1 50 8 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/029eac141b67e1cb0bd3098707abc153.pdf 27f4f101b038b27f647c3cce95658d74 PDF Text Text Name: Branch: Years Served: Conflicts: Date of Interview: Tom Collins (Sergeant) U.S. Army 1967-1970 Vietnam War October 14, 2012 Joseph Lingo: This is Joseph Lingo here interviewing, Mr. Tom Collins, a retired veteran. Mr. Collins, could you please state your date of birth and where you’re from? Tom Collins: My date of birth is 2/4/43 and I’m originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’m a Philly boy. Lingo: Could you tell us a little bit about your early life before you were in the military? Collins: My early life Ok. When I was eleven years old, I was the oldest of four, the youngest being five. My mom passed away of a woman’s cancer. So being the oldest of eleven years old, I had to take over while my father had to work. So I had it pretty rough as a youngster. I could not enjoy my childhood as well as my two brothers and my sister did. So, when I came home from school, I had to get the dinner ready at eleven years old. And while my two brothers, Joe and Eddie, and my sister Mary Anne were out playing, and when they came home from school. So, that went on all the way until I graduated high school. Whatever. Got married at twenty years old, which was too young because, it did not last but about four and a half years. About twenty-four and a half years old. At twenty-five, I get a letter in the mail stating that I’d been drafted. So at twenty-five years old, I was drafted. Didn’t have a clue (laughs). Didn’t have a clue. Had I been working…I was working already for five years at a bakery in Philadelphia called Tasty Cake. And I am about 5’11”, 212 lbs at the time and not really in shape, but not bad. But, all I knew was, I knew I was going to Vietnam sooner or later. So, being drafted, had to go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for basic training. And had it rough. Had eight weeks of rough, because, by the time I was done, I had bloody hands, calluses like you wouldn’t believe. But from 212 lbs I went down to 185 lbs of all solid muscle, in a matter of speaking. But it was good for me, really. Made a better man out of me than I was already. So, and from there, went to Vietnam eventually, which most of us did. Got to Vietnam and the replacement center over there , and what we would do when we got off the plane. We got there at night. And all you can see is…mortar shells, in the night, just going back and forth. And I got off the top step to come off the plane, and I just said “Oh shit! I know I’m gonna die.” First thing a guy thinks of, I mean, here I am, a city boy, never shot a weapon in my whole life. Yeah, I’m sorry, shouldn’t say that. I used to go hunting up in Pennsylvania with my buddies for deer and pheasant but other than that, I’ve never shot a rifle, so to speak. And, I, you know, took my step off that plane. You just know that you were going to die. That’s the thought of everybody that goes, that went there. Believe me. Because we talked later and everybody thought the same thing. “Well, I’m not coming home.” I 1 �thought the same thing. And, got off the plane, and all you could do. It smelt like you were in an outhouse. That’s what it smelt like there. Like you were in an outhouse, standing inside of an outhouse. I said “Oh shit!” But, from there, we went into a bus. They drove us somewhere and next thing you know, we’re being placed in different units. Now, myself, I went to military police school in Fort Gordon, GA. Lingo: This is the army, right? Collins: Yeah. Yes, the United States Army. Correct. Military police, we had, were in control of all the military. There was no such thing as MP’s at that time, in the Marines, the Navy, Air Force, or whatever. Air Force had Air Patrol. Navy had SP, Shore Patrol, but the Military Police were over them. So we had jurisdiction over all the military as Military Police. And, but that’s all changed from what I understand today. Everyone has to go to military police school in their own organizations. Military, the Marines, Navy, Air Force and it’s all changed. So, so, anyhow, we go, and the next thing you know we’re standing outside and this SGT comes walking down He’s telling people, you’re going here, you’re going there, you’re going there, you’re going into the infantry, you’re going to such and such a unit, you’re going here, you’re going there. And this guy’s sending me out into the jungle as an infantry. I say “Whoa Sarge! Yo! I wasn’t even trained for the infantry.” I said “I was trained to be a Military Policeman.” I said “What the hell you doing?!” You know, I didn’t get too cocky. Because, he understood what I was saying, and he had orders for military police to certain companies to go to. So, he said “Ok, ok. Collins.” He said “You go to the 716th, Company A which is located in Saigon.” I said “Ok.” And then there was a couple of other guys that were assigned to the 716th in Saigon. But there was A, B, and C companies so I was thankful for that, I think. Untill, pretty thankful, I guess. Now, I figure, well, whatever. Do you mind? I got to have a swig of water. Lingo: Yeah, that’s fine. Collins: I get to talking too much, I get dry. So…Now let me see. This is 19,…1968, January. And anyhow, when I first got there as military police, we had shit duty. Consisting of, you had to sit in a tower at a depot, all around Saigon. Saigon consisted of all the generals that ran the war over there, all the big officers. Where their headquarters or their billets were in Saigon and the 716th Military Police which is the 18th Battalion were the ones to take care of them and make sure nobody bothered them in a manner of speaking. Getting to the bad point here. Which was the Tet Offense. I’m glad I was on patrol at the time. Eventually, I earned myself patrol which you don’t get right away when you’re a newcomer. You got to earn that. Lingo: Would you briefly describe patrol? What that means, exactly. 2 �Collins: Yeah. Patrol: 12 hour days and what is it? 151, no, M51 jeep; no top. You didn’t have a top on because you can see on the roofs and the tops of the houses and buildings of Saigon as you patrolled your district, just like a cop. We had an M60 machine gun mounted in the back of us with several thousand rounds. Plus we carried an M16 and a .45 military issued. Plus a vest, a vest, steel pot. The vest, thing must have weighed thirty pounds to wear that thing. And we just patrolled on anything unusual. We’d look into or if we got a call to go to a fight in a bar. Things of that sort. Shooting, whatever the radio operator from the military police building would send us depending on what patrol you were working. I worked the fifth district so most of the time, if not all, while I was there, I was in Car 51 and the guy on the radio at the police building. Can’t even think of the name. We called him Waco. So, anytime Waco called you, you’d respond to him. He’d just say like for instance “Car 51. Car 51 this is Waco.” So either myself, depending on who’s driving, or my partner who would pick it up and answer him “Waco this is 51.” And he would send us possibly to a fight, a shooting, or whatever. And come to find out, while I was there, not knowing how big, as far as the surroundings, Saigon, Vietnam was. Come to find out, there was like five million people that live in Saigon. And five million people, you didn’t trust them. Not a one. Not a one. You didn’t know who they were. Many times, many times, they were VC. What they were called VC, Viet Cong; the enemy. You just had to constantly look while on patrol, day or night. Night time, thankfully, I’m glad in a way I had day patrol while I was there. 12 hours on, 12 hours off, no time off. I think for about three or four months after I was there, you just go out and have a couple beers, shoot the bowl with the guys, whatever, or you just stay and write letters, or whatever. But…I was always on the defense; every day, every minute, every hour of the day. If you weren’t you couldn’t really let yourself lose, really, and not pay attention to your surroundings, and to this day, 43 years later, I am still the same way. I don’t trust anybody I don’t know, to this day. I go out with my wife to a restaurant, and I have to sit in a certain area so I can see everybody, because I don’t trust anybody that I don’t know. The only people I trust are veterans, my brothers. Other than that, I always think that “I don’t know you, I don’t know you, I don’t trust you, I don’t trust you.” Because that’s the way it was there. You don’t turn your back ever on anybody, ever, in a combat zone, other than your own buddies; your own brothers. Because it’s happened, number of times. Just like we’re on patrol, I’ll give you an example. Day time, night time, it doesn’t matter. Day time, these Vietnamese people would drive these little Hondas. There’d be two on one most of the time, on a Honda, when they were going to work. There were times where it happened, didn’t happen to me, thankfully, they would toss a grenade in our jeep. You got to understand, you’re driving a jeep and you got amongst you thousands of people on Hondas! It’s like you’re in the middle, they’re on the sides, they’re in front of you, they’re in back of you, you got to be constantly looking, all the time. I used to teach my guys that because once I made sergeant, I had to teach all these young guys. I was 20, I turned 26, man, and there’s guys that are 18, 19 years old that I’m working with. That’s the 3 �oldest they are. They were from cities, like myself, and a lot of them were from Ohio, New York, Detroit, cities like that. They were like me, you know. They didn’t think like this before. And once you’re older, and because of my upbringing, because of what I had to do at a young age, I had a lot of common sense and I knew what to look out for and whatever; roof tops, you got to keep your eyes on the roofs, because it happened, when Tet started, they were on the roofs, everywhere, the snipers. They killed, you know. We had a lot of my brothers killed as military police. When the VC attacked Saigon, in Tet, what they called Tet, was the New Year for the Vietnamese people. That was what they called Tet. And, this offense became known as the Tet Offense. Now, thank god after it was all over, I come to find out, approximately, there were 4000 VC, trying to take over Saigon. And there was a thousand of us in A, B, and C Company of the 716th Military Police. We each had a section of Saigon, out to Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base, that was C Co, and B Co was in the middle of Saigon,. I was in A Company, which was in Cholon, which was known, they were mostly Chinese people that lived in the Cholon area, which was a bad area. So I come to find out later on. It was a very bad area, Cholon. There again, you just have to keep your eyes open and be prepared, and keep a round in the chamber at all times. You don’t want to have to stop, when somebody starts shooting at you, you don’t want to have to stop and say “Wait a minute!” <click clack> Put a round in your 16, your .45, you better have a round in there all the time. Just be able to take the safety off and do what you got to do. And that’s what happened when the shit hit the fan. Eventually, it hit the fan, man. I mean, unbelievable. It’s in books, there’s pictures of us, the military police, the 716th,…we lost 24 brothers, man. I mean, from snipers up on the roofs picking MPs off at the embassy, which we had…the Marines were there protecting the embassy, the American Embassy there. And, there was only two Marines, which was a joke, so the Military Police were sent there to protect the ambassador and whoever worked there, and whatever and all that. We lost like…eight or nine MPs there alone, just picked off, laying in the street, laying by their jeep,…the VC, what they had done was built tunnels across the street, and they would come under ground, across under the street, and up into the embassy, into their grounds. And, the guys, the MPs that got there first, all around the embassy, they see these little V, these little Gooks, they called them Gooks, or whatever, the VC, the Viet Cong, they see them popping up out of the, out of the dirt, you know? And they just picked them off, once they found out from various areas of the grounds. Just like I said, they build tunnels across the street, right under the embassy. They were prepared. And…you just killed as many as you could, because if you didn’t they were going to kill you. There’s no doubt about it. You had to do what you had to do to survive, otherwise you were dead. You’re just dead. “It’s not a game.” That’s what I used to tell my young boys. “It’s not a game.” ‘Cause once I made Sergeant they gave me a squad of 18 and 19 year old fellas. And like I said, I’m 26 years old now. So…you try to teach them. You just don’t trust no body, you don’t get too close, other than your own brother here, and that’s it, 4 �man. Bar girls and that kinda stuff, don’t get too close. You don’t know who’s who, and…it’s unbelievable. Tet Offense went on for several weeks; two and a half weeks. That’s all it was; shooting and killing for a couple two and a half weeks or so. Unbelievable. It was…it’s like you could make a movie out of it. But, my understanding from it was that when it was all over, we killed, so they say, over 2,400 of them. And we did get help from the…I think it was the 25th Infantry came to help us, so…we drove them out, you know? They were dead all over. Streets, and if you look up, if you go buy some DVDs, you’ll see, you’ll see that, in the streets, dead just laying all over,…our MPs are in the streets dead, too, stuff like that, which…I was glad, I was glad to get home! At the end of ’69. I was there for two years. They wanted to make me E-6, but I said “Nah.” I was offered E-6 and a $5,000 bonus, and that was 1969. And I said “No, I don’t think so. I just want to go home.” I still have three months to go now, so, each day, man, it’s just, it’s like, each day, man. You’re just looking around, you don’t want to get involved, because what happens is if you get involved in a killing now, or whatever, it’s like, you can’t go, because now you have to go to a court and all kinds of junk. Now you got to understand, we’re working with civilians, and we’re military people. We’re in their country, so what happens is, [brief interruption from Mrs. Collins] a big major shooting goes on, and now you got to go before a court, because you killed one of their people, or whatever it was. So, just things of that sort, because it’s not like Tet. Tet was over now, so now we got everything under control in the military. Back in Saigon we got it under control again. And…right before I left, about three weeks no, not before I left I had four months [counts months to himself], I had five months to go and had two of my buddies killed. They were on patrol, they were second shift. B Company, and I knew them , and I was just talking to them at the PX, just when I got done with my twelve hours, I went to the PX, I had to buy some stuff, and these guys were given' the regular guys a break, and the PX, and all your main head quarters or buildings for the…big officers always had an MP outside. Lingo: And “PX” is…? Collins: The Commissary. We called it the PX at the time…[ Post] Exchange…I forget what the “P” stands for, it’s been so long, but the “X” stood for “Exchange”. Well, that’s the Commissary where you go buy cigarettes, and whatever you want, cigarettes, liquor, clothing, like…civilian clothing, shoes, and stuff, cameras, you could buy cameras,…and I didn’t know at the time, but you could buy a car, and have it ready by the time I came home. I could have bought, like, a ’69 Camaro for half price. Uhh, God, when these guys told me what they done I said ‘I didn’t know you could buy a car!” They said “Yeah, at the Commissary, at the PX!” I said “You’re kidding! What?” Yeah, they had an area, you could buy books, you could buy any car you wanted that was out at that time. If you were there in ’68, you could buy a ’68 Camaro, you could buy ’69, you could buy a charger, and just, any kinda car you wanted <brief interruption from Mrs. Collins>. Any engine you wanted, and I didn’t, man, I didn’t know that, cause when I got home, I bought a 5 �’69 Charger when I got home, so, whatever. I could have gotten it a lot cheaper and with a big, big engine, I didn’t know. Whatever. I,…there again, my two buddies, brothers I’ll call them. Each of them had three weeks to go. They were getting ,counts months to himself., they were leaving in September, and on the 31st of June, they worked the second shift, they were Company B, and they were told to go to a bar fight, and they went inside the bar to see what was going on and whatever, and next thing you know, we heard it later at night, we were woke up and told us that both of them were shot and killed in the bar while they were on duty. A…an ally killed them. One of our allies; a south Vietnamese officer, a major, shot and killed them; he was drunk. They didn’t have their pistols drawn or nothing, man. He just come out drunk, coming upstairs room in this bar, and the story we were told was he had this .45 in his hand, and he shot and killed both of them as they were coming up the steps to see what the ruckus was, and I just got done talking with them several hours ago, shooting the shit with them, and, whatever. And to this day,…in honor of them, I have their names on my vehicles; our, my two vehicles we have here; my wife’s and mine; I have there, in little, in little white print, I have their names and the day they were killed. On both sides of my vehicle, back window, side windows; on each of my vehicles. In honor of them. So, every time someone looks at them, I want them to think of them two guys. I lost other guys, other buddies too, but uh… Anyhow, I couldn’t wait it get home. Guys in the field had it rough, in the jungle, but a lot of them weren’t shot at as much as the MPs were, in Saigon, believe me. Because Charlie, they called VC Charlie, too; he was known as Charlie; he wanted to make a big hit and Saigon was the capital of Vietnam. So, if they could take over Saigon first, now the Tet offense, the VC on the same day started, which was the 32st January, they started this Tet offense at once, all over Vietnam. Not just Saigon, it was all around Vietnam. They tried to take over all the cities, and whatever, and it was just like all hell broke loose in the country of Vietnam at the time called the Tet Offense. It wasn’t very nice, it wasn’t very nice, let me tell you. Let me tell you. Cause now, you’re even more spooky on patrol, as myself, and my buddies and brothers, were even more spooky. I didn’t trust anybody then, and now I m even worse, until I was getting ready to leave. I stopped, I caught, 5 deserters over there, in Saigon. Un-freaking real. Can you imagine being a deserter for five years? For four years? I got one with three years, and one for two years, and I think one for one yea. That sounds strange, but I did. And you know, just by stopping guys ,and checking them out, and looking at them, and saying “something’s wrong with that guy, I know it. I can tell by the way he’s dressed.” You know, I mean he’s got fatigues on, jungle fatigues on, and a bonnie hat, but something’s wrong. He’s got the wrong shoes on. He don’t have boots on. Or if he has boots on, there’s something, there’s just something wrong.” And I used to teach my younger guys “when you’re on patrol, you look out for certain things when you stop a person.” And that was unbelievable. I come to find out that the desk sergeant “Hey SGT Collins, this guy’s a deserter for five years” and I said “you got to be shitting me!” What they do when they go desertion, you know after they go AWOL after a 6 �certain time, then they’re deserters. what they do is they stay there with the Vietnamese people and they live with them people, and those people give them false identification, and they make up ration cards; at the time you had a ration card, you could only buy so many things at the PX, at the Exchange, and you stop a guy and you ask them’ for their ID, and you can tell by looking at their ID that something’s wrong with it, the coloring is off, and what unit are you with and where’s your pass, and they make an excuse up, and so you get on the radio, you call in, Desk SGT calls back, they never heard of them, they don’t know who he is, so you say okay, and right away you cuff them. But first, you, you search them. So, here I am m, I have three weeks to go, so now I’m training y young guys, and they know what to do by now, but I always tell them, I said “while I’m on the radio, you keep an eye on him. If he tries anything, you do what you need to do.” So I’m searching this little fella, that I, that I stopped, I put him up on the wall, just like a regular cop does, we were trained like regular police were. And, found this little guy, had a .45 tucked in the front of his belt, covered over with the jungle fatigues because it covered them over, see, you weren’t tucked in or nothing, your jungle fatigues, they were just laying out. Well this little guy, had a .45 tucked in his belt, in his belly. I felt that, boy I got, you don’t know, like this right, and I took it out. And I had him spread, you know with his feet and his hands up on the wall. And when I pulled that out, I just kicked his foot, his leg from under him, and he just went <whap bang>! Down on the ground! And then I checked the .45 that he had, and don’t; he have a round in the chamber. That even pissed me off even more! He had a round in the chamber, which means ,if he had the opportunity, he would have used in on me or my partner! It was ready to shoot. All he had to do was pull the trigger. That pissed me off even more! So, I cuffed him right then , and I basically threw him in the jeep. I had to watch what I was doing, because there’s people around, because it’s a PX, it’s a civilian area, a military area where people are going into this exchange area to buy stuff, so you had to be careful, but I did give him a couple shots to the ribs before I threw him into the jeep, and I got to talking with my partner, I said “See that? Don’t ever take your eyes off anybody you stop, never!” I said “Now, just to say we put him in the jeep without searching him,…because maybe he’s sweet talking you or some bull. He’s got a gun, with a round in the chamber, were driving the vehicle, he’s sitting back there cause were gonna take him to the station, and he pulls that out,” I said “because you never searched him ,or you never cuffed him neither.” I said “I just want you guys, you guys, to know, what you got to do, man. You just can’t trust anybody.” I was glad to get home, well not the way I was treated though. I flew back to Philadelphia on December 21st, or the 22nd. I think it was the 22nd. I thought I was, I thought I was welcomed home, but I wasn’t. Once I got in the airport, I was spit at, by two guys walking in the airport and they called me a “baby killer”, and I just didn’t understand what was going on, cause I wasn’t told about it in Oakland when I was getting out of the army. Now they must started telling people behind us, when they were getting out, because they were told “Don’t even wear your uniform to home.” To me that was bull shit because I’m wearing my uniform home, because was proud of what I done. Thankfully I came home alive. There 7 �were 59,000 guys who didn’t come home, that were killed. 59,800 something. So,…at least I was alive. My workplace didn’t want to give me my job back after working there for five years. I was pretty well pissed after I got home, I really was. I think after couple of days, like less than a week, I wish I was back in Vietnam, at least I had the respect of my own people. And I knew I could trust them, too. You get home,…you were treated like shit. I couldn’t understand it. I just got bitter. More bitter. I think I got bitter form that, a lot. And I drank a lot after that. Drank a lot. Didn’t care. Didn’t care. I looked for a fight, anytime you wanted a fight; I was ready. For somebody to say something wrong to me. I’m ready to kick you’re ass, or you’re going to kick my ass, either or! But I’m going to let you know. “Don’t talk to me that way”, or whatever. I guess what I was looking for was respect for what I done, and I didn’t get it. To this day, I just don’t, I never forget it. I tell people that, I said “If I could come across those two guys that spit at me, I was carrying my duffel bag, and I was just happy to be home, those guys looked over at me and just both of them spit at me, and called me a ‘baby killer’. And I swear to God, I didn’t know what was going on. I just, I stood there dumbfounded and dropped my duffel bag and looked at them. And I just said ‘What the hell just happened here?’ If I was on my, my game, I’m gonna say, cause I had a .38 in my duffel bag that I took with me. I would have shot both of those guys, I really would have. I would have killed them. Or I would have shot them in their knee caps. I really would, cause I didn’t care what happened to me. All I know is you treat me like this,…if I wasn’t as happy, so to speak, as I was, and glad to be home, honest to God. I would have grabbed that .38 out of my duffel bag and would have just went after them and shot them. Simple as that. You ain’t spitting at me no more. I didn’t deserve that. Who the hell do you think you are, spitting at me after I just, what I went through. You don’t, you don’t know what I went through…You don’t walk in my boots, so to speak. Anybody who ever says anything…You don’t know what a Vietnam Veteran went through, or a World War Two Veteran, or a World War One Veteran. You don’t know what they went through. You don’t know what I went through; ‘cause you didn’t walk in my boots.” And that’s that I was thinking about. I was afraid, every day, even though I was back in the city, a city of 5 million people; you didn’t know who was who. And it’s the same shit that’s going on in Afghanistan. Their regular,…so to speak, their military is shooting our people in the back. You’re supposed to be allies, working with one another. And you wonder why these people, these men and women, who come home, and why they are the way they are. It’s… Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is what it’s called, believe me, I mean, been there. I’ve seen guys that are really bad with that. I know guys, to this day, that are bad with that and it still continues with them today. Forty some-odd years later and it still happens, some guys. And, it’s not their fault. It’s the country’s fault. Vietnam was a bad war. It should have never happened. Never. The government had no respect for us at all, and the people neither at that time. It just wasn’t right. Too many people, over 58,000 people got killed and it wasn’t right. A bunch of kids, a lot of them, bunch of good kids like you and,…like yourself and your friends. And they weren’t given the respect,…anybody can tell you that was in Vietnam, bad war. 8 �Really was. Really was. No respect for us, and it pisses me off to this day. I’ll never forget it and I’ll never let it go. People say “How can you hold on to that?” You don’t understand! You weren’t there! You weren’t treated like I was when I came home. I was ready to, “Holy shit! Why are you treating me like that?” I even asked the cab driver that took me home from the airport. I said “What the hell was going on?” Why am I being treated like this? I said “Holy shit! Is this the way it’s going to be?” You know? I said “If that’s the case,” I told my father when I got home, I said “If that’s the case, I want to go back1 At least I was treated well there by my own people!” My brothers and all, you know. But, of course, that didn’t happen. I thought it out and went back to my old job, ‘cause I…I threatened them to go to the government, you know. It was a big company in Philadelphia, the bakery, I was there five years already and I went back looking for my job about a month later, and…”Oh, we, someone else is on that job.” And I said “So?” I said, “I’m guaranteed my job.” I said, “I didn’t ask to go. I was drafted.” And, you know, whatever. And that guy, that boy, that boss, that supervisor, I wanted to kick his ass, right then and there. I wanted to kick his ass,…I felt bad because he was smaller than me. And that’s probably why I didn’t do it! Because I would have dropped him right there, believe me! And I just, I just got so pissed, and I said, “Well you know, we’ll see about that.” I said “I’m going to go to personnel and talk to them.” Which I probably never should have told him that, because he ran in the office when I went over to go get the elevator to go upstairs to talk to personnel. I know he ran in his office to call them and tell them that I was on my way. “Well, you’re a hot head. You got a chip on your shoulder.” “Well son of a bitch! I’m deserving of my job and you don’t want to give me my job back? What do you mean I got a chip on my shoulder?” And even after I got my job back, years later…”Tom, you got a chip on your shoulder.” I said “I don’t got a, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder, I’m just telling you like it is! And you don’t want to hear it! That’s the problem!” You know. If I have something to say to you, you’re telling me one thing, and I have an answer for you, and that answer you don’t want to hear, that’s what it is. Don’t tell me I got a chip on my shoulder. Where I used to drink at around the corner from where I lived in Philly, I used to go to, walk to the bar, and became friends with some guys. This one fella used to sit there after he’d come from work, and he had an office job. Me, I’m busting my ass all my life as a laborer, but whatever. I used to go in for some drinks and got friendly with this fella, and he used to tell me after a while, when we’d talk. He said “Tom, you got a chip on your shoulder.” I said, “Man, don’t you freaking tell me I got a chip on my shoulder just because you don’t want to hear what I have to say.” I said “You don’t want to talk to me, I could care less, I mean, I’ll go and sit in that corner, that’s not a problem”. I come in here to get a drink, and you don’t want to be bothered just because you don’t like what I got to say. I have a chip on my shoulder. Yeah, okay. People don’t like it when you tell the truth about things that they don’t want to hear, that they really don’t. Whether it’s about the Vietnam War, or I have a problem with the way veterans are treated today, coming back home, I have a problem with that. My wife and I donate to about 4 different, things for the military, which I’m proud of. 9 �We don’t have a whole lot to donate, but we do, several times a year, for each organization, a few dollars helps, here and there. But, the way they’re being treated when they come home, it’s the same junk the way I was, the way I was treated, all us Vietnam Vets, when we got home, were just treated like dirt, honest to God. They didn’t want to give you your jobs back, they didn’t, they didn’t want to hire you because you’re a Vietnam Vet. In other words, you were a bad person. “Oh we were doing what our country, the United States of America, asked us to do.” And for that, we’re bad people, you know. I mean, I just,…it’s very hard to understand. It really is. That’s about it. I mean, I’ll be 70 years old very shortly, and…I should have died ten years ago. I have a thing form Agent Orange, which Agent Orange was a thing that was sprayed in Vietnam, to kill all the foliage, the trees and everything, It was supposed to kill it all, which it did, and its killed a lot of Vietnam Vets too over the years, that come up with cancer. There must be twenty five to thirty different diseases that they found out Agent Orange caused, and mine is…I had a five way bypass done, ten years ago. Now I have a Pacemaker defibrillator, and this is my second one, as you can see the scar up here is my first one. And what they had to do was change one about five months ago, because the battery was running low and it was no good. So they had to move the pocket and put a new one down here. And what it is, defibrillator Pacemaker is they have a wire that goes down my heart. So if I have a problem with my heart, one or the other will take over. So, and, I didn’t find this out until as far as what caused it until about a year and a half ago. All these years I had been home. And they finally caught up with me ten years ago. I had a heart attack here, because my wife and I had been living here for twenty six years, and…one day at work, Monday morning, bang! Heart attack. So, that was April 22nd, ’02, right? Yeah, ’02. And, ’03 November was when I had to be cut, and I had a triple bypass, well, apparently, two, two of the…of the veins didn’t take. So, before the doctor and team went home, because it was a Saturday morning and they don’t do heart, things, transplants, or no, not transplants, heart operations on Saturday. They normally really don’t do it, but apparently when they tested me and did my thing on Friday afternoon, they seen, they were all, up in the high 90’s that were blocked, all of them. So, I was a candidate for Saturday morning, and down in Charlotte,…so, they cut me open, did me an ICU, and something wasn’t right. This I found out later through the head nurse. She said “Tom we thought you were gone.” She said, and she said “I had to call the doctor, get him back here,” She said “In all my years as a head, as a nurse in ICU, I never seen what happened with you; with the machines. In other words, these things where they go ‘beep beep beep beep beep’ well they’d go ‘beep beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeep’ it’d stay there!” She said! And she said “I had never seen that before!” And she said “Oh my gosh!” She said “I knew I had to call them back!” Which the doctor knew, that when she called back something was wrong. So they had to re-cut me open. That’s why the scar is so thick. Normally now it’s like a little hair. Or normally now what they do is they come up here, from what I understand; under your armpit. And, they had cut me re, they had cut me open again, and they do two more. She said, she said “Tom, you,” she 10 �didn’t tell me, she wouldn’t tell me, and I was trying to get it out of her. She said “You shouldn’t be here.” I said “Well where should I be?” Now you got to understand, this is my first time being in a hospital my whole life, and I’m 59 years old , in a hospital, with a heart attack, and open heart surgery, and all this other junk ,and she said “You should have, you should have gone.” I said “Gone where?” You know, I was trying to get her to tell me. I was trying to hear her tell me that I should have died. She said “You should have passed.” I said “What are you talking about?” I kind of knew what she was talking about; I just wanted to get her to tell me. I said “Are you trying to tell me I should have died?” She said “Yes”, but she didn’t want to put it in them words. She said “Yes, Tom. You should, you should not be here.” She said “All of the nurses up here, all the nurses in ICU don’t know why you’re still here. In fact,” she said, “we started calling you ‘that miracle guy’”. I said well, I guess the good Lord wasn’t, my wife would say “He wasn’t ready for you to go up there and give him a hard time!” I said “Probably not, I guess I got more work to do; I’m not ready yet.” And that was ten years ago, and I’m very thankful, really. That was tough, man….I was in the hospital for nine days, and that was tough. Anyhow, that was all my understanding, and the VA said that it was form all the Agent Orange being sprayed, over in Vietnam. Now where I was, over in Saigon, I come to find out, through people, by reunion people, we have a reunion every two years, the 716th Military Police, every two years we have a reunion somewhere, and those guys were telling me “Hey Tom, did you know that Saigon was the second, if not the first, heavily sprayed area in Vietnam? And do you know why? Because of all the generals that were there, and all the officers that were in Saigon, their headquarters, where they… billets were and the hotels they stayed in, and all that kind of stuff. That’s why. So when they sprayed, they sprayed like hell, to kill everything on the, on the outside of Saigon, you know? That’s why. And a lot of us, being, well even them people living in there, us being MPs and whatever, we’re breathing in that stuff every day. So ,and it,…a lot of my buddies dies, have dies, from what it done to them; giving them cancer. It’s a cancer causing thing. It really is, amongst a lot of other things that they found out, over the years. I do get compensated, a few bucks for it. Not a whole lot, but it’s something, I guess. So I’m living my life! Very interesting, especially when you’re in the military. I think, I think, by the way I was treated, I often wondered, I stayed, went back or said “Yes, I’ll take that five thousand, now I can order my car!” Like a ’69 Camaro, or whatever. But I didn’t do it, and I probably would have made a life out of it. Because I was good at what I done; at Military Police. And that was why they wanted to make me E-6 <Staff Sergeant>, because I was good at what I done. I mean, I stopped a lot of thing from going on,…I’ve seen two VC, on one of those Hondas, stick, C4 <plastic explosive> on one of the military buses. And I didn’t know what it was at the time. I was watching, and as I watch people, and we had a military bus, that brought a lot of these military people to this PX, in Cholon. And just watching this Honda, with two guys on it, you know the little people. And all of a sudden I see the Honda stop, and the guy in the back goes like <motions with hand> and they took off. So what does that tell you? Well that 11 �tells me he just stuck something up on the left, rear,…wheel well! And right away, I couldn’t leave my post, because I was the fella that was working the front gate. So I called in for a patrol right away, and I told them, I said “You better get the bomb squad here!” I said “I’m positive, I’m sure they just stuck a piece of C4 Up there.” And they were going to wait until that thing got loaded, and then blow the damn thing up., with all them people in it. And sure enough, it was; it was a plastic on that rear wheel well. So because of me, thankfully, and I was given a citation for it, which I was, just doing my job, but whatever. That’s all I got to say! And I’m hoping I can live a lot longer! Lingo: That’s pretty incredible!... Collins: And I have shot and killed people over there, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. One time we were going on duty… The rest of the interview is lost because the recording equipment ran out of room on its storage device. 12 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/b70f1e0de4833b34f2764dc83b9d0c0c.mp3 142d6d37781e4065eace3aded14cf064 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. File size 59.6 KB 118 MB Format, digital MP3 Military Branch military branch (U.S. Army, etc) U.S. Army Officer Rank Officer rank (major, private, etc) Sergeant Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lingo; Josheph Collins; Tom Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Lingo, Joseph Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Collins, Tom Interview Date 10/14/2012 Number of pages 12 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:51:50 Date digitized 2/5/2015 Checksum alphanumeric code a86579bd35619a295936d42d1f3c7e29 142d6d37781e4065eace3aded14cf064 Scanned by Leah McManus Equipment Adobe Acrobat XI Pro Resolution 300 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived UA.5018. American Military History Course Records Recording rate A/V rate (48,000kzh x 16 bit) 48000kzh x 16 bit Format, original Electronic File Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 5018_Collins_Tom_2012_1014_M 5018_Collins_Tom_20121014_audio_A Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sergeant Tom Collins [October 14, 2012] Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Language A language of the resource English English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lingo, Joseph Collins, Tom Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Description An account of the resource Sergeant Tom Collins, born in 1943 in Philadelphia, was drafted during the Vietnam War and went to Fort Bragg in North Carolina for his basic training. He entered the army and was trained as a military policeman. He served in Saigon on a patrol squad. He says to this day, even in civilian life, he doesn't trust people he doesn't know after his experience in the military and having to constantly be on the look-out. Subject The topic of the resource Collins, Tom Veterans Vietnam War, 1961-1975 United States Personal narratives, American Interviews army draft Fort Bragg military police Saigon Vietnam War https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/e734df30a5383368b16df55d3dc9f77d.pdf a3e100191d98142a39b2272338e69bd8 PDF Text Text ) ~onorable ~~~tbarge f!7/uJ -eJ ~ ~ ad LEO. FINKELSTEIN 34 600 169 CORPORAL 394TH BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON (H EAVY) 2\rnt.y nf tlf:e Bnit:ell ~bites eJ ~ ~~ ~dJ(/~~ ae 61»~ ~ #le ~Jd [7~ ~ t-~• ~ ,' f?7/UJ ~ ,eJ aat04~~~.'~ -~~ ~ ~ [$~~~~ /r; atJJ ~· <3}~ .a/ SEPARATION CENTER FORT BRAGG NORTH CAROLINA I 3 SEPTEMBER 1945 Regi stered Sep tember 5, 1 945 at 12:03 P.M. in Book #9 page 63. ~..Q.co 0 0-·~ Reffii'ir or Deeaaoruncme County, North Carolina. Lf?~ . ;7=n~ R B MART IN AGD ~1A JOR J �ENL'I STED RECORD AND REPORT OF SEPARATI.QN ·HONO RABLE D ISCHARGE u our o• thDUotoa 4~ 12 JAN SI-UC'lfV C . .fzl IUYICI 0 Al4 u . DATr 01 nunuu I , .. , - .... , ..... }< , •• . , .. ~~~ ....... lu , ... D.urOi l•nfl ..rOAC'IInJIHIU I 19 JAN 4~ ;;~~~~~~ CO 21. PUCE 0 ' UTR liTO UHIU s c FORT JACKSON ae. MO•I ADOII.U AT Tl• t NC or D 'fn I NTO SIIVIC& SEE9 1 ;~~~"""'""".. "'·/ uo ..,. tl • .. Infantry, C1Yia1lcn CIIJ<I mcu.amcmantp.,.,.,o... o :c./ CLERK TYPIST (405 ) CHI NA NE\V GU INEA NORTHERN SOLOMONS EASTERN MANDATES LUZON BISMARCK ARCH IPELAGO \.JESTERN PAC I F I C SOUTHERN PHIL I PPIN ~ s ... ...... , •• • , ... cm"ou AS 1 AT 1c PAC IF I c TREATER CAMPA 1GN f\1EDAL \v 1TH 8 BRONZE SERV 1 E STARS DIST I NGUISHED UN IT BADGE \.J I TH 1 OAK LEAF CLUSTER GO 1063 HQ FEAF ,_. 7 JUN lJ5 PHILIPP INE LIBERATION RIBBON GOOD CONO:.JCT t-1EDAL G1 :.SJ:iQ. _ 'ITJ-J a•. IICCIVID Ul OVMO l:it' l H ) I 1'1AK '+'+ NONE 1 0 . MU.UAn OC:C-UtUIOIIA'- IPI CU .U1' .u :o 110 1 1:. aATTUI AIII D CAMPA.tltll WOUIIDS ACli'ON ••• UTUT t•• oMru n o• "2~AN4bm3~"UL441 ;9~~N44 .,_ J III'Y1CI OVTI IOI co•ti •UTAL U. L AIID a&TUI• OATI OP OI ,AIT UII DU'riNA.T10• 0 4 Tl OP A Ul V.U. .,• ._ llfl»dtrl TY 30JUN45 II , "11M; IT la.AOI HIJ.D tOUL u • otM OF I IU VICC COtll'f-r.CHU L IIIWICI ··- OATil FORI IGM st•YlCl 2 NOV 43 19 JUL 45 Ap T US A 22 NOV 43 20 AUG 45 rilAO ,•••9"' 1"2~ ITUY ,...9"'1"1'9 CORPORAL 1•. PIIOI IIIVICI NONE CONVENIENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT AR 615- 365 15 DEC 44 (38 YEARS OF AGE OR OVER REF SEC I I CI R 21:iQl .. 0 . II'AION U D • U 1'H011t1' JOI SIP.AUTION "'' · tCI'YI CC KNOOU Ar-T IMDID I ••- ••· U MUII (Tht. ·~ I.DUCAtiO• lor completion ol abovo Item• o r on tty ol other ltoom opodBod in W. D. Dl,..,tlvHI NO TIME LOST UNDER AW 10 7 LAPEL BUTTON ISSUED ASR SCORE (12 MAY 45 ) 86 INACTIVE SERVICE (ERC ) 12 JAN 43 TO 18 JAN 43 E MK OPP 1ST LT (YecraJ I "".L:Jan1LJ NONf:' AUS FHT o- � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leo Finkelstein Papers Description An account of the resource This collection contains materials relating to Leo Finkelstein, resident of Asheville, North Carolina, the Asheville Lions Club, and the Beth Ha-Tephila Cemetery in Asheville. It contains computer discs, notes, scrapbooks, book drafts, correspondence, photographs, programs, fliers, and other materials related Leo Finkelstein, his wife Sylvia, and the Lions Club, Elks Club, and Jewish Community in Asheville, North Carolina. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Finkelstein, Leo, 1905-1998 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Leo Finkelstein's U. S. Army Discharge, September 3, 1945 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1945-09-03 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 107_01_16_LeoFinkelstein_ArmyDischarge_1945_0903_M Description An account of the resource The document of Leo Finkelstein's Honorable Discharge from the US Army in 1945. The reason for separation is stated as: "convenience of the government." Subject The topic of the resource Finkelstein, Leo, 1905-1998 Veterans--North Carolina--Asheville Military discharge Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title=" In Copyright - Rights-holder(s) Unlocatable or Unidentifiable" href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-RUU/1.0//" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright - Rights-holder(s) Unlocatable or Unidentifiable </a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="AC.107 Leo Finkelstein Papers" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/192" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> AC.107 Leo Finkelstein Papers </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title=" Leo Finkelstein Papers" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/27" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Leo Finkelstein Papers </a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940s 1945 Fort Bragg honorable discharge Report of Separation United States Army https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/9c900aada3130c6925cfe705dab8e397.pdf 0aca8a23c1a9936c79bc6493039eb7b4 PDF Text Text Oral History with Charles Watkins April 28, 2011 Interviewer: Judkin Browning Judkin Browning: It is Thursday, April 28 [2011]. My name is Judkin Browning and I am here at Appalachian State University interviewing Charles Watkins, a professor in the History Department here at Applachian State University, and the interview will begin now. Chuck, if I may? Charles Watkins: You may. Browning: First of all, when and where were you born? Watkins: I was born a poor, black sharecropper’s… oh, no wait [Dr. Watkins, who is white, was joking, mimicking a line from the movie, “The Jerk.”] I’m sorry. I was born on February 4, 1946 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Browning: And when you joined the military, what branch of the service did you join? Watkins: I joined the army under duress. Browning: Ok. So please enlighten us on how you entered the army, obviously not voluntarily. Watkins: Well, my family had moved to Delaware when I was a young kid and my father had opened up a clothing business in the early 1950s, and in the mid-60s, he started having a series of heart attacks while I was away at college. So I was having a very good time at college. I was in the middle of my second senior year, and he had another heart attack, so I dropped out and went home to basically run the business. And, as such, I had had a series of deferments, being in college. I think I had actually had every deferment known to mankind. And, when I left school I was able to get a hardship deferment because I was working for my father. And my dad died in late December 1968, and technically my deferment, of course, died with him, and so then I began to battle the draft board, which increasingly wanted me to make reports, in particularly business reports. It so happened that one of my father’s rivals was on the draft board, and I figured if I turned over my business records to the draft board I would be out of business the next day. So, I thought that I could stand down the draft board, which proved to be an idiotic concept on my part, because they finally had enough. And so they not only sent me a draft notice, they gave me a week to report, and so I did what every good business man would do, I ran to my senator in D.C., whose name was Caleb Boggs, and I moaned to him about the problem, about how unfair it was and so on, and of course he said to me, “Gee, if you had just come before you were drafted I could have helped you, but I can’t do anything after you are drafted.” So he sent me to the 1 �Pentagon. So I had a nice chat with the people at the Pentagon, who basically said (laughing) “That’s going to leave a mark.” So anyway, what I did was I found that I could enlist and get a 120-day delay, and it was my goal to try and sell the business in that period of time… I worked on that and lo and behold the time came and off I went to Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Browning: What year was this when you eventually reported? Watkins: I guess it was 1969, I don’t remember the date. I remember it was hotter than hell in Fort Bragg. If you’ve ever been to Fort Bragg, you know they have these wonderful ants, and in summer it’s hot as blazes and no matter where you sit down, the ants climb up your boot, and start rolling up your pants leg there. Browning: Let me ask you a question about how, for those who are uninitiated, how does the draft process work? When you were a young man in college, how did you know that you had been drafted? How did you get a deferment? What were the mechanics of that? Watkins: You would be automatically deferred if you were actively enrolled in a college, or in certain types of graduate school, like Divinity School would give you a deferment. You made application for deferment, and you were given a classification. I think 2-S was a student classification and 1-A was… you were ready to roll, as it were, you were unprotected. And you got a draft card and it had your number on it. So colleges would report to the draft boards when students graduated or unenrolled any longer, so it was an interesting system of “Gotcha,” if you will. [Browning starts to speak]. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I think that I was drafted in the last draft before the lottery was introduced, and I had a wildly high lottery number as I recall, so I never would have been drafted. And I was reasonably old at that time for a draftee. Browning: The lottery was in ’69. Watkins: I was 22 or 23 years old. So I was… they caught me at the very end. Browning: I believe the lottery was in December of ’69. So prior to the lottery, there was just an understanding that if you were 18, you would be issued a number? Watkins: You had to register with selective service just as I guess you do now. So you did that and you requested a deferment. Browning: So when you eventually enlisted, it was 1969. The Vietnam War had been in the news for quite a while, especially with the Tet Offensive in ’68. Watkins: Yeah. 2 �Browning: What were your thoughts on, or did you have any thoughts about what was going on in the Vietnam War during your college years, during your deferments? Watkins: You know, I went to a Southern school, good ole Mars Hill College, favorite college of the South. I like to brag that Mars Hill College is the only degree-granting reform school in America at the time. (pause) When I left college in 1968, unless you were going to Yale or one of the Ivy Leagues, or really any of the northern schools, people’s idea of the ‘60s really hadn’t hit. So most of my classmates—my class was 1967, even though I didn’t graduate with it—most of those guys, if they thought they were going to get drafted, they went ahead and enlisted, and it was just one of those things that you did, you got out of the way. Now when I went back to Mars Hill in the early ‘70s for a summer to get my degree, the place was plastered with anti-war stuff, you know. The teachers had stuff on their doors, and all this kind of stuff, but that was really an early ‘70s phenomenon for most places. Browning: So did you, I mean, just following the news, did you have any thoughts on what was going on overseas, or “when my time ends, I may end up there?” Or was it all so far away? Watkins: It was all very, very, very far away. And it was not something that I thought that I would be a part of. Because if you think about it, the draft system was a kind of social classifier, in the sense that if you were not college bound or college trained, you might well go. Otherwise, you could very easily escape it and avoid it. Browning: So, back to your service—you entered in 1969, wound up in Fort Bragg in apparently the summertime, and your boot camp experience was there? Any memories that you have? What was boot camp like for you? Watkins: well, the army is a wonderful place to be if you’ve been under a lot of pressure, because you don’t have to make any decisions. You don’t have to pick out a tie in the morning. You don’t have to figure out what you’re going to have for breakfast or when you’re going to have breakfast, or if you’re going to have breakfast (laughing). The army takes care of all the major decisions. Do you need to have a crap? Well, you have ten minutes here to do it in. It’s now or never. So it’s very (pause) a simple life, shall we say? I had a great drill sergeant, whose name was Churchill Graham. Churchill Graham was a great guy. He said, “Don’t ask, don’t ask about my feelings about the war. I’m a professional soldier and I go where they tell me to go.” And he didn’t want to hear any crap from anybody. He was an equal opportunity taskmaster. He was black, but he didn’t care if you were black or white or green or yellow, as long you could get down and give him 25 pushups when he needed it. He was a good role model, a good role model. 