Aaron O’Donovan: Today is September 16, 2010. My name is Aaron O’Donovan. And I will be interviewing Dave Carroll, a veteran of the US army. The interview is being conducted at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, Ohio as part of the oral history project by the Ohio Historical Society to preserve the stories and experiences of servicemen and their family members for future generations. For the record, Dave, could you say and spell your full name?
Dave Carroll: Yes, Dave Carroll. C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
O: Can you tell me a little bit about your background; where you were born and where you grew up?
C: Actually, I was born in Alabama; I spent six years in Alabama—went to the first grade there. Then my parents moved to Ohio, so I’ve been in Ohio since my second year. I lived in the area all my life basically, since first grade up. I lived in Zanesville for about fifteen years when I got married out of the service—came out of the service, moved to Zanesville, got a divorce in 1991, moved back to Roseville, and I’ve been in the Roseville area since 1991.
O: And I know we were talking earlier before the interview—you said that you got drafted, and you didn’t join the military.
C: Right.
O: Can you tell me what your impression of the military was before you got drafted?
C: Well, my impression basically was watching all the movies you watch as a kid—the war movies. You think of it a little more as not realizing the true reality of what the military was, what war was. You had a lot of grander ideas of going out and doing spectacular things and being the hero and getting shot at, but never getting hurt. Then, once you got into the service, you quickly learn that it’s an entirely different life—an entirely different reality once you get in: life and death is reality.
O: Can you tell me about the time frame of when you kind of had an idea that you were going to be drafted?
C: Well it was during high school, senior year. The Vietnam War was pretty much underway. Just about everybody coming out of high school was getting drafted if they didn’t enlist. About the only ones who were pretty much safe at the time were the guys that were married—got married and had a family. Or the ones going directly on to college. Me, I didn’t; I got out of high school and went directly to work. So I realized that I would be drafted—just a matter of when. I didn’t realize how soon it was going to be. I was living with my parents—still living with them after I got out of high school. And I came home one evening, and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table—had an envelope in his hand; he handed it to me and said, “Well, son, here’s what we’ve all been waiting for.” There was my draft notice.
O: And what year was that?
C: That was in 1966.
O: What branch of the military did you get drafted into?
C: I was drafted in the army.
O: And what was your family’s reaction to this happening?
C: Well, obviously my dad—he was a World War II veteran, so he knew very well what was in store for me. He spent three years in the European Campaign, so he was well aware. Of course, my mother—like any other mother—was worried to death. She didn’t want to see me go, but she realized it was something I had to do. My family all the way back from my grandparents had all been military. There weren’t a lot of options back at that time. You either went, or you skipped country.
O: You said your dad served in World War II; can you tell me a little bit about that, like where he served at?
C: Yes, he served in World War II; he actually enlisted into the army. His first major campaign was in North Africa. Then out of North Africa, he went to Sicily and participated in the Anzio invasion. He was a light machine gunner.
O: And you said that your grandparents, too—served?
C: Grandparents—they were in World War I. He was in World War I, yeah. I don’t know a lot about him. He died an early age—when I was at an early age.
O: So you have a long history of service?
C: Of military? Yes.
O: So what was your first experience or memory of the military when you got in?
C: The first experience of the military was obviously basic training. When we first ___, they call it the induction center, where you’re first inducted in—which was at Fort Hayes in Columbus. I realized then that it’s a whole new ball game with people shouting at you. And then once you got inducted and decided where they were going to send you, which I took my basic training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When I got there, things really changed as far as how you got treated. When you first went in, a lot of screaming and shouting at you to get you in shape, so to speak, get you your military hair cut, and then a very, very tough regimen of disciplinary stuff. You really became disciplined both mentally and physically. It was a very rough six weeks of training.
O: And most of those guys you were with—were most of those guys drafted as well?
C: Most of them. That is correct.
O: Did you notice any difference between the people that wanted to be there and were drafted?
C: Well, the ones that wanted to be there that volunteered—a lot of them, after they got in there, there was a little thinking, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done this.” So, again, like me, a lot of the guys were freshly out of high school. They had completely different ideas of what military life was going to be like. So a little different than what you see on TV.
O: How did you get through basic training—like how did you keep your mind stable and your body in shape?
C: Well, certainly after six weeks of the kind of training they put you through, it definitely got you in shape. I played sports in high school and thought I was in shape, until I got to Fort Bragg, and you realize you’re really not. But when they get done with you, physically and mentally. They work on you mentally as well as physically because they have to prepare you. We were told right up front that most of us would wind up going to Vietnam, and “the training that you’re going to be getting here was to help prepare you for that,” so the majority of the guys that were there wound up going to Vietnam, myself included.
O: Can you tell me what unit you were a member of when you went in?
C: When I went in, when I went to Vietnam, I was attached to the 9th Infantry Division.
O: What was your job in the 9th Infantry?
