with the beaches and all the nice stuff that you have and going back to the south…the contact that I had with different types of people…people with different educations…and realizing that I was the officer…I wasn’t necessarily the person in charge…my job was to coordinate and sometimes actually try to help them to do their job…umm…my second assignment when I took over an area…an area half the size of southern California…I walked into the maintenance area and umm…smoked with the ward officer there who was used to having lieutenants come and you know…ward over him and my impression to him was how do I help you…umm…the people who worked for me and were beneath me…when I took my second big assignment…I said…I am going to get you more money.  Everything has a classification and its all been on paperwork…they were doing the work and I wanted them to get paid for it…I also had extra assignments in the theatre office or in certain cases where people had died and it was my responsibility to go out with the Chaplin and visit those families and tell them that their husbands had died and that we were going to make arrangements to bring their bodies home…I think that the thing I learned about the army is that America is made of a lot of different people and a lot of different backgrounds…and it’s different and kind of a joy to get out of a close community that I lived in and realize that there are other things out there…and the people who worked for me…I was probably the only person who learned their language .. many of the people were prisoners of war who had been brought to Germany as slaves and stayed afterwards and sometimes late at night they would come in and tell me their stories…and the other part I think was the challenge to try and learn how to motivate people and umm….umm…how to challenge people…umm…when I finished, my particular unit was probably the best or among the best in Europe and that is because the people who worked for me taught me what needed to be done and there was a great satisfaction in doing that.

J: Having come across all these different people, have you befriended them or still keep close connections with them?

B: I don’t.

J: So what were some emotional events that you encountered?

 B: Actually it was just a job.  I can’t say if there were any highs or lows…it was a lot of fun and comradeship among …umm…my fellow officers…we were young and in another country and there were lots of things to do.  We weren’t necessarily at risk…the danger with some of the people was mainly in Vietnam so I don’t think that I can say if I had any particular lows or highs.  I was just doing my job.

J: Umm…so what did you and your comrades do for fun…like when you guys are taking a break.

B: Well…I learned how to play poker…In college I had studied mathematics and economic theory and we had to write thesis’s and I tried to write mines about mathematical theory of gambling…and it literally helped my in my earnings…in the army I would earn around three hundred a month but at night I would earn a hundred to a hundred and fifty a month.  It was not unusual for us to start at nine o clock and night and for me to drive home at five thirty in the morning.  I skied and backpacked in the mountains…I played tennis for a local tennis club and I also played tennis for the US Army…we had a very close group of individuals who were like myself…non-combat officers and we worked together…we socialized and went to dances and local nationals.  It was a great time…now let me just…let me just say one thing…over the service I took what is called an overseas discharge…that meant that you could be discharged to wherever you were based and if you reported back to the base within twelve months, the military would fly you home.  So I took a six month overseas discharge before coming back to go to college at UCLA and during that time I visited Ireland…and London we would see…I had a friend that I was traveling with…we would see umm…a movie and a play every single day sometimes two movies and a play and it wasn’t like today where everything is expensive…Ireland we traveled around and kissed the Barney Stone…we were in Belfast and could see what was happening between the Catholics and the Protestants and then probably one of my favorite times of my life was that I went back to Germany and got myself a three speed bike for twenty five dollars…I put saddlebags on the back and put hiking boots in the front…and my goal was to ride that bike from Nordberg to the Black Forest and back in eight weeks and I got to the black forest in ten days and before I was done I got another map and took my three speed bike to Italy and what I did was every six days I cashed a twenty dollar traveler’s check and did thirteen hundred miles on that bike and I was as skinny as you guys are today.

J: So while you weren’t at duty, did you feel the need to go back or did you want to go back.

B: I think that as you come to the end of you two year period they ask you if you would like to continue…I was a little independent…part of that was my educational training and I knew that I was going to go on to something else…I felt that I need to go home and go on to graduate school…if the military would have called me back I certainly would have gone back.

J: If you could go back is there anything that you would do to change the experience.

B: The answer to that is no…it was a growing experience and I had matured.  When I was twenty three years old I had three hundred people working for me in an area that is half the size of southern California.  I probably had more responsibility when I was twenty three years old then I had since…And I knew…all of my close friends knew that we were going to be there for a limited period of time…I don’t think negativity ever came into how we approached our work…we knew we had a job to do and we were going to do it the best we could.  And for the most part there is nothing about the military that would cause me to want to change it.

J: What are some things that you have learned through serving?

B: I feel…I continue to feel that every young person should have some part of their life committed to their country whether it is through the military, peace core, vista, or teaching…but I think that everyone has their own responsibility to give something back to their country…also, when you go someplace else, you realize how fortunate we are to live in America and living here I believe, carries a responsibility to be a good citizen and part of that I think, is to serve your country.

J: Thank you…so what new outlooks or perspectives have changed about how you view the world?

B: I think I gained the perspective of what an interesting country we live in and the exposure I had not only to a whole variety of Americans but people of different ethnic backgrounds and geographical backgrounds…the same is true in Europe…and again I had the opportunity to work with a variety of people and the army was an important part of my education.

J: So what do you think about the world now?

B: Well first of all I work in the investment business.  We work with high net worth individuals and we invest their money…the world’s changing and there are all kinds of issues like politics and military issues, and economic issues…umm…so I think it’s much more complex...my parents probably said the same thing in respect to us…I truly am not sure that we are being educated as well as we were back then.  There is more information but I don’t think that that necessarily translate to a better…umm…education.

J: Okay, were you supportive or against the war back then when you were serving?

B: Supportive…Frankly, we lost the Vietnam war but umm…I felt that we were trying to do something and that there was some basis on what we were trying to d.my parents probably said the same thing in respect to us…I truly am not sure that we are being educated as well as we were back then.  There is more information but I don’t think that that necessarily translate to a better…umm…education.

J: Okay, were you supportive or against the war back then when you were serving?

B: Supportive…Frankly, we lost the Vietnam war but umm…I felt that we were trying to do something and that there was some basis on what we were trying to do…I felt that had I been called to Vietnam, I would not have hesitated to go.

J: And umm…how do you feel about the current war that is going on in Iraq?

B: That’s an interesting question and umm…umm…I think that we went in there and took out a dictator and had they had the ability to govern themselves that would not even be a question.  I find it incredible that your given a country that want to govern themselves.  I think I am supportive of that…the interesting thing about the war is that the issue of weapons of mass destruction and sometimes people would want to point to the president and say hey he got us into the war but it was the United Nations who could never feel comfortable with the issue and there were many games being played with the Iraqi’s which prevented the inspectors from doing what they had to do…there was a general belief that there were weapons that were being concealed…there were certain types of weapons used on Iranians…there certainly are issues with the Iraqi’s.  Iraq is certainly a secular country and provided woman with the opportunity to get an education.  I think that decision had pluses and minuses and it’s a decision that was made and I support it…I find it incredible that they have found the ability to govern themselves and to some extent their neighbors who have tried to prevent them from doing it…they don’t want to see this sort of thing happen so it’s a fairly complex question.

J: Thank you very much Mr. Bob Novell.

Jason Hsin

Beckwith p.6

6226

18 May 2008

AVHP Transcript

Officer Luis Vicuna

Interviewer: Jason Hsin [denoted by J]

Interviewee: Luis Vicuna [denoted by L]

J: So we’re sitting here with Officer Vicuna, um, let’s begin with some basic background information. Can you tell us a bit about yourself, um, what your full name is, how old you are, your hometown and what was life like?

L: Um, my name is Luis Vicuna, I’m 29 years old, I originally grew up in San Gabriel then moved to Arcadia and then when I was ten moved out East into Upland and uh graduated from Upland in 1996and uh about two years later I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

J: Okay. Uhh was there any certain particular events that inspired you to enlist in the military?

L: For me it was uh a lot of different things then I realized I wanted to become a police officer which luckily worked out, uh, I wasn’t really being productive as far as going to college and getting grades up [inaudible] yet and giving me some time to get away, um, save some money, and uh, kinda put me back on the right track.