3 �Browning: Did you find the physical challenge of boot camp to be difficult for yourself? Watkins: At first, because I had been out of school—I’d played soccer in college, and I had been away from that for awhile—so I was out of shape. But I managed to quit smoking before I went in, so that was a help. But the army knows how to get you into shape very quickly. They are very effective at doing that. Browning: So when you finished your time at boot camp, where were you—what was your specialty, and where did you find yourself next? Watkins: well, I, because of I guess the needs of the army at the time that I enlisted, I ended up signing up to become a clerk. So they sent me to clerk school at Fort Jackson [Browning: in South Carolina?] in South Carolina. And they ran three schools there, as I recall. They ran the clerk school, and then they ran what they called spoon school, and that was to teach you how to do mass cooking for the military, and they also had pole-climbers school, which you trained you to climb up poles and fix communications lines. We all sort of trained together. I was… I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were going to save my life, because they taught me how to type. Basically, they taught me how to type by having a sergeant stand behind me and every time I made a mistake, he hit me in the back of the head. And so I got damn good and accurate and fast, real quick. So it was intensely boring. Browning: How did that save your life? I’m just curious. Watkins: Well, I’ll tell you a long story, Judkin, if I may. I got bored, and so I volunteered for flight school. I thought that I was going to be sent down to learn how to fly Hueys. So off I went to Fort Walters, Texas, where flight training took place. What I discovered was, (laughing) we weren’t going to learn how to fly Hueys. What we were going to learn how to do was to fly a little two-man bird called the Hughes—had a big, bubble top and a little boom on the back. And what you basically did was you, if you were a pilot, you flew real low and real slow with a guy who had a rifle, and you looked for people in foxholes. As romantic as the opportunity was, I thought, you know, I’m not going to do this, because that gave me a four-year commitment, and the deal at the time was—well, this is great. You go in, you graduate as a warrant officer, you do 12 months in Vietnam, and then they promote you to Lieutenant. Then you come back and you spend a year out, and then you go back and you do another year in Vietnam, and then you come back, if you come back, and you’re a Captain. I thought, well, you know, I’m not going to make this a career, I don’t care if I’m a Captain or fraptain. They tell you at that time, when you’re headed off to flight school—they say “look, you’re going to Vietnam, one way or the other. You’re going to fly in Vietnam or you’re not going to fly in Vietnam, but either way, you’re going to Vietnam.” So I thought, well, okay, you know, the hell with this, I’ll take my poison up 4 �front. So I dropped out, and of course I got orders to Vietnam as I knew I would. I expected that they would make me a door-gunner… Browning: on a helicopter? Watkins: On a helicopter, or I would be assigned to an Av Company in some regard. But, lo and behold, I stayed in Cam Ranh… Browning: That’s Cam Ranh Bay. Watkins: Cam Ranh Bay. What I discovered was—I did not know it—but I possessed at the time the most valuable skill that the army needed. I could type. Who knew? And so I ended up being a clerk with a Headquarters company there. Browning: Did you find yourself thanking that sergeant who beat you in the back of the head at Fort Jackson? Watkins: Yeah, it was good, you know, because quite frankly—you might want to turn the tape off—but you know, as far I knew, they could have sent me to Fire Base Fuck You in a heartbeat (laughter). But it was better to be at Cam Ranh. Browning: So when you were sent to Vietnam, do you remember when it was that you arrived in country? Watkins: It was sometime around Thanksgiving. Browning: of ’69? Watkins: Yeah. Browning: Did you serve twelve months? Watkins: Yeah. See, that’s a funny way to fight a war because, you know as soon as you get there, you are given a date—it’s called the DEROS date: Date Eligible to Return to the States I think is how the acronym works out. So let’s say you go on December the 25th, well you know on Dec. 24 the following year, you’re going to be out of there. So it doesn’t encourage you to take risks, I don’t think. Because, now we were housed next to a bunch of troops from the Republic of Korea, known colloquially as ROKs. They were very, very difficult people, and one of the reasons why they were thought to be very difficult people was because they were there until the war was won. Which means that every night the ROKs pounded the shit out of 5 �somebody all night long with artillery fire, and you know, I never had any bad experiences that would give me flashbacks, but when I came back I found that it took me months to go to sleep at night with quiet, because I was used to artillery fire all night long, and that took some time to go away. Browning: What were your duties primarily while you were at Cam Ranh Bay? Watkins: I filled out forms. Browning: You weren’t actually loading and unloading so much? Watkins: No, although I was with an outfit called the 124th Transportation Command, and if you’ve ever seen these big SEALAND vessels were container ships basically, sailing container ships, and we’d unload them primarily using local labor. The material would be divided up and we would send truck convoys all over the place in the central part of Vietnam, so you’d go to Pleiku and Buon Ma Thuot, and Nha Trang, all kinds of interesting places and we would send those things out with what were known as hard trucks. They were supposed to be armored vehicles, but we made them armored by putting sandbags in the bottom of the truck and screw a couple of M-60s on the side, and that’s your protection. Browning: As part of your time in Vietnam, did you ever visit other parts of the countryside? Did you ever make your way to Saigon, for instance, or any other places besides Cam Ranh? Watkins: (pause) I never actually went to Saigon proper. I went a couple of times to Tan Son Nhut Air base, to the international terminal, where… because I took a leave back in the states, and you end up back there on your way out. Never saw Saigon. I went on… we used to call these things Civic Action Missions, where you go out and theoretically help the populace, and so I did some of those and I realized that my captain wasn’t reading the intelligence reports before we left, and at one point we had a MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] advisor who showed up and said basically, “what in the hell are you people doing out here?” Browning: This is a hot zone? Watkins: Yeah, I mean, you know, here we are wandering around in a convoy of jeeps. Browning: Now did you ever experience any combat or engage in a firefight, or witness one taking place? Watkins: No, no. I have no war stories. The only problems that we had really involved rockets. I don’t like rockets. And Charley would try to hit the SEALAND ships by setting up 6 �these rockets and try to nail the ships. The only problem was they didn’t have a guidance system, and so sometimes the rockets would end up in odd places, like my company compound, for example. I thought for God’s sake, you know, we’re the most industrialized country in the world, can’t we give these people a guidance system so they wouldn’t kill us accidentally. And every now and then sappers would come in and they’d blow the place up. But other than that. Browning: It makes me think, Cam Ranh Bay makes me think of the scene in “Forrest Gump” when he first arrives in Vietnam. Have you seen that movie? Watkins: You know, I did see Forrest Gump. Browning: and he first arrives in Vietnam, and they’re playing the Credence Clearwater Revival song, “Fortunate Son,” and Forrest Gump’s narration says when I first got to Vietnam the thing that I was surprised about was, something to the effect of the amount of beer, because they’re having a big barbecue when they first arrive in country. I didn’t know if that movie or any Vietnam war movie that you’ve seen if you thought that these people are getting it wrong, or that’s somewhat similar to what I remember over there. Watkins: You know, except for “Forrest Gump,” which I don’t think is really Vietnam. Browning: No, it just has a scene. Watkins: I have deliberately never watched Vietnam films. I think I’ve seen snippets from two. I remember seeing the river scene from… what was that film taken from Heart of Darkness? Browning: “Apocalypse Now.” Watkins: “Apocalypse Now.” Some very dark and weird scene. Browning: So you’ve never seen the Robert Duvall Air Cav scene? Watkins: No. Browning: The classic scene of that movie. Watkins: No. But the other scene I saw was, I think it was “Platoon,” and I came upon this accidentally. But whoever the main characters were, I think there were three of them. You and I may have had this discussion before—but they’re all standing around having a chat while somebody is burning shit in the background. And, I’m a guy of fastidious manners, and I like privacy, and there is no privacy, certainly in the war. And so you discovered that if you needed 7 �to have a bowel movement, there was a place to do that, a small building euphemistically called “the shitter.” And it consisted of about a board with maybe 8 holes in it, and underneath the holes were half of 50-gallong oil drums and that’s where the waste material went, and every morning, a Papa-san, an older Vietnamese gentleman would come by and put a handkerchief around his face, like he was holding up a grocery store, and he would take gasoline and he would pull out all those drums with a stick and he’d pour gasoline in those drums and then he’d light them all on fire. And, you can imagine the worst thing that you’ve ever smelled in your life and multiply that by a factor of 100 and you’re not even close to what that stuff smells like. You don’t want to be anywhere close to that. and the fact that these three guys are standing there talking in the middle of this is so absurd. When Papa-san or anybody else would go on holiday for Tet, that meant somebody else had to do that. and the person that had to do it was the last guy who’d shown up in the company, and we used to outfit that guy, whoever it was, in what amounted to a 1969 HAZMAT suit, you know with a gas mask on and everything else, and they’d still be half dead. It was just a very unpleasant experience. I don’t like to watch Vietnam movies, but that one fascinated me just to watch that scene, because who’s the director of that? Browning: Oliver Stone. Watkins: Oliver Stone. He’s supposed to be a big Vietnam vet. Browning: He had served a tour over there. Watkins: So he says. Well, I don’t know how anybody who ever served a tour in Vietnam (laughing) would have been able to do that scene. Because anybody who’s ever been near that would understand how absurd that is. Browning: Now I remember that you mentioned to me before that—I had asked you earlier, off the record—about the climate in Vietnam. I wonder if you could remark on that again. What you encountered when you got off the plane, and a lot of people are “Oh my god!” Watkins: Well, it was hot, it was real hot. But the climate to me was just like Delaware. It just had a more garbage-y smell than Delaware. The funny thing is, speaking of movies, because you land at Cam Ranh on a jet, at the time I was there they flew Flying Tigers, and so they didn’t want the jet to be on the tarmac for very long because you start to attract mortar fire, so you go off the plane and another group of guys gets on the plane. It’s a very surreal experience, because you’re getting off and you’re in your jungle togs, and they’re just fresh from the factory, everything’s clean. And the guys who are getting on the airplane. They looked like they’d been through hell, I mean, their clothers are all ripped and all that. and there was a guy in front of me, getting off the plane—and the lines pass, you know, you can talk to each other—and he looks over at this guy getting on the plane, and he’s obviously very nervous and he said, “how was it, 8 �man?” (laughing) and the guy looks at him and he says—I’ll never forget this—he said, “It was the worst movie I was ever in,” (laughter) and he kept on going. And I thought, well, there you go. And that really kind of describes the situation. You know, it’s why everybody talks about “when I go back to the world,” or “when I get back in the real world,” and at first that doesn’t make any sense, but after a while it does. Browning: and did you find that while you were in country in Vietnam—obviously Vietnam is much talked about in the years following the war and in the years of the war—did you when you were in country, did you find you and your comrades discussing the war in any way, greater mission, why are we here? Or were you just counting down the days until you. Watkins: No. Browning: Not many philosophers in the organization? Watkins: No. Not too many people want to (pause) discuss the philosophical aspects of things. You know what your day is, and you want to be around for that day. That’s the only thing. Browning: So your day came around Thanksgiving of 1970? Watkins: Yeah. As I recall, and this may be incorrect, but I remember having Thanksgiving dinner twice that year, because we were flying back. But I couldn’t get on the first flight, and I remember I was standing there, and I had given away all my other sets of jungle fatigues that I had. I had only had one pair of boots for about 4 months. They wouldn’t give you any more, and one of mine had fallen apart. I’m standing there and it’s raining like hell, and I missed the flight, couldn’t get on it, gotta wait for the next one. “What’s that God-awful smell? Did somebody dump their garbage or something?” And then I realized it was me. I was out there and I just smelled like an old wet dog. And I wanted to keep that set of fatigues, you know, as a souvenir and the boots, and finally I threw them in a trash barrel, and I put on a pair of Class A khakis that I had. You know, it’s hard to stay clean, and it does accumulate. Browning: When you returned to the States, what consisted of your remaining service once you got back? Watkins: Well, I had orders to go to an MP company in Fort Belvoir outside of Washington. But clerks and Spec 4s, they always know what’s going on in the army, and it became known that good duty could be had in what were called AFES stations, these were induction stations. If you could get assigned to an induction station, you weren’t on a military base, and you lived basically a civilian life, except for the time that you spent at the station. They get you an apartment and this sort of thing, and I was getting married anyway, and so I had orders to AFES 9 �station in Charlotte, NC. So I had somewhere around a year left, so I gave mental tests to people who didn’t always want to take them. Browning: Did you also have to judge the tests, or judge the results? Watkins: Yeah, we would score the tests. And it was really great training because you learn how to add up really long columns of numbers in your head to save time. You score these things real quickly. At the time it was the AFQT, the Armed Forces Qualification Test, and then another test called the AQB, Army Qualification Battery, I think, and so you’d be done at 12 or 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you could go off and do whatever you wanted to do. Browning: So you said you were getting married anyway, were you engaged while you were in Vietnam? Watkins: Yeah, I was. Browning: Communication was almost exclusively letters? Watkins: Yeah, entirely letters. The idea of making a phone call was—you were in another world. Browning: How often did you have correspondence with your future wife? Watkins: I did not have correspondence with that woman, my wife [Dr. Watkins is again joking] Browning: (laughing) I’m sorry I should have phrased it differently. Watkins: I don’t really remember. We’d get mail once or twice a week maybe. Sometimes there’d be a letter, sometimes there wouldn’t. Just depended. Sometimes you get a bunch of them at one time. Browning: When were you officially decommissioned, if you will, from the army? Watkins: I got an early out, to go back to school, sometime in ’73, I guess. I don’t remember actually. Browning: Was it a four year commitment that you had? Watkins: It was three year commitment. So I went in last ’69… 10 �Browning: Somewhere in late ’72 or early ’73? Watkins: Yeah, something like that. Browning: And so you said you went back to Mars Hill College? Watkins: I did, I went back to Mars Hill. Browning: And finished your Bachelor’s [degree]? Watkins: Yeah. Browning: And from there? Watkins: I came to Appalachian for about nine months, because at the time I was interested in going to law school, and no law school would take me. I was being turned down by night law schools that largely took cops, you know, that wanted to get out of “copdom.” A friend of mine said… and secondly, although I am usually—I probably shouldn’t admit this—I am usually amazingly adept at taking standardized tests. I am really good at it. Well, I couldn’t score high on the LSAT to save my life. All the answers looked right. (Laughter) And having given mental tests, you know I was very adept at testing strategy. So I knew how to maximize the score by, essentially by manipulating how I answered the questions. Well, it was absolutely not helpful whatsoever, and I thought, well, you know, I don’t think I’m stupid, but I need 200 more points on this thing. So a friend of mine said look, you need to go to Appalachian, said they’ll take anybody, and then you know you can use that transcript for grades. And amazingly, while I was here I took a course in constitutional law from a guy in Political Science who had both a Law degree and a Ph.D., and that’s how I learned how case law was built, and I realized how you actually made the determination on the LSAT, but I was interested in museum work also, and I had a chance to go to Delaware, so away I went. That was the end of law school. Browning: So you acquired your Ph.D. at Delaware? Watkins: Yeah. Browning: What year was that? Watkins: ’82. Browning: And then soon after that you wound up back here. 11 �Watkins: Well, yeah, I mean I had worked for a couple of years. When I left Delaware, I got a job as a museum director in Pennsylvania. I had the dissertation completed, researched, and everything written but two chapters, so I left in 1980. And it took me two years to write those last two chapters, because the work was pretty intense. So that worked out well. Browning: Obviously, you’re at Appalachian now. What year were you formally hired here? What year did you join? Watkins: I came in 1984. Browning: And been here ever since? Watkins: Yep. Browning: I guess the final question I should ask you, being an oral history interview for a military veteran, is: when you look back on your military experience, do you see any… what value do you see? Life lessons or anything that it taught you? What of intrinsic value would you say your service gave to you? Watkins: Well, Judkin, I can honestly say to you that I hated every goddamn day that I served in the U.S. Army. I got up every morning and I said, “I hate this fucking army.” I’m insuring that you will never be able to play this tape. Browning: You are not insuring that. Watkins: But the army… I was a snotty, superior kid. And being a private in the army was the greatest experience that I could have, because it threw me in with people I never would have been involved with. And it taught me that except for a very few number of morons at the bottom, and a few Mensa people at the top, the difference in intelligence between our smart people and our dumb people—it ain’t that much. So, when I think of William Buckley’s great quote, that he’d rather be governed by the first 20 or 50 or 100 people in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty… I don’t know if he understood exactly what he meant, but I understood what he meant, and that is, if you have to rely on the average intelligence of the American public, you’re going to be okay. Because there’s not much difference between whether they got a high school diploma or a doctorate—they’re about the same. And that was a real good experience for me to have. You learn how to get along with people who sometimes, you know, don’t want to get along. Then the army ruins you in a certain other way. If you need sympathy, or you need coddling, or you need psychological assistance, the army would not be the place to look for that. The army doesn’t care if you don’t feel well today. They don’t care if your knee hurts. They 12 �don’t care if your nose is running. They don’t care if somebody has just shot at you with an M60. They just want to know a simple question: did you accomplish the mission or didn’t you? And so that becomes the deal. They teach you to get the job done. No moaning, just get it done. Nobody wants to hear the grisly details. And so that’s good to know, and frankly, I probably would never have gone back to college without the GI Bill. It enabled me to have time to do what I wanted to do without the need to get a job right away. So I got a lot out of that as a result. So it’s a good thing. Sometimes…. I remember one night…. I’ll tell you a war story here, but anyway. We seemed to be being blown up, and I was dropped on a hill with an M-60 machine gun, a tripod, and a box of ammo. And it was pitch black out. And I was gonna defend the hill. Hoorah. It was just one problem. I had never fired an M-60 machine gun, and I had never loaded an M-60 machine gun, and so after about half an hour of trying to figure out how to put a belt in the damn thing, I just sat there next to the gun and waited to see what would happen. But you know they give you a lot of leeway for experimenting. You done? Browning: Well, Chuck, I thank you very much for the time you took to tape this interview. It’s been very enlightening, informative, and entertaining. Thank you very much. Watkins: I do my best. THE END 13 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/adda78b91181f55ebcd43c34c25d63a3.mp3 c8f984fb1ba2e1935de0a077ae2c8f41 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Watkins, Charles Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Browning, Judkin Interview Date 4/28/2011 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:42:34 File name 2013_063_Watkins_Charles_interview 2013_063_Watkins_Charles_transcript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Charles Watkins, 28 April 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Browning, Judkin Watkins, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 13 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Subject The topic of the resource Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Veterans Watkins, Charles United States Interviews Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Charles Watkins talks about his service as a typist in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. He spent a year overseas, and finished his 3-year service contract conducting mental health tests in the US. 1969 AFQT Appalachian Cam Ranh Bay Charles Watkins Churchill Graham deferment Fort Bragg Fort Jackson Mars Hill private typist Vietnam https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/bd39b2c2eed0d6f65ab1dceff2e63593.pdf e879ac8eec16009713fb203f09497efa PDF Text Text Rob Helton: It is October 12th, 2012. Mr. Thomas: Uh huh. Rob Helton: I’m interviewing Mr. Gene Thomas, and we are in Mr. Thomas’ home in Pyatte, North Carolina. I am Rob Helton, a student at Appalachian State University, and this interview is being conducted as part of Dr. Judkin Browning’s American Military History Course for the Appalachian State Library, and we will begin the Oral History now. Mr. Thomas, When and where were you born? Mr. Thomas: I was born in Michaelsville in Yancey County. Rob Helton: Yes sir, what year was that, or what is your birthday? Mr. Thomas: 28 Rob Helton: Of…? What year? Mr. Thomas: …September the 19th, 1928. Rob Helton: And where were you raised? Mr. Thomas: I was raised in Avery County. Rob Helton: What did… What did your family do? Mr. Thomas: Well, my Dad was an engineer, and… he worked for Russ engineering company and retired there. They sent him all over, everywhere. Put in steel mills, paper mills, and all that stuff. And all he done was read the blueprints and tell them what to do. He had a big 554 acre farm in Highland County, prettiest place, it’s up in Virginia, but I came down here and stayed with my people most of the time. I’d go up and stay for maybe a week or two with him. My mother died, and he married another woman up there, she had a big farm, 220 acres of land, and one of these big colonial homes. And Dad had a new ranch type home built there. And, there was three of us children. I had a sister that’s older than me and a brother that’s four years younger than me, and he went in the Navy. And my sister lives in Morganton, out there like you’re going out 64, out there a ways on the left. Nice place, but she’s, she’s had so many strokes and she has to go with a walker, won’t let her drive her car no more. And her daughter’s living with her. Rob Helton: So when and why did you join the Army? �Mr. Thomas: I’d just a, I’d never seen the ocean or anything before, up in these hills, and… and I’d… Radio was all we had had back then, no televisions or… And I just wanted to do something for my country. Rob Helton: So where did you go to enlist? Mr. Thomas: I… They was a guy come through had… he, they was a, he’d… asked us a lot of questions and then he put us on a bus in Marion and sent us to Ft. Bragg, and I wanted to, they had things up all over Ft. Bragg there. ‘Join the Airborne, $50 extra a month for jump pay’ long as your on jump status. Well that’s what I wanted, and I wanted to jump. (laughs) That’s all I thought about, jumping out of an airplane. Rob Helton: And… I think you mentioned earlier but, you had an early childhood desire to jump? Mr. Thomas: Yeah Rob Helton: Would you mind telling that story again? Mr. Thomas: My mother told me about going to the county fair, and seeing this man go up in a balloon. And I said, well how did he get out of it? She said, he parachuted. Well I said, what’s a parachute. She said, you come down like a big umbrella you know. I ruined every umbrella she had! We had this big barn and a big chicken house and I’d jump off of that chicken house. (Rob laughs) And I just wanted to do that so bad, I thought what a thrill that would be, come floating down. But it wasn’t so good when they were shooting at you, you know that?. (Rob laughs) Rob Helton: Yes, sir. So what, when… do you remember the… your enlistment date? Mr. Thomas: Yeah. The 8th day of… I was sworn in the eighth day of February, 1944. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: At Ft. Bragg, and then they sent me from there to Ft. Jackson to take Basic Training. And it didn’t last long, then they shipped me on to Ft. Benning, Georgia, which is down there right out of Columbus, Georgia you know. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: Across the river from Alabama, the Chatahoochee River runs down there. And before we ever jumped out of an airplane, they’d put a harness on us and we’d slide down this cable, and that’s how we learned how to land, you know. Do a PLF and all that. And then they had them 250 foot towers, they’d pull us up in them, but the chute was already inflated. Had four big arms that was out, and… The Sergeant on the ground, he’d say ‘pull it to the left, pull it to the right.’ Before we �ever jumped out of an airplane we went through all of that. And then we started jumping out of them old C 47s. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: And that was a thrill, I tell you, that was a thrill. And I loved it! And then they took us in the rigging tent, where they rigged the chutes on these big long tables. And we, you could hear a pin drop buddy, we thought we was gonna jump with the chute that we… rigged you know? But we didn’t. They had riggers that was good. And they had come out with that old C5 chute, which wasn’t worth a hoot. It didn’t have no panels out, and they was hard to maneuver you know. And then the next chute I jumped was a T7 chute, which had one panel out, and you could maneuver it pretty good you know. And then they got that T10 chute, and boy that was a dandy! And I just loved it. Rob Helton: And so after jump school, you were assigned to the 101st Airborne? Mr. Thomas: 101st. Rob Helton: Do you remember which Regiment and Company? Mr. Thomas: Yes, sir. I was in the 506th Parachute Regiment, 3rd Battalion, A Company. And my commanding officer in Europe was from Lexington, North Carolina. Colonel Robert Sinks, he was a full bird Colonel. And I thought the world of him, and then we had a Captain, he was from Pennsylvania. Richard Winters, you may have read something about him. Rob Helton: (humorous) Yes, sir. I believe I’ve heard of him. Mr. Thomas: He was one fine man. That man, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t cuss. But he was a leader, that man… I’d have followed him through hell, well I did! (Both laugh) But he died along back, I kept telling Georgia (Mrs. Thomas) I said we need to go up to Hershey, Pennsylvania and see my buddy. He was a Captain when, well he was a First Lieutenant then he made Captain. And he was just such a good leader, that man was a leader, and he didn’t mind killing. Cause we had a job to do. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: And buddy he was right with us, all the way. When we jumped in France, St. Mere Eglise, France. I had a friend from, well he was originally from Alabama, but they lived in Winedot, Michigan. Went up there, his people did, to work in the factories you know. Building Jeeps, tanks and… And Donald Barragut was his name, and that, and he got wounded three times. And he was another fine guy, buddy. He was 19 and I was 16. And, we trained a lot after we got to England. We trained in England, then we went up in Scotland and trained some, and then �back to England. And then… D Day was coming up, that was the 6th day of June, 1944, and they had rushed us through everything. They needed us bad, and me just a kid. And I had some good men that was older than me, they was a lot of help to me. And we jumped, come down behind the German lines. St. Mere Iglis, at night. It was just a little after midnight when we jumped, and then that was D Day, that’s when they was gonna land at Normandy you know, and all them beaches up through there. And… we fought up there, and… they was… right out of St. Mere Iglis, there was swampy country and the Germans had filled it, flooded it with water and a lot of the guys drowned in it. We come down right in St. Mere Iglis, and… they issued us these little snapper bugs. You click it once and then you hear two clicks and you knew it was your buddy, some of them in your company or platoon. And we fought there, and fought through them hedgegrows a long time up through there. And then they pulled us back to England. Newbury, England. And… we’d fall out and thought we wasn’t going when the weather was bad, and rainy and windy. And finally one day Eisenhower, I’ve got pictures of that, where he give us a pep talk, and wished us the best. And see, he was a… MacAuthur had the say so, not MacAuthur, but Eisenhower had the say so what to do. And after that, after they pulled us back to England we trained some more, and then… September 17th, it was on a Sunday, and, we pulled a glider behind us till we got to the drop zone, and cut him loose. And the German’s was shooting at us, you could here them bullets go ‘pew, pew, pew’ through the chutes! And I got it on the ground and I come down right on the edge of a little cornfield and I was getting out of my chute and I heard them cornstalks a rattling. Well here come a German soldier. And I’d just got out of my chute, and I had a carbine rifle, and… I whirled around, and there he was. He was ready to lay it on me buddy, and I whirled around and I shot him. Shot his helmet off, and the bullet went through his head, and he had on glasses. I’ll never forget him, that’s the first one I killed in Holland. Had to kill. And… after that it didn’t bother me. They had told us that, don’t think of them as a person… think of them as an object, and if you don’t get that object, he’s gonna get you. It didn’t bother me no more after that. And… we fought there in Holland, there at Mannehoven, Hell’s Highway they called it up through there. And after that they pulled us back Camp Mourmalande, France. And then on… 16th of December they loaded us up by trucks, had all coloured drivers, the Redball Express they called theirselves. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: And they hauled us from there, they wouldn’t go all the way into Bastogne, we had to walk in with snow up to our knees. And that first night we slept out in the field, and then we went on in and set up a perimeter around Bastogne. And then we fought there… and… my foxhole was here and then went on up out to the end. One night there was a jeep come up there, had a driver and a Second Lieutenant in it. And buddy I jumped out of my foxhole cause a lot of them Germans was wearing our uniforms. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. �Mr. Thomas: And I made him advance and be recognized and give me the password for that day, and they did. I run him through the mill. And my mother had sent me a carton of chewing gum for Christmas, and I was chomping on that stuff! And he said soldier what have you got in your mouth? I said some chewing gum that my mother sent me. He said spit it out! I said is that an order or a request? He said that is an order! Said the Germans can hear you a chewing that chewing gum. (Rob laughs) I said they must have pretty damn good ears. (Both laugh) He got back in his jeep and he left. And we fought up there, it was awful, terrible. Ten below zero, and in that Ardennes forest you know, out of Bastogne. And then we went on up to Norville, little town right out of Bastogne. We fought up there, I, we didn’t have no food, we run out of food and about out of ammunition. And, them Germans boy, they was, they was good fighters, I can say that. So, I seen this barn and a house way over here out of Norville. And I told my buddies, I said I bet you they got some eggs over there. And I said, I found out what the password was gonna be, and nobody else would go, we was starved! So I left right before dark, and went around through the woods and circled back down, there at Norville. And… I went to this barn and went in the barn and there was a big German police dog in there. And he run me up the steps up into the hayloft, and it had a gate there and I slammed that gate to. And his teeth looked that long buddy! (Indicates length of forefinger) (Rob laughs) And I was afraid to shoot him you know, didn’t whether they was Germans there or what. But finally a girl come out of the house and, with two milk pails. Was gonna milk the cows and… she… wanted to know if I could do that you know. (Indicates milking a cow) They spoke French and that was all. And I did, and I hadn’t had a bath in I don’t know when, and took me in their house, nobody there but her and her mother. And her Daddy was a doctor and he was in Brussels. And her and her mother was running the farm. And I got to take a good bath, and they fed me, and I kept showing them what an egg was. And they, they knew what I meant, and they had some of that five star cognac, they give me some of that, took me in this bedroom and I slept under a duck down comforter, and I set my rifle right there and slept with my forty five pistol right here where I could get it. (Indicates across his chest) And I looked, and I said get me up before it gets daylight. And they filled me up a thing kind of like a flour sack with eggs, and I went back up and circled around through the woods and come back up to where our perimeter was. And I got halted, and they could have court marshaled me for that. And… but my buddies covered up for me, and we had these little gas stoves about that high and about that big around. So we scooped snow up in our steel helmets and boiled them eggs! (Both laugh) Over that little thing there were it had our helmet over it. And the next day this officer came up there and he said where in the h e double l did all these eggshells come from! And one of them said I think old Thomas found a hens nest! (Both laugh) Covered up for me buddy! But we had eggshells everywhere, or we’d have starved to death. Well, it did let up a little bit and they dropped us some food and ammunition, medical supplies and stuff, and the Germans beat us to it. They got it, and we went for days and days… And first warm food I remember we ever had was an old corn meal mash, they’d cooked up. And buddy I thought that was the best tasting stuff I ever tasted in my life, cause we was hungry. And we fought up there for a long time and then this… Maxwell Taylor was my Division commander at that �time, but they had sent him back to the states. And General Anthony C. McClauliffe was a two start general and he went with us to Bastogne. And one day these, this German motorcycle come in with a, waving a white flag and an enlisted man and an officer. And wanted to talk to our commanding officer. And I could speak pretty good German, and we blindfolded them and took them into Bastogne, where General McClauliffe was. And, he told them, said we got you surrounded we want you to surrender, and he said Nuts you damn Krauts, said we’re just beginning to fight. (Both laugh) And they couldn’t figure out what that was! He went back to their outfit and told them what McClauliffe said, they couldn’t figure that out, nuts what that meant. Meant for them to go to hell, we, we just wasn’t going to give up. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: And we made it through that, lost a lot of buddies. After that they pulled us back into southern Germany. South of Munich, and… sent us to, down to Landsberg where that concentration camp was. Landsberg. And we liberated them people, that was the most sickening thing I’ve ever seen in my life. They had these big barrels there of false teeth that had gold in them, and they’d… take their teeth out and pile them in them. And then they’d put people in these gas chambers, women and children, they thought they was gonna get to take a bath, and they’d turn the gas loose on them, killed them in there. And then they’d put them in these furnaces and things and… cook them. And that place stunk so, they finally gave us some things to go over our nose and mouth, to keep that smell down. And them poor people was eat up with body lice, and they come holding their arms out wanting to hug us, we’d just have to back away from them. I was so sorry for them, they were Jews, Polish, Czechs, different nationalities they had there in that concentration camp. And… we killed the Germans out around the perimeter, you know, where they had that. And this… they was a building right across from us and, ‘ka ping ka ping’ they was shooting at us, and I spotted him in an upstairs window and I blowed him all to pieces. I was, at that time I was a 60 millimeter mortarman. And we come back in to Germany and… there was a river that run down through here. My buddies was down here dug in right beside the river, and I was shooting over their heads at them Germans that morning. And I had to move it I don’t how many times, me and the other guy did, took two men. And I was a feeding that mortar so fast that throwed one in and one was coming out! And that one coming down hit that last one I’d thrown in and it went ‘zup zup.’ I’ve got books that’d tell you the whole story. And it went down, they heard it coming, making a yodeling noise. But it hit in the water, didn’t hit them. And this guy, Donald Barrugut wrote this book… Said ole Gene, old Thomas come closer to killing us than the Germans did. Well I finally got zeroed in on them over there across the river, and I knocked them German guns out, and got a Bronze Star for that. And… then we went on in to Austria, cleaned the Germans out of there. We first went into Salzburg, and then on up to… what was the name of that little old place… And we fought up there, then they brought us back to, into Germany to Berchetesgarten for a rest, you know. And we seen this boxcar setting on the side track. And had big cables, it, it was sealed, sealed up. The car was, the railroad car. Some of the guys got some big cutters and �hacksaws and we cut that seal off of that box car. And it was loaded with gold bricks, all in that thing. And we was studying about how could we get to Switzerland, or bury it and come back after the war. (Rob laughs) And he made us quit, Colonel Sinks did, said that don’t belong to you. And they was some salt mines there, and old Goering, he had all kind of stuff in them salt mines. Pictures and everything, that they’d took off of the Polish and all them. And we was wondering how we could get that to Switzerland, or digged up. And then… we went back into where we was at in Berchetesgarten and… then Roosevelt died. He was in Warm Springs, Georgia, you know. I seen guys break down and cry about it but… He, he was a good President, I was, I mean, I was raised a Republican, you know, and he was a Democrat, but I’d have voted for him again if he’d of run, you know. It didn’t make no diference, I just voted for the ones I thought done the best job, in the Presidential elections, been that way ever since. But, they fell us out one morning there, this was in 1945, and they fell all the NCO’s out one morning and we didn’t know what they was gonna do with us. They finally told us to, we gonna send you to Breruth (?) and take constabulary training to guard those war criminals in Nuremburg. And they sent us down there, and we… had a big long haul getting down to the prison. And each one had a war criminal to watch after, kept a light a burning 24 hours a day. And then we had to record, had a clipboard there, every hour I looked in their cell, whether he was sleeping, or reading, or standing, or whatever. And then we had to go to the courtroom, and… I never seen so many lawyers in, in my life there. And they give them different sentences, on… what they had done you know, war criminals. And they hung ten, I watched that, there in the gymnasium. And… after that I was wanting to get out of Nuremburg. I’ve been there where Hitler, I’ve stood right where he made his speeches there at Soldier’s Field. And after that, I got to come home, I come home and stayed out 28 days. If I’d stayed out over 30 I’d have lost my rank. And I reenlisted. Put me on a bus at Spruce Pine and took me to Greenville, SC. Airbase down there. And I was sworn in again, and then from there I went to, over in the Pacific. I was in the… Marianas Islands, and then I was in… oh what was the name of that bunch of islands… oh anyway it was Kwajalein and Naniwetaw (?) and all them there. And then I come back to the States, and then the Korean War broke out. And I was at Ft. Lewis, Washington, and I was at Camp Carson too. Then up to Ft. Lewis. And they sent us to Japan, I mean we went to Kobe, Japan. And… then they fell us out and put us on a train to sent us all the way down to Sassibo (?), Japan. And we sailed from Sassibo to Pusan, Korea. And then we fought all the way up, all the way up to the Yalu River. And we come back down, the Chinese, we fought the Chinese there, and then at Koon Ri they come over on us again, and was about to over run us, the Chinese was. And they said it’s every man for himself, and there was an old weapons carrier sitting there, and they was a Turkish Brigade a fighting on our left down below us. And the British on the right. And we put that thing up on that railroad track, a bunch of us, about 5 got in it, and bump bump bump going down through there to where this Turkish Brigade was. We fought there, and then I finally got back with my outfit, I was in the 38th Regimental Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Then I got hit, we’d took this hill, and they overrun us there. And the next time we went back up I got hit. And they flew me from there to right out of Tokyo, to a hospital. And kept me there a long �time, and then finally flew me on to Walter Reed, and I had the awfulest seizures from that nick I got here in my head. Seizures, seizures, and they kept me there a long time. I didn’t want to come out… And they put me out, said I wasn’t fit you know, to… to… fight. And… stayed there a long time. I got to come home, and… I had the old women, they come and hugged me and told me son, we’ve prayed a many a night that God would bring you home. And I believe they did, and I made it home. And that wound up my military career. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Do you mind if I ask a couple of follow up questions? About… (Mr. Thomas shook head.) Rob Helton: Do you… Do you remember how much you were paid a month when you went and joined the Army? Mr. Thomas: It was about twenty seven dollars a month, I believe. Rob Helton: And then you got jump pay on top of that? Mr. Thomas: Yeah, fifty dollars as long as you was on jump status. Rob Helton: Was that… was that comparable to anything that you could have made in the States? Mr. Thomas: Well back then things was cheap, back in the early ‘40s and ‘50s. But I don’t’ regret it a bit, I’d go back tomorrow if they’d take me. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. When you, when you jumped into Normandy and Holland do remember what your jump kit consisted of? Mr. Thomas: What? Rob Helton: Your jump kit, your weapon and equipment? Mr. Thomas: Well, I jumped with a carbine rifle and a forty five pistol. But I was a mortarman, and I’d took training you know, to operate a mortar. And I got pretty good with that mortar buddy, I tell you. Till throwed that one in, that one was a coming out and it liked to killed my buddies. (Laughs) And I really liked to fire that thing, drop it in, bloop, shew. But it was something. But when I was in Korea I just had a rifle, I’ve fired a M1 rifle and a carbine till the whole side of my face would be blue. Them little Chinese was tough, I can say that. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Before the Korean War broke out, did you know where Korea was, or know anything about it? Mr. Thomas: Never heard tell of it. �Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Now when you… when you got into Korea do you remember what the, the date or the month? Mr. Thomas: It broke out in 1950 and we got there… it was… what… in July, first of July when we got there. And buddy it was rough, I tell you. Rob Helton: And, so you were there during the winter. Mr. Thomas: Yeah Rob Helton: Do you have memories that stand out from the winter fighting? Mr. Thomas: Yeah, I remember this old boy from Austin, Texas. They’d had a bunker there and we got in this bunker, it was cold. God it was cold. The moon was shining bright that night. We had trip flares set up down here at the foot of the hill, and… and if the gooks would come across then they’d hit that trip wire and just light up everything, you know. And my buddy, I kept hearing something a grinding and a chopping and he, he was in sleeping bag laying right behind me, and I was watching down there, which way we thought they was going to come in. And I kept hearing that noise, finally it got daylight and he says, he had false teeth. He’d pulled them out and laid them on a rock. And that rat had chewed his teeth! (Both laugh) Plum in two! That’s what I could hear, cause I knew if they come in down there they’d trip them trip flares. And his teeth just fell apart, his upper plate. And froze, and hungry, that, that was rough. We went hungry too during the Bulge, eat K rations whenever we could get them. But it was a rough go, I don’t want to go back to Korea. I’d love to go back to Germany and all them places where we fought, and Holland. Belgium. Austria. I thought Bavaria, down there in Southern Germany, was the prettiest country. It was pretty and… and different places, and then most towns was blowed all to pieces, you know. And… But they put us, after that they sent us to Bamberg, Germany. And it was time for me to come home, after the Nuremburg trials. And they sent me, we rode cattle cars from Bamberg, Germany to Laharre, France. And there we caught a ship, brought us back to the States. And, but I didn’t stay out but 28 days, you know, and back in there I went. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Before you got to the concentration camp, had you and the other soldiers, had you been told anything about concentration camps or ever been informed of… what was happening in those? Mr. Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah we knew what was a happening. And… that’s the most sickening thing, that I saw in the war, was them poor people. Lord, it was awful. And another thing, them SS troopers, I know you’ve heard of them. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. �Mr. Thomas: Up there at Malaby, Belgium. They took a whole bunch of our men that was prisoners of war, most of them was in the medical corps. Lined them up out in the field, snow on the ground, and had a German army truck here and they rolled the tarp up and they had a machine gun in there. Fifty caliber machine gun, and then they just started mowing them down, and they was two escaped, run through the woods and got away to tell the tale. Now this was back in Belgium. And I remember what McClauliffe told us, says don’t take no SS men prisoners. Says, you know what to do. We didn’t take no SS prisoners. We lowered the boom on them buddy. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: And a lot of them had our uniforms on, you know, behind our lines. Some spoke perfect English. They’d trained them when they was just young, and… Korea wound, wound me up though, I draw a little pension for getting hit. Rob Helton: Would you describe your wound from Korea? Mr. Thomas: Huh? Rob Helton: Would you describe how you were wounded in Korea? Mr. Thomas: Yeah. I’ve got a hernia right here that I’ve had that’s bothered me ever since. There was a pile of rocks there, and they was a shell hits them rocks and it throwed a rock and hit me right there. And then next I got shot threw the hand, and then when I got my head busted, that’s when they sent me to Japan. And then I wound up in Walter Reed. And… kept me up there a long time, I’d have them seizures, I’d be just like sailing through a tunnel or something. And I could see a light, and then they’d, they, they give me all kinds of medication for it. And I finally got to where I could think some, you know. And… And, it bothered me a lot. And they put me out. Rob Helton: So, obviously, it’s on the other side of the world, but how was the fighting in Korea different from Europe during the Second World War? Mr. Thomas: Well, it was different, because… you know just a regular German soldier, he was like us, he had to fight. And… I’ve… well it says thou shall not kill, but I killed a lot of people, but it was in uniform, you know. And, I used to have the awefulest nightmares in the world. And… I’d… come out of the bed, my wife couldn’t sleep for me, you know. And I’d dream the enemy was coming in on me, and my bullets just come to the end of the barrel and dropped down on the ground. And me a slugging it out with them with a bayonet. Now we had to do that, in World War Two, fix bayonets. And… I’ve, I’ve rammed them so hard I’d have to shoot my rifle to get my bayonet out of them. But, it bothered me, one of my buddies come to see me, he was from down in Hudson, below, there out of Lenoir. Thad Tungmire (?). And he come to see me, my wife told him about how I was having them nightmares. �And he talked to me, he said Thomas, I’m going to tell you one thing. He said, if you don’t start talking about that, and get it out of you, you’ll go plum crazy. And I was crazy enough! (Both laugh) Way it was. But, I survived. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. So after you got out of the Army, what did you do then? Mr. Thomas: Started trucking. Yeah I run… out to California, Oregon, Washington, into Vancouver, British Columbia. And up in Canada, and up to LaChute, Canada, which is right out of Montreal. And then… then I’d run up to Peterburg, Canada. And I had a contract to haul the stuff up there. And… then I come back and I just kept trucking. Made good money. I’d bring home a thousand dollars a week. And one week I’d put it in savings, and the next week I’d put it in checking. But buddy, I run out across them deserts and didn’t have no air conditions, no power steering back then. And all I wanted to do was drink water. And we had a, we had a Lister bag I’d hang on the front of my bumper, to keep the water cool, and we suffered, and I laid right with it till I retired. Drove 57 years. (Recorder almost falls) Rob Helton: Excuse me. Are you a member of any veteran’s organizations? Mr. Thomas: Yes, sir. I’m a lifetime member in the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars and I’m a lifetime member in the DAV, Disabled Veterans. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. And you’re also a member of the Honor Guard? Mr. Thomas: Yes, sir. I’m on the Honor Guard, been on it a long time. Well I’m the oldest man on the Honor Guard, I was there when they formed it in the VFW. And we’ve done a great job, we’ve went all the way to Charlotte, and down to South Carolina, burying veterans everywhere. And a lot of my buddies is dead, they’re gone, they’ve been dying lately here. We watched this DVD of one of my friends, last night. He died down at Johnson City at the VA Hospital. And Georgia and I’d go see him. And he fought in Italy, and war is hell, I can say that. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Have you participated in any reunions or other events? Mr. Thomas: …No. I had a chance to go to reunions, you know, of the 101st Airborne, but I never did go. Then I was invited to come to Bush’s Inaguaration, and stay in the Mayflower hotel, have livery, limousine service to the President’s ball and dinner. And all that. And… I just didn’t go. So, then the next, I got them in my car out there, they wrote old letters, they invited me to come and sit four days in the Senate circle to represent the state of North Carolina. (Both laugh) Rob Helton: Now you also spoke at Appalachian’s World War Two symposium this year? �Mr. Thomas: I did, I sure did. Mrs. Thomas: Oh that’s another thing, you remember that… Mr. Thomas: World War Two… Mrs. Thomas: Round table. Veteran’s Round Table. Mr. Thomas: Yeah, over in Boone. Mrs. Thomas: That round table over there. Mr. Thomas: Yeah, we have meetings every month. Mrs. Thomas: Been there since it started. Mr. Thomas: And… Had me on television. Georgia was with me when they had me on television. If we had time I’d like to show you all of that, but I don’t guess you’ve got time. Rob Helton: Well we’ll see sir. Is there anything else that you can think of that we’ve left out? Mr. Thomas: Well, I know I’ve, I’ve left something out… My brain don’t work like it used to. (Both laugh) But… I was out there to fight for my country, and I put my heart and soul into it. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Well sir, I’d like to thank you for conducting this interview and also thank you for your service. Mr. Thomas: Well I want to thank you too. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. Mr. Thomas: Proud of you. Rob Helton: Yes, sir. And this concludes the interview. Mr. Thomas: Alright. � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/900f1dd7e11266b1ebb82b9c9aef150b.mp3 cde09afffe5e012260f74c4ec939e30a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Thomas, Gene Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Helton, Rob Interview Date 10/12/2012 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:10:22 File name 2013_063_Thomas_Gene_interview 2013_063_Thomas_Gene_transcript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Gene Thomas, 12 October 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Helton, Rob Thomas, Gene Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 12 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Subject The topic of the resource World War, 1939-1945 Korean War, 1950-1953 Veterans Thomas, Gene Personal narratives, American United States Interviews Description An account of the resource Gene Thomas of Avery County gives his somewhat glorified account of his service in WWII and the Korean War. He fought all over Europe against the Germans, and preferred it to the Korean War. He was shot in the head in the Korean War and has been part of the DAV ever since. Avery County basic training C47 concentration camp DAV Fort Bragg France Gene Thomas Korean War mortar parachute regiment Roosevelt St. Mere Iglis WWII https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/5fa78b194eb186e0d7915d7ad08b4a56.pdf 24c4f4840dde6ba4c4f7bf0cd97d1c5f PDF Text Text Sterling Hardy IDS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Ok, First off who are you? Haston Gray Haymore Ok, and you are from Dobson? Yep, from Dobson We are doing this interview in his home in Dobson, North Carolina. Today is March 7th 2011. When were you born? January 3rd of 48'. Ok, ( ... )I am doing this interview as part of the United States Military History class under, Dr. Browning, Appalachian State University( ...) Ok, were you drafted or did you enlist? I was drafted. Ok, when were you drafted? It was 69', it was in April of 69' Ok. It was about twenty to twenty five drafted out of our county .every month. Ok, what branch of the service? Army. Army, Ok. Where did you do your basic training? Fort Bragg. What was that like? We'll it was not to pleasant, cause when you was drafted, you didn't want to be there, but, it was one of them things, it was on of those things, you know you had to do. Wasn't anything you �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 could do about it. We had to do it. And when we was drafted we went through the recruiting center in Charlotte. Right. I was drafted in the Army. We all or a big group of us sat in there, in chairs, in rows, sergeant came out said you, you, you, you four come on with me, you just joined the Marines. I was the fifth man. So I stayed in the Army. ( ... ) Now I know that Basic Training is pretty, pretty strenuous, is there anything that kind of sticks out to you about the training? Not, not really, they put you through each week with a different type training it was, I know the first few weeks they was alot, alot of running and exercising. Then, then things kind of backed off, then rifle range, different things like that, kind of backed of a little bit. Right. I pretty much know that the weather was insane .. The weather was hot in Sanford, Sanford was the hottest was always Fort Bragg, Fayetteville was always on the map was the hottest spot in North Carolina. Yeah. It was hot. ( ... ) How long were you in basic?( ... ) I think it was nine weeks. I know it kind of varies. Yeah, I think it was nine weeks.