C: My job at the 9th Infantry is I flew a Huey helicopter—flew as a courier for mail and all kinds of documents. We flew to many different little base camps throughout the south—mainly through the south down into the Mekong Delta region. We flew some up north of the camp, which was dense jungle and foliage up there—basically delivering things in the little villages where we would have personnel stationed. Obviously you had to get things in to the guys that were there and take things out. So I flew a Huey from six o’ clock in the morning until whenever it was done in the evening; it could be six, seven o’ clock in the evening.
O: How many people were a part of your unit?
C: In the 9th?
O: Yeah.
C: I would have no idea; it was a division, so I'm not sure how many.
O: What led you to doing that job—that specialty? Was it something you drew out of a hat? Was it something you wanted to do?
C: It basically was. When I got over there, my orders had assigned me to Saigon. And when I flew into Benewah, which is a replacement facility that once you get there, then they decide where they want to send you. My orders said Saigon, so if I was thinking, if I was going to Vietnam, this was the place to be. But when I got there, they decided that they didn’t need me there; they needed me at a base camp called Bearcat, which was a huge base camp for the 9th. And when I got to Bearcat, I was told that I would be flying a Huey that the guy that I’d be replacing was what they called a short timer: he had less than a month left, so once that happens, they usually try to take you out of the dangerous situations and put you back. You’d been over there for eleven and a half months. They take you out and put a new guy in—let him do that. So that’s basically how I got it. I was chosen—just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.
O: What kind of specialized training did you do for that job? How long was your training?
C: I spent five weeks of training in Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. It was five weeks of postal training.
O: Was flying a new experience for you? Have you ever flown before?
C: Yes. I had never flown before. When I took the trip from Columbus to Fort Bragg, it was just a couple hours. But then when I took the fly to Vietnam, that obviously was much longer. We flew from Columbus, Ohio out to Oakland, California. Was out there for two or three days in Oakland, then from Oakland, we flew to Vietnam, making stops in Hawaii and in Guam.
O: So you entered as a Private First Class, right?
C: Yes, I was.
O: What was your rank when you got out?
C: I was an E4.
O: An E4, okay.
C: Right.
O: How long were you in Vietnam?
C: I was in Vietnam twelve months.
O: How long total for your service?
C: Three years.
O: Three years, okay. Do you remember what kind of preparations you had to make before you were sent overseas? Do you remember what that was like? As far as, how did you get yourself mentally ready for being sent over and the kinds of things you had to do to get in order?
C: Well, mentally ready was when I graduated from the school there in Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. They told everybody once we gradated to go downstairs in the orderly room, and there would be a bulletin board down there with everybody’s name on it and where their first year of duty would be. And, of course, I’m hoping France or Germany or even here in the states somewhere. And me and a buddy who was from Columbus; we went down, and both of our names were on the duty list to be sent to Vietnam. So I had two weeks; once I graduated from there, I was given a two-week leave. So basically had two weeks to go home and think about my next twelve months in Vietnam. My dad helped me a lot with that as far as how to prepare yourself and getting into an actual combat theatre. Really, over there, no place was actually safe.
O: So, what was your first impression when you got to Vietnam?
C: Oh boy. That’s one that I don’t think anybody that went over there would ever forget. Entirely different—the way you grew up at home; the lifestyle in the states. My first big impression was when the jet landed—remember, it was a TWA. Of course, it was air conditioned inside. It was real cool, and we went to get out, and you walked out of the door, and I remember it was like walking into a blast furnace. The heat was so intense that it took your breath; you just had to stand there for a second to get your breath going from inside of that to one hundred plus degrees. And when I got there, the lifestyle of the people was extremely different—everything they did. I just kind of stood there and said, “Boy, this is what I’ve got for the next twelve months.” You adjust to it as you’re there. You spend a little time; you start to adjust to that particular way of life like you do anywhere, but it’s a real shock to someone that basically –I never even been out of the country, probably only been to two or three states growing up, so my basic idea was what your home life—what was around your area. That was what you were used to, and then you go into a completely different culture, as it was in Vietnam—it was a little shocking at first.
O: Did you get any cultural training at all before you went over there, or were you just thrown into it?
C: No.
O: So tell me a little bit about the base there; do you know how many soldiers were there and the size of your base?
C: Our base camp was the main base camp for the 9th Infantry Division, so it was a very huge base camp. It had artillery placements there; it had a company of tanks there, a big helicopter base—matter of fact, my barracks was right beside the helicopter base, so it was a pretty good size. And it had bunkers all around the camp to protect it. I got the job of pulling bunker guard many nights as well. There was a lot of people there—a lot of different support personnel as well as combat personnel was there.
O: What city was that in?
C: Well Bearcat. It wasn’t really a city. It was a base camp. All it was is just a huge camp cut right out of the jungle. It just made a camp. It was probably about forty miles from Saigon. That was the big city and then a lot of little villages and hamlets south of it and north of it.
O: Can you talk a little about your living conditions? You said your barracks was right by the helicopter area, so did you get woken up a lot? I imagine that helicopters were coming and going at all times?