J: So when you joined the marines, uh, what was your rank, your role as a soldier, and where were you assigned?

L: Um, I was assigned to the 4^th Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Camp Pendleton, California, I did [inaudible] Marine Corps, [inaudible] the rank of Sergeant, … [rest of section is inaudible]

J: Um just keep going. Um okay let’s try that again then.

J: Ahem. Through your career in the Marines, uh, what was your highest rank attained?

L: The highest rank that I attained was Sergeant.

J: And uh what was your role as a Sergeant?

L: I was uh a light armored vehicle commander assigned to the uh 4^th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. And what we did was we either did combat patrol, or we would do route security, or we would do, um, reconnaissance missions which meant going forward to forward lines into unknown areas and uh and find out where the enemy is at and report back in.

J: When were you deployed overseas to Iraq?

L: I got the initial call June – I’m sorry – January 30^th of 2003 and I had to be back on base in two and a half days and I think I got back on base February 1^st [inaudible] together and [inaudible] got everybody together and left [inaudible].

J: Can you describe the day that you [inaudible] was it very emotional what – was your entire family there, what was the scene like in general?

L: Uh it was an emotional day for I think for a lot of people but wasn’t really for me, uh, it was kind of, well it was what we always trained uh to do and finally you know the ultimate culmination when war broke out and we were able to go out and um you know find a practical application for what we had been trained to do. Uh my entire family was there my two brothers my mother my father my girlfriend uh everybody was there and you know they were sad because they didn’t know what to expect and we didn’t know what to expect but we were excited uh to go out and put boots on the ground.

J: Did you believe in the cause of the war that you were fighting in?

L: What was the cause that we were fighting for … because; you know that’s up for debate. Um, at the time you know there were weapons of mass destruction and there was also the want to get Saddam Hussein out of power and you know I was all for getting Saddam Hussein out of power it’s obvious that some form of weapons of mass destruction were used obviously uh I think it was in 1993 or 1995. Saddam uh used mustard gas in Northern areas against the Kurds so he did have the capability of using weapons of mass destruction so in regards to all of that yea I believe in the [inaudible] of the war.

J: Describe daily life while deployed [inaudible]. For instance, how different was living on base from home?

L: Being deployed we didn’t have a base, um, well initially we arrived in Iraq on February 19^th that was about a 23 hour flight and uh we left late on the 17^th we had a layover and stuff like that so we got there on the 19^th. We moved into a, uh, a camp, uh assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and we stayed there for approximately a month you know doing training and you know whether it was training with the vehicles, physical training, you know mental preparations, ah, but once the war actually kicked off and we crossed the line of departure into Iraq uh the only thing that we had as a base was our vehicle and we ate slept and did everything with the vehicle. We didn’t have any kind of shelter or anything like that that we could create ourselves.

J: When you were initially shipped overseas um where was your first destination?

L: First destination was Kuwait um we were assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 and uh [inaudible] approximately 40 kilometers south of the Kuwait and Iraq border.

J: Okay. So what was your role as a Sergeant over there um in Kuwait?

L: Well when we went overseas I was actually a corporal, and uh my assignment was I was a light armored vehicle gunner and at times whenever the platoon sergeant was the LAV commander … was ultimately responsible for 23 different marines, and all our missions consisted either of combat missions or route security missions, or reconnaissance missions. Um, at any given time you know like I said you know I was in direction of – I should say direct command of 23 marines and If we went out on you know some type of reconnaissance mission we would go out and find out where the enemy was at, report back. If it was a route security mission if pretty much putting some people in front of the convoy, in the middle and in the back of the convoy, and making sure that any time we came under fire, that uh, we were the people that went out and engaged the enemy. And um… [nods].

J: Have you ever trained with uh Iraqi soldiers?

L: No we never did. The… in the initial part of the war and then eventually what turned into what we called the [inaudible] military operations other than war uh we started working with uh the Navy SEALS and doing some uh, doing some intelligence work and stuff like that. But I never really worked with the Iraqi soldiers.

[Tape skips]

J: So what was the most traumatizing experience that you saw while deployed in Iraq?

L: Uh, when we crossed over into Iraq, uh, we crossed over in the second day of war as we were waiting for some other equipment to come over to um you know get enough supplies to sustain ourselves so what happened was we crossed over the second day and we caught up to the unit we were attached to which was First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, um, at that point we got attached to them, we started doing different types of combat missions and we had no place to sleep. You know, um, I remember one night, [inaudible] we call them [inaudible] we dug our own graves, and [inaudible] went down about six to eight inches about 3 inches wider to 6 inches wider than your body and about 6 inches longer than the height of your body. And uh there was one night when we were sleeping in our little holes and uh we started getting mortared and the idea was – well, we’re underground, you know, as – as these mortars are exploding and shrapnel’s flying above us, you know, we’re safer. You know, staying in place than actually popping up and trying to receive different types of cover. Um, and, eventually as we continued pushing forward, you know, different missions change engagements change sometimes we’re in the front sometimes we’re in the back sometimes we’re in the middle – and uh, I remember taking my first shower; if you can call it a shower. 27 days into being – into Iraq. The shower consisted of a 5 gallon orange bucket with one gallon of water and some shampoo and I just shampooed my face and my hair and I felt like a new man! Um, and that was the first time I really attempted to clean any part … you know, in detail of my body and then I think it wasn’t until … um, I’d say almost two months into that that we actually came across a facility that actually had showers and I remember you know they told us, “Hey, it’s a three minute shower,” and the next thing you know you have a bunch of naked marines in there for like five, ten minutes just enjoying the fact that hey, you know we don’t have to clean ourselves out of a bucket anymore there’s actually, you know, running water, you’re not just reusing the dirty water that you just took off your body to now clean another part of your body, you know? So, um, I’d say more or less the first two months were on the road, finally in early May … we got placed in a place called Dogtown uh that we deemed Dogtown just because the place was full of stray dogs and you know they’d come over and we’d feed them stuff that we weren’t eating and uh this was about five kilometers west of the Iran/Iraq border, and it was just our area of operation and where we had to patrol. And then we ended up losing a guy – it was in this driving accident; we were going down a highway, trying to provide water and uh fix the uh generator for this uh small town uh north of Al Qud. An uh, on our way other there the – I can’t really explain it, it’s kinda like a semi truck but instead of having a pivot point it’s a hydraulic pivot so as the vehicles would turn left, you know, they would fold [makes hand gestures], but in this case it started to fishtail in the back and eventually jackknifed and went down an embankment. And uh, I was the first vehicle behind it, and I as I saw it start to fishtail I bumped my vehicle commander and said “Hey look, you know, this vehicle’s gonna lose it,” um, probably within five seconds the vehicle jackknifes and goes down the embankment 25, 30 feet, hits the ground, jumps up, does a – and it was weird seeing this humongous truck in this flip, hit the ground and explode. Now the problem was, uh, there was two marines inside that vehicle so we knew, hey, potentially we have two casualties you know and to what extent who knows. And, the worst part about it was one of the guys that was inside that vehicle was attached to our headquarters and supply company, and his brother-in-law was in my platoon, um, and he had not gone on … on this mission that we were going on for the day. He was back at camp, so, we knew we had to find him because, this was actually the day where, this was actually May 18^th 2003, and May 17^th 2003 for the first time uh since we got in Iraq these guys had actually caught up and they had spent a couple nights together and you know exchanged stories back and forth and the next morning they went uh, ah, the guy in my platoon took [inaudible] uh, the guy in my platoon went to bed a bit later than his brother-in-law, because he had to be up early. And uh, they just said “Hey we’ll see you tomorrow,” and, you know, carried on with their business for the rest of the day. So next morning when we went out he ends up … dying in this accident and luckily for us when the truck exploded at some point either when it first hit or when it came down the second time, it launched the two marines out. The … first marine’s head that we found uh was pretty much - it was around to about right here [draws arc around face to indicate area] this huge trauma that dented his head to about right here [completes arc on other side of head]. His eye socket was down below his nose and you know we had to cover up the rest of his face. Although I knew that there was probably nothing that we could do to save him due to the trauma to his head, you know we still got out there and did uh, we did CPR on him. You know stabilize his neck and start giving him rescue breaths; he was bleeding internally and you could hear him gargling on his blood and stuff like that and uh but you know we do what we could until the doc got there and you know when the doc got there he [inaudible] him which he stuck a tube down his throat and I remember the doc telling me “Alright, keep doing chest compressions, and I will uh, and I’ll blow.” He blows two breaths and I go in there and start doing some chest compressions, and he goes to blow the second time and … and he blows in the first breath, comes back out, and I see out of the tube that’s coming out of the marine’s throat, it’s this bloody froth, and it’s just erupting you know like a volcano would. But at the same time the doc is now spitting out this bloody froth. When the air went in it built some type of pressure and all this blood had shot back into the doc’s mouth and was shooting out, out of the uh tube at the same time. So, I kinda had to turn away because it was so disgusting I thought I was going to throw up, but then my immediate thought was “Hey this marine needs me right now” so I turn back around and it’s still erupting out of the tube that you think, you know, “Take a deep breath here, this marine needs you right now, his life is dependent on you.” And uh, got back to doing chest compressions and the doc pulled out the tube and realized it had probably gone down the wrong hole but you know we couldn’t really do much to move him because you know he had such, such uh massive trauma to his head that we didn’t want to move his neck you know, end up killing him ourselves. So he eventually got the right way in there uh with the uh with the tube and started doing his breaths and uh I continued my compressions until I was relieved - and uh, by somebody who was a little better trained than I was. And then I was tasked with: “Hey uh, go look for uh for the other marine.” And something that I haven’t mentioned before: this truck was full of water bottles, and uh, bullets, and tools.  What happened when this truck caught fire was the ammunition started cooking off so they started shooting off, you know, and uh here we are doing CPR and I remember bullets impacting all over us but, we weren’t ready to move the marine, you know to get him to a safer place because you know, we’re still, we already sent someone out to get uh a makeshift stretcher so we can move him without damaging him anymore. And uh finally we got the stretcher and we moved him and then uh, and then I came back down looking for the other marine. And on the side of the road lay there a puddle of water it was probably about an inch or or, maybe two inches deep. But the marine had landed face first and uh he we ended up finding out later that he got a broken collar bone, a broken femur, head trauma, uh, some broken ribs. And he was trying now like every now and then like roll out of the water to get a breath, you know he was probably in there, five, ten minutes you know barely breathing out the sides of his – the side of his mouth. When I got there I rolled him over, you know, place him in a C-spine, got another stretcher, and we ended up bringing him back out onto the roadway. Once we were on the road we had made some shelter for him you know using uh camouflage netting and stuff like that because you know the average temperature by now was about 125 to 130 degrees. And uh one of our guys was also a paramedic in the civilian world so he had brought all his equipment and he ended up working on both of the guys simultaneously with the doc and they’d trade back, back and forth. The first marine that we had found ended up dying. And uh the second one ended up … ended up living but I believe the, the biggest scene that impacted my life just seeing that hey, you know, this is, this is one of us. They got hurt, and this is, this is the first guy that had gotten hurt. Um, alter on throughout the war we had six guys get hurt in explosions. Three of them lost an eye, and uh the other three just received shrapnel injuries and stuff like that but that’s the end of the story. [nods head]