( ... ) Now once you completed basic where did they ... Once we completed basic we, I was sent to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, that's the outskirts of Washington, D.C. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Ok. I was, I got the, they call it aMOS, my job, the job was Generator Repairs. We stayed in Fort Belvoir for about, that school lasted, two months. Two to Three Months, Generator Repairs, showed us all how to operate generators, repair them. ( .. ) Then we was held over there, we all knowed we was going to Vietnam. But they was a few that didn't. But, we was all prepared for it and they held us there for, for probably two months deciding on when we was going to get, just a doing chores, duties just waiting on to get our orders to go. And, when did you get your orders fmally? Oh, I don't know, I don't know the dates of it, but, I know I was in the military from 69' into 70'. Then I got my orders to go, then the orders was for twelve months. Right You had to go for twelve months. ( ..) Yeah and I went to Benewah, Vietnam stayed there. And everything was going pretty good there and I had opportunity, now I was justa I was justa, in for two years( .. ) I just in for two years, And I had the opportunity to stay forty-four extra days, cause when you left Vietnam, you had five months or less left they wouldn 't send you anywhere else, they would just send you on home. So I was one of the few lucky ones. I stayed in the military for nineteen months. Just long enough .. Just long enough to get my, they would not I was there for five months they would not send me know where else. So I, I was lucky enough got extended over there for forty four days. Ok. Now what was the area in Vietnam like that you were in? I was on a Aviation unit. Like I said I was supposed to have been a generator operator. When you go over there, you do what they tell you to do. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Right. It didn't, that didn't mean nothing. I was from a we'll maybe operating a generator, refueling helicopters, and down to flying door gunners. You name it, we done it. You have a job title but, that don't mean nothing. Right. The United States Military basically says you know we need, so many guys for this and ... It don't make know difference what you was trained for you was there. Now that must have been pretty interesting being a chopper gunner what was that like? We'll you was setting a chopper from a hundred feet in the air to five thousand feet in the air. You had your legs swinging out behind a M-60. And it it it was it was interesting. I'm sure you did a variety of things but, what was the primary purpose? Our primary operate, was suppose to be operating a generator. But, really I did more refueling helicopters than anything else. Right. When you actually went up in the chopper what did you usually do, did you just patrol or support? We use thing what we did is carrying after they was a battles, things they would just go out and check. See what was, we was carrying the high ranking officers out. OhOk. The helicopters you got a pilot and copilot and a crew chief and door gunner. The crew chief and door gunner served the same purpose. The door gunner took care of when you came back in, door gunner took care of cleaning the weapons, make sure they had ammo. And the crew chief took care of the helicopter. The pilot, copilot they was gone, they was gone to the airconditioning. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Right. So we was left there to do the work and so actually the they was only four people on the helicopter. And we was carrying some of the high ranking officers out, couple of them. Doing like recon, post battle reports and everything. Yeah that was what we was doing. Just flying, Just flying, just checking, just checking on the just making reports on whats what was happening. Now, did you actually see any of the Viet-Cong or the North Vietnamese Army or ... Oh yeah, oh yeah everybody did oh yeah. Did you actually see combat with those troops? Not that much. We kinda stayed on the backside, we didn't see that much of it. Right.( ... ) Actually our unit what our unit done we took the Vietnamese soldiers out early in the morning let them do the combat then we'll go back and pick'em up. Thats actually what our job was. Right. What did you think ofthe South Vietnamese, did you think they were capable soldiers just like me or ... what? No, no, no, no, no no, they wundn't. They was smart people now, they was smart. They could take almost nothing and make things out of it. ( .. ) So .. We's throw away enough stuffthey can make they can make a, they can build anything out of it. Right. And, really, and I guess the reason the United States really wanted them to go was because you know it was their own backyard, they know the terrain ... We'll Vietnamese, North Vietnamese moved in took over the South Vietnamese just like the the Iraq moved in Kuwait. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Right. And thats what happened there we was moving the North Vietnamese back to the North.( .. ) Actually we was helping the South Vietnamese. Did you think that was a good purpose for you to be there? A waste of taxpayers money all the lives everybody, everybody will agree with me that it was a waste of taxpayers money. Now as a just a soldier did you think you know that you were doing good, doing a good service for the country or did you think ... No, no. We were not doing nothing for the United States we all was there cause we was told to be to go there. Right. Even your top ranking officers and everybody. We just had orders to go there. I suppose it was a big part of a fear of communism, expanding you know really the reason we were there, because the North Vietnamese were communist and they were backed by the Soviet Union and we did'nt want them to control South Vietnam, which was you know I guess democratic. We'll thats truth. When one, When one country starts taking over another country and start running it the way they want to thats true, thats why we was wanting to get the South Vietnamese back where they belong. Did the South Vietnamese people were they happy to see you there or.. Oh yeah, oh yeah they they was they was Where there, did you get alot of support from the civilians did ... Oh yeah, we did we did actually we had civilians help us on base, they come on base and help us �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Ok, well lets see, were there any interactions between you and the South Vietnamese that really stood out did you see them do something or anything that really jumps out in your memory. No, the South Vietnamese they was a, they was quiet and they was calm, they was no way like the American people. Right. They was no comparison, they's laid back. No hurry. Theysjust wundn't no way like them, you can't compare them to the United States. Right. We all theys alot of difference there. The South Vietnamese they was good people now, they wouldn't do anything to harm us. We'll thats good. ( ..)I know theres alot of Viet, soldiers that served in that war really complained about having to deal with the Viet-cong which, you know were civilians but they would really strike at US forces and South Vietnamese forces You were talk the Viet-cong that was more talking about the North Vietnamese. Right. What was hard now it was hard determining .. . Right. The North from South Cause they .. Thats where your hardest part is you didn't know they was a north you did know they was north you didn't know they was south. You had to be careful. Look the same, spoke them same language ... Look, look a thats right, same langauge all looked the same.( .. ) �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 So while you were there what was you know the food like? Were you we'll supplied, did you ... Oh yeah, the military, military they keep you supplied first class. We We, the food was right theys ok. That wasn't a problem. We'll that was good. Yeah Yeah, we was definitely we'll supplied now.( .. ) Did you get you know any leaves you know R and R at any point and time. Yeah a I went to a a Taipei, Taiwan for a week. Ok. That was a, I know you've seen alot of a stuff you by here made in Taiwan. Right. I was there for a week. Taiwan is a nice little country now. Ok. It was it was interesting. Where in Taiwan were you at? Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan. I'm not familiar with that country is that... I'm not either. Was that on the ... I was, I was there for a week Was that on the coast or.. It, It is on a coast. Yeah. So, spend alot of time at the beach? No, No, I actually never did see the beach. Actually where we was at was in the mountains. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Ok. Taipei, it was a little city called Taipei. We'll what did you do while you were there in the city? Party, what else everybody everybody done that. We'll we did alot of site seeing. They was alot to see in the mountains there and they had alot of lot a they had alot of tourist there, actually it was the military. And that was one a, when you go on they call it Rand R you had several places you could pick from. That was one of them. And they was setup for the American troops to come in and they had alot sight seeing. We'll thats good. We'll what did you do to you know keep in touch with your family back here? Wrote letters, I tried to write at least every other day. Right. And I'm sure that they wrote often as well. Oh yeah, oh yeah, they, family was we'll supportive and we write when we would write home, we'd take the envelope just write up in the the a right-hand comer, where we'd put a stamp we'd write in free. We didn ' t have to buy stamps, just write in free and .. We'll thats good. And, of course they'd see that the letters got delivered. We'll did you receive any like a care packages from home? Yeah, we, I's we's always constantly getting something from home. That was a real treat, when when, you get a package especially Christmas. You, You, You, get some cookies or something or other something baked from home. And wrap it, where it could be shipped it was that was different. That was a real treat. We'll thats good, thats good. Did you see any soldiers that say didn't you know receive anything from home, that were you know kind of over there on their own. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 The, yeah you'd we'd see some yeah, they was always some around that didn't a really didn't hardly get any letters or anything. Yes it was kind of kind of heartbreaking to see that but( .. ) We'll, I know that the military trys to keep troops entertained, try to keep them from being bored cause thats you know a big part of being on duty some times, when your not fighting its just kind of monotonous. Did you see you know say the USO or other. .. Yeah, bout six weeks or two months after I was there, before I left here I went to a, I'm a race fan , I went to Charlotte Motor Speedway, I think it was a the summer race. The world 600 largest race and during that race they was doing some filming. I think it was one of Burt Reynolds movies. I can't think of the name of that movie, Speedway I think, is the name is the name of the movie. I believe it was and actually they was filming some during the race and before the race started they had some a cars on the track and with the crowds there they was filming it. Right. And the biggest portion of that movie was filmed at Charlotte. And I was there at the race track and here I go to Vietnam bout a month, six six weeks, no month two months after I was there they got that movie over there and I couldn't believe it. I said I was there just a few months ago. That, That was a great feeling. We's just sitting outside and the had a movie projector setting up against a building, sitting out there on the ground watching a movie. But, it still was a movie sitting on the ground didn ' t make no difference where you was sitting at still a movie. Yeah, Yeah, how often did you get to see a film? Once in a while they, they would get one in probably about every month. Ok. I mean thats, thats a real treat. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Right. We'll did ... Went down to, we's in a, sitting in a little bar, Saigon, Saigon is a large city. Saigon is a huge city, but the city you, you, wouldn't see no tall sky scrapers, like you would here. Right. Largest building you'd see there wouldn't be over four or five stories high. And we's sitting at the USO club and this lady come down and said, "the, oversees line is open, anybody wants to use it. They's about four of us jumped up, "Yeah." So we talk and, oversees line was open so we called home. And I talked a pretty good while, I know at the time momma and daddy said the power or the phone bill for that one call was seventy some dollars. Anything in nineteen seventy that was I don't know how long I's talking but, we took advantage of it. Yeah, why not?( ... ) Did you make any, you know, friends with your fellow soldiers? Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah we did everybody was everybody on base was close. Everybody was, cause we all was there for the same purpose. They's one guy l's real close with I met, once I left I didn't even see him. Right. He was New Jerseyan. But, there was one guy from Concord, he come up and seen me couple times, since then after we's home. We'll were those two guys basically your closest friends over there or.... No, I tell you what no we all was close. So it didn't matter ... It don't matter, everybody was close ... Ok. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 And nobody, nobody fussed and argued. They didn't, that many, that many people together, nobody, bickered nobody, fussed, nobody argued. We was there for a job and none of us wanted to be there but, we was there and had to make the best of it. ( ...) Did you keep like, a diary or anything? No, no no no I don't think, I won't say nobody did .. Yeah. I real dare say nobody did. Kind of an unusual thing ... I made alot of pictures and the pictures only thing we can find was, film. I carried one of them old instamatic camera's in my pocket bout' wore it out. I carried one of them things in my pocket and only film I could buy was slides. Right. I had put on the slides, and some of the kids got them and tore them apart, I don't know, probably have them refurbished. I don't know where they at now. Pictures I didn't care nothing about. Yeah.( ... ) Lets see, has anything else that you would like to say about you experience in Vietnam? No, no it, it, it was, it was a real experience. Its, its something, I wouldn't take nothing for and nobody, nobody round here, people here in the United States, never been there they just wundn't believe it. Right. It, it it justa, you wouldn't believe its on Earth, way the people lived, you you just wouldn't believe it. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 We'll I, the only thing I've seen, is I've seen you know pictures in books and the occasional film, I have no way of knowing what it was like ... All the pictures, films you see, some of them is close to it, none of them, none of them is exactly accurate. Right. We'll when did you finally, get sent home? It was in, I think it was in November. It was in November of70'. Cause I was only away one Christmas.( .. ) So I, I lucked out on time wise .. Right. So I stayed one year and fourty four days, over there. So, you basically got an honorable discharge .. Oh Yeah ... Cause you were done with the service .. Oh yeah, when we went in to basic training in Fort Bragg, course they's a big group of us we talking about thousands. Right. We all, about the second day there, all they did no training, they's doing testing, they's testing see how, see what we knowed. Thats what they was doing, they was testing us. The following day they called us out by groups. This, this is actually what they done now, they was calling us out by groups, like, twenty-five thirty to a group. They was telling us, you scored better then anybody here. You got the top score. And all these thousand's peoples here you got the top score. And you can go anywhere you want to in the United States. Will send you anywhere you want to go, but, we got to get you signed up for another year. You wouldn't believe the people signing up. I said, I know what this is about, nope I didn't. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 So .. And those people signed up for another year and they got sent where they wanted to go for one year. Got that one year up, they went to Vietnam. Bet that makes people upset. Oh yeah, oh yeah they was upset. This one little guy came in Vietnam over there he was all upset, he was in Germany. Had it made in Germany, had his wife there, so as his years up, she went home, he went to Vietnam.( ... ) We'll when you carne back home, you know what was one of the first things that you did? I know there's, you've heard soldiers say you know the fust thing, I want to do when I get home is go do such and such or get something to eat that... That that that was, we'll you, you, you, always got your own places you like to eat at. All of you got things you want to do. Just, you want to go out and see, see the boys you used, to see everybody. Andjust get out and see what kind of changes is made in the country, but its just good to be home. I guarantee it. Did you go to school after you got home? No, no no ... Ok, so you went straight to work then ... I went and come back, I went went to work. And, I guess it was you and your daddy right? Yeah, yeah yeah we, we we's building houses. See it wundn't, it probably wundn't about two years after I was back we got married. Ok. See, I met Becky, at Fort Bragg ... �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Really? Basic Training. Yeah .. What was she doing there? She was down there visiting another guy from Mount Airy, her boyfriend at the time. Thats what, she was she was visiting him and thats where I met her at( ... ) We'll you know shortly there after lets see what four years or so the war ended did, how did you feel about that? I thought it was about time, about time bringing all them soldiers home. Shoulda ended a long time ago. Right. Like I say, I won't, everybody, everybody says that was useless ... Yeah ... All those lives lost, all the money we spent over there, I still think it was useless. Yeah it is hard to see what we you know gained from it, something thats tangible, you know something you can grab aholt of, you know say we did this, and we gained this from it you know. We'll this, the the war in Kuwait, now when Iraq, overrun Kuwait, now see we had alot of American people in Kuwait. I don't think we had anybody in Vietnam. I don't think so now. But, we had a good reason to protect Kuwait.. Right. So you thought that war more so than the one that you fought in was correct... �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Oh yeah, oh yeah, I really think we'll everybody right now thinks George Bush Sr. didn't finish his job. But, he done what he said he was going to do, get the Kuwait out of, or get Iraq out of Kuwait and he did. Right. So everybody, everybody agrees on that war, but, no Vietnam War I don't, I don't think find hardly nobody agree on we, we should of been there.( ... ) What do you think about the war that we are in now, or I guess you could say Wars? We'll I, I think thats something we don't have no choice, really I don't, I really think, I really think they jumped the gun a little bit to quick. Right. But, I believe it should have been, I don't think we, I, the war probably, it had to be done, but, I don't think, I really think, they ought to have settled it before we went over there. Start blowing the place up. Yeah, I should have been done through diplomacy ... Yeah, I, I, I think that should have been first, I really think, George Bush all he was after was Saddam Hussein. He was after. .. After Saddam ... After blood to really ... He was cause that man tried to kill his daddy, he tell, he said that on the news, so( ... ) We'll, we're almost finished here, I got just a few more questions. Did you join say a veteran's organization? No, no, no, thats no, when I got out of the military that was it. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 You wanted ... Nothing, to do with it, I had done my part, that was it. But, closer I get in the sixties, I'm we'll self-employed and self-insured and it was costing us a fortune, me and Becky both. It was costing us a fortune, insurance sales, bout three years ago, I was about, I was six .. Fifty eight or fifty nine I got on with the VA. Started going to the VA clinic where I could cancel my insurance. Right. That has saved me a ton of money. I'm in with the VA right now. And are you happy with ... Oh yeah, they'll treat you, they'll treat you good. Their real good to me. We'll thats good. Lets see ... ( .. .) We'll you said you'd seen a couple guys since then ... One of the guys he had married my first cousin, Bobby Duncan. He lived in Mount Airy. Yeah I've seen, me and him, he he came, he came and looked me up one day and we talked a little while. And, like I say he was married to my first cousin and recently he's passed away.( .. ) Is there any other people that you've ... Anybody else I've seen in Vietnam no. Right. No, No Lost Contact... Really when I left, I left and I think everybody felt the same way. Yeah, but, I'm pretty sure that your satisfied with the service that you gave and ... Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah I was I done, I done, what they sent me over there to do.( .. ) �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 We'll is there anything that you learned over there or saw over there that effected your civilian life in any way? Make you appreciate the United States more, it will, it will make you appreciate the United States. ( ... ) Oh, have you ever been to Washington and seen the Vietnam Veterans Memorial? Oh yes, oh yeah, I have ... I bet that was experience ... We'll now see I was a, they, when I was at Fort Belvoir for my training, theys really not a part of Washington D.C, I hadn't been through. At the time been through the White House. Becky and I got married we went to Washington D.C on our honeymoon. I got her picture standing under the breeze way of the front of the White House, where you see the cars pulls in .. Yeah. I got her picture standing out there, we's out there in front of it, and I made her picture in front of the White House. Been through part of the White House. The Capital Building, I don't think there is a corner in that building we hadn' t been through. We you off on the weekend, we toured Washington. We'll thats good. So they's not a part of Wash .. the Capital, I don't think not a corner we hadn't seen and they's been alot of changes made and we went up to, went up and seen the Vietnam Memorial. Yeah, and I tell you its something else to see. Yeah, thats something that I personally want to do is I want to go to Washington and I want to see you know not just the monument or the Capital and all that but, I want to see all the war memorials ... �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 We'll we've, we've seen it all but, Vietnam Memorial it just a just this wall with all these guys names on it. but, what gets you you look at all these names, you stand and look at them ... Yeah and they just go on and on ... Justa, just that many of them and the only one on that wall that I really know was Paul Mouse's son, Barry Mouse I think that was his name. Earl Mouse was the brother.. Right. I went to school with them, Wilkes County. And, I actually don't think you here from Surry County really nobody's name from Surry County is on that wall. I don't think now, it might be. Cause when you look the names up you look them up by the counties. Right. Under North Carolina you go down under the counties and thats the way you look the names up and they tell you where they at. But, I've not seen the WWII Monument which, they gonna, Veterans going up there now and seeing, I hadn't seen that. It wundn't built at the time. I think thats a great thing ... but, we went through the Washington Monument, Jefferson Monument, we we've seen it all. We'll thats good. And I think personally thats a good thing that the triad is doing is taking you know those North Carolina Veterans ... That is good thing, I highly support that, you know Candy our daughter went on one of those trips as a nurse. Yeah. She really enjoyed it. I'd like to volunteer to go myself when I get out of school. �Sterling Hardy HIS 3823 Dr. Browning March 14, 2011 Right. It would be, it would be a good thing. She really enjoyed it it was a stressful day, those people, those people got to be in pretty good health to make that trip. Yeah. Some of them in wheelchairs, some ofthem not, but thats, thats, thats, a good thing. Yeah. We'll is there anything that you'd like to add at all? No, you leave I'll probably think of something or other but, not right now, not right now. Alright, we'll I thank you and .. . I, I hope this, everything works out. Alright. � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/cc6dd45e66960ce41289f32a7163ddd2.mp3 c26703b26d9d8994ac75814b3a66878d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Haymore, Haston Gray Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Hardy, Sterling Interview Date 3/14/11 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:37:55 File name 2013_063_Haymore_Hasten_interview 2013_063_Haymore_HastonGray_transcript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Haston Gray Haymore, 14 March 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hardy, Sterling Haymore, Haston Gray Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 20 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Subject The topic of the resource Haymore, Haston Gray Veterans Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Personal narratives, American United States Interviews Description An account of the resource Haston Gray Haymore is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He was deployed for one year and forty four days to Benewah, Vietnam, and worked alongside the South Vietnamese soldiers. He describes them as "good people" but very different from the Americans. Haymore states strongly his opinion that America should not have entered this war, that it was a useless endeavor and many lives were fruitlessly lost. army Benewah Vietnam Fort Bragg Haston Gray Haymore honorable discharge Viet-Cong https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/87ac7bd6ccf07e5ae009c270db827fc9.pdf 7e9d95b7f82946bc394ff0175507291e PDF Text Text Military Oral History Interview Transcript Ben Marsh Unknown location 16 October 2011 AM: Andrew Marsh BM: Ben Marsh AM: This is Andrew Marsh and I am interviewing my grandfather Wilson Benson “Ben” Marsh about his service during the Second World War. The date is October 16th at his house. BM: Okay Andrew, when I was in high school I was rather much attracted to getting specialized training and the Army. There was a program called “ASTRP,” which was Army Specialized Training Reserve Program. AM: Somewhat similar to the Reserve Officer or ROTC programs we have in schools today? BM: Yes, yes it's a very basic form of that. We were qualified to enter the program and they determined I was qualified to enter the program there. And so when I was in high school and joined up, I was a part of the Army Reserve at that time. They assigned me my serial number when I was there, which was a special serial number for a volunteer, which is entirely different from a draft...serial numbers. So I joined the army reserve when I was in high school so that in high school we got a good deal of courses such as first aid, which they wanted the populous of the country. If we got into war...they wanted the populous to have a certain amount of first aid training and so forth to care of the wounded and what have you. So that as soon as I got out of high school they told me to report to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and went into the science part of the beginning of the specialized training that they wanted to train us in that location of some the things that may come up in engineering, problems, and things like that…just get us