C: Yeah, all hours of the day and nights, yes. But the living conditions when I first got over there—we lived in nothing more than a canvas tent put up on the ground is all it was. Just a huge tent that probably housed ten, fifteen of us at the most. It was a pretty good sized tent, and all you had was just a canvas cot set on the ground, and that’s what you slept in at night. Over there, when it rained, it was basically monsoons. It rained very heavily, and the water would come in on you. If you didn’t have your equipment and your boots in the right position—a lot of times, I slept with them on my cot because it would rain so much, the water would come through and they might be washed two or three cots down when you got up the next morning. Then after I was there six, seven months, they actually came in and put up concrete slabs. And then actually made wooden barracks with a canvas on top, which was the living conditions looked better. It kept out a lot more of the rain.
O: Is that because they knew they were going to be there longer than they thought?
C: Oh, I’m sure. Yes. But when I left there in ’69, right after I left there, they actually gave that base camp to the ____ soldiers, the South Vietnamese soldiers, and moved the 9th Infantry down on the Mekong Delta: a place called Benewah.
O: I guess we can talk a little about—can you tell me your primary duties? I know you talked a little bit about that. Can you tell me what your primary duties and tasks were when you were in theatre?
C: My primary duties were, I’d get up five thirty in the morning. I had thirty minutes to get all of my stuff together—whatever was taken: mail, orders, whatever would be going with the flight. Get all that together, be transported to the helicopter pad, be out of there at six o’ clock every morning. And we would start out the flying in the southern part of base camp first. We would hit all of the little villages along the way—hamlets—that had American personnel in it and would drop off that mail, those orders, pick up whatever they had to come back. Little villages, I can still remember names: _____, _____, _____. Those were villages that had Vietnamese civilians in them. Then we would go to our last stop on the Mekong River at the Dong Tam. That was the last stop there. And that was an American base there. From there, we would finish there; we would leave and fly back up to Bearcat, and then go north of Bearcat a little ways and deliver into fire support bases. One of the big ones we flew into was Blackhorse. These were basically fire base camps where they would cut of the middle of the jungle and put some artillery there to use as support to the troops when they would go out on missions. So that was always fun, flying into those when they were firing 105s into the air. So you had to be very careful.
O: How often did you get fired upon? Was it pretty frequently?
C: At times, yes we definitely did. One time, our helicopter got shot up pretty bad. The left door gutter—the gutter that was behind me—took a round in the leg, and it shot up the fuel cells. We were lucky we were on the southern end of our trip and made our next to last stop before we hit the Dong Tam. We landed safely. They yelled at us to get out, that the chopper was about to blow. And they had a fire truck waiting there, and they foamed it down. And fortunately it didn’t blow. I can still remember that time. We were in a place we shouldn’t have been. The chopper pilot flew into an area that we shouldn’t have flew into. And we received some pretty heavy fire from it.
O: I don’t know how accurate this is, but was there a mixture of part landing zone and part dropping out of the air depending on what kind of package it was? Or were you always landing, dropping off, and then going back up? Did you ever drop from the air? Or was it always a landing zone?
C: No. It was always a landing place. They had landing pads. Some of them would have steel grates that you would land on. But then there would be some of them, you would just land right on the ground in a pre-designated area. There was rappelling out of a lot of those places for some of the guys over there. They did a lot of that. But fortunately, I didn’t have to do none of that. We had a place that we landed. We even landed, from time to time, on a ship down on the Mekong River. We did that a couple times where we had to drop something off to that particular ship. I didn’t realize at the time, but that was a really scary thing because with the ship moving, you had to land as that ship was coming up. And we had lost a few choppers by landing the wrong way and them hitting and basically just falling over into the South China Sea. So that was a pretty tricky landing on one of those.
O: Did you ever get used to flying in the dangerous areas, or you always on edge?
C: You are. Most of the time, it’s routine. It’s the same thing day after day; it’s a routine thing. But there was always that possibility that something different could happen—that you could take enemy fire, and we did on a number of occasions. And then sometimes, it was helicopters being in the wrong areas and areas they shouldn’t have been in. That happened quite a few times over there.
O: I was wondering; it seems like a unique job. Do you know how many soldiers are doing a job like yours? Did each Infantry have someone that did that?
C: I'm sure that the different base camps did because they had to have ways of getting not only mail and orders, but supplies. There was helicopters that was designated supply ships that would take into these base camps that was out in the middle of the boonies nowhere. You had to get supplies into them, and you certainly didn’t bring it in by truck. The helicopter was the workhorse over there. Everything was done by the helicopter. It was either done by Hueys or done by Chinooks, which is the big heavy boys that brought a lot of the ammunition, artillery, and that kind of stuff in. But everything that was brought in, ninety percent of it was brought in by helicopter. So yes, and when I left over there, somebody took my place.