J: Have certain events changed your uh view on life? Are you more grateful and appreciative for being alive?

L: I think, I think Iraq in general kinda changed my point of view on life. Uh, before it was, you know, what else could I do? You know, for the future, always living for the future and uh, retirement and what I was going to do for work. I stopped kinda living for … for the day and I think Iraq and experiences like that just explained, you know, seeing friends getting hurt or shot … helped me to, not only still [inaudible] and prepare for the future, but appreciate today. I remember when I first got back, I went to a party and everybody was having a good time and you know it was at one of my buddy’s dad’s house. And uh he had this nice view of the valley and you know, pool, with the grotto and game room and there was a bunch of people there and I remember I disappeared for a little while looking down the hill about five or ten feet just so nobody can see me but uh I could still see the valley and I began to appreciate you know the landscape and the fact that we have electricity and we pay taxes to keep the road you know without potholes. That uh I can walk down the street you know without worrying about some guy from another clan or something like that you know pickin’ on me or the fact that if a cop car rolled by that nobody was trying to shoot at it, or that a bomb was about to go off at the side of the road. You look at all the other things that other people have, or don’t have in other civilizations and uh, you know we’re so grateful here in the United States. I remember the exact night that I got back which was September 13^th 2003. My buddy Andy was having a party at his house and I walked in there. And I wasn’t – I wasn’t like “Hey look at me I’m going to war,” so when I came back a lot of people didn’t know that I was going to war, not to mention that I had gotten the two and a half day notice on “Hey, you know, pack your stuff, we’re going.” Um, so I remember coming back and my buddy Mike asking me, “Hey what’s up Lu, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen ya in a couple of months.” And uh, I just didn’t answer him and I didn’t wanna tell him anything because, here his biggest concern was who he was gonna drink with that night and who he was gonna get laid by. While you know there’s other young men and women deployed on foreign shores and risking their skin every single day. And this is still when everybody was supporting all the troops in uh, a major way and I’m thinking the peers that I have here in California – they weren’t feeling really certain about it, and maybe people think – do people really care about what we’re doing – do people really care about, who’s dying, or who’s losing their arm or their eyes or their legs or losing their sons or their daughters or their brothers or their dad. And uh, in Iraq, it can go in a lot of positive and negative ways. It made me realize that what I have and made me realize how disgusting some people are who don’t appreciate what they have. My girlfriend, when I came back, my girlfriend at the time, said “You know, it’s kinda weird. You’ve changed a lot. But you’ve changed in a good way because, um, things that don’t really matter are not a big deal, and things that are important by principle, are.” And I noticed that, you know, if it doesn’t matter, why fight for it? But in the opposite side of the spectrum if it does matter then it’s something you’d really want to fight for. Um, so Iraq was a huge, huge change in experience to be honest with you, my friends think I’m a better person, and at the time when I was still with my ex-girlfriend she said, “Hey, you’ve become a better person, you’ve grown up, you’re more mature, you’re calm, and I think personally it was a positive change.”

J: So how do you feel now that you are home? Do you believe that Americans take their freedoms for granted?

L: Absolutely. And I’ll think back to personal experiences. When I was a senior in high school there was a girl, Kendra Nelson, when everybody else would stand up in our government class, and we would to the pledge of allegiance, they would just stand there, hand not over their heart, you know just looking around like “This is B.S. The government forces us to do this. So you know we’re rebelling against the government.” And I didn’t understand until I got back from Iraq that they should put their hands over their hearts, they should say the pledge of allegiance because it’s the freedom that they have to not say the pledge of allegiance and to go out and rebel that makes this country great. It’s that freedom that they have to say that the U.S. is a terrible country that should inspire them to say “I pledge allegiance to the flag.”