prepared in science there. AM: And this was in 19...? BM: This was in 1944,when I graduated from high school. It was an interesting experience even to travel at that time on a train because the... travelling to Nashville, Tennessee...to say it was crowded was an understatement because...and a goodly portion of the trip there wasn't enough room for me to enter either one of the...passenger cars on the train. I had to spend most of my time...between the cars on the platform with about five other fellows there. The “clinkers” from the steam engine was a problem in my long hair (as an aside my grandfather has worn his hair in a flat-top crew cut for my entire life) I was able to wash it out. AM: What all did you study at Vanderbilt? BM: At Vanderbilt we studied more advanced algebra than I had at high school. I studied the physics, which was a real good course at Vanderbilt, and chemistry, and some of 1 �the history on it. They had a very structured program there. You had a certain time to go to the library and study. We stayed in one ancient dormitory there, which was a very fine dormitory in its day... that was a good course there. As soon as I became of age to become in active duty they called me up to active duty, and told me, it was between semesters, and they told me to report to Fort Bragg for induction into the Army. AM: And when was this? BM: This was in 1945. AM: 1945. BM: 1945 yes. And eventually got out in 1947,I don’t remember the exact date...that was after the war ended. There they give you the serial numbers and most of the shots that you need for protection of wherever you might travel in the world and they had to have hard evidence in their records of health evidence and shots and so forth, they had to have them in front of them the whole time. AM: Now was this basic training or was that… BM: This was in the beginning of the process to go to basic training. In other words a lot of this was done before we went in to training. Down there in transferred to Camp Gordon, Georgia, which is now Fort Gordon, Georgia, for the basic training in infantry warfare. It was a thorough course, the least of which was getting you in shape to do hard physical effort, be it marching, carrying things physically, physical exertion, the accuracy of the weapons that you would use, which was mainly machine guns and most especially rifles. They also would train you in protecting yourself and your own health, because they expected you to be responsible for your own health. The picture was not...pretty if you got sunburned, or frostbitten feet or anything like that, you were responsible for your own physical condition and in situations where you had control of it they expected it. They made no bones about it. You are government property, and you going to do what you are told to do, and you are trained to follow orders as they were. It and its positives...because you knew you were going to wind up in combat so... they gave you training as to handle yourself in hand to hand combat even. They gave you experiences in the field of being actually having weapons fired over your head, even artillery. The artillery that stuck in my mind was a 108-millimeter cannon that shoots a missile over your head and it lands about a hundred yards away and explodes. But the rifle fire was the most interesting because it travels above the speed of sound and it's just a “pop” (snaps fingers), just a sharp crack as it passes over your head and then a few seconds later you hear the boom of the rifle that shot it (chuckles). AM: To you...what was the most difficult part about basic training? BM: The most difficult part in the beginning is getting in shape. The exercises that they put you through were continuous sit-ups, pushups, chinning yourself on it, and endurance 2 �through that and probably the most challenging part of the strength was-that you and about six or eight men got on a tremendous log about eight feet in diameter and say about 12 feet long and you were to life that. AM: Like a telephone pole? BM: Yes, sure, and not a small telephone. AM: Wow. BM: One of the most trying in patience is doing a march with a full field pack...but they knew how to keep your stamina up in it. They would give you a break five minutes out of every hour. AM: Pretty reasonable. BM: It's reasonable, and if they gave you a ten- m i n u t e break you could get a short nap in that. If you were tired (chuckles). But they let you have a break each hour because you can keep your stamina up in that way. And it's remarkable how quick you can do that. AM: So how long was basic training? BM: Basic training was about three months. AM: Three months. BM: It takes you over half of that for you to get into really good physical shape, and the physical shape you cannot let the exercise go down, in it, because you lose part of the physical shape in a week if you aren't active in the exercise that means something. They taught you health issues, that you were to take care of your skin, not get it sunburned, take care of your feet. You were to change your shoes and your socks on a regular basis every day in n hot weather. How to use the close combat in which your ammunition is not effective or its too dangerous to your own side to use live ammunition when you had to use bayonets the butt of the rifle or whatever in hand-to-hand combat. It was even to the point to where veterans to train us that had been in combat and some of the things they could tell you about was to give you examples of some of the things that you needed to be aware of. For instance, they would sit down in a place, on the ground, and say that I want you to come up behind me just to where I can't see you, I'm going to keep my vision straight ahead and I can see 90 degrees each side. I want you to come up on me and touch me before I can point to you. That's a good challenge, in dry sand that's not too bad, but you get in grass, that’s a different issue. How to use a weapon is interesting, how do you shoot it for accuracy, and above all you are to take care of that and you don't find any rust in that rifle or on it anywhere, you keep the bore cleaned out and oiled, so that there’s no powder residue in it. 3 �We went on maneuvers where we would do exercises on that. We would dig foxholes, we'd have to camouflage things, and the main issue there is to break the outline. As long as you got on dull clothing and so forth you could break the outline, you're virtually invisible, as long as you don’t move too fast. They expose you to the experience that they had had in training that the government on a long-term basis would determine what was necessary to help you survive and accomplish. None the least of which they went in to the ethics of battle. That sounds crazy, but there are certain things in the Geneva Convention to have some civilization in warfare as possible. for instance, your job was to disable, the enemy, not necessarily to kill him, but just to disable him. They surprisingly respected that, now the Japanese they were a separate case. I won't go into that. At least in the European Theater both sides respected the Geneva Convention very nicely, from some of the propaganda you wouldn’t think that, but the Germans did fairly decent job of operating within it. For instance, the main thing was that they said in no uncertain terms, you do not alter the ammunition that we hand you to use period, and we're serious on that. Because, most of you guys that come from the country down here know that when you go on out squirrel hunting you would rather have a hollowed out bullet to put in that rifle. Because a squirrel, you can shoot him full of holes and he'll keep going but, you take a hollow-point bullet and that bullet explodes inside the squirrel once i t goes inside the skin, and it's obvious you're out to kill someone when you do that. And both sides we have complete agreement that if you discover that ammunition on any soldier and he's still living, you're welcome to execute him right there. AM: Wow. BM: In other words, neither one if same time, you capture him you're going to treat him right; you’re going to give him medical care and medical help, if the situation allows it. Your job is to disable as many of them as you can. AM: So what was the next step, after basic training? BM: Next, out of basic training they determined...where are the chances are that we are going to need these people from this particular company. In my case, the war was winding down. By that time I finished basic training the Germans had already given up, and while they gave us a break between the next training session. They sent you home for a couple weeks, have a furlough until they took you to the next training step. The next step for us was that we were going to invade mainland Japan; we were going to be the first wave of replacements. They expected a lot of losses to such an extent where the experts told President Truman you’re going to give the order on this, but here on the consequences of the two. If we go in there and invade the mainland of Japan, it is probably going to take a quarter of a million men dying, to take that homeland. Now the reason they 4 �sent us there to that type of warfare was that we were going to have to go house-to-house and cleaning out Japan. We realized that that was the case from them fighting on the various islands there. It'd take house by house to clean it out because they did not give up. Now that’s the majority of them, course there were exceptions. We were to go there and to be trained in that plus additional jungle warfare. Jungle warfare is entirely different from straight out cross-countryside...house-to-house combat is a different issue also. AM: Now, did the war end before you went to do this? BM: They were transferring us to Fort Rucker, Alabama. AM: Okay. BM: But now while I was on furlough home, they dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan and Japan gave up, so. When we got to Fort Rucker the instructions were put them on a troop train send them to the west coast, we're going to start relieving everybody that's been in combat over there in stages. Four years, three years, one year, and we'll let you know when you going to send the one year home. Now when we got to Fort Ord, California, now that was the main debarkation-staging zone, they would go to San Francisco and debark on troop ship to the Pacific. When we go down there to Fort Ord, California, the powers that be in t he headquarters company, about 1200 people they got to looking at the orders and said hey, three quarters if not 90 percent of the people we got in headquarters down here been in there at least two years, we’re going to disappear “poof” like that! What in the world are we going to process the other half a million that's going to be pouring through here to do that? So they went down the line...hey what’s this guy's taken in school? They ran across my service record and said "Hey, he's got two years of typing in high school, hey come here!" [Laughs] AM: So you got put in headquarters company? BM: Yes. AM: And this was in San Francisco? BM: No, this was in Fort Ord, California. AM: Fort Ord okay. BM: We staged them, got all their records together, make sure their shots were ready, and they had the training and so forth, and training was not much of an issue at that time. You were just a body that was in the army to go over there, and they trained them when they got over there if they had to. They would rather them have training here, but if they had to they would train them over there. The rest of the time that I spent in the Fort Ord was doing clerical work, and helping with the physical and paper work to help the men get collated into numbers and groups of companies of people to put on the train in Monterey and Pacific Groves there to go to the pier side in San Francisco to get on the troop ship there. It was 5 �cushion job, But I enjoyed every minute of it because it's a fantastic place to go out on your leave time to see what was going on in the countryside. One of the more interesting things was the in your time off go to the little USO there in Carmel California (chuckles) and you'd go in there and some of the local people in there would say "Hey you want to go somewhere? Yeah! I want to go up 17-mile drive, you going up Delmar as far? He says yeah sure!" That's one of the scenic areas there...the local people, you'd never s e e more than 10 people in the USO over there because it's small. Not many people knew about it, we in headquarters, some of us knew about it and they would put on a show almost any time for the troops there. One of the more interesting things there was going to Santa Cruz up there. This was mainly run by the Navy and the Marines, they had a tremendous hospital in which the badly wounded were brought in there to recoup, put on prostheses, things like that for them...nurse them back to where they could be medically discharged. They had a big pavilion there down on the waterfront there that the USO and local people would put on shows for them. None the least of which were the hospital people that were in the hospital they had some people that would put on shows themselves. They had lost a leg or an arm or something like that, and they would get out there and put on shows. This was mainly aimed at the new people, wondering what am I going to do with the rest of my life, one of the most interesting things that I saw there, and this was all psychology, they prepped you psychologically for about anything, they'd get the big bands to come locally, ship them overseas and they'd go to combat zones. And this was part of the morale that was built up in the troops. You see remnants of it now with Bob Hope and the others, but they would send Arty Shaw and Glenn Miller and all of the comedy shows. The comedy shows were the greatest. One of the funniest ones was the “hell's-a-poppin' show.” They would pull al kinds of jokes. In the Santa Cruz, the local thing was to make a statement was "kids you’re not too bad off". One of the guys that didn't have his prosthesis on yet, he'd come in on crutches and they'd start a boogie-woogie tune and he would dance to that, and the jitterbug he had a 13 year old girl that he'd have come out, and trusted him enough to where he could sling her all around, and he only had one leg! (Chuckles) AM: Wow, that's impressive! BM: So, you get an idea of how the morale was kept up in it so that even overseas they had always had movies at night, even if you’re in the boondocks in the middle of the jungle. And in fact, they show some of the Japanese were more human than most of them were, at night sometimes in some of these locations, they would start the movie in there after dark, and in same of these fringes Japanese would show up just to see the movie. Neither one of them, the Japanese or Americans were interested in fighting so they just let them be there. Neither one of them carried their weapons in there and knew the Japanese didn't carry, they weren't interested in starting anything and neither were we. They were the exception, when they got into a fight...they would conquer or die. It was rough, but there was always human side, now it is the nastiest business you have ever seen in your life. There is no mercy in some cases, unless you are disabled to where you can't continue. Bath sides tended to have mercy an 6 �you, as much as the situation permitted and yes unfortunately the situation in which you can't do that to accomplish the job and protect your own self, you have to do what's necessary. In other words fight. Now I have been rambling on. AM: It's all right! BM: After Fort Ord, California, they transferred me to Fort Worden, Washington, which is in the edge of Seattle. AM: How long were you in Fort Ord? BM: At Fort Ord, I was in there for about six months and I was in about three to four months up in Seattle, Fort Worden. I never did get used to waking up at three o'clock in the morning and the sun was already up (laughs). It was good duty both places, in the outfit I was in. we had good supervision, encouraging supervision. One of the most interesting things I ever ran into up there was privy to know information that wasn't publicized in any way, because at that time the press still in this country was recognizant of you keep the morale up of everyone in the country. One time we were up on a long weekend pass up there in Vancouver and we came chugging back in Monday night, in through the main gate, and the guard was surprised to see any soldiers coming in and they said "Where in the world have you guys been? Well, we’ve been up in Vancouver what’s wrong?" Well, he said, they called it a riot between races downtown. You can imagine what they called it. But he said everybody’s either in jail downtown or in the brig here that we could get their hands on. In other words everybody’s on lockdown, they said "well oh okay come on in then" (laughs). The interesting thing in there was one time we been in almost a year in headquarters we didn't have to march, carry a weapon or anything else for about a year. And [chuckle] headquarters was told by the commanding general "You are going to put a full company of men down there, in a parade downtown. They said what?? They said Admiral Bull Halsey is coming in here and were going to show him how the Army does It!” And he was in the Navy! AM: And this was in Seattle, near Seattle? BM: Near Seattle Washington, yes. Well we said okay, all right. But we got down there in that parade and we were in the middle, halfway between a Caucasian race band in front of us, and an African American band equal distance behind us. And the cadence that the guys could hear in the front was entirely different from the cadence that the AfricanAmericans were setting back there. And so up there in the front they were doing this ( taps out a slow steady rhythm with his hands) and the one in, the back sped up this motion up a lot. AM: (Laughing) So the column was running into itself? BM: And the rest of us in the middle were wondering what do we do? Go back to the 7 �plowboys cadence or what? (Laughing) the remarkable thing about it, we got along between all the races in the armies and services too. The morale was such that everybody in the whole country says we got a job to do and let's get on it. The other sections, the other things that I'd really like to talk with you about it is how the civilians did, had to do, and how they were organized but that’s another issue. There's a difference between the benefits that we had coming out of that forced entry as opposed to the pay for being a soldier now. Now both of them had the benefits, but there was not anything that replaced the benefit level that they gave us coming out of the army after the Second World War. AM: Meaning the GI Bill? BM: GI Bill. Yes. So that...part of the duty was tough, but basically I enjoyed the thing. The interesting people, yes it was tough at times with the training, but it was survival. The morale issue was never let down...they encouraged the morale all the way through it, and you were prepared for...you were convinced that you could take care of yourself in certain circumstances as long as you helped them around often. And that's one reason...you were given the understanding that you had to take care of yourself until the medics get there if you get hurt. In some cases that's no little issue at times. But training was good, it was thorough. Now, one thing I'd like to say warfare at that time has no bearing on the warfare is now. The psychology is entirely different, and the soldiers are different, because they choose now, we didn't have a choice then. Now the population and the condition of the country was controlled entirely so that both could work together. AM: So, the program that you were in high school...did you sign up for the program and then enlisted in the Army or were you drafted? BM: I expressed an interest in joining the Army. My parents did not want me to sign up for anything other than the Army. They knew more about the services than I did at that time. I expressed an interest in joining the ASTRP program, they said come up here to the name of the airport here in town, it was named for the first guy that had died in the Second World War, that was local, I'll think of it in a minute...they said report to the army doctors at I get the name of the airport in a bit AM: And this was in Marshville? (his hometown) BM: This was in Marshville, they told me to come to Charlotte, get on the bus and go out to the airport out there and there were doctors out there that would go over you and see if you were physically qualified to enter the services. They gave me...those test, called me and told me to come back in two days and they said..."how many cokes did you drink the day before you came up here?" I said "About six or seven" and they said, you don't drink any coke and you come back in two days. Well, I had too much sugar in my blood you see? AM: I see. 8 �BM: and they said all right, welcome to the ASTRP! AM: So you were never drafted? BM: No, I was not drafted. I signed up myself. As it turned out, it was a good thing because if you had a serial number starting with a one, the first thing they did always, and everybody in the Army that was in a position of authority...they looked at your serial number to begin with, so many of them were long term army people that they treated you different. And it showed up in a lot of places, believe me. Now it is different now because they hire you to be a soldier. Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of reasons to go ahead and join the army because you get benefits that you can't get any other way quicker. So I don't quarrel with that... Just a matter of fact they had to have millions of people out of this country to go to war (long pause) I don't know if I answered the question? AM: You did. I feel like you did...when did you leave the service? BM: I left the service in.... I believe it was in August and the reason I remember was the first session at North Carolina State had already started, and I wanted to go into North Carolina State as quick as I could. And I got home too late to enter the first session of the year. AM: And this wan in 1947? BM: Yes, 1947 I believe. I'd have to back-check it. I went in to the January start of that, and went in to engineering yes. To answer your question what did I study in high school it was a general thing, from history to civics to science, which included chemistry along with the science issues (sigh) something on nutrition was in it, I don't remember what the name was, English, and typing. AM: And then mixed in with that was the program. BM: Now I didn't start the program until they told me to report to Vanderbilt University. AM: Oh okay, so the program that you were in was after high school at Vanderbilt, okay. BM: They waited on the next session to begin before they told me to report there, report about a week ahead of the beginning of the first session. And after one session I aged up to report for active duty. Another reason that they grabbed me so quick was that the battle of the bulge in Europe had gotten out of hand to our side. And it scared the living daylights out of the whole country really. We thought we were winning it, but the Germans broke through. And ... they sent everybody into the services at that time whether they were physically qualified or not, it scared them that much. It's an interesting time to be in, we were actually scared, the whole country was. Did I answer the question? 9 �AM: Yes, absolutely. So, just to sum up your service you went to Basic training in Georgia, and the war ended right after you got out of basic... BM: The war ended in Europe before I finished basic, Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and Truman became president when I was still in basic training. AM: And then the Japanese surrendered. BM: The Japanese surrendered soon after that after Truman had said okay what are the consequences of us using the atomic bomb, they had been working on the atomic bomb, we don't know how long because some of the things that were happening here in the country... they were having to put so much effort and copper tubing copper wasn't available in this country for a long time because they were building the facilities over at Oak Ridge there. None of us knew why but that was the case and once they tested the atomic bomb over there in the west they came up to Truman and say all right, we're going to have to invade the mainland of Japan. He says all right, what are the consequences. He says use it, after he heard course the rest is history. It's a nasty way to end the war, but it saved a lot of lives believe me. They lost a lot there, but not nearly as many as it would take us to take the country. That's basically it, come on with more questions that'd be fine. AM: Something I've been wondering, at the time were you relieved that you weren't going to see front line combat? BM: Well, oddly enough not really, I never even thought about it. I know that's crazy to sound, but they steeled your nerves really well. They know your chances, you know your chances and your family knows your chances. And the only way that you have...they have taught me to take care of myself in about all situations. And that’s all you had to go on really. So It depends on the circumstances you were in whether you had a chance to live or not... in the pacific it was worse than it was in Germany and Europe. AM: If you could pick two or three things that stand out the most to you...I guess the best memories of your service, what would they be? BM: The characters that I met in it either in the services or in the periphery areas, such as the shows that they put on for morale. It would be hard to pick, I think the thing that I loved in Fort Ord was the capability to see what was going on in the west coast. The top duty of anybody would choose in California and especially in Monterey Bay there would be to be on the two P.T. boats that were stationed there to rescue people out there in the ocean! (Both laugh) They'd sit back cooling their heels and enjoy Monterey, Pacific Grove... AM: Getting a suntan? BM: The bottom line was, I don’t have any bad memories about serving. Now I was lucky don’t get me wrong. I was young enough to where I never faced combat, and I saw some of the ones that came back they were severely distorted from being in it. I roomed with a 10 �fellow at North Carolina State that had been in combat four years in the European Theater. Due to a technical problem part 1 ended here, I tried to pick up where we left off in part two AM: Before the recording stopped, you were talking about a roommate of yours an North Carolina State that had served for four years in active combat in Europe, do you want to continue with that? BM: Sure, I'd love to. He was by that time...considerably older than I was, he was from eastern North Carolina out there, from the area of Chocowinity and Greenville and so forth. He had been in combat so long out there...but he was one of the five percent that wasn’t hurt in the war. He was put up in hospital there in London, England, and I don't remember what he was in there for, but one of the incidents and this was when the abuzz bombs" were still raining down in London, before the V-2's. The buzz bombs, you could hear them coming, and some cases see them passing over and certainly if they were heading towards you they can see it. Surprisingly they weren't very fast at all but they were highly effective. They had no idea where they were going to hit, they just knew just about the range it would be to fall on London or in the area. Anyway he was telling about an incident there in which one of the guys he knew was up there...in the bed. One of his buddies had come around there to visit him there and the guy that was in the bed...Avery was his name. That his friend was standing there and looking out the window, and the guy in the bunk said the last thing he said he heard the buzz bomb was coming...and it's coming in this window. He started running for the door and the thing hit, the concussion blew him through the door, took the door off its hinges, it didn't kill him but it blew him through the door there. He was about two stories away from the blast zone there. After that incident I suppose the...the noise or the shaking of the dormitory, the dormitory actually shook when a train passed by on the train tracks out there. And in the middle of the night if he was asleep he'd have a nightmare, when that train came by. Otherwise he didn't seem to have any postt ra um at i c stress syndrome, I mean after a while I guess you get used to it. He was still a real nice guy, you know wasn't mean and would treat you with respect...that issue aside morale was a tremendous thing that was kept out of contingency. The movies that were put out were propaganda or morale issues, one of the things is that if you want to downgrade someone you have to start poking fun at them. One of the most popular movies was the great dictator, and of all the scrapes he could get in to he got into a German anti-aircraft gun...he started cranking the thing trying to get it into position trying to shoot some aircraft down, it wound up with him upside down fell out on the ground (chuckles). AM: Now the great dictator was that with Charlie Chaplin? BM: No, that was...I don’t know who the main character was...you might be able to look it up 11 �online. That was a great thing, of course the entertainment that we sent. Course they always had dancing girls, and singing girls and Bob Hope and comedians and big bands, they were given transportation and donated their time to it. They had their shows in the training camps here, and even the “ hell's a poppin' show” from Broadway was a comedy scene too. They had off- color humor, they never swore but they came close to it...also Spike Jones, he was a comedian. His orchestra had fantastic musicians, but they can tear it up so bad. Morale was great, the news report always were controlled so tightly and the things so secretive in some places, to find out. For instance...even the interpersonal actions of the commanders of the European Theater of the time there was one period in which they tried to get control of General Patton, they tried to cut off his supplies. His theory was when you get a man out of a foxhole you don't give him a chance to dig another one, as long as the gasoline holds out go after him. Everybody said await a minute we've got to give the English general a chance to get a little pat on the back out of this deal" but George Patton was running so far ahead of everybody that sometimes in order for allied supreme headquarters to figure out where Patton was they'd have to listen to the Germans and radio traffic to determine where Patton was. He was a leader, but not a leader. He would say to his men, and they respected him, they’d die for him and they knew he'd die for them too. But anyway, he was a type of leader, in quotation marks, he’d say this is the job to be done, go out there and do it. The average commander thought that to cross this river out here it would take us about three or four days to plan the job and about three or four more days to cross it. Patton went there and said, "Hey guys we going to go out there and cross that river up there and get it done." In a couple days they'd have it done, start moving his tanks and troops across it in two days time. He didn't play politics, not at all. He's an interesting character, he had a severe learning disability, and he memorized everything. The reputation he had was that he studied maps of the terrain and he studied military history where he knew what ever battles that had been fought in this territory before him, he knew what the successes were and what the failures were. That's in that different books there, it took a lot of effort. If you want to go in to what it took for this country to actually do that here on this ground I'll be glad to, but it’ll take even more time to do it. AM: I think we'll talk about that.... BM: Don't get me wrong...if you get everybody in the country behind something at that point in time we could out-produce anyone in the world, and we could do it quicker than anyone else in the world. AM: We can talk about that more some other time. BM: Okay, that would be fine. I’ve enjoyed it. I didn't get overseas at that time. AM: I've got a few more questions if that's all right. 