O: Do you have a rough idea of how much you could load at one time onto your plane? Do you have a specific weight amount?
C: There was a weight amount. The Huey could not lift a lot. It was not that type of a workhorse. It was mainly set as a gun ship and as a troop transport. It could carry some stuff, but not a lot. The Chinook—that was a workhorse—that thing could actually pick up a howitzer and drop it in wherever it wanted. As far as the weight ratio on them, I don’t know the answer to that. That wasn’t my area, but that was the one that brought a lot of the heavy stuff in.
O: Is there any part of your job you felt you were especially good at, or you actually enjoyed?
C: Well, I guess I was good at doing that. Did I enjoy it? No, not really. I could say, a lot of times it was just ordinary day to day stuff you just did. There was times it could become very dangerous and did become very dangerous. In that position, I feel very lucky to have gotten back home without any injuries—could have been a lot worse.
O: When you got put into the job, did you feel like you were trained enough and you knew what you were doing when you got in there? Did you feel confident?
C: No, I wasn’t really trained. I wasn’t really trained for that. It was just like, “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to take this, and you’re going to get on a helicopter. You’re going to go deliver it.” Matter of fact, when I got over to Vietnam, I was trained basic training on the M14. I never even saw an M16 till I got to Vietnam. And when I got to Vietnam, they were just replacing the M14’s with the M16’s, so they gave us—everybody that was over there—one session of training with the M16s. They just took us out. “It’s not all that different from the M14, but here’s the difference.” And they had us do some firing with it. They said, “Now that’s your weapon.” So the training—
O: On the job training.
C: Yeah, I was trained on the M14, but I never ever touched an M14 while I was over there. Just the new M16s they had now.
O: Do you feel like you always had enough supplies when you were over there? Did you ever feel like you needed anything else? I mean, I’m assuming people sent you care packages and stuff like that, but did the army provide all the stuff that you could need?
C: It did. It provided stuff that you did need, not necessarily stuff that you wanted or you enjoyed. When I was in base camp, the food was hot. It wasn’t really good, but it was cooked there in the base camp, but obviously when we went out of camp, we ate the c-rations. That was the difference of being—and I was out of base camp, I had a hot breakfast, and that was about it. My rest of my meals was all c-rations, which was livable; it was food. The army supplied all of it. Now, as far as the packages from home, yes, my parents was always sending potato chips and cookies, and they weren’t in the best shape when they got to you. That was one thing you always looked forward to over there was getting that package from home. My parents, especially, my mom was very good at that.
O: How often were you in contact with them, as far as letter writing or phone calls or anything like that? How often did you get a hold of them?
C: Well, they wrote me almost on a daily basis. I didn’t get to write back as much as I should have. I would have liked to, but at the end of the day, when you’re done after you’ve been out there for twelve, fourteen hours a day, when you got back in, the only thing you wanted to do was crash. But, of course, I did write home, but not like I should have. My parents worried quite a bit.
O: What was your proudest achievement as being a member of the U.S. Army in Vietnam? What are you really proud of?
C: Well, when I first got out, no I wasn’t. Matter of fact, when I first got out of the service, I spent my last fifteen months in the service in Germany, and when I got out and come home, people would say, “Oh, was you in the Army?” “Yeah, I was in the Army.” “Where did you serve?” I would say, “Germany.” I didn’t voluntarily offer Vietnam. If I was asked, “Did you serve in Vietnam?” “Yes,” I said, “I did.” But at that time back in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, it wasn’t a popular thing to have served in Vietnam. There was a lot of negative-ness towards the guys that served over there, a lot of name calling, so ____ confrontation, you just didn’t get involved in it. I've been involved in a few times that I remember. Go out somewhere, things would happen; it got me into a few situations.
O: Not being alive in that time, why do you suppose the people acted like that toward people that were only doing their job because they were drafted? Why the animosity toward the person drafted and not the animosity toward the government itself?
C: It was a whole new generation and people back then looked at the soldiers being an extension of the government. They hated the government, so they hated the soldiers. Compared to nowadays, where you might not agree with where we’re at now with the wars we’re fighting now, but the people now are having negative thoughts against our government. They realize, hey, the troops are over there doing their job; we need to support the troops. Whereas back then, it was a lot of negative press coverage. Basically, the press over there had a lot to do with the negative-ness that our people back in the states was at that time, because most of the time, they never showed the good stuff that was happening that we did over there. It was all the negative stuff—the reporters and all that was over there. There was some bad stuff that happened over there; there’s no denying that. There was a lot of good soldiers over there, too, and a lot of guys who was trying to do their job the best they could.
O: So do you think that your experiences might have helped soldiers that are fighting now? Maybe—Iraq and Afghanistan are the most popular wars—but you said that they do support the troops now. Do you any sense of accomplishment that you paved the way that these soldiers today are at least treated better than you guys were? Do you think Vietnam was a lesson to people? Do you feel like you had a part in that in teaching people what really goes on?