[Tape skips]

L: You know I can talk some more about that. Look at the high school issues that people have. You know, it’s – who’s got what iPod, who is dating who, and who’s you know, friends with who, and what clothes are other people wearing, you know, what does that matter in the grand scheme of life? When September 11^th happened, everybody thought to themselves, “This is a terrorist attack on the U.S.,” we’re all Americans but today, almost six and a half years after the incident, and how many people out there think about September the 11^th every single day? Outside of the people who lost a family member, um, can you say you think about it? Or anyone else thinks about it? I think about September 11^th you know, on average, about two to five times a week. Because it ultimately changed my life. I went to Iraq! Through trickle down effects, I went to Iraq because of September 11^th. So you know I think about everybody we lost and – it’s – September 11^th is something that’s going to happen again. You have, in effect,m like uh, the Bezlan School in Russia: where a bunch of terrorists overtook a school, and ultimately 300 kids and parents were killed, you know, and over a thousand other people were wounded, you know, that’s going to happen in the U.S. Some type of terrorist activity will culminate and, and, you know, destroy a lot of hearts and a lot of lives and a lot of families, you know just like September 11^th did. I think about that every single day. I think to myself, “You have here young American kids, adults, senior citizens that are still worried about some of this stuff that doesn’t matter,” and what does matter is “How are we going to keep our kids safe?” And that’s why I work with the schools now. People ask me “Why are you a cop?” And I tell them pretty much, “Because bad things – not might happen – but will happen.” I’ve put myself in the position for where the day that it does, whether I’m on duty or off duty, because I can carry a gun, the day that somebody shoots up the school that I work at, I’m gonna be the first guy to go out there and engage him, or her. No matter what age, whether they’re ten years old or whether they’re trying to kill kids, or they’re 50 year olds and trying to kill kids. Or, when I want to have a family. I can be 45 years old and I’ll be dropping my kids off at school and I’m ready for someone to come onto campus with a gun and I’m ready to engage them if they try to hurt my kids or my kids’ friends. If you look at instances like in Israel, in 1972 a group of terrorists came over and I think killed about 25 kids, since then, they haven’t lost one student to school violence because now they have uhhh I believe one soldier, one Israeli soldier per every ten students on every single campus in every single part of Israel. And additionally they have a parental patrol where different parents from each school they are assigned one day a week to patrol the school to ensure that that spot’s safe. If you look at the past 25 years here in America, how many kids have died because of school violence? I believe in 1998 it was Columbine and you had 12 students get killed and you know there’s Jonesboro and other school shootings like Virginia Tech. And what do we practice when we practice active shooter scenarios to where teachers respond in the correct way and students are trained to respond in a correct way to an active shooter scenario. Do we practice that, or do we practice fire drills? Fire drills are mandated once a month. You guys have to do fire drills. You know, how many active shooter drills are you doing per month? Or per school year? How many kids have died in the past 25 years because of a school fire? Zero [makes hand gesture]. Yet, we practice that once a month. How many kids have died in school violence? And how much do we practice that?

J: Can you describe the day of September 11^th? Where were you, what were you doing, and what was your initial reaction?

L: It’s actually uh I remember very clearly. I was um, if I remember correctly it was a Wednesday [it was actually Tuesday]. Um, I was sleeping when I get a phone call, and I look at my caller ID and it says it’s Sgt. Merlin Micken, and uh, I answer the phone and I say, “Hey what’s up sarge?” And he says uh, “Put on the news right now. We’re going to war.” And I said, “Why, what happened?” And he said, “Everything will be explained just turn on the news.” And I had school that day – and I uh, I turned on, I turned on the TV and saw that one of the twin towers was on fire. And uh as things were developing I asked him, “What happened?” He goes, “This is a terrorist attack.” This is probably within the first five minutes, and he had already recognized this as a terrorist attack, not some accident where a plane flew into a building. And we continued to watch, and sure enough, later here comes the second plane and it crashes into the building and you know it’s not a coincidence at that point. I asked him, “What do I need to start doing right now? Are we going to be called soon?” And he just told me to relax , wait for the word, and obviously uh things were cancelled, uh, school was cancelled, because they didn’t know what other things were going on, and I’ll say that’s probably one of the biggest changes of my life because so much stemmed out from that day that has affected my life.

J: Were you attending college at the time? And where were you attending college?

L: I was going to Mt. Sac and [inaudible] Antonio College in Walnut.

J: Can you describe a typical mission that you would be sent out on?

L: I’d say uh a typical mission that we went out on … let’s say, a convoy security – what we would is we get intel from our chain of command. ‘Hey uh this bunch of stuff needs to be moved over to this area. These are the people moving it. These are the personnel. These are the types of weapons they have or they don’t have. And uh they need convoy security.” So depending on if we have one platoon of infantry Marines or two or three platoons, or if the entire company was going to be assisting the move of this convoy we would take up tactile positions throughout the column to make sure that if we got into an engagement we were able to break off – initially to engage and break off if we have to continue the engagement and um until the threat was terminated. That would be route security. We were just uh on line with everybody else. There were certain times in Iraq that we were moving so fast and our movement had surpassed the army’s movement that we were put on a stand-down, we were forced to stand down and stop moving forward, and wait for the other parts, other flanks for them to catch up. And specifically the West side. So those, you wouldn’t see action for a week or something like that. And then next thing we knew for the next 14 or 17 days in a row we got fired at every single day. It just became one of this like, okay, well, they’re shooting again. So, if they cross into my field of fire, you know, I’ll engage them, and if they don’t then you know I’m not going to get some today. Maybe I’ll get some tomorrow. Specifically I remember we were in line and there was uh three different companies and I was because we were in First Platoon we were on the Northeastern part of the column and right outside we had gotten intel a bus had just dropped off about 50 different soldiers and u I should say Iraqi soldiers or insurgents or whatever and they were moving Southwest into our area and into my field of fire and you know then the first vehicle in my platoon engages them and then the second vehicle comes up and you know here I am in the third vehicle thinking “Okay, as soon as you start seeing people…” it was at night and we were using thermal sights on a 25 millimeter bushmaster chain gun and I had a little coaxial mounted machine gun… and um….

J: Just on a sidenote here, what type of vehicle were you in?

L: It’s called the light armored vehicle 25, it kinda looks like a tank, it’s got a turret with a cannon that sticks out, and it’s got a light armored hull but instead of having tracks it’s got four tires on each side. That’s the Marine Corps light armored vehicle. Eventually the Army came out with the Stryker which is more or less a copy of the LAV 25. But like I was saying, the first vehicle starts getting some, the second vehicle starts getting some, and I’m having RPG explosions to the front of my vehicle in my field of fire, but nobody crosses over. They ended up killing everybody within the other company that was next to us which was the first two vehicles. So you know here I was getting shot at for probably 15, 20 minutes and then it’s all over. Your adrenaline’s pumping and I got myself amped. And nobody came into my field of fire. So, you know, I would say that would be a typical thing that you would go out for some time and you would never know when you would be getting your next engagement. And next thing you know you were working every day.

J: was it rare for you to actually be engaged in a firefight?

L: I’d say it was more rare for me to be engaged in the firefight than it was for me to be in the firefight. Um, because, you know they were taking potshots at every vehicle that passed by and you know if it’s just pot shots we’re not gonna commit the platoon or commit the first half of the column out to engage two or three guys you know in a hilltop or in a bush. We would always keep driving. And if we didn’t have any RPGs or you know at the time they were using roadside bombs and stuff like that so, we’d just march right on through.

J: Can you quickly describe the rules of engagement?

