1 50 3 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/a6b71683a78084e78fc5011a16611d49.pdf aac04c2dcfbbd529fec35f62d942f60b PDF Text Text Name: Branch: Years Served: Conflicts: Date of Interview: Richard Gilbert U.S. Army 1968-1971 Vietnam War October 15, 2012 Cody Spiker: My name is Cody Spiker, interviewing Richard Gilbert at 214 West Academy Street, his residence. [Cherryville, NC] Mr. Gilbert, when were you born? Richard Gilbert: I was born March 27th, 1948. Spiker: Where were you born at? Gilbert: I was born in Franklin NC, which was way up in the mountains up in the corner of the state. But I grew up in Lincoln County. Spiker: Lincoln County, when did you move down to Lincolnton, or Lincoln County? Gilbert: Oh, probably when I started school, around First grade. You know, about seven, six or seven, something like that. I think I actually started second grade down here, so. We moved up on highway 27 out in the country. Spiker: Okay, so your family is from the Appalachian Mountains actually? Gilbert: Yeah my mom was born in the mountains, my grandmother and grandfather yeah, basically homesteaders, so. Spiker: Okay, one of the things that they are pushing for in this interview process is people from the Appalachian Mountains, (“Oh” -Gilbert) the Appalachian area, veterans form this area so that’s excellent. So, which war did you fight in? Gilbert: I fought in Vietnam. Yeah I went, I got in the army, let’s see, it would have been ’68. I think, and then I went to Vietnam in ’69. So, I went in in December, I went to Vietnam I December of ’68 and came back in December of ‘69. Spiker: Ok, and where you a volunteer or were you a draftee? Gilbert: Well, I was a volunteer. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I didn’t really support the war but I knew that needed a college education and I didn’t really have a way to pay for it. So, I saw that as a way of getting an education an you know, so, I enlisted for three years. Spiker: Okay, so at the time that you enlisted where were you living at? 1 �Gilbert: I was living in Lincolnton and I was attending Lincolnton high school, and I was in my last year. And there were several of us who talked about it and decided we would go see a recruiter, and so we did. We all went in together; there was about, I don’t know, eight or ten of us. Spiker: So you were about eighteen? Gilbert: … Somewhere along in there, it was just after high school. Spiker: What branch of service did you enter? Gilbert: Well, since I enlisting and I got the opportunity to pick, I had some choice and they told me what was open. Artillery, a couple things, communications, and military police and I decided that I would go military police. Sounded exciting. (Spiker chuckles and says, “MP’s lead the way.”) Spiker: So you obviously enlisted into the Army? Gilbert: Right. Spiker: Do you recall your first days of service? Like when you went to basic training? What was that like? Gilbert: Oh I remember the first day of training like it was imprinted in my brain, (Gilbert chuckles) It… we had about a week or so before we actually started basic they had us in a kind of holding pen, which was extremely boring, there was nothing to do except you know what freedom we had to go to the PX and eat. That was about it. So… when we were ready to start basic they put us on the bus and drove us over to our company and then I think you can imagine what happened after that. Hahahaha. It was in July at Fort Bragg and I think that was probably the hottest place on earth. And… it was a pretty miserable day. Spiker: I can imagine. Do you remember any of your instructors? Gilbert: Oh yes, lets see, there was… a Corporal Norris who had… he was an interesting character. He had been in the Army and… served and came back home and somehow or another he was in the reserves and didn’t attend the meetings and got re-drafted, (Chuckles) so they pulled him back in and they put him as… in our company as a trainer, as an instructor. …There was a couple of Drill Sergeants, you know I guess if I thought about it I could probably remember their names but I can’t right at the moment… it was interesting. I learned a lot about the Army. The Army travels on its stomach, the food was great. Everybody else complained, but I ate like a king… there was a fairness. They picked on everybody equally, (Chuckles) It was… interesting. I got kind of an insight into Army thinking which… and I respect that, I really do. I respect that. I didn’t like being in the Army but I did respect it. You know. Spiker: You mentioned earlier that you went to talk to a recruiter with a couple of fellows from your high school; did you end up going to basic training with those fellows. 2 �Gilbert: As a matter of fact, we all went through basic training together… all in the same company except two of use. Two went into the company next door and the rest of us were in the same. I went in with a guy named Steve Rice from High Shoals and… Steve, Steve was tough guy. He was real tough; he was a street cred guy you know. He carried a hawkbill knife and (chuckling)... you didn’t mess with Steve. But… Steve and I were good friends… he and I, we stayed together all through basic training and.. we did some crazy things together… (“Do you want to explain some of those?” -Spiker, laughing) Oh, I’m glad to tell you one. We had to do; you know we had to spend the late afternoon and evening crawling under barbwire while they were shooting over the top of us in training. And they had these bunkers placed out there that had artillery simulators in them. And I went first, I was in a wave that went in and crawled under the barbwire, and then Steve came after me. I said Steve I’ll meet you at that center bunker and we’ll smoke a cigarette before we go on. And we did, and we both got chewed out (Chuckling) seriously chewed out. But we did, we had to hold it so nobody could see the light from the cigarette, we passed it back and forth. And the artillery simulators were going off and the ground was shaken, all the bullets going over head and all that stuff. It was pretty exciting. Spiker: So after basic training you went to your MP school, where was that at? Gilbert: That was at Fort Gordon Georgia. (“Fort Gordan Georgia.”