C: Well, I think so. I think that might have had a lot to do with that. People look back now and see that, “Wow, our soldiers should have been treated like that back then.” Again, it was an entirely different generation: the generation of the ‘60s—the hippie culture and so forth. It’s a lot different today, and I think the Vietnam—what we went through back then—probably played a part in it. But I'm just so glad to see now that our troops are getting treated differently than what they were back in the Vietnam era. So, yes, I think we maybe paved the way to some degree for that.
O: I'm going to talk to you a little about your influences or mentors in your military career; do you have any that you particularly remember fondly? Some of your mentors that maybe showed you the way and maybe you had some respect for?
C: Oh, absolutely. I had a guy in Vietnam that was over there probably five months before I got over there that helped me a lot with, first of all, the job I was going to do. He helped me with that. Helped me with what civilian life was going to be like. The dos and don’ts when you went into town, which I didn’t get to do too often, but once in a while, I did get to go to Saigon, so some of the things the dos and don’ts and what to watch out for. And the main thing—how not to get caught in the wrong place or the wrong situation over there. And that’s not only with me, but especially with the guys that was out in the field—depended a lot on if you was a new guy coming in. You tried very hard to find somebody that you could learn from, and hopefully, without doing it the hard way.
O: I know you said you didn’t get to the towns or villages very often, but do you remember being able to enjoy any of the local food or the customs or interacting with any people there in Vietnam?
C: The local food, no. Matter of fact, we were told to be very careful what we ate, especially the fruits and stuff that was over there. We were told to watch that. The only time that I ate anything was when we would go—we got two in-country three day R&Rs, and I spent both of them in Vung Tau, which was, again, a Vietnamese town, but it was set up as an R&R center for the guys that was in country. It was located right on the South China Sea. It had a lot of good American food. The first good night’s sleep I’d had in six months when I went there. It was really nice, but as far as eating the food that you would get, you ate it if you had to. If you didn’t, you didn’t. Same way with the water; we was told not to drink the water unless you had to. They’d give you disinfectant pills, salt pills—the stuff that you used over there.
O: Do you remember what it was like when you were told you were leaving Vietnam? Do you remember the time period? Can you tell me a little about when you were leaving Vietnam?
C: Yeah, if you’re lucky, you get to become what’s called a short-timer over there, and that’s usually under thirty days. When you first get over there, you lose all conception of what day of the week it is, what month it is even, because you’ve got no reason to know those dates—the average guy over there. But when you start to get short, you start to keep track of the days. You started to worry a little bit more, and you started to count them down. So yeah, you got very anxious. Not only the fact that, wow, only “x” amount of days, and I'm ready to go home, but you also start to worry even more; I’ve spent eleven months over here. Man, I hope nothing happens in my last month over here. It did many times, and you see a lot of cases of it over there where guys would be weeks, sometimes days, from rotating back to the States, and something happened to him. There was elation about it, but there was also concern and worry about it.
O: And what was your last month and year in Vietnam; do you remember that?
C: November of ’68.
O: You said after you left Vietnam, you served in Germany. Did you go back home before getting shipped back to Germany?
C: Yes. I got a forty-five day R&R at home before I went to Germany.
O: Can you tell me a little about coming back home and about how you were greeted by either your parents or your—do you have any memorable experiences about that?
C: Very memorable—good and bad. We flew back. We got on the plane in Benewah and flew back. Again, we made no stops. Coming back, we had to make two stops: Guam and Hawaii. Very quiet on the way home; there wasn’t a lot of talking. Going home, you rested and slept, and it was a long trip. Just thinking about what it would be like to be home. Probably, the biggest elation you felt was when we got close to California, and the pilot come on the intercom and said, “If everybody look out the right side of the plane, you can see the coastline of California.” And that’s when the plane just erupted. Everybody was screaming and yelling with joy. Oh man, we made it. Still, there’s that thought in the back of your mind; we’re not home yet, so we’re not getting excited. But when we saw the coastline of the California, of the United States, and we knew we had made it. We landed, spent two days there getting paperwork and everything processed to get your leave back home and to get my particular orders for Germany. And on the way back, we stopped at O’Hare airport. And I remember one of the first negative things that I saw when I came home that I got experienced with. I was walking through the O’Hare airport to go wait for my next flight to go down to Columbus, and I was walking through. People in there; you could just feel the animosity toward you. People looking at you and pointing. And I remember as I walked by, I sat down on a chair, and was just sitting there and an older guy came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “Don’t worry about it son,” he said, “I've been through what you’ve been through.” He was a World War II veteran. He said, “You did your job.” He asked me if I was on my way back from ‘Nam. I told him, “Yes.” And he said, “You did your job; don’t worry about what people think. Just go home and be proud you did what you did.” That was quite an uplifting there for me. Then of course, when I got back home, my parents and my brothers and some good home cooking—first I’d had in a year. I really enjoyed that forty-five days home. And my trip to Germany wasn’t quite as bad because I knew I had just over a year, and I’d be getting out for good. Trip was a lot more enjoyable to Germany than on other side of the world.