L: The rules of engagement were … if anybody, whether they were in uniform or not, who had, uh something you could identify to be a weapon and that weapon could be an RPQ, a mortar tube, you know, um, uh, AK-47s, Dragunovs, you know, any type of weapon whether it be individual or [inaudible] type of weapon that could be used against us and if this person was engaging you ran out of rounds and threw his hands up and said “Okay fellas I’m done,” then technically you can no longer engage him. You can only either take him into custody or continue to deal with the other people you’re engaged with. So it was, actually this was one of my biggest regrets because there was an engagement that we got into where I probably should have killed a bunch of people, but I didn’t identify any weapons and you know, didn’t want to ruin my Marine Corps career and tarnish myself by killing a bunch of innocent individuals, which would have affected me as a police officer. But uh there was one night, in we called the Thunderdome, we were inside a compound where we found a lot of evidence where they attempted to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. And there was also a torture area where they were trying different chemical agents on people. Anyway, we occupy the compound, and we send out some scouts on patrol of the perimeter to make sure nobody was there to engage us. Um, as we were starting to get ready to go in and set up security – well as soon as the eight man patrol goes outside, they close the gate behind them and probably within fifteen yards um there’s three or four houses across the street and we start taking heavy gunfire. So immediately, because we were the, we just came out of a 24 hour patrol, we jumped in our vehicles and went right back out there because we were the most equipped and we start engaging these three or four houses. First two vehicles are engaging the houses right here, then uh we had about 15 meters of dispersion between us, and I’m covering the open field in the back of these houses will lead out into. But about 400 yards down, there’s a berm. And this was right at nightfall so we had our thermal sights going. And we had been briefed earlier initially that anybody within 18 to 35 years of age, male, wearing dark clothing is gonna be who we’re looking for. And we are now in Saddam City and these are going to be Saddam’s Fedayeen. Well sure enough we see a bunch of people retreating and crossing into my field of fire across the berm but the berm went up to about their shoulders and I had high explosive rounds and you know it would’ve just been like a bunch of little grenades going off a hundred yards away but I tell my vehicle commander, “Hey look I got 20 guys running behind the berm,” and he says, “Alright, well engage them if you see weapons,” and I don’t see anything. Because they’re behind a berm. And it was just west of where these people had retreated out to and I kinda lost sight of them for a second, but you know looking back on it now it was probably the people that had just engaged us and had just attempted to kill my Marines. I think it was. It’s one of those things I kick myself in the ass for. I should have killed a lot of people that day. And I’m sure those guys at some point or another went out another day to fight another fight. And maybe they were successful in killing marines or soldiers or airmen on another day but… [sigh]. I gotta say that’s one of my biggest regrets.

Wesley Chen

Today is April 25, 20 um08 we are interviewing staff sergeant Clifford, from the marines, an Iraq war veteran born on May 8, 1982

My name is Wesley Chen and I’m and I’m doing this interview at arcadia high school with the help of Lawrance Chung, Christine Chen, and Nina Castro. This interview is being conducted for the veteran’s history project of the library of congress.

So miss Clifford, please tell me a little bit about your heritage or your family and where you were born.

Sgt. Clifford.

Well I was born in Manila, Philippines I lived there until I was about five years old. Afterwards, my family and I we moved to Torrance, California and I pretty much went to you know, junior high, well elementary, junior high, high school. Graduated from Irvine High school back in 2000 I did about a semester of college at El Camino over in Torrance. Afterwards, I went I joined the United States Marine Corps. In February 2001 and then I went to the boot camp in April in 2001

W. Chen

When did you first decide that you wanted to join the Marines?

Sgt. C.

I’ve always had uh military influences throughout my life. My father, he was in the army, and the coast guard. So, that was always there, but it wasn’t something I was willing to jump right into after high school. I kind of wanted to check out the whole college thing first but then I decided to hey I’ll check out all the branches and see what the military has to offer. And I just felt like the marine corps was the best one for me. I wanted the challenge. I felt like it was the branch that was really going to challenge me the most. Especially, the Marine Corps being known to be the elite, out of all the branches and I felt like if I did a successful tour in the Marine Corps, there’s nothing that can get in my way.

W. Chen

You trained at Camp Pendleton, correct?

Sgt. C.

Well initially, Camp Pendleton was my first duty station.

For females our boot camp is in Paris Island, South Carolina. Afterwards, which I went to uh Camp Guyver, North Carolina for what we call Marine Corps combat training for three weeks. Afterwards, my job in the Marine Corps is actually administrations, basically translates to human resources. Out in the civilian world but I went to school at camp Johnson, North Carolina afterwards the first duty station over here in camp Pendleton California

W. Chen

Tell me about your experiences in boot camp …

Sgt. C.

In Boot Camp?

W. Chen

Or um… combat training. Which ever one is more influential in your life.

Sgt. C.

Well I hafta say.. everyone would probably say boot camp.  At least for me it was.. the breaking of me the building of me as an individual as a marine it really I went there not knowing how to swim. It really challenged me and pushed me to my limitations.  And of course it came down to swim qualifications and jumping off a 10 ft plank and, and all that good stuff I mean going in there and not knowing how to and accomplishing it was um was ah I was ecstatic about that that was the one main thing I was nervous about in boot camp Afterwards, um, I had a small fear of heights.    We had the repel tower just looking down… looking down on it…it wasn’t so bad after all it kinda got rid of part of that fear for me and I thought some parts of boot camp was… fun

W. Chen

Could you please explain the repel tower?

Sgt. C.

The repel tower is about 70 ft high tower, um, you go up the stairs all the way to the very top and they show you how to repel down you’re kinda hanging off to the side and they say okay go and you just slide down it only last for a few seconds but it was a lot of fun

W. Chen

And after your training, where did you go?

Sgt. C.

To camp Pendleton

W. Chen

Uh.. uh.. after camp Pendleton or was there anything interesting in camp Pendleton or you wanna talk about?

Sgt. C.

You know it was,  I did  my normal basic job at camp Pendleton um

While I was at my um Marine occupation specialty school at camp Johnson, that’s when 9/11 occurred.  So that’s when we all knew, especially being in the Marines you know we’re probably going to go to war soon and umm when I got to camp Pendleton shortly after That’s when we started uh gearing up and just started preparing for it.. you know for whatever it was to come

W. Chen

How did you feel when 9/11 happened?

Sgt. C.

I was devastated, I was pissed off um

It was it was a shocked that that would actually happened on American soil.  Cuz I never would once think I would experience that in my life time

…

W. Chen

Then after camp Pendleton where did… where did you go?

Sgt. C.

Well while I was at uh at camp Pendleton I got uh sent to camp coyote in Kuwait over there cuz uh that’s when the president was give uh Sadam a time limit to .. to let go of the nuclear weapons or allow the inspectors to go in there so we went to …We got deployed to Kuwait and I was there for about a month and a half and that’s when we got the word from the president hey you guys are going to cross into Iraq and My job there at that time was, well, you know, I was doing convoys, so we were just sitting at the reach point just waiting for the word once we got the word we just entered into Iraq…

W. Chen

Was it difficult adjusting to Kuwait.. Being situated there?

Sgt. C.

It was it was a whole culture shock there was a lot of things we had to abide by Especially since us, you know, going into a foreign country. We need to spec…respect their cultural traditions um just dealing with the heat constantly, and the humidity.  Well there was slight humidity there wasn’t that much…just living in these you know little cots three of us rounded into a tent for short periods of time…

W. Chen

And then you moved off from Kuwait?

Sgt. C.

Into Iraq, yes.

W. Chen

What did you do in Iraq

Sgt. C.

Well when we first got to Iraq when the was first started um our main thing was um was building up a base and a defense, a perimeter for us. ‘Cuz our job there my units job was to support all our infantry guys so while they were going in there we were trying to establish our base so that we were able to re-supply them a lot better and uh a lot of us brought medical and dental for us so that if anyone got injured. You know we, we took them in and took care of them and evacuated them out of the country.

W. Chen

Was anybody close to you injured?

Sgt. C.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to have anybody really close to me injured.  But I've had my friends, friends get injured I’ve seen that happen.

W. Chen

Being in Iraq was there… was there a constant fear of being attacked?

Sgt. C.

There always was, um we always had to keep you know our defenses up.  Cuz at any time you don’t you’re the entire country is a war zone.  So at anytime we don’t know whose against you whose against you and we had certain procedures to follow um We allowed the Iraqis to walk around with AK’s At anytime they could point at you and start shooting but we weren’t allowed to engage we weren’t even allowed to hold our weapons at them unless if they pointed them at us.. or we feel we’re going to be threatened. Once we had our bases established especially when I went out on my second tour in Iraq they would just drive by our bases and shoot on the border so there was never anyway of telling..

W. Chen

What did you personally feel about this insecurity of being shot whenever?

Sgt. C.

Um I try not to think about it a lot I try to keep my defenses up. Besides that when it happens and you’ve already had training and you’ve already had drills so we all pretty much knew what to do. When that occurred ‘cuz part of my job was to take accountability for everybody I also did my job as administration out there. So when I was there anytime we got attacked.  Hey did anybody get injured did anybody get attacked?  Also part of my job if anyone did get injured that I did up a report of exactly what happened so I could notify the states so that they could tell that family.  You know what occurred.