-Spiker) Yeah, and I did not know it snowed in Georgia, but it sure did. (Chuckling) Yeah, I graduated on November the 22nd because I remember it was… it got pretty cold down there… it definitely snowed. We had a bout three or four inches one day. That was fun, we got to drive jeeps in the snow, out through the hills. We did a night driving class… so we had to keep our interval and that kind of stuff. It had snowed on the ground so it was a lot brighter than the sergeant liked but…(chuckles) It was good. Spiker: So… when you finally graduated… MP school where did you go after that? Did you go directly to Vietnam or…? Gilbert: No, I got, I got leave. I came home…for… I got a, I think a thirty day leave. And then… I reported to… California… and I don’t remember all the details of this but… we had to stay in… It was right next to the Navy compound and… we could see the swabbies walking around. Course, you know how soldiers…they are… there is always enough competition to start something. So, there was always some yelling back and forth across the fence and… I thought California was kind of neat. I didn’t get to see a whole lot. There was a building there, it was building 590, which, you know, can you imagine… They must have shipped cow in it because this thing was huge. It was long and wide and all the bunks were three bunks high and close together. They were… sending a lot of people to Vietnam. Yeah… I stayed in building 590. That’s… kind of a famous landmark I guess if you look at the history books. Spiker: Lets backtrack for a minute, when you said you had leave. Did you come back home? Did you have a significant other at the time? Gilbert: I had a girlfriend (“okay, what was her name?” –Spiker) Harriette, Harriette, yes Harriette Gurley. (“Where was she from?”- Spiker) Cherryville (pronounced Chur-a-ville) 3 �(“Cherryville, okay.” –Spiker)… Cherryville and Lincolnton were big rivals so… me dating Cherryville girls was… kind of a risky thing, but I found out that your Cherryville girls were very attractive. (“Yes sir.” –Spiker) …I dated here almost a year before I went to Vietnam and then several years afterwards and then we got married. Spiker: Okay…When did you actually get boots on the ground in Vietnam? Gilbert: It would have been December of 1968. I don’t remember the exact date, but… flew into… Long Binh and then flew from Long Binh to… Quin Yon and that’s where it think, if I remember correctly or company command headquarters was there and we had two platoons at… well that was battalion and then we had… another, our main area where I was, was in Pleiku. And.. Quin Yon is right on the coast, so I got to see the ocean. Of course, Cam Ranh Bay we did... in-country training. We did a couple weeks of in-country training in Cam Ranh Bay… Pretty place too. Nice white sands azure sea and sea snakes. (Chuckles, “Did you encounter any sea snakes?” –Spiker) No, no but they always warned us if you go out into the ocean be careful. (Still Chuckling) So, but it was a beautiful place I loved it. Vietnam was a beautiful country…. So, Cam Ranh Bay and the I went to Quin Yon; and from Quin Yon I went to Pleiku and that was where I was mainly stationed. We did have two other, little satellite outpost that we… we convoyed. So, we would convoy up to the pass from each side and then we would convoy back… and we would you know, switch of the convoys…. My route was up to the what was called the Mang Yang Pass, if I remember correctly…. It was real gentle going up on one side and then It was real steep going down the other side. And there were tanks parked all over the place on the down-side of that. Spiker: Now a days there is two different MP’s, you have the Combat MP and the Garrison MP. Was that still so back in Vietnam? Gilbert: Well no. I was a 95b10, hahaha, everybody was a 95b10, it was… completely different I guess from… what’s going on today. It was… our main focus was convoy escort and… then town patrol, where, you know, you… actually patrolled in the streets of… like Pleiku or An Khe or some place like that. And… that was pretty much it. There was none of the urban warfare kinda stuff that you guys have gone through, so…. Spiker: Okay… while you were in Vietnam did you see any combat? Gilbert: Ambush or two…I got blown out of bed one morning. That was exciting. A rocket landed between where I was and the mess hall and blew a pretty good size hole in the ground. And there was a sandbag wall between me and the explosion so I was okay, but I woke up looking at the floor coming up at my face…and… I couldn’t hear anything. It was just.. ringing in my ears. I was armorer at that time. They put me in the arms room. I was taking care of the weapons, and we had florescent lights in the arms room and it blew every one of them out but one. There was only one burning and that was pretty exciting. We lost a guy that morning, he was a dog handler. Killed him and his dog as they were going on duty, it was very early in the morning so… Spiker: And do you remember his name? 4 �Gilbert: I don’t, I didn’t know him… we had two barracks of MP’s, one of infantry who helped guard our perimeter and then we had a dog handler… barracks…you knew them in passing, but you didn’t really work very close. Those guys mainly were perimeter guys and they guarded the ammunition supply dump and that sort of thing. We would mainly patrol and come back. You know, we considered them as part of our unit, I mean there was no doubt about that but…there wasn’t as much interaction as there was you know.. with the other MP’s. We had our own club. Spiker: Really? Tell me about that. Gilbert: Well it was up on the little hill and it was the road runner club because it was our mascot and… the MP’s didn’t do well at other peoples’ clubs for some reason… But the club was just a small little separate building with a bar and… served soft drinks and beer. No hard liquor. No one was eligible for that… occasionally they would hir, you know, a little Vietnamese rock band and bring them and they would you know have a couple of Go Go Girls or something like that.. It was just a nice little club. Spiker: You mentioned your unit a minute ago, I forgot to ask your unit number. Gilbert: Oh Lord, let me see. Gah, that’s just been so long. It ws the 504th MP CO, and Battalion, I think If I remember correctly, I was in Company B. I was in B, 504th MP Battalion at Pleiku. But that’s been a while, don’t quote me, hahaha. Spiker: Okay, other than being an