12 �BM: Sure, that'd be fine. AM: Did you serve with anyone that was from your hometown? BM: No, I didn't because I started out in the Army in which it was just a group of guys and they'd say hey, I believe we'd want them at the technical end of what we need out here, and I went to Vanderbilt at that time and they almost exclusively at that time they trained science end of the training, and they were training doctors at the speed of which you wouldn’t believe. Get guys just out of high school and he's made top grades all the way. Okay you're going to be a doctor, come on to Vanderbilt, and put you through. And when they finished when them, they went to combat zone. Did I answer the question? AM: Yes. Have you kept up with any of the people you served with? BM: No, I have not, regrettably. I didn't have any means to do it, and at that time I wasn't much interested in doing it. I knew of the reputation of some of them...some of them were undoubtedly quite successful. Part 2 ends here, Part three concludes the interview. AM: Well, I think about wraps it up, I really appreciate that you came and sat down and took some time to sit down with me and talk about your experiences. BM: I welcome the opportunity because I haven't thought about some of these things in quite some time. I was privileged to be present in a time in which this country went through great changes and so forth, and to see what a country can accomplish if you get everyone behind it. Now yes, there were dissidents, but there were nice things for them to help with the effort. For instance if you were a conscientious objector they were allowed to go into firefighting school and gave parachute training and you'll fight forest fires. And what the Japanese were doing to the west coast is another issue, and they needed the firefighters b i g time to help with that. You've probably heard in the news reports what's going on at that time. But we were instructed in no uncertain terms...that if you know of a forest fire out here you don't tell anybody (laughs). AM: Wow, that's interesting. BM: There were certain things you didn't talk about anywhere. The populace, and what the populous went through that's a different subject, I didn't go into that. AM: That's fine, and I'd love to talk to you about it, but I'm not sure if that's... BM: That is a total study in what people can do, when they have to. 13 �AM: Well, thank you very much; I appreciate it! BM: You're quite welcome Andrew; it's been a pleasure. 14 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/5ababfab0a4a1ef7d6999bdca1bd186a.mp3 ff5f3400c897f17526a13e1640b1ce79 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Marsh, Wilson Benson Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Marsh, Andrew Interview Date 10/16/11 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 58:28 min Copyright Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Tag Army, Army Reserve, Vanderbilt University, Fort Bragg, Camp Gordon, infantry, Fort Rucker, Fort Ord, Fort Worden, Marshville Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Wilson Benson Marsh, 16 October 2011 Subject The topic of the resource World War II, 1939-1945 Benson, Wilson Veterans Personal narratives, American United States Interviews Description An account of the resource William Benson Marsh joined the Army Reserve in High School, 1944. The interview talks about his service during World War II, the USO shows to entertain the troops, basic training, and the dropping of the atomic bomb. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Marsh, Wilson Benson Marsh, Andrew Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Extent The size or duration of the resource. 14 pages Language A language of the resource English Army Specialized Training Reserve Program Fort Bragg Geneva Convention GI Bill Vanderbilt https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/0f109f4181c2be7229592582411c0a85.pdf ad1a982ce0b34856ae1c574f119229de PDF Text Text Military Oral History Interview Transcript Barry Craig Forrest Robbins, North Carolina 16 October 2011 WF: William C. Forrest BF: Barry C. Forrest JC: James Wesley Cain, another veteran. WF: My name is William Cameron Forrest, I am interviewing Barry Craig Forrest, the date is October 16th, 2011, the place is Robbins, North Carolina and this is part of an oral history project for History 3823. Okay to begin, how did you join the military? BF: I joined the military while I was in college. I enlisted in the North Carolina State University Army ROTC program, and a month later I also enlisted in the North Carolina National Guard. WF: Why did you choose to do ROTC rather than just enlist? BF: Well, I had always wanted to be an officer, I wanted to be a tank and armor officer, and that was the reason. WF: Why did you choose the National Guard over the active duty Army? BF: I chose the Guard over the active duty Army because the active duty Army would have had to do a lot of traveling, and it made sense to me at the time so that I could help the people of the state North Carolina better if I were in the National Guard as opposed to in in the active duty. Plus, I was in college at the time. WF: So you were living on the campus at NC State? BF: No, I was living in an apartment in Raleigh about two miles off campus. WF: Why did you pick the service branch you joined? BF: I had always been a student of history; I had studied the tank battles of World War Two, and was interested in armor warfare, so I enlisted as an armor officer. WF: Do you recall your first days after enlisting? BF: Somewhat…it was kind of confusing. I didn't course I didn't know anything about the military not having come from a military family. I was just doing what they told me to do I and then try to figure out what to do next. WF: When did you join? 1 �BF: I joined in September 1980. WF: What did it feel like? BF: It felt good. I didn't have any qualms like some people do about joining the military, it was always an exciting life for me I was happy. WF: Was it something you had always wanted to do? BF: Yes, I had always wanted to join. I always wanted to be of service to people to try to help people, and through the military I thought I could be of the best service to the people that I grew up with the people of my state and the people of my country. WF: What about your training experiences, do you remember any of those? BF: I had a number of training experiences over the 28 years I was in the Army. Initial training experiences I had were while I was with the National Guard I would go to drills, and this was before I had any formal military schooling other than just some classes through the ROTC program. I remember being on the tanks out in the woods in at Fort Bragg doing our weekend training and then doing our two week annual training periods being very exciting times, a lot of interesting things happening. Of course this is typical military stuff you know you go out there and it's a lot of hurry up and wait an you hurry to get somewhere and then you might wait around a couple hours before you do anything and then you might only do something for just a brief period and then you're back to waiting again. But all in all I enjoyed it, I felt like I learned a lot…like it was something I was good at. WF: What did you have to do to become an armor officer? BF: To become an armor officer I had to be of course enlisted in the army, and then when I completed my school at NC State University. I finished the ROTC program I went to the armor officer basic course was what it was called in 1983 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. I was there that was a four month course for second lieutenants and I was there from July of 1983 until the end of October 1983. WF: Do you remember any of your training instructors, ROTC, or otherwise? BF: Let's see I had a Major Van Horn he was a ROTC instructor. The trainers at Fort Knox, I don't remember any specific names of people for; well I take that back we had a Marine instructor that was our small group instructor when I went to the advance course in 1989…his name was Marty. He was a captain at the time he was he was a pretty good guy. He was a Marine armor officer. He was a unique individual (laughs). I don't know how you'd say it kind of a hard charging guy. 2 �His nickname was “Thumper.” He got that nickname because when he was a tank company commander in the Marine Corps. He had a particular private who was always giving him problems. So finally this private had just given him enough problems that it was the straw that broke the camel's back. He called the private over to his tank and got him behind the tank and he said, "Private this bolt is loose tighten it." His first sergeant went to the private and said, "No sir, it's not it's not loose." Then said, "Get a little closer and look at it." So the private gets a little closer and said, "No, I sir I can't see a loose bolt anywhere." The lieutenant said, "Get a little closer." By this time the private got fairly close to the back end of the tank. The lieutenant reached over and grabbed the guy’s hand and his head…and thumped his head up against the side of the tank. And (laughs) lesson learned for the private and from that point on he was called “Thumper.” WF: Interesting, so you mentioned you had 20 plus years in the military…how did you get through it? BF: A lot of patience, a lot of patience. All kinds of people with all kinds of ideas about the way things should be done or about the way they should be run, and you can issue an order to a hundred people and you will have a hundred different…versions of how the order should be executed. WF: In regards to your experiences in the military did you ever serve during a time of war? BF: I was in the military from 1980 until 2008…no correction 2009. I served through the little conflict they had in Grenada, the incursion into Panama and the First Gulf War and the Second Gulf War. WF: What was your job or assignment during these wars? BF: Initially I was an armor officer. I did platoon time as a tank company platoon leader, I was tank company commander, was the intelligence S-2 officer for the tank battalion. I worked as the S-1, I did some work in the operation side that was during the First Gulf War by the time the Second Gulf War rolled around the Army had decided to put me into an engineer. So I was a combat engineer during the Second Gulf War. I was never mobilized or deployed to either of the war fronts. WF: So how did you become an engineer? BF: I was what they would call a “yellow book engineer,” basically that means that I had been school trained to be an armor officer. They decided that I needed that they had too many armor officers they needed engineers. So I had to take correspondence courses to learn how to be a combat engineer officer. Those correspondence courses are they come in in books that have a yellow cover on them. So if you do the correspondence courses and you become qualified in whatever course they are offering you you're a yellow book engineer or yellow book whatever. And that's the way I got it. 3 �WF: Did you ever have a lot of memorable experiences as an armor officer or an engineer? BF: Yes, there were a number of different (laughs)…you can't do this kind of job and not have memories of different things. I remember driving down the interstate, or the autobahn in Germany in an M-1 Tank at 60-miles an hour passing cars on the side of the road. That was a unique experience. I remember driving through farmers’ fields in Germany in 1984. The tank next to me we was driving across a beet field. The tank next to me was throwing what they called a “rooster tail” behind the tracks of beets and soil. The farmers weren't too happy about that one either. I remember driving into a German village one night in a column. A company column and stopping in the village by the British. The British were our opposing forces, by a British patrol. They had a roadblock set-up and we couldn't go forward and we really didn't have room to back up the whole company out of the village. I looked off to the left and there was a vacant lot where I was at and it opened onto open fields out behind just outside the village. So I called the commander on the radio and told him what I had and he said go with it so we I took my platoon, we turned left we went into the vacant lot then the whole company followed us out. We drove through and across this farm field and drove around the village. Next morning we had to come back through there and the area we had driven through there were foxholes dug all over the place. We had driven through a British infantry position in the dark (laughs) and had managed not to run over anybody with 14 M-1 Tanks. I remember getting a M-1 Tank stuck one time so deep in the ground it took us four hours to pull it out. We had to use three tank retriever M-88s to do the job. It was just a mess. The tank sank into the dirt so deep that I could step off the top of the off the hull of the tank right onto the surface of ground it was just level. WF: I stuck one up like that (laughing). BF: Oh? WF: Broke the track on it. BF: Yes. WF: In the mud and it took us to about midnight to get it out and get it back home. BF: Yes, I remember going being at Fort Hood and doing some of the lanes. Some of the lanes training and some of the gunnery training down there. I remember sleeping in the camp area by my tank and hearing something rattling around in our garbage and looking up and there was a cow walking through the area getting into the garbage ah bags over there trying to look for something eat. I remember a guy getting bit by a bat while he was riding in his tank. He was riding with the hatch open they drove under a tree and dislodged the bat it fell in the vehicle with him and bit him on the arm. He had to have rabies treatments. WF: So where have you gone overseas in the military? 4 �BF: During my time in the military I have been to Germany twice. I was there for different things, different reasons in Germany. I went to a conference. I was in Korea for just a real short span I was just over there for a conference. The rest of the time most of the rest of my travels have all been inside the continental US. WF: So what kind of a conference was it that you attended in Korea? BF: It was a conference to plan two exercises that were coming up we went to this conference. I went to the conference in February and the exercise was going to take place in August. The time change between North Carolina and Korea was horrendous. I was always ready to go. I went to bed every day at five o'clock and woke up every morning at three o'clock. While I was there the climate was nice it must have been, must have been March cause it was not really cold march or April that I was there not February. Because it wasn't really cold when I was there, it was cold enough that they had the heat on in the hotel we stayed in Seoul (clock chimes) Lord they had the heat turned up to probably a hundred degree I slept on top of the covers. I remember the riot police being around all of the gates to the base that we were or the post we were working off of. They are at least a squad at every entrance to the base because they had protestors that would come and protest in front of the bases. I got to see I got an understanding for if you study history when they invaded Korea, when McArthur came into Korea and he did the amphibious invasion they talked about the tides were a big factor well I didn't understand that until you go out and you look at the when you leave Seoul and go to airport you have to go by the ocean or by the across the bay. Well, depending on what time of day there if you are there at one time in the day there is just miles and miles of water if you come by at another time of the day it's just miles and miles of mudflat so and I'm you know it's like knee deep mud you ain't nobody's going to get across that in a boat or a vehicle or walking anytime soon so that gave me an appreciation for why they ha why the tides were so important in that particular operation. WF: While you were overseas did you receive any medals or citations for your actions? BF: I did not receive any medals or citations for actions done while I was overseas. My highest awards have been a Meritorious Service Medal. I have three of these; mostly for just service at whatever job I happened to be doing at the time. I got a Meritorious Service Medal for service in an infantry brigade, another for service in an engineer brigade, and for service working in the National Guard headquarters in Raleigh. WF: While overseas how did you stay in touch with your family? BF: When I was in Korea you could just buy a pre-paid phone card and you could dial home with that that was pretty neat. When I was in Germany I wrote letters. That was pretty much before they had all these new cell phones and that was in 1984 there were you had to go to a 5 �hardened phone facility to do to call home an everything we I didn't really have time to do that I mostly was by letter. WF: Did you like the food overseas? BF: Yes I did. I liked I liked the German food was all right. I'm not a particular fan of spaetzle but European foods are good. I liked jaeger schnitzel and things like that. The schnitzel was pretty good. What's that Hungarian soup? Anyhow there was some soups I liked really liked over there the Korean food was ok. It was pretty good, I like I like Asian foods anyway. WF: They didn't have a dog in it? BF: No, I ate at a Korean restaurant just a little ways down the street from my hotel. At least the menus were in English so I could read what I was getting. Because I had been warned that you had to be careful because there's bologna and bologna or something like that and one of the other of them was dog. And I didn't want to eat any dog. But I found the food pretty good I could eat just about anywhere in the world I think. WF: Did you feel any pressure or stress while overseas? BF: No real stress while I was overseas. Like I said they were short assignments and I was pretty well prepared for both assignments. At the time in Germany I probably had the most fun. Driving tanks across the countryside that was (laughs) I enjoyed that. WF: What did you do to entertain yourself while overseas? BF: There wasn't a lot to do in Korea. They had a street called Taiwan Street there in Seoul. It was like a little small shopping district. That you could go up there and I could walk up there and walk around and look at the shops and so some stuff like that and they had a they had a history museum not far from the just outside the gate of the post I was at. I went there and then I walked around on the post some and looked around there that was about it for German, for Korea. In Germany, just the looking at the countryside moving around a lot talking to the people. Because I, a number of the Germans speak English pretty well. It was pretty interesting plus I spoke a little German at the time. That helped some. WF: Did you take any photographs of your experiences overseas? BF: I have photographs of I have a number of photographs of the German trips. But I don't really have any pictures of the Korean trip, some not a lot though. I just didn't I didn't take a camera with me for that one it was just a short trip so I wasn't going to get the tourist do any tourist time so. WF: Why did you take pictures while you were overseas, if you did? 6 �BF: Well, most of the things I took pictures of when I was on the trip to with Germany because I was new to the Army at the time I was just a lieutenant. There was a great opportunity to see foreign military equipment up close. I took my camera with that, that was my intent when I took my camera was to take pictures of foreign military equipment, and I wound up taking pictures of other things like I think I took a picture of every church bell tower in every village we went through, almost. And then just pictures of the countryside I thought it was really pretty we were up in the north on the North German Plain on the Reforger. We were doing up near a place called Wolfe, I think was the name of it. There is another town there I can't remember the other town. We were probably 20 kilometers from the East German border at the time at that time the border was still guarded and they had minefields on the East German side of the border. I we drove right up to the fence that divided East Germany from West Germany and looked across into East Germany which we later found out that U.S. Army personnel were not supposed to be within one kilometer of the fence. So technically we were kind of violating the rules but nobody explained it to us. WF: What did you think of your officers and fellow soldiers? BF: I served with some good officers I served with some sorry officers, I've served with some good enlisted soldiers and some bad enlisted soldiers the good enlisted soldiers you try to hang onto and you try to promote them up and make sure they have a make sure they have good job security and a good career progression then the poor ones you try to help them to be better soldiers and if they refuse to do that you try to limit the damage they can do to your unit, or the their responsibilities. Until you can get rid of them. WF: So what positions have you held in the military. What jobs have you progressed through as you have spent your time in the military? BF: My career progression was a as a tank platoon leader, tank company executive officer, tank company commander, a tank armor battalion intelligence officer S-2, was a engineer battalion S1, worked at the engineer at the infantry brigade as a in the operations section 5-3 section, was the brigade S-1 in the infantry brigade, was the brigade S-1 in the engineer brigade, worked outside of the S-1, outside the S-11 and was mobilization officer for the state of North Carolina. I was the person that mobilized probably 90 percent of the units that went to the Second Gulf War. WF: What was your favorite position in the military? BF: Tank company commander. WF: Why did you prefer that position above all the other ones? BF: Because I was still working on the tanks I still got to be down with the soldiers and work with the soldiers. I was trained from the beginning and that was the job that I aspired to be was to be a leader in a tank unit an armor unit. And (clears throat) it was just a challenge to develop the training and work the tactics and lead the company in tactical situations. 7 �WF: Do you recall the day your service ended? BF: My service ended 30 September 2008. Not really a big day, it's just when it was the day I was officially retired. By that time I really didn't like the office jobs. I wanted to be around the soldiers and be out with the line units. The fighting units, the sharp end of the spear but (cough) this unit… this job I was doing the year of my retirement was just a desk job and I got to go out and visit the units, but I didn't get to go with training. I really didn't like that as much but by that time I was ready to go. WF: What rank were you when your service ended? BF: I retired as a lieutenant colonel, 0-5. WF: Did you ever want to go any higher than that or was that as far as you wanted to go? BF: I always wanted to go higher. I did not get to be a tank company or a tank battalion commander. But there was only one battalion in the state and there were just so many people that wanted to be in command. So many better connections than I did there was no way I was going to get it so I just had to live with it. WF: So you mentioned you were in the National Guard, did you have another job while you were in the military? BF: Well, when I was for the last 20 years I was in the military service I was on active duty with the guard. I was what they call an active duty Guard Reserve, an AGR soldier. The first eight years I was a traditional Guardsman. That means I had a two-day drill every month and a fourteen-day annual training period in a year. During that time I worked as a land surveyor, doing survey work. WF: What did you do after your military service ended? BF: The first year after it ended I just kind of lived the retired life. I took the children to school. WF: And then had to get two jobs? BF: Lay around the house, and then I managed to find me another job. As a military contractor working with the Robin Sage exercise in the Special Forces qualification course. WF: Why did you choose to go to work as a military contractor after retirement? BF: Because it gave me a chance to be back with at the soldier level of the military training. And it was an opportunity to be able to just be back near combat level type assignment. Plus it was working with Special Forces those guys are always cool. WF: You know he sent some Special Forces to Africa? 