W. Chen

How did you maintain contact with your family?

Sgt. C.

Uh we were out there we actually has access to internet after a while and uh we were allowed phone calls we were allowed phone calls home.

W. Chen

Was any of your family members worried?

Sgt. C.

Especially my mom, in uh an only child so um she was uh glad she was pretty nervous

W. Chen

Was there .. uh any.. or … influential things your mom ..uh.. any said to you?

Sgt. C.

I normally kept in short and sweet um a lot of stuff that happened out there we couldn’t tell them where we were at and what we were doing because at the same time the enemy is trying to tap into the phone lines and to our internet systems.  So we couldn’t give details of “hey this is what happened and hey we’re going to go do this now” mainly for security reasons. Or really tell them until we got back to the states.  I already knew she was worried so I didn’t want to worry her too much.

W. Chen

Going back You said that no body you knew personally was ever uh threatened.  Was your life threatened? At all?

Sgt. C.

I mean just with the whole borders but Luckily for us, they have bad aim so it always occurred at the end of the base where nobody is staying at cuz but my life has never been threatened.

W. Chen

How did you earn your rank staff sergeant

Sgt. C.

A lot of it is umm thus it was we compete against other marines.  For me it was a matter of just excelling at my job uh just you know For getting a high physical fitness test score um just a matter of just being an overall good marine

W. Chen

How did you earn your medal for Marine corp. achievement?

Sgt. C.

I got that um My first one I have two,  The first one I got it while I was out in Iraq actually its umm I was doing the job of with someone higher rank then me um a master sergeant at a time when I was just a sergeant and a corporal cuz at the time I went out there it was the first time I was a corporal my second term I picked up sergeant During that time frame I did the job of a master sergeant which is um Because I did above and beyond my job, that’s one reason why I got the second one.

W. Chen

And then your um Iraq campaign medal?

Sgt. C.

It’s for doing a tour in Iraq.

W. Chen

And your National Defense Medal?

Sgt. C.

National defense, I received it for being in the military during the time of war

W. Chen

And good conduct?

Sgt. C.

Just me staying out of trouble.

*Pause for a second*

W. Chen

Umm.

Sgt. C.

Go

W. Chen

Did you form any close relationship with any of the people you worked with?

Sgt. C.

Yes um a lot of the marines I work with I have became really close friends. We’re like brothers and sisters. And Even though some of my friends have gotten out of the marine corp. and continued on with other civilian jobs We still maintain contact with each other

W. Chen

So after Iraq they brought you back?

Sgt. C.

Mmmhmm..

W. Chen

And you met your family again how did you feel?

Sgt. C.

To see my family?

W. Chen

To survive that experience of a tour in Iraq.

Sgt. C.

You know I was extremely happy to see my family, I was happy to be back at home.

Things were a little bit different cuz you go out with your friends and there’s these new songs you’ve never heard before and, and you’re like oh that’s good whose that and they’re like oh that’s been out for a while. About four to five months and I’m like oh okay. Cuz you have to try and kind of get back into the swing of things it the way you were living and the way things are. Things are different. It was just getting back to the swing of things.

W. Chen

Was adjusting difficult for you?

Sgt. C.

No it wasn’t.

*Pause again*

Sgt. C.

Now I can say you will never lose that bond you never see each other for five or ten years and then once you see each other you’ll just reconnect just like that. so that’s one thing I can say when you go out there the people that you go out there with you form this really close bond. That’s it kind of its kind of really hard to explain. It easier to know it if you’ve experienced it.  Um if you need their assistance even though they are three hours away they’ll drive down and help you. We form that close of a bond with each other.

*Pause*

W. Chen

Alright repeat that again.

Sgt. C.

Is there something that you can get from joining the Marine Corps that will be unique to your character that would be unlike anybody else’s experiences?  Or has influenced you deeply in someway.

W. Chen

In joining the marine corps well joining the marine corp..

Sgt. C.

Or having served

W. Chen

Or okay..

Sgt. C.

Well I think doing both just joining the marine corps and having the deployment experience in Iraq  Its really made me more mature well what I could say at the time in I turned 21 at the time I was 20 experiences in the marine corp. that it gives you and being in place of leadership positions.  It really made me more mature beyond my years I felt like. Besides from that It made me a stronger person inside Its given me a lot more self confidence in myself cuz I never normally pictured doing things you know me doing you know like cuz before I worked at the mall working at Ann Taylor united women con selling women’s clothing. So I went from that to joining the Marine Corps which is the most elite branch And having doing a successful tour with the marine corps its it has given me a lot of self confidence. On this cause I know there’s nothing that I set my mind to I couldn’t accomplish.

W. Chen

Could you please elaborate on what has developed you leadership skills in Iraq?

Sgt. C.

Uh Being in charge of a small group of marines that I worked with um I was directly responsible for them anytime they went off base or did convoy Any time that we had gotten attacked I had to run around and make sure that they were okay um that they kept in contact with their families just those experiences. And plus on top of that  I had to keep track of every marine in our unit which was 600 on where they were all at-at all times. Because our biggest thing out there was accountability we didn’t want to leave anybody behind we wanted to make sure that everyone got out there safely and came back safely

W. Chen

And some of these marines that actually had difficulty did you ever talk to them afterward?

Sgt. C.

Oh yea..

W. Chen

Recover them after the fact they have been missing for a period of time.

Sgt. C.

Well there was um we’ve been fortunate not to have any uh marines missing uh because we’ve had a lot of protocols and guidelines set in place to  just to make sure that no one was gone missing some of the marines just has difficulty just being away. Friends or family or a lot of the marines are married with kids and lucky we have chaplains there they are kind of like religious guides. You know to help them through you know talk to them and Help them overcome that because that was the biggest thing that a lot of people were going through

W. Chen

And it … it was counseling … can I call it that?

Sgt. C.

Its I mean I wouldn’t really say it was counseling it’s just you talking to a spiritual leader. You wouldn’t really call it counseling its more like advice.

Sgt. C.

I meant talking about the marines families and being away from, their wives, their spouse, their kids.

W. Chen

That’s counseling on your part right?

Sgt. C.

Um yea a lot of it wouldn’t really be entirely counseling. In my part it’s just basically it’s just um it’s just like being a big brother big sister.

W. Chen

Helping cope with the situation.

Sgt. C.

Exactly.

W. Chen

And did that in any way remind you of your family. And how did you miss your family?

Sgt. C.

I did miss my family I did miss my friends back home. But I’ve always been the type that’s focus at the task at hand and accomplishing it. And then getting back there safely making sure my fellow marines got back there alright.

W. Chen

Guys? Do you think you feel different from some other people? Since you’re a superior officer.

*mumbling, slight pausing*

W. Chen

You’re a high officer. A higher ranking officer and umm  you’re a girl do you think guys and other marines do they treat you differently?

Sgt. C.

Um I don’t think they treat me any differently. After you’ve been in the marine corp. for some sort of time pretty much we’re so small there’s always someone that’s going to know you type of deal I’ve never had an issue with that.

W. Chen

Being with the marines have you ever like worked with the army with the navy and of the other branches.

Sgt. C.

Yes we do we’ve worked um with the army and the navy um with the navy. They The ones I’ve mainly dealt with is the medical side cuz with us being a support unit we would always have the navy corp. men attached with us and their infantry guys We would also have doctors and a dentists with us as well when I was out there, and a surgical team. With the army I haven’t worked that closely with them I’ve had brief encounters . With the army we had one army battery attached to my unit their whole job was They had these things called patriot missiles so if at any time when they launched a missile at us the patriot missile just intercepts that missile before it hits us.

W. Chen

Was there any close calls with the patriot missiles?

Sgt. C.