armorer, did you have any other details…jobs? Gilbert: No, that was the only really specialized job that I did. They… our armorer had…the person who was serving as armorer had left, and…they “Okay you’re good with tools, go down there and keep the record.” Course you know everybody does things like paint numbers on jeeps and that sort of thing but that was the only one that I had actually just a separate job. It wasn’t that bad, there were only two of us and we had… it was one on and one off. We slept, we actualy had a bunk in the arms room so we could actually sleep in there two…so, there was always one of us in the arms room, so. If any thing happened we could unlock everything. I did have a station… if we were attacked, from the arms room I was to move up on to a bunker that had a .50 on it. I was to… be part of the .50 crew on, if else had…if I had expended all the ammo that was where I went. (Chuckling) Spiker: So, that never happened though? Gilbert: No. Our attacks were mostly rocket attacks, which were pretty long, big rockets and then of course mortar attacks, we would get those every once in a while. Ambushes would be anything from a few pot shots to a couple of mortar rounds coming in to some sort of improvised device… every once in a while they’d blow a bridge up and we would have to put a defile around it and you know, keep and eye on that. But, I think the road was probably the most dangerous thing. That’s where we, we got more people hurt. Mainly form accidents…rain, mud, jeeps turn over. We also had an armored vehicle, we had V100, which I think now is obsolete, 5 �we probably sold them all to some other country. I really liked it because it had a 318 Chrysler engine in it with a four barrel carburetor… (Chuckling) Spiker: Can you tell me about some of your most memorable experiences while deployed to Vietnam? Gilbert: Oh, wow, let’s see. Well I can think of a couple things… I enjoyed shooting rats at the mess hall at night that was fun, with a crossbow. We would get Vietnamese crossbows and shoot the rats and try to stick them into the wall and that was fun. I used to like to drive out to a … yard, you know the local indigenous people…there was…the French had built a damn near this little village and I used to sneak out their and lay out underneath the trees and just sleep. It was just a whole different…the kids around and all that kind of stuff. Little kids you know how they just want to play and I’de go out and skip stoned with them things like that. It was a good way to kind of relax. Spiker: So were…was everybody able to just go out? Gilbert: No, this was something that really wasn’t sanctioned. Haha, but… you would have your radio on and if there was no convoy…you’d just have to run the road by yourself, just you and your… you’d have a driver and an interpreter and then a gunner on the jeep who had a M60…But if there was nothing going on we’d kind of sneak over, it wasn’t just about a quarter of a mile and just sneak over…relax a while. Have lunch and then get back on the road. It might have been breaking the rules a little bit, but it wasn’t that serious. It was no, no real threat to anything. It was just a little way to unwind. Spiker: Do you remember much from the end of your tour? Gilbert: Well, I remember when I got short. They took me off duty, I think the last couple of weeks they take you off duty and then put you on light duty where you’re basically cleaning up barracks and taking new guys around to get their equipment and showing them where everything is and things like that. And then, they start processing you out, you have to send your whole baggage and that sort of thing back…and then I think I caught a ride we was always thumbing rides on airplanes or something. I went over to the Air force base, which was right behind us, so I went over and thumbed a ride on a transport and it was a great ride. I remember going back, it was fantastic because the back door was open a couple of feet. And it had a big crack and I could look down on the jungle and there was no one else on the plane except the pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, you know, and me. And I was in the seat, the last seat, just strapped in, looking out the door at the jungle going by. It was pretty cool; it was a good flight back. Spiker: You say… getting short…for the sake of the interview can you explain what that is? Gilbert: Short is when you’re getting ready to go home and your friends will present you with a swagger stick. And its usually a bullet with a stick stuck in it. (chuckles) And it’s carved to look like a long, little swagger stick, or it’s a shell with a stick stuck in it, then you kind of stick that under your arm and you walk around with it and everybody knows you’re short, you’re bragging you know…and then of course you would make the twoe fingers close together like 6 �that…(Demonstrates fore finger and thumb about half an inch apart)…short, and people would be envious. And of course you would have your short timers calendar up n the wall with all the X’s over everyday that you been there…. Spiker: What rank where you when you went in and when you came out? Gilbert: Oh, Lord. I remember being an E2 for about three weeks-four weeks and then they made me a E1; I guess an E1 and then they made me an E2. I think that when I got out of basic they made me a E3. And then when I got o Vietnam I became a Spec4 and I stayed that, or should I say, I stayed that until I got back to the United States, I did get busted. Not real proud of that but…I lost my rank for about a month but I made it back. I was basically a good guy, just little things happen. Spiker: Yes sir, yes sir. So, while serving did you earn any awards/medals? Gilbert: I had just regular Vietnam medals…I did have a whole bunch of unit citations and all that kind of stuff…I didn’t get any wounds or anything like that. I just tried to stay out of trouble and not get killed. I did think I was dead one night though. I ran out of the barracks, we had an attack, and I ran out in the middle of the night and they had dug a ditch across the walkway and I had forgotten about it and the next thing I know I had came too looking up at stars. I thought I had been hit, I start trying to feel for things and, I figured I would get a purple heart for that but they wouldn’t give it to me for some reason. (Spiker