8 �BF: Yes. WF: So would you say the military has become a lasting effect on your life? BF: Yes, it has. WF: Why do you think it has? BF: I have been places and seen things and talked to people that I would never have done if I had not been in the military. I mean it's a job with benefits. These trying times with jobs and all there are not many people that I can say they've got a job that has full medical benefits and full housing benefits and a death gratuity if you die. WF: Did you make any really close friends while you were in the service? BF: Yes, I made a number of them. WF: Do you still continue these relationships? BF: Yes, I do. Don't get to see all of them as much as I used to, but I talk to them infrequently. Some more than others. WF: Have you made a lot of relationships as a military contractor as well? BF: Yes, I have. Lots of different people mostly retired people that work as contractors doing this job and some of the active duty soldiers that work as cadre for the lane. They're all good folks I liked working with them. WF: Did you join a veteran's organization? BF: I joined the American Legion. WF: In the veteran’s organization what kinds of activities does your post or association have? BF: Oh they have a number of different activities. They meet a lot of times when they are having meetings so I don't get to go to the meetings. But they do fish fries. I participate in the fish fries, and they sponsor baseball teams stuff like that. I've not done much work with a ball team but I've helped them with a fish fry some. WF: Is there anything else you would like to add to this interview? BF: No, I would say that probably my one regret from military service was that I never ever served in any of the conflicts ever. That was not my desired path when I entered the military. If there was a conflict I was going to serve in it. I wanted to be part of history (clock chimes) and because when they occurred and the assignments I was in at the time, I did not get to serve in those conflicts. 9 �WF: Thank you for your time. 10 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/d1b0eceb7939c141d86afdfa8b3f0351.mp3 1bf3afafde201140bb158c57f413fcd9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Forrest, Barry Craig Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Forrest, William Interview Date 10/11/16 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 29:22 min Copyright Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used. Tag Robbins, NC State University, ROTC, National Guard, armor, officer, Fort Knox, Germany, Fort Hood, Korea Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Barry Craig Forrest, 16 October 2011 Subject The topic of the resource National Guard Gulf War, 1980-1988 Iraq War, 2003-2011 Forrest, Barry Craig Veterans Personal narratives, American United States Interviews Description An account of the resource Barry Craig Forrest, interviewed by William C. Forrest, enlisted in the NC State University ROTC and the NC National Guard in 1980. He served 28 years in the Army as an armor officer and combat engineer. Although he served in the First and Second Gulf War, in this interview he mainly discusses his service in Germany. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Forrest, Barry Craig Forrest, William C. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a> Extent The size or duration of the resource. 10 Pages Language A language of the resource English armor officer Fort Bragg Gulf War NC National Guard platoon Raleigh yellow book engineer https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/32d1818c78aeebb379cafdc4f4dc2e3c.pdf 213cf3ba6b1cf27723096be077b9be6a PDF Text Text Oral history Transcript Appalachian State University Interviewee: Lt. Colonel Steven Wilkins Interviewer: Ben Brazaski October 15 2011 BB: Ben Brazaski SW: Steve Wilkins BB: This is Ben Brazaski and I am interviewing Steve Wilkins at his residence on 10/15/2011. I'm doing an oral history project for my U.S.Military History class for Dr. Judkin Browning. And could you state your full name? SW: Steven Patrick Wilkins. BB: And your birthdate? SW: 3/27/1960 BB: Is ...ok... Were you serving in any particular war or conflict? SW: Well…did... I had a full military career... I went into the Army commissioned as an officer in the Army immediately upon graduation from college... and through the course of my career participated in three actual conflicts, the invasion of Grenada, Desert Storm and then Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion and first year of the conflict in Iraq. BB: So just to clarify, what branch of the service were you in? SW: I was in the Army. BB: And when you left what rank were you? SW: I retired as a Lt. Colonel… I was actually a Lt. Colonel promotable and that's a ... that's another part of the story we can talk about later. It's a good thing but because of the war in Iraq I stayed longer than I anticipated which was not a bad thing but I ended up getting promoted or getting �selected for promotion but because I stayed in and was extended for that duty. BB: Was there anywhere else you were stationed outside the United States? SW: Yes. Early in my career as a young captain after being assigned to Ft. Bragg I was stationed in Korea for one year. And it was actually a very interesting time period because it's when South Korea was building up to host the Olympics and there was a huge effort going on in the country and I was there during the Asian games the year before the Olympics which was kind of a dry run so it was a very interesting time to be there because they were transitioning from really a third world developing country into a very, very modern country so it was quite a good time to be there. I served overseas a lot that is the only time that I had that. We would call a permanent change of station... where actually moved everything to Korea and was there but I did serve in I lot of other countries in the early 1980's. I… I went to Central America... Honduras ... many times... when we were involved in... I wouldn’t call it a conflict, but it was definitely a standoff. Nicaraguan government at the time was sponsoring a trouble along the border with Honduras and the US had decided that their activity was aggressive and that we were going to take a stand on that so for several years we did a lot of exercises down there developing infrastructure where we could reinforce Honduras if needed. Elsewhere in Central America so I went there many times... participated in the invasion of Grenada in 1983 so that was overseas and during that same first tour in the army. So... went to turkey on an exercise which was very interesting ... enjoyed that very, very much... let me think... where else did I go during that time period? Overseas... well... then I went to Korea. Later on I ended up going to lots of countries in the Middle East because eventually I went through army special forces training. Became a Special Forces officer i11 fifth Special Forces group so we went to the Middle East to do our training. We were oriented... to southwest Asia. Middle East went to Jordan a couple of times, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, went to Somalia; made a lot of trips to those locations. Then, later on as we were building up to do the war in Iraq. Went to Germany and Kuwait several times for planning conferences there... because the headquarters we were going to fall under in Iraq was headquartered in Germany and then of course we actually went to some planning conferences in Kuwait itself. Went to Europe a few other times on trips related to the military so really got to see quite a bit of the world. BB: When you were in combat situations what exactly was your particular job? SW: Well when we went to Grenada in 1983, I was assigned to a… I was commissioned a transportation officer. When I graduated from college I went to the citadel... graduated 1982, with a political science degree. Badly wanted to be an infantry officer and was initially assigned that, two years duty infantry, and then control branch of transportation corps which I thought that was ok because transportation did interest me even though it wasn't my first choice. But then the army changed its policy that year and I came straight in as a transportation corp. ft. I personally was very disappointed. But once I got to my first assignment at ft. Bragg, North Carolina found that I enjoyed that career field very much. We were very… I was in a very active unit, we were called a terminal transfer unit and essentially we had a lot of people. We were big company 250 people; we had a lot of cranes, and forklifts, and trucks and bulldozers and �everything else you can think of. And our job was to run terminals be it either barge terminals or ocean terminals airfield operations, truck terminals maybe for surface movement to where we would receive cargo off of ships or airplanes... whatever or maybe load them. We were called a transshipment point, and it turned out that it was very interesting work. But the particular company I was in, because it was at Ft. Bragg in 18th Airborne Corp and then develop orient or train whatever you would say to do these for airfield type operation this… this sort of workhand that’s because at that time just a few years prior under President Carters administration, the rapid joint task force in order to project American military power into the middle east if necessary. And the army 18th airborne corp. at fort Bragg was a key component of that so they designed 18th airborne corps around the 82nd airborne division, 1015t airborne division, 24th infantry division, and others to be able to go into an austere environment rapidly. And our company was a key part of that because we on the early deployment list to go in and actually manage all the cargo and people that would be coming into airfields to support the operation and that’s what we did in Grenada. My platoon...my company commander, myself, and my platoon ... we had just come out of an exercise, a huge exercise, down in Florida training to do this very same thing for many weeks in the tropical environment so that it all fit well. We deployed to Grenada to run the airfield at pt. selines and that's what we did and it was very chaotic. A lot of people at that time kind of described Grenada as a convoluted messed up disorganized operation that demonstrated how the services couldn't communicate well with each other some of that was true but some of it was a little bit overstated because the operation was conducted with almost no notice the 18th airborne corp. units had literally no notice when we were told we were going to be deploying. At that time we had practiced deployments, no notice deployments all the time because of the situation in central America, and we would often fly units down there and they would practice and they would parachute in, or go in by ship, or a combination of the two and hang around and train for a few weeks and come home. That was a regular thing, getting an alert at fort Bragg those days to deploy. This was 1983; late summer early fall 83 was not an unusual thing at all so an alert in the middle of the night was not unusual at all. Well practiced but then people were told we were going to Grenada. Most people didn't know there was such a place called Grenada and assumed it was a fictional....oh well here's another training exercise and this time rather than call the enemy atlantians or something, which is typically used for calling it Grenada, so it’s an invented place. People didn't realize it was for real till they actually started passing out the live ammunition and giving the shots and all those things at fort Braggs green pope air force ...green ramp like we always simulated in previous exercises so my organization went down and parked at the end point selines airfield and just set up a very shabby tent… little tent operation because that's all we had. We were out in the dirt, it was dusty, it was hot, and we were offloading primarily c141 aircraft and after the initial we came in actually very, very, early on with the lead elements with the 82nd airborne division because that’s what the war plans and you did. And we set up an operation and it was very chaotic at first because c141 transport aircraft were arriving every fifteen minutes. Part of the airfield was under construction and all cluttered up and so you only one aircraft of that size could land at a time so one would land and it would taxi down to the airfield turn around open up we would offload it, it would take off and another one would come in and land just minutes after it took off. This was around the clock day and night. Our crew was working shifts twenty four hours a day and not long in the operation because of the short duration. We actually had to start loading planes out because a lot of the stuff that was brought in early on particular combat equipment like artillery and heavier munitions and things weren’t needed. The real fighting last only about a week there was some other events after that but it �became apparent that a lot of the forces that were there needed to leave and that we needed to start bringing in military police civil affairs people and people like that, you know for stability operations. So then what we had to do, is units would be told that they could leave, they would come near the airfield and park and get all their stuff ready and coordinate with us to we develop load plans and stage them all and do all the things you need to do to prepare cargo. And people you know to load on an airplane quickly leave and then when an airplane would load come and offload supplies you know we would quickly as we could have another load with people and all standing by that we could put back on it. And that went on for several weeks at a very hectic pace after about six weeks the whole operation ended and turned into a civil affairs operation. And in December… and we were actually along with the deputy commander Gerald Ferris we were actually the last unit to leave Grenada. Two airplanes came in at the very end and he and his group were on one and our last element with one fork lift was on another and that's how I closed out, so that's… that was my role in that particular conflict. BB: Just going back to kind of jog your memory about an early service. Where were you living when you decided you wanted to join the military? SW: Well it's hard to say exactly when and where. I was actually born in Durham, North Carolina and grew up there and went all twelve years k-12 to school in northern Durham County and it was a fairly rural area. A lot of us kids were kind of interested in military stuff we played in the woods a lot. We hunted and had guns then and I had lots of relatives that had been in WWII and Korean war veterans uncles and such and I had heard them talk and things. Although they didn't talk about it a lot, I just kind of became interested in it and liked the outdoors. And when I was in high school I decided I wanted to go in the military in some shape or another as a result of through college ROTC I wanted to do... I just wanted to try it. I didn't know whether I wanted to come out and go into the National Guard. I knew I wanted to be commissioned an officer and be in the National Guard, army reserves, the active army, or something of that sort. I really wasn't even settled on the army, I was just kind of going in that general broad direction. So I'll never forget I got to so I decided to go to the Citadel. Actually had narrowed my colleges down to two choices, Appalachian state and the Citadel. And I liked Appalachian because they had forestry programs and things like that that interested me, and they had ROTC. And then I ran across a Citadel recruiter at one of our college days in high school and they had some impressive literature. We used to joke later on that it was propaganda but it was interesting and I liked Charleston, South Carolina. I had been there so I said “gosh well I'm taking a military career let's go to the citadel and see what I really think maybe and then decide,” and I'll never forget that I was so unsure of it. I didn't know this but when I went to the citadel, everybody there, 100 percent of the corp. of cadets had to be enrolled in some ROTC, that's just part of the way the college worked. You don't have to go on active duty in any part of the military afterwards, but you do have to enroll in ROTC. So freshman year first thing we're standing in line being told what to do and we were told you know this line had to sign up for the ROTC you wanted I told one of the upperclassmen. I said “well sir I don't know which one I want to sign up for,” Hahira, and he said “just pick one and you can change later.” I guess I had kind of a perplexed look on my face and he said “just pick the army it's the biggest one.” And so that's how I decided, and got into army ROTC and enjoyed it. At that time the detachment officers, the NCO's that were there were very impressive they were all Vietnam veterans because we really hadn't been out of that �conflict very long so just about every career officer and NCO were, and they were really a sharp bunch. They were very impressive, they worked with us well. I like the sound of the things that they did during their career. There were pretty good mentors overall so I kind of got interested in that. And then, sophomore year, some friends and I found out about a program. The South Carolina national guard had to wear mummy... college students that were in ROTC could enlist in the National Guard and you know ... you know... you were automatically qualified to do that and you... they made you private first class immediately. Your something when you came in and then you could be a sergeant within a year or something, and we though, a lot of us thought it was a good idea because we didn't have a lot of money and... You know... you get paid for drill hush every weekend and again. I thought that would be a good introduction to the army, since I was leaning that way, so I did that. I enlisted in February, this is February 1980 my sophomore year, and then since it's the National Guard they can schedule when you go to basic training. So I enlisted in the National Guard field artillery unit in Georgetown, South Carolina. Just as a side note, this is a very interesting unit, second oldest unit in the United States Military called the Swamp Fox Battalion, named after Frances Marion, cause that's the area, Georgetown, South Carolina where Frances Marion operated in the revolutionary war, and our unit crest had the fox on it which was the Swamp Fox Battalion one of the oldest units in the military. So that was a very interesting and I went to basic training that summer at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and it was very hot at Fort Jackson in the summer. It was very interesting training and looking back on it, at the time, I just did it to do it but looking back on it I am glad that I experienced… since I had a career as an officer I was glad I got to experience what our entry level soldiers you know, get as their first training and indoctrination into the army. I found a very useful thing to have experienced later on in my service. The funny thing though is I had a I got home... I'd only been home a few days from basic training and waiting for the school year to start again and I got a call from a marine recruiter out of Charlotte. At that time the marines were doing a transition from older aircraft to newer aircraft aviation parts. She called me up and said, “hey I'd like to offer you a guaranteed marine aviation contract. When you go back to school your junior year, you change to Marine Corp ROTC and if you're physically qualified and you meet the requirements for you to graduate you automatically get in a flight training program. If you meet all the and...it's interesting, cause I'd always wanted to fly, but I just had come back from army ROTC. That experience with basic training said, “no thanks, I'm already in the army national guard, I just got back from basic training.” And then when I hung up I thought well this guy must think I am really a nut If I just finished army basic training and I turned down a flight contract to they probably didn't want me anyway. But anyway, that's just how I just kind of fell into the army program gradually not that committed you know. But I decided somewhere along the way, I don't remember when I decided I would seek a regular army commission and then I would go on active duty immediately after college, but I can't put a finger on exactly when and where. BB: Was there any time during you military career where you actually saw active combat? SW: Well, it depends on how you define active combat. If you're talking about kind of what you see in the movies, you know, throw a hand grenade and close quarter combat; I didn't experience any of that. And in fact up until the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, most people in the army did not experience that since Vietnam. Because the conflicts we were in Grenada went by very, very, quickly and I was not in an infantry type unit, and most of the infantry that landed in �Grenada didn't engage in fire fights either. They did a lot of searching a lot of patrolling, certainly saw some of that, was certainly around it, heard it. We all felt like we were in potentially in some danger you know at first but didn't experience it them... but later on I participated in desert shield/ desert storm. There's a gap in what we're talking about and then I went into army special forces training was in fifth group and we did a lot of training in the middle east, and then in 19… I guess it was 1990... late 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Since that was our area of the world, in fact we had only been back from a training exercise in Jordan like sixty days when that happened. So we were one of the first units to deploy, and we were there a long time, and through the course of that conflict we did see... I don't know that anyone ever shot at me, I never shot at anybody. It's certainly possible at some time that closer to potential danger than we thought, you just don't know. You don't know those things, you really don't know what happened ten or fifteen minutes before you were there that changed the whole scenario, or what could have happened if somebody hadn’t have done anything else. But again that conflict was the United States Army in particular is... once the land war started used such overwhelming force, it was like a tidal wave, and although I saw the results of it, we were right there. Our job was to work with the Arab units, in the northeast Saudi part of the peninsula, a very multinational unit under Saudi leadership. So we were right there as they were doing their thrust of the east coast, and going into Kuwait city to liberate it. But frankly at that time I was more afraid of getting hit by celebratory gunfire. It was going on in Kuwait city by Kuwaiti's...then then then then enemy at that time. Then later on when I was in Iraq with the 1015 airborne division, again we had moments in the early part of that war where some of our infantry units did experience close combat for periods of time. Now later on it would be much closer... you know, you know as things change it’s a different story. But during that time period we were moving through cities and all in Iraq it was a very uneasy feeling you know especially later on as the counter insurgent started to pick up and there were incidents around us. I awakened one night where right outside our place somebody had come by our place and thrown a few hand grenades at our guards outside and things of that nature. But I don't know that I was ever directly fired at during any of these conflicts. BB: When you were overseas was there any way to contact your family? And did that progress as your military career evolved? SW: Well yes, there always was, but it changed dramatically during my military career. When I did the invasion of Grenada for example, we had no postal. At that point that was, this was 1983, there's no personal computers, there's no internet, none of that stuff. We had no postal service for a little while because it was such a hastily put together operation, but we did have after a while and we could write letters. There was a little army postal detachment and you could send letters out and you could get letters back as well. It would be a little slower than the mail service in the U.S.. Then again, when I went to Korea it was the same way. Communication was primarily letter writing and of course with the U.S. forces had been in Korea a long time there was a very developed postal system there. Letter writing was very reliable, of course it was slow, no computers, could talk on the phone. In fact at that time I was engaged to my wife, Meg, and we had very good phone service in Korea. So I could actually call her on the phone and go through an operator and the time difference was ... Korea is pretty much on the exact opposite time, twelve hours apart from the United States, the timing had to be just right to make a call. But, and �then sometimes the international lines would be clogged up and you couldn't make a call so we had good communications. It was just different than today, slower; you had to anticipate if somebody wasn't there. People didn't even have answering machines then really, so if you called somebody, and it just rang, and they weren't home you missed it. They wouldn't even know you had called, so there were different challenges. I remember calling back to my unit from down in Honduras, off the back of my air force jeep, I wasn't aware of it, but one of the forward air controllers that was with us, somebody had told me that you could make a call that I needed to call back to my unit cause we were out in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains of the Guatemala border operating a dirt airstrip up there in a place named kookieaqua, and that was my first experience with this sort of thing. Is with the air force foreign air controller was able to patch, was able to make a call, a radio call to... to a mars station. They called them at Scott Air Force base, in Illinois, and was able to get a phone patch back to Fort Bragg so I was able sitting in the middle of nowhere talking off a little Air Force, you know combat foreign air controller jeep to be able to call back, but again, that was hit or miss. � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/96dccec1e0720aa5a0b9c243b9248ec4.mp3 d46420e8fe53abdaccadc07b32d16332 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers. Copyright Notice: Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Brazaski, Ben Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:11:53 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. 6 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Steven Wilkins, 15 October 2011 Subject The topic of the resource Veterans Wilkins, Steven United States Interviews Description An account of the resource Steven Wilkins, Lt. Colonel, US Army, was born on March 27th, 1960. In this Interview Steven Wilkins describes some of the places he has been stationed outside the U.S. during his military career. He talks about being in Korea, Central America, and the Middle East. He mentions his specific job while in the Army. He also discusses his decision and influences to enter the Army and specifically mentions experiences as a child and going through ROTC. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/15/11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Language A language of the resource English Ben Brazaski Fort Bragg Grenada Iraq North Carolina ROTC Steven Wilkins US Army