You know there was one close call um  there was the day before we entered Iraq we they the Iraqis actually launched a missile at us and it flew about 6ft above our heads. It was close enough where you could see the writing on the missile and it landed right out side on of our other bases. But Since they launched it so low the way patriot missiles are designed you hafta set parameters for it and since they set they launched it below the radar it didn’t detect it on time. So luckily it hit outside the base and no one really got injured.

W. Chen

And how do you feel about that incident?

Sgt. C.

It was, uh…

*Pause*

It was—you know it was terrifying that it pludded that close and that you can actually see the writing on it, and you didn’t know at the time—we didn’t know if it was a nuclear or chemical, so we actually have, um, these—these chemical suits we had to put on and a put on our gas masks until we got the all clear from our MBC guys.

W. Chen

Did you tell your family about this incident?

Sgt. C.

No

Nina Castro

When you were there in Iraq I know you must have been bored in such a hectic place, but, um, how would you try to get away from all of that? Just kind of, like, have time for yourself? Any leisure things you guys would do?

Sgt. C.

Yes, um, we actually bought these little mini DVD players, so *laughter* from the Iraqis, they would actually sell us bootleg DVDs, and we were watching those, you know, just to help entertain ourselves. Sometimes we would buy stuff, um, online, have it mailed out to us, and we have, um, fee access as to where we can buy different DVDs, and we would just sit there and watch, um, episodes of Fam—Family Guy, or Sex and the City, and we would have, um, you know, books we would read while we’re out there. Um, sometimes…later on, not when we first got into Iraq, but my second turn in Iraq since we actually had an actual base already set up, it was a couple times when they had a little salsa night.

W. Chen

Is the security tight when you’re trying to receive things from outside?

Sgt. C.

They are—it gets inspected by customs. So…

W. Chen

Have you ever had any trouble, or known anybody that has trouble receiving things?

Sgt. C.

*shakes head*  mm-mm. No, we actually receive packages just fine.

*Pause*

W. Chen

Every day life, your routines you had to adapt to Iraq; could you elaborate on what kind of things you’ve had to adapt to? What conditions?

Sgt. C.

Alright First biggest condition out there was the heat Sometimes the weather got up to a hundred and twenty degrees. And you know your wearing full gear so you’re looking at your flak jacket was the, the plates inside to stop the bullets and that itself weighed about you know approximately 20 pounds on you.  Plus canteens of water you have that and you have your m-16s and you know you wear your caviler.  When you’re out there um my hours mainly when I was there was from seven in the morning to eight nine o clock at night.

W. Chen

Eating? Um, dining?

Sgt. C.

Eating well lunch was probably about 12 o’clock, breakfast, um, probably had it about eight o clock every morning we always had a meeting to discuss what was going on um the task at hand what needs to be accomplished. And then afterward you had lunch around noon then dinner probably around six or seven.

W. Chen

What did you have? It must have been different to transition from—did they give you something different for rations?

Sgt. C.

Well, when we first got out there um we ate MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, and it just comes in that little brown bag and you just which ever one you draw. That’s what you have um after a while we had what they call tray racks?  Which tasted just like an MRE there’s really nothing difference to it.  Later on we actually had um this British company, um, they actually you know had food set out but it was uh It wasn’t the greatest it was okay I mean but it was a good change from the MREs We would have eggs then powdered eggs you would see all the water its just okay you just put hot sauce and everything you just got use to it.  Made it taste a lot better.

First got out to Iraq we didn’t have a parameter set up.  So anytime you had to walk around far you had to put on your full gear cuz there was there was no wall no nothing around us it was just plain flatland—

Lawrance Chung

—no vehicles?

Sgt. C.

Yeah we had vehicles but I mean they’ll only do so much, y’know…

*Slight pause*

The thing about—just to give you on how hot it was you have you’re driving your humvee, right, we didn’t have A.C. so the heat from the humvee actually pushes up against you plus it’s a hundred and twenty degrees outside and every time we drove around we wear flak jackets and Kevlar, its just necessary protection ‘cuz you never know what would happen out there. Now, with that your also sweating a lot, so one of the creative ways we did to actually have cold water at that time was, um, you would take a bottle water, um, you would take a white sock, wet it, put it over the bottle water and you would take a black sock, slip it over it, wet it—and then when we were driving we would hanging it outside of our humvee window, and then just let it fly, and then the window would kinda cool It off, and, uh, the black sock would kind of reflect the sun away from it, so you’d have some a lot of a cool water. And another thing that we did was we would dig a hole three fit into the ground where you could feel it’s nice and cool, you’d take an empty cardboard box, put it in there, you’d take a trash bag liner, put it inside the cardboard box fly it up with water, put some bottled water in there, and then just throw like a little cover on top, and then by the next day you’d have a nice cold water.

W. Chen

In the marines, was there anything you necessarily didn’t agree with? Something that affected your routine that you just had to find some way to deal with? Um, it can be a condition that was introduced that you didn’t have in your normal spilling one.

Sgt. C.

Um…that I didn’t agree with…

W. Chen

You felt a resentment towards, everybody had to go through these conditions, it’s just that you felt that, whatever it was, it was bothering you, or…

Sgt. C.

Yet there was never really nothing that I had to do that had resentment against, mainly because it’s just—everything that they have you do is for a reason, I don’t understand what’s the reasons behind it, that’s why I never really had any resentment behind it—behind any of the things.

L. Chung

And um, just for a second what about the media? Was there any media people there? News crews?

Sgt. C.

Oh yeah, they were really annoying. The media—one reason why we don’t like the media out there with us is because they become a liability. There out there—I know they’re trying to get the story and report back what’s going on, but half the time—half the stuff that they give back is half truth, so I understand everybody has a false impression sometimes what’s going on out there because they’re not getting the full truth from the media. The media likes to display death, destruction, and despair  mainly because it’s what a lot of people read, but there was a lot a humanitarian work that was going on out there, um, that we did that no one really knows about because the media is not gonna portray that, and the news media that’s attached out there with us—you’re trying to take a shower, and they’re trying to ask you a question, and it’s like “look lady, I’ve had a long d and despair  mainly because it’s what a lot of people read, but there was a lot a humanitarian work that was going on out there, um, that we did that no one really knows about because the media is not gonna portray that, and the news media that’s attached out there with us—you’re trying to take a shower, and they’re trying to ask you a question, and it’s like “look lady, I’ve had a long day, leave me alone right now!” Um, and some of my friends that are in infantry, um, went hey were—when they had media attached to them, it—when they got attacked, y’know, they’re trying to fight of the attackers, and you get this news guy, y’know, just running around trying to snap pictures at the same time you’re trying to tell them, “Hey! Stay down! You’re gonna get your ass shot”—I’m sorry, cursed—

W. Chen

It’s fine.

Sgt. C.

“—you’re gonna get shot!” But, they don’t listen. So they become a lot of liability, ‘cuz you’re still trying to watch out for them, trying to keep them out of harms way, but not all the time they listen. And then the stories that a lot of them print is not always true, or if it’s a half truth.

L. Chung

So you’ve read these stories that they’ve reported?

Sgt. C.

Mmhmm

L. Chung

And…

Sgt. C.

We read them.

L. Chung

And have you had direct any direct experience with the media? Have they come up and asked you—

Sgt. C.

Well they’ve, I mean, they come up and try to ask me questions while I’m trying to take a shower, um, the female news ladies would, uh, y’know they would try to go to the female bathroom, and you’re there, y’know, trying to wind down from the day, trying to shower, and they’re trying to ask you a bunch of questions. It’s just—it was leave me alone.

L. Chung

And you talked earlier about humanitarian works?

Sgt. C.

Mmhmm

L. Chung

Can you give me some—

Sgt. C.

—examples?

L. Chung

Yeah, can you tell me about that?

Sgt. C.