laughs) No, falling in a slit trench was not considered being wounded in action… Spiker: Oh, it was a slit trench?! My goodness, haha. Oh, that’s rough (Gilbert laughs) Gilbert: It was new thank goodness. Spiker: Oh good, so there wasn’t anything in it yet. Gilbert: They had just dug it. It could have been worse. Spiker: It could have been a lot worse. How did you stay in touch with your family while in … [Vietnam] Gilbert: Well, we had a new method of communication. It was the cassette tape. My wife, well my fiancé at the time, we sent cassettes to each other. I got lots of letters. I wasn’t as good at writing as she was…she…basically, I had a couple of pounds of letters by the time I got to come back. Spiker: What was the food like, over there in Vietnam? You said you liked the Army food. Gilbert: Well, I always thought it was great. The cooks were well trained, they were good. Our company had one cook who was, all he did was make pastries, so we had fresh bread and cakes, pies. He would make breakfast rolls and sweet rolls…I guess I was a chow hound because I liked to eat late. I would have breakfast at eleven o’clock at night and like if I was going on duty 7 �and skip the morning breakfast, and eat late…. I never really complained about the food. It was all I wanted and there was plenty of it, and it was good food, it wasn’t just empty calories… occasionally we had steak and baked potatoes. Something weird happened, strange happened when I was in, this was when the Army tried a little experiment. They actually, for the evening meal, they sold beer in the mess hall. Your limit was two, but they were “tall boys”, you know, tall ones. After the evening meal, if you were off duty, you could have as many as two beers in the mess hall. Now I don’t think that lasted too long, but that was an unusual, this was strange for the Army. That getting very liberal here. Spiker: So it sounded like ya’ll had plenty of supplies while you were there. Gilbert: We did run short in Vietnam, we ran short of canned drinks for a while, in the PX and all that kind of place it was just, something happened and for about a month we couldn’t get soft drinks and things like that for a while. They were short supply…you could get them. A lot of guys would take cases of drinks, buy them at the PX and then take them and trade them on the black market… that kind of thing is always going on. Spiker: Other than shooting rats, how did ya’ll keep yourselves entertained? Gilbert: Well, we had a day room, and there was tv, and that’s where I saw the moon landing cause that happened when I was…you know… there. Then we had magazines and occasionally, if you had a good friend, you could sneak into the commo bunker, the command bunker, the communications bunker and you could make a phone call or get a phone call… so, one of my friends actually called me from Vietnam, he was in another company a couple of hundred miles away, and he’d call me and we’d talk every once in a while. But that was bellow the radar (Chuckles “Yes sir.” –Spiker) ...there was always an emergency phone call if somebody at you home needed to get up with you, you could, it would have to bounce all over the place to get to you, and there was no guaranty that it would get there, but you could make a phone call to the states every once in a while. It was not something that was easily done, at least in my unit. Spiker: I meant to ask you, your buddies from high school, did any of them get assigned to your unit with you? Gilbert: No, I was the only MP. The rest of them, I think maybe about half of them ended up in the infantry and I know one of them became a medic or maybe two of them. Two of them became medics and I don’t really remember the rest of them….Did have one that went to Chemical Warfare school. Yeah, I remember him. He went there, he was a pretty smart guy. They grabbed him up, and I don’t think he went to Vietnam, he went to Washington and, or some place, kept him stateside. He was real, he was a smart guy. Spiker: After your three years was up…or did you spend all that three years in Vietnam? Gilbert: I did not. When I came back from Vietnam I was stationed in Maryland at Fort Meade. There were…Fort Meade was Basically riot control for the city of D.C. at that time, and this was when, you know, everybody was rioting about everything. There was always some kind of march going on somewhere. So, that’s where I was, and I applied to Gaston College and got an 8 �early out to go to school. I got about four months out early to go to college. That was just like, exciting like going into the Army. It was great. I was ready for college then. Spiker: Did you use your GI Bill to go to college? Gilbert: I sure did. I got almost four years of college out of three years in the Army. Spiker: Nice. Gilbert: Yeah, at that time it was a full, about a hundred and ninety dollars a month if you weren’t married, so, I think it went to a little over two hundred dollars a month if you were married, as I recall. But you know you could live cheap in Boone, it was a hundred dollars a month in rent… Spiker: So, you went to Appalachian State as well? Gilbert: I did. Spiker: Good, good. Were you married to Harriette at that time? Gilbert: We got married the year that I transferred from…it would have been my third year of college. We got married just after I graduated from Gaston. I got an AA form Gaston and then we got married and she started graduate school because she was ahead of me by four years. And, I had just started my third year at Appalachian. Spiker: Did you retain any friendships from the service while you were still in college and throughout life? Gilbert: A few but unfortunately they have gone by the wayside, most of them. I can’t, only the ones that are from Lincolnton that I went to school with I still see them occasionally. Most of them are, you know, you just lose touch. Spiker: I understand. While…studying at Appalachian State what was your major? Gilbert: I was an Art Major. Spiker: Art Major, and did you go on to fulfill your dreams in art? Gilbert: Well, I got out from Appalachian, my wife and I were married, we moved to Dallas, NC and I started teaching at William C. Friday Middle School. Spiker: What did you teach there? Gilbert: I taught art, my degree was actually art education, so, either being an artist or being a teacher was…either