O: Can you tell me what you did in Germany when you were over there?
C: Germany, I was in a replacement center and just basically did a lot of—I worked in a postal area over there, just getting mail and stuff out. And then I had some driver duties where I just drove people around. It was very easy, very easy duty over there.
O: Where were you stationed in Germany?
C: I was stationed in Frankfurt. 28th Replacement Center.
O: I know you said you weren’t able to try many of the local food or customs in Vietnam. Were you able to do so in Germany?
C: Oh, absolutely. Loved it.
O: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
C: Great food over there. Any kind of German food, German pastries, German beer was great. Matter of fact, I probably ate more on the German economy than I did in our own mess hall. Bought a car over there. Bought a car over there for seventy-five dollars.
O: What kind of car was it?
C: It was an Opel. Bought it for seventy-five bucks off of a German—
O: Can you tell me what the people were like over there?
C: The people were much different, obviously, than it was in Vietnam. Their customs were a little more like—it was a Western civilization obviously. I was surprised how many Germans were able to speak English. You hardly got into any situation where somebody couldn’t speak English. I learned to speak a little bit of German when I was over there, but most of them were able to speak. You could go and come. Very little restrictions on you from the army—you could put your eight hour days in, and when you got off at four o’clock in the evening, you could go and come. You just had to be back by midnight. You could take the weekends and go wherever you wanted to go, anywhere in the country, so it was much—where I was stationed over there, there were some places in Germany that were a lot stricter than where I was at. Being in Frankfurt was pretty lenient on you.
O: What was the political environment there? Did they have any feelings about Vietnam, or were they just out of it and didn’t really care?
C: You heard some, but not a lot because we was over there. It was a big boost in their economy, so you didn’t have a lot of negative, at least where I was at. I saw very little of it. Even the Germans that knew you was in Vietnam, I never got hardly anything. Had more of it back home in the states—twice as many in the states as I did over in Germany. Heard a lot of it when I got back home out of the service.
O: So after you spent the remainder of your time in Germany, you went back home, and that was the end of it—the end of your service. You put in your amount of years you needed to put in.
C: I put in my three years there, but I also had two more years of inactive duty where if something happened, and they needed to call you up, you could be called up, so even if you was out of the service, you were still obligated to the government for “x” amount of time. Then when that time was up, you got your final discharge and stated that your obligation is now up.
O: Did you ever think you were going to get called back up?
C: I didn’t really think so because the draft—it changed a little bit. They had a lottery type of draft after I went in, where the guys who got drafted, it was a lottery number, and I'm not sure how that worked ‘cause I wasn’t involved in it. But I had some friend that wound up getting drafted ‘cause their lottery numbers was picked and others who didn’t have to go because their lottery numbers were exempt. I mean, I knew I could, but I got out in ’69, and I think the war lasted about ’72 or ’73 when it was finally over.
O: Did you ever think about getting back into the military?
C: When I got home. Well, actually, a few years later, I did join for one year in the National Guard. So I did spend one more year.
O: And what did you do with the National Guard?
C: In the National Guard, I was attached to what they call an APC unit, an Armored Personnel Carrier unit. You worked on that, you learned how to fire it incase—like now, they use a lot of National Guards overseas. Back then, I don’t remember seeing any National Guards in Vietnam, as least where I was at. But you prepared just in case they did need you, and you tore it down, learned how to clean a unit. The firing mechanisms—they fired twenty millimeter guns so they can fire. We would go once a year; we would go up to Lake Erie, and do firing up there.
O: Where was your main work place in the National Guard? Where at in Ohio?
C: In the National Guard was with that APC. That’s all we did. We met once a month, one weekend out of the month. We would train out of New Lexington. We would go up there, and you’d just have a lot of training and learning—the firing of them, and the main thing, you learned how to tear them apart, keep them clean, and that type of stuff. It was kind of a mundane thing.
O: Did you get time to preserve any of your history over in Vietnam or Germany for historians or your descendants? Did you keep any journals or photos or letters?
C: Of course, I wrote letters home. I don’t know if my mom’s still got those. Didn’t keep any journals, but I did take a ton of pictures, slides. A lot of American’s carried cameras. I carried a camera wherever I went. Matter of fact, I almost got me—well it did get me in trouble a couple of times taking pictures of things that you shouldn’t be taking pictures of. But yeah, I took a lot of pictures. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of photos and slides. Back then, slides was a big thing, so I've got probably who knows? Hundreds of slides that I took over there while I was in the helicopter from the air. Most of them was out of the helicopter. I took some movies. I had a super eight millimeter; I took some movies also. Most of them was from the air, but a lot of them was from the ground, too. So, I did do that.
O: So, your descendants will be able to use that down the line?
C: Oh yeah.
O: Did you receive any medals or special service awards as a result of your service?