Okay. My, some of the things that we do is, um, there’s a lo of farmy line out there, y’know, a lot of the people, unknown, farm their own crops, so some of the stuff we do, we give them farming tools, such as, y'know, a little pitch fork, y’know—I don’t know all of the names of the tools, but we give them farming tools to help them, y’know, farm their land and their crops, however the insurgents, or the people that are just really against the US, anybody that actually accepts what we give them to help them out, they will actually kill them. And so that’s one of the sad things that happens out there, um, we actually employ some of the Iraqis to help build, uh, furniture, y’know, for us to use while we’re out there. So that way we’re trying to help them   

Get, y’know, money into the economy and help-and help them out with some jobs.

L. Chung

And these Iraqis were all of them welcome? Were they welcoming you guys?

Sgt. C.

Um, there were some that were and some that aren’t. You’re always going to have both. No t everybody’s going to like you.

L. Chung

And the ones that aren’t, do you just kind of ignore them?

Sgt. C.

You kind of have to—well the ones that aren’t are usually the ones that’s trying to—

L. Chung

—shoot you.

Sgt. C.

Yeah. So…

W. Chen

Do you remember a story in which you’ve read that you were involved in and the media slandered the story?

Sgt. C.

Hmm…not one for me personally, it’s just some of my other friends. Aside from that the, the main thing that I get tired from reading from the media is just all they print about is all the bad stuff, they don’t print about all the good stuff that’s happening out there, all the humanitarian work that goes on, but you’ll see it in the military websites that we have that says, “oh, these marines have built a school” y’know, for the children, or, “hey we’ve got the water going again back in Bagdad,” stuff like that, pack supplies back up.

W. Chen

You remember a comment from one of the stories that really frustrated you annoyed you, just…

Sgt. C.

There’s a lot, I don’t—I can’t pin point to you exactly at this time an exact one, but I stopped reading the media after a while.

W. Chen

So currently, ho are you involved in the marines?

Sgt. C.

Currently right now I am a marine corp. recruiter. Um, the high schools that I have set up are Pasadena, Monrovia, Maranatha, and La Sal. Uh, right now my jobs, pretty much everybody is getting out of the marine corp., which I finding them they’re replacements.

W. Chen

Thank you Miss Clifford.

Sgt. C.

Aright, thank you. 

Transcript for Art Leatherman

A – Art Leatherman

P – Ping King

V – Vivian Wang

C – Charissa Hanafi

A: They were made of canvas, leather face on the inside, and we had hats that folded with the flaps down over our ears, we had long-handled underwear, all kinds of gear, and we had a duck-down sleeping bag, and we asked, “What’s this for?” And they said, “Hang on to it, you’re going to need it.” Well, uh… we landed- we landed in Yongsong, Korea, North Korea, but it was supposed to be a tactical landing, but we hit a typhoon out in the sea of Japan, and uh… we were three days in this typhoon and during that time, the Republic of Korea troops had gone past Yongsong, so it was going to be an administrative landing, but in the process, they found out that the harbor was heavily minded, and it took them 14 days to clear the mines out of there before we could land. I was on an LST, which is a landing ship tank, the entire hold of it was full of 55 gallon drums of aviation fuel, so if we’d hit a mine, I would not be here talking to you today. I mean, that ball of fire would’ve gone up in the air and we would’ve all been incinerated. They wouldn’t have to worry about Missing in Action, you would never have found anything. Anyway, we did not land until they after they had cleared the mines, so then uh… as we got set up there, we operated and the first snowfall came and it melted right away as it hit the ground, but then uh… in the middle of October, the snow was sticking to the ground and uh… from that point on, why you needed your cold-weather gear. In fact, for Thanksgiving, a refrigeration ship arrived in the harbor and uh… we got 120 frozen turkeys to roast for-

P: Thanksgiving!

A: -Thanksgiving dinner, and uh… they came in about a week before Thanksgiving, so we put them in a tent, and we dropped the center out of the tent, and we shoveled snow over the tent and we kept the turkeys frozen and the night before, why they were boiled and then they were roasted, and we had turkey on Thanksgiving day. Uh… but it uh… the … it was interesting because I was one of the four that helped the cook

P: (laughter)

A: cook these at night, and we started with them frozen, just dropped them in boiling water and then we uh… stuck them in the oven to brown it up so it would look like it had been roasted. But I didn’t uh… I was asleep when my buddy came over and said, “You better hurry up and get over there or else you won’t get any turkey because the divvy just showed up,” but I said, “I don’t really want any turkey,” I said, “I saw the rats crawling through it last night.”

Everyone: (laughter)

A: And a couple ran off with the drumsticks

P: Oh my, I see

A: But anyway, we had rats and things like that, but the thing I miss most was not being able to bathe. We didn’t have water at our disposal, the- our drinking water was flown in from Japan, so we couldn’t drink the water that was available there, so we had, everyday, the plane came in and they unloaded the water buffalo with a tank of water, and there was not enough water to bathe, and uh, the LST that we had uh… gone out on… the showers didn’t work, and it was not a Navy LST, we had a Japanese crew. They had turned this over to the, uh… Japanese government for using the hall free, so here we were with the Japanese, they had their own food, we had our own food, they had their own cooking utensils, but no showers. So uh… anyway, it was … kind of a … we were kinda a smelly group after a while. Also, we had trouble with fleas. They were pretty good-sized fleas. So they gave us (clears throat) a little cardboard containers that had a nail in the end and they were pliable and so you would puff this DDT into your sleeping bag so after a while, your sleeping bag was kinda kinked with DDT and now that’s been a banned product…

P: Haha, yeah it is.

A: …But I slept in it for three months, so I- I don’t know, I mean, maybe I got resistant to it

P: (laughter)

A: But uh… we had unusual things like that happen… and then they… well, the Chosin reservoir incidence started and the Chinese army came in, and we had to uh… consolidate to develop a per line, and the air strip we were at in Yongsong was gonna be on the outside of that per so they flew our planes out to the air strip and it was at the uh.. what they call Wong Ju and it was just in from Han Hong Nam and they were flying, and transports came in and started flying everybody out. Well, I was going to be on the last plane to fly out and they uh… they were drawing enemy fire and they decided they didn’t want to lose a transport so they left 35 of us with one ltd behind and they… we had a radio and they told us to get into our, we called it the uh… Hilton Yongsong, where we slept at night, and uh… we stayed in the shadows because way off in the distance, you could see fires of the enemy starting to cook their meal for the evening. So they told us to watch out in the harbor at first light and if- when we saw the flashing light of an LST to move out that way and they would pick us up and the next morning, why, they came in with an LST – a Navy LST – so we figured, we’re going to get a shower! The showers didn’t work on that LST either…

P: (laughter)

A: And uh… so we were still without a shower. But uh when we got up to uh… Wong Ju, we were told that uh… the Marine division had been encircled by the Chinese. And it was our job to try to get them out… so being an old weather fire squadron, we could fly day and night or if the weather was bad, but the other squadrons could only fly in the day because we had radar- a big radar globe in the wings, so that we could see what was going on at night. So we operated 24 hrs around the clock and uh… it got a little taxing because we didn’t have that many personnel now I was supposed to be an office clerk, but I was out cranking a hand crank pumping gas out of 55-gallon drums; we didn’t have gasoline trucks. We didn’t have anything like that, it was very primitive and uh some of the time you were… they had a little saddle and they had a bomb in it and you were over there helping hang the bombs on the wings, you’re uncrating rockets, uh when the plane is ready to start again, you have to push the propeller through to get oil in the upper cylinder because there’s pistons all the way around the engine, and without that, you could wear the engine out rather rapidly if you didn’t get oil up in there. And then someone had to stand behind the propeller when the plane was starting with a CO2 bottle because about 85% of the time, you had to overload the fuel into the engine to really get it started and so what you did, you stand back there and when you see the flames, you squeeze the handle and put the hose out there and choke out the fire and the engine keeps right on going. So, if someone had to do that, I mean a lot of people think that all they do is jump in a plane and off they go but it doesn’t work that way. And on the flight line, none of the bombs are armed; they taxi down to the end of the runway and there are ordinance men down there that fuse the bombs that plug the rockets in so if someone acc pushed the button and you haven’t ar