way. It was convenient and there was a job…I didn’t know I was going to like teaching though. She talked me into…I was just going to be an art major, she’s the one who 9 �talked me into being an art education major she says you might want to teach, you don’t know, you know. You might not do well as an artist when you first get out. So, why don’t you just do that, it’s just a few extra courses. I said, “Alright.” …and I kind of like teaching. Spiker: So, you continued to teach until? Gilbert: Well I taught for about…six years and then I went to work for a mining company, but there was financial incentive. Yeah, I got a pretty good raise to move into the mining industry…I went to work in a lab for them and got to do all kinds of wonderful and interesting things in mining and in a lab and chemistry and special projects…mainly why they hired me was because I knew a little bit about chemistry, I knew a little bit about ceramic engineering, I knew how to weld, I knew how to do some electrical work, so that art background of kind of knowing a little bit about a lot of stuff, but not being an expert the said, “Well good, we’re going to put you in special projects.” So, for about twelve years. It was a good job, excellent, I was never doing the same thing for very long they were always pulling me around and making me do all kinds of crazy… I mean learned how to survey, learned how to use a computer. Just everything. Spiker: After that job you went on to teach again? Gilbert: Well I stated teaching college off and on as an adjunct professor, not a full time professor, but just in part time. And then I’ve done that ever since. I worked as a computer programmer at Doran Mills in Shelby. I worked in the printing industry for a couple of years as a trainer, I would install systems and train people on how to use computer systems and use programs like photoshop and how to do touch up editing and I was a font expert I guess you would say. And all of those electronic font things…and then I got back into teaching again in middle school. An then…this will be my tenth year and last year. And I will retire. Spiker: Congratulations. Well, I think that’s pretty much all I have. Is there anything else that you would like to add to… Gilbert: No, I enjoyed talking to you. Spiker: I have as well. I have as well. I do appreciate it. 10 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/c96ca3742e967c7d579080db60668489.mp3 33274ab687bac5808732c11c00bd0f44 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 75.7 KB 16 MB Format, digital MP3 Military Branch military branch (U.S. Army, etc) U.S. Army Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Spiker; Cody Gilbert; Richard Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Spiker, Cody Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Gilbert, Richard Interview Date 10/15/2012 Number of pages 10 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:35:06 Date digitized 2/5/2015 Checksum alphanumeric code 1ab5da6a51135cdce2f97284fb80a21a 33274ab687bac5808732c11c00bd0f44 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_Gilbert_Richard_20121015_transcript_M 5018_Gilbert_Richard_20121015_audio_A Title A name given to the resource Interview with Richard Gilbert [October 15, 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 Spiker, Cody Gilbert, Richard 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 Richard Gilbert served in the army for three years during the Vietnam War. He was a volunteer right out of high school, and figured the military was his only way to get to college. He was stationed in Pleiku, Vietnam and worked as a military police officer. He saw very little combat but his base was ambushed a couple of times. After the 3 years were up he majored in art at Applachian State and worked as a middle school art teacher. Subject The topic of the resource Gilbert, Richard Veterans Vietnam War, 1961-1975 United States Personal narratives, American Interviews army Fort Gordon Georgia Fort Meade GI Bill military police Pleiku Vietnam https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/46401aa1b2f411e996a3a879512b26cb.pdf 480be3d941d9f7530e040f436b289783 PDF Text Text Spiker 1 Cody Spiker Browning His 3823 15 October 2012 Oral History Report: Richard Gilbert, Vietnam Veteran, Born in Appalachia, and Appalachian State University state graduate. My name is Cody Spiker, interviewing Richard Gilbert at 214 West Academy Street, his residence. [Cherryville, NC] Mr. Gilbert, when were you born? I was born March 27th, 1948. Where were you born at? I was born in Franklin NC, which was way up in the mountains up in the corner of the state. But I grew up in Lincoln County. Lincoln County, when did you move down to Lincolnton, or Lincoln County? Oh, probably when I started school, around First grade. You know, about seven, six or seven, something like that. I think I actually started second grade down here, so. We moved up on highway 27 out in the country. Okay, so your family is from the Appalachian Mountains actually? Yeah my mom was born in the mountains, my grandmother and grandfather yeah, basically homesteaders, so. Okay, one of the things that they are pushing for in this interview process is people from the Appalachian Mountains, (“Oh” -Gilbert) the Appalachian area, veterans form this area so that’s excellent. So, which war did you fight in? I fought in Vietnam. Yeah I went, I got in the army, let’s see, it would have been ’68. I think, and then I went to Vietnam in ’69. So, I went in in December, I went to Vietnam I December of ’68 and came back in December of ‘69. Ok, and where you a volunteer or were you a draftee? Well, I was a volunteer. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I didn’t really support the war but I knew that needed a college education and I didn’t really have a way to pay for it. So, I saw that as a way of getting an education an you know, so, I enlisted for three years. �Spiker 2 Okay, so at the time that you enlisted where were you living at? I was living in Lincolnton and I was attending Lincolnton high school, and I was in my last year. And there were several of us who talked about it and decided we would go see a recruiter, and so we did. We all went in together; there was about, I don’t know, eight or ten of us. So you were about eighteen? … Somewhere along in there, it was just after highschool. What branch of service did you enter? Well, since I enlisting and I got the opportunity to pick, I had some choice and they told me what was open. Artillery, a couple things, communications, and military police and I decided that I would go military police. Sounded exciting. (Spiker chuckles and says, “MP’s lead the way.”) So you obviously enlisted into the Army? Right. Do you recall your first days of service? Like when you went to basic training? What was that like? Oh I remember the first day of training like it was imprinted in my brain, (Gilbert chuckles) It… we had about a week or so before we actually started basic they had us in a kind of holding pen, which was extremely boring, there was nothing to do except you know what freedom we had to go to the PX and eat. That was about it. So… when we were ready to start basic they put us on the bus and drove us over to our company and then I think you can imagine what happened after that. Hahahaha. It was in July at Fort Bragg and I think that was probably the hottest place on earth. And… it was a pretty miserable day. (Gilbert and Spiker Chuckle, “I can imagine.” -Spiker) Do you remember any of your instructors? Oh yes, lets see, there was… a Corporal Norris who had… he was an interesting character. He had been in the Army and… served and came back home and somehow or another he was in the reserves and didn’t attend the meetings and got re-drafted, (Chuckles) so they pulled him back in and they put him as… in our company as a trainer, as an instructor. …There was a couple of Drill Sergeants, you know I guess if I thought about it I could probably remember their names but I can’t right at the moment… it was interesting. I learned a lot about the Army. The Army travels on its stomach, the food was great. Everybody else complained, but I ate like a king… there was a fairness. They picked on everybody equally, (Chuckles) It was… interesting. I got kind of an insight into Army thinking which… and I respect that, I really do. I respect that. I didn’t like being in the Army but I did respect it. You know. …You mentioned earlier that you went to talk to a recruiter with a couple of fellows from your high school; did you end up going to basic training with those fellows As a matter of fact, we all went through basic training together… all in the same company except two of use. Two went into the company next door and the rest of us �Spiker 3 were in the same. I went in with a guy named Steve Rice from High Shoals and… Steve, Steve was tough guy. He was real tough; he was a street cred guy you know. He carried a hawkbill knife and (chuckling)... you didn’t mess with Steve. But… Steve and I were good friends… he and I, we stayed together all through basic training and.. we did some crazy things together… (“Do you want to explain some of those?” -Spiker, laughing) Oh, I’m glad to tell you one. We had to do; you know we had to spend the late afternoon and evening crawling under barbwire while they were shooting over the top of us in training. And they had these bunkers placed out there that had artillery simulators in them. And I went first, I was in a wave that went in and crawled under the barbwire, and then Steve came after me. I said Steve I’ll meet you at that center bunker and we’ll smoke a cigarette before we go on. And we did, and we both got chewed out (Chuckling) seriously chewed out. But we did, we had to hold it so nobody could see the light from the cigarette, we passed it back and forth. And the artillery simulators were going off and the ground was shaken, all the bullets going over head and all that stuff. It was pretty exciting. So after basic training you went to your MP school, where was that at? That was at Fort Gordon Georgia. (“Fort Gordan Georgia.”-Spiker) Yeah, and I did not know it snowed in Georgia, but it sure did. (Chuckling) Yeah, I graduated on November the 22nd because I remember it was… it got pretty cold down there… it definitely snowed. We had a bout three or four inches one day. That was fun, we got to drive jeeps in the snow, out through the hills. We did a night driving class… so we had to keep our interval and that kind of stuff. It had snowed on the ground so it was a lot brighter than the sergeant liked but…(chuckles)(“Definitely”-Spiker) It was good. So… when you finally graduated… MP school where did you go after that? Did you go directly to Vietnam or…? No, I got, I got leave. I came home…for… I got a, I think a thirty day leave. And then… I reported to… California… and I don’t remember all the details of this but… we had to stay in… It was right next to the Navy compound and… we could see the swabbies walking around. Course, you know how soldiers…they are… there is always enough competition to start something. So, there was always some yelling back and forth across the fence and… I thought California was kind of neat. I didn’t get to see a whole lot. There was a building there, it was building 590, which, you know, can you imagine… They must have shipped cow in it because this thing was huge. It was long and wide and all the bunks were three bunks high and close together. They were… sending a lot of people to Vietnam. Yeah… I stayed in building 590. That’s… kind of a famous landmark I guess if you look at the history books. Lets backtrack for a minute, when you said you had leave. Did you come back home? Did you have a significant other at the time? I had a girlfriend (“okay, what was her name?” –Spiker) Harriette, Harriette, yes Harriette Gurley. (“Where was she from?”