C: Just the Vietnam Campaign, the campaign ribbon, the campaign medal. The ones that they give to the guys that served a full year over there. And I got a flight ribbon for being on flight. I did get that. Good conduct medal, obviously, which everyone got one when they got out.
O: Okay, can you tell me about any friendships you formed as a result of your experiences in the army and if you maintained any contact with your fellow members?
C: Yes, one guy from Indiana. Matter of fact, when I got out of the service, I was in contact with him quite a bit. He come to my home. Him and his wife come to my home in Roseville—spent a while with me. Then, a few years later, I went over to their home. And then, it was probably twenty-five years that I hadn’t saw him—kind of went out own way. I got a call one evening, just here a few months ago, matter of fact, from him. He was a truck driver, driving across country, and he happened to be coming through Zanesville. He called me and still had my number—my mom’s number, actually, and she gave him my number, and he called me, and we got together and had a really good time talking and reminiscing a little bit. But that’s the only guy that I really been in contact with. A couple other guys that I was in Vietnam with—this guy was in Germany with—a couple of guys that I was in Vietnam with that I was real close with, they’re both passed away now.
O: You said you are active, though, with your motorcycle club. Can you tell me a little bit about your motorcycle club and what it is?
C: Yeah, just became a member of the CVMA, the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association. Just this past year—one year member with them, which is an association of guys. To be with them, you have to have served in a combat theatre. You have to have an honorable discharge. And it’s not a motorcycle club; it’s an association. That’s the difference between a club and an association. Our whole existence, the reason for our existence, is to help support veterans and their families. We do a lot of charitable work. We raise money. We put runs on; we raise a lot of money for that. The Fisher House—I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Fisher House. That’s the big one that we donate to every year. We do a big benefit out of Columbus. All of the proceeds go to the Fisher House, so it’s a great organization, a great bunch of guys that share the same background that you share. A lot of Vietnam veterans in that association.
O: What wars have these guys served in? Are they from Vietnam to current?
C: Most of the guys are Vietnam veterans, but we’ve got some Desert Storm. We’ve got a guy that’s a Desert Storm veteran. Some guys that are in that are still active duty. But I'm not sure as far as back of Vietnam if we’ve got any older ones. I don’t know of any World War II or Korean War veterans that’s in it. Most of them are Vietnam vets. A lot of younger guys are coming in now that’s from the current theatre of action that we have.
O: Did you use any of your GI benefits to further your education?
C: I did use GI benefit. As far as going to college, you mean?
O: Yes.
C: Yes, when I got out of the service about five years out of the service, I did go to college under the GI Bill after I got myself straightened up and back in the right frame of mind and realized I have to do something with my life now. I went two years of college. I took criminology courses. And then, I got married and had a daughter, and I had to quit college and go to work. I got two years in—didn’t get to finish my criminology degree. But that was the advantage that I took.
O: And where did you go to school at?
C: OUZ. Ohio University Zanesville.
O: So I'm assuming that criminology background led to your current occupation. Can you tell us a little bit about your current occupation?
C: You mean, as far as the police officer—?
O: What did you do after you—?
C: Yes, I'm a part-time police officer at the village of Roseville, which I have been for almost thirty years. Strictly do it on a part-time basis. I work every week, mostly on the weekends. That comes from that criminology. I went to what’s called the Ohio Police Officer’s Training Academy, which you have to do before you become a police officer. I graduated from that academy. And to be able to keep your commission, you have to be putting in so many hours of work a month to keep that.
O: Do you gain right just the same as full-time officers do? Like, do you move with the ranks the more years you put in?
C: No, you don’t. You're strictly a patrolman. I had the chance to do that, but police officer work, at the time I started it, wasn’t very good paying. I worked at a full-time job; I've been in the management field most of my career. But now I'm retired. I just retired last year, so I am devoting more time now to the police work.
O: Can you tell us why you want to become a police officer—what led you to that?
C: Well, when I got out of the service, and I decided that I wanted to go to college and take something, I went to see a counselor, and he was just going over some different things, and he mentioned criminology, and I asked him to talk a little about that and what all was involved. Of course, I've always been interested in police work, and that’s when I decided I’ll give that a try. It was a very good course; I'm glad I did. From there, when I was in college, I was taking the training, so I graduated. It took three hundred and some hours back then to get your training and get your certification from the state. And you keep that as long as you stay in the field.
O: You said you were part-time; how many hours is that a week?
C: Anywhere from eight to sixteen. Usually one or two days. Sometimes I’ll fill in for vacations and get a full weekend.
O: And you had another job while you were doing that as well?
C: Yes I did. I had a full-time job.
O: What were you doing with your other job?
C: The other job—my background for thirty-some years has been transportation, so I work for many different trucking companies.
O: Do you think your military experience helped you in either one of those?