- Spiker) Cherryville (pronounced Chur-aville) (“Cherryville, okay.” –Spiker)… Cherryville and Lincolnton were big rivals so… me dating Cherryville girls was… kind of a risky thing, but I found out that your �Spiker 4 Cherryville girls were very attractive. (“Yes sir.” –Spiker) …I dated here almost a year before I went to Vietnam and then several years afterwards and then we got married. Okay…When did you actually get boots on the ground in Vietnam? …It would have been December of 1968. I don’t remember the exact date, but… flew into… Long Binh and then flew from Long Binh to… Quin Yon and that’s where it think, if I remember correctly or company command headquarters was there and we had two platoons at… well that was battalion and then we had… another, our main area where I was, was in Pleiku. And.. Quin Yon is right on the coast, so I got to see the ocean. Of course, Cam Ranh Bay we did... in-country training. We did a couple weeks of in-country training in Cam Ranh Bay… Pretty place too. Nice white sands azure sea and sea snakes. (Chuckles, “Did you encounter any sea snakes?” –Spiker) No, no but they always warned us if you go out into the ocean be careful. (Still Chuckling) So, but it was a beautiful place I loved it. Vietnam was a beautiful country…. So, Cam Ranh Bay and the I went to Quin Yon; and from Quin Yon I went to Pleiku and that was where I was mainly stationed. We did have two other, little satellite outpost that we… we convoyed. So, we would convoy up to the pass from each side and then we would convoy back… and we would you know, switch of the convoys…. My route was up to the what was called the Mang Yang Pass, if I remember correctly…. It was real gentle going up on one side and then It was real steep going down the other side. And there were tanks parked all over the place on the down-side of that. …Know a days there is two different MP’s, you have the Combat MP and the Garrison MP. Was that still so back in Vietnam? Well no. I was a 95b10, hahaha, everybody was a 95b10, it was… completely different I guess from… what’s going on today. It was… our main focus was convoy escort and… then town patrol, where, you know, you… actually patrolled in the streets of… like Pleiku or An Khe or some place like that. And… that was pretty much it. There was none of the urban warfare kinda stuff that you guys have gone through, so…. Okay… while you were in Vietnam did you see any combat? …Ambush or two…I got blown out of bed one morning. That was exciting. A rocket landed between where I was and the mess hall and blew a pretty good size hole in the ground. And there was a sandbag wall between me and the explosion so I was okay, but I woke up looking at the floor coming up at my face…and… I couldn’t hear anything. It was just.. ringing in my ears. I was armorer at that time. They put me in the arms room. I was taking care of the weapons, and we had florescent lights in the arms room and it blew every one of them out but one. There was only one burning and that was pretty exciting. We lost a guy that morning, he was a dog handler. Killed him and his dog as they were going on duty, it was very early in the morning so… (“and do you remember his name?” –Spiker) I don’t, I didn’t know him… we had two barracks of MP’s, one of infantry who helped guard our perimeter and then we had a dog handler… barracks…you knew them in passing, but you didn’t really work very close. Those guys mainly were perimeter guys and they guarded the ammunition supply dump and that sort of thing. We would mainly patrol and come back. You know, we considered them as part of our unit, I mean there was no doubt about that but…there wasn’t as much interaction as there was you know.. with the other MP’s. We had our own club. (“Realy? Me about that.” – �Spiker 5 Spiker) Well it was up on the little hill and it was the road runner club because it was our mascot and… the MP’s didn’t do well at other peoples’ clubs for some reason…(Spike Chuckles)…But the club was just a small little separate building with a bar and… served soft drinks and beer. No hard liquor. No one was eligible for that… occasionally they would hir, you know, a little Vietnamese rock band and bring them and they would you know have a couple of Go Go Girls or something like that.. It was just a nice little club. You mentioned your unit a minute ago, I forgot to ask your unit number. Oh Lord, let me see. Gah, that’s just been so long. It ws the 504th MP CO, and Battalion, I think If I remember correctly, I was in Company B. I was in B, 504th MP Battalion at Pleiku. But that’s been a while, don’t quote me, hahaha. Okay, other than being an armorer, did you have any other details…jobs? …No, that was the only really specialized job that I did. They… our armorer had…the person who was serving as armorer had left, and…they “Okay you’re good with tools, go down there and keep the record.” Course you know everybody does things like paint numbers on jeeps and that sort of thing but that was the only one that I had actually just a separate job. It wasn’t that bad, there were only two of us and we had… it was one on and one off. We slept, we actualy had a bunk in the arms room so we could actually sleep in there two…so, there was always one of us in the arms room, so. If any thing happened we could unlock everything. I did have a station… if we were attacked, from the arms room I was to move up on to a bunker that had a .50 on it. I was to… be part of the .50 crew on, if else had…if I had expended all the ammo that was where I went. (Chuckling) So, that never happened thoug? No. Our attacks were mostly rocket attacks, which were pretty long, big rockets and then of course mortar attacks, we would get those every once in a while. Ambushes would be anything from a few pot shots to a couple of mortar rounds coming in to some sort of improvised device… every once in a while they’d blow a bridge up and we would have to put a defile around it and you know, keep and eye on that. But, I think the road was probably the most dangerous thing. That’s where we, we got more people hurt. Mainly form accidents…rain, mud, jeeps turn over. We also had an armored vehicle, we had V100, which I think now is obsolete, we probably sold them all to some other country. I really liked it because it had a 318 Chrysler engine in it with a four barrel carburetor… (Chuckling) Can you tell me about some of your most memorable experiences while deployed to Vietnam? Oh, wow, let’s see. Well I can think of a couple things… I enjoyed shooting rats at the mess hall at night that was fun, with a crossbow. We would get Vietnamese crossbows and shoot the rats and try to stick them into the wall and that was fun. I used to like to drive out to a … yard, you know the local indigenous people…there was…the French had built a damn near this little village and I used to sneak out their and lay out underneath the trees and just sleep. It was just a whole different…the kids around and all that kind of stuff. Little kids you know how they just want to play and I’de go out and skip stoned with them things like that. It was a good way to kind of relax. �Spiker 6 So were…was everybody able to just go