C: I would say probably in the police work, it did—as far as the discipline and understanding people, being around people, being able to work with people. It’s like the military; it’s very people oriented. You deal with many different kinds of people. That’s the thing about the military. When you grow up in school, you're basically around the same kind of people all the time from your hometown, but when you get into the military, you become associated with people from all over the country from all walk of life: city people, country people, good people, and some not good people. So you have to learn how to cope, and it’s the same thing with police work. You become associated and have to learn how to deal with many different kinds of people and personalities and beliefs and religions. So, yes it did help.
O: How has your military experience or your police experience affected your personal life? Do you think it shaped you—the way your personality is today? Or did it affect your relationships?
C: No, my personality. When I first got out of the service, my personality was not necessarily good. The Vietnam experience—it’s kind of hard to get into, but you did have different beliefs and you did some crazy things that you look back on now and reflect and say, “Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.” With the lifestyle, some of the guys that came back from over there, including myself, lifestyle wasn’t all the greatest. But then as time goes on, then you get married, and things start to change a little bit. Did it affect my personal life after my marriage? Yes, it did. I lived with that for a lot of years. Some things that my wife had to endure that maybe she might not have had to endure if I hadn’t been in the service. You're exposed to a lot of negatives when you go into the service, especially into an environment like Vietnam was. You see a lot of things that stay with you. A lot of bad things, a lot of traumatic things, and those are not something you easily get over, you easily recuperate from. I've recuperated from most of them, but a lot of guys never recuperate from them. So, it’s a real tragic thing, but it happens. And the same thing going on today with the guys who come back from over there. They're going to see some things that are going to stick with them, and some of the guys—sometimes you can’t cope with it. So, yeah, it affects your personal life.
O: I know today they have a lot of psychological help and things like that; was there any of that in Vietnam when you got out?
C: When we came back?
O: Well, yeah, were you able to seek anything?
C: I'm sure it was offered, but I never seeked it until much later in my life. If I had of, things might have been a little different with me. But it wasn’t pursued at strongly as it is now, and back then, you had the feeling that, hey, I don’t need help. I don’t need to go see a shrink, if you will, or a counselor or whatever. I think it’s more widely accepted now, and guys certainly, and should, take advantage of it when they come home from that kind of an environment. I recommend that to any of the guys that I talk to. Don’t be afraid to get some help; it’s out there, and that’s what it’s for. It will help.
O: Did you see any significant changes in the military, either while you were in the military from the beginning through your experience to the end, or even to the service members you talk to now that are active duty. Do you see a difference from when you were in and maybe when they're in right now?
C: Well, I can’t really speak that much. I know that the training is a little different. There are some things—from what I hear from the guys that go in—that they're not allowed to do now that back then, they did do. Back when I was in there, they could do to you whatever they wanted. If you didn’t do what you were told to do. And again, I'm talking in training—in your basic, in your AIT training. It was nothing to see one of the guys get hit, get stepped on. And from what I hear, they can’t do so much of that now. And the psychological training back then, it was horrendous; they would actually try to break you down. But their thinking on that was, “We’re doing this so that if you get yourself in that situation, and let’s say you get captured, this is what’s going to happen to you. We’re doing this kind of thing to try to prepare you for if and when that does happen,” and of course, it happened to a lot of guys over there. So I don’t know whether that kind of training is quite as hard now it was back then. I don’t know. From some of the guys that I've talked to, I know the physical part of it. There’s limitations that your drill instructor has now that he didn’t have back when I went in.
O: What do you think the most important thing you did in your military service was?
C: Most important thing was probably the work that I did in Vietnam. I probably wouldn’t have said that when I got out, but the stuff that I did was very important, I feel, as a support role to the guys over there—getting the stuff to them that they needed. There was two things over there that was the most important in what a guy looked for each month. That was pay and letters from home: mail from home, communication from home. That was the two things, and that was two of the things that I helped deliver.
O: Is there anything about yourself that other people might not know that you’d like to share?
C: Bowler—I was a professional bowler one time. Semi-professional.
O: That’s interesting. Did you get a chance to do any bowling while you were in the service?
C: In Germany. That’s where I started. I actually started bowling in Germany, and actually liked it, and was actually good at it. And when I come out, I got involved in it pretty heavily, pursued it, became pretty good at it. Went to the professional bowler school in Cleveland, graduated from there, got my bowling card, and went out on the regional tours for about a year and a half, two years. And just didn’t have the time and dedication to spend to it and the resources to spend to it to go to the next level. Being married and all that kinda didn’t help either. I didn’t drop the bowling; I still bowl today. As far as the competiveness end of it. It was very interesting and met a lot of good guys on that tour.
O: That is interesting. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to talk about with your experiences?
C: No, just the experiences that you experience when you get in a life and death situation, everybody handles differently. And until you’ve been there, I hate to see these people that criticize the soldiers and what they do, but until you’ve been there and walked in their shoes, you shouldn’t do it.
O: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
C: No, that’s it.
O: Alright, well thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. I appreciate you sharing your stories with us and helping us preserve them for future generations.
C: Thank you.
O: Thank you very much.