out? No, this was something that really wasn’t sanctioned. Haha, but… you would have your radio on and if there was no convoy…you’d just have to run the road by yourself, just you and your… you’d have a driver and an interpreter and then a gunner on the jeep who had a M60…But if there was nothing going on we’d kind of sneak over, it wasn’t just about a quarter of a mile and just sneak over…relax a while. Have lunch and then get back on the road. It might have been breaking the rules a little bit, but it wasn’t that serious. It was no, no real threat to anything. It was just a little way to unwind. Do you remember much from the end of your tour? Well, I remember when I got short. They took me off duty, I think the last couple of weeks they take you off duty and then put you on light duty where you’re basically cleaning up barracks and taking new guys around to get their equipment and showing them where everything is and things like that. And then, they start processing you out, you have to send your whole baggage and that sort of thing back…and then I think I caught a ride we was always thumbing rides on airplanes or something. I went over to the Air force base, which was right behind us, so I went over and thumbed a ride on a transport and it was a great ride. I remember going back, it was fantastic because the back door was open a couple of feet. And it had a big crack and I could look down on the jungle and there was no one else on the plane except the pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, you know, and me. And I was in the seat, the last seat, just strapped in, looking out the door at the jungle going by. It was pretty cool; it was a good flight back. You say… getting short…for the sake of the interview can you explain what that is? Short is when you’re getting ready to go home and your friends will present you with a swagger stick. And its usually a bullet with a stick stuck in it. (chuckles) And it’s carved to look like a long, little swagger stick, or it’s a shell with a stick stuck in it, then you kind of stick that under your arm and you walk around with it and everybody knows you’re short, you’re bragging you know…and then of course you would make the twoe fingers close together like that…(Demonstrates fore finger and thumb about half an inch apart)…short, and people would be envious. And of course you would have your short timers calendar up n the wall with all the X’s over everyday that you been there…. …What rank where you when you went in and when you came out? Oh, Lord. I remember being an E2 for about three weeks-four weeks and then they made me a E1; I guess an E1 and then they made me an E2. I think that when I got out of basic they made me a E3. And then when I got o Vietnam I became a Spec4 and I stayed that, or should I say, I stayed that until I got back to the United States, I did get busted. Not real proud of that but…I lost my rank for about a month but I made it back. I was basically a good guy, just little things happen. (“Yes sir, yes sir.” –Spiker) So, while serving did you earn any awards/medals? …I had just regular Vietnam medals…I did have a whole bunch of unit citations and all that kind of stuff…I didn’t get any wounds or anything like that. I just tried to stay out of �Spiker 7 trouble and not get killed. I did think I was dead one night though. I ran out of the barracks, we had an attack, and I ran out in the middle of the night and they had dug a ditch across the walkway and I had forgotten about it and the next thing I know I had came too looking up at stars. I thought I had been hit, I start trying to feel for things and, I figured I would get a purple heart for that but they wouldn’t give it to me for some reason. (Spiker laughs) No, falling in a slit trench was not considered being wounded in action…(“Oh, it was a slit trench?! My goodness, haha. Oh, that’s rough” -Spiker) (Gilbert gawfaws) It was new thank goodness. (“Oh good, so there wasn’t anything in it yet.”- Spiker) They had just dug it. It could have been worse. (“It could have been a lot worse.”) How did you stay in touch with your family while in … [Vietnam] Well, we had a new method of communication. It was the cassette tape. My wife, well my fiancé at the time, we sent cassettes to each other. I got lot’s of letters. I wasn’t as good at writing as she was…she…basically, I had a couple of pounds of letters by the time I got to come back. What was the food like, over there in Vietnam? You said you liked the Army food. Well, I always though it was great. The cooks were well trained, they were good. Our company had one cook who was, all he did was make pastries, so we had fresh bread and cakes, pies. He would make breakfast rolls and sweet rolls…I guess I was a chow hound because I liked to eat late. I would have breakfast at eleven o’clock at night and like if I was going on duty and skip the morning breakfast, and eat late…. I never really complained about the food. It was all I wanted and there was plenty of it, and it was good food, it wasn’t just empty calories…occasionally we had steak and baked potatoes. Something weird happened, strange happened when I was in, this was when the Army tried a little experiment. They actually, for the evening meal, they sold beer in the mess hall. Your limit was two, but they were “tall boys”, you know, tall ones. After the evening meal, if you were off duty, you could have as many as two beers in the mess hall. Now I don’t think that lasted too long, but that was an unusual, this was strange for the Army. That getting very liberal here. (“Yes sir.” –Spiker) So it sounded like ya’ll had plenty of supplies while you were there. We did run short in Vietnam, we ran short of canned drinks for a while, in the PX and all that kind of place it was just, something happened and for about a month we couldn’t get soft drinks and things like that for a while. They were short supply…you could get them. A lot of guys would take cases of drinks, buy them at the PX and then take them and trade them on the black market… that kind of thing is always going on. Other than shooting rats, how did ya’ll keep yourselves entertained? Well, we had a day room, and there was tv, and that’s where I saw the moon landing cause that happened when I was…you know… there. Then we had magazines and occasionally, if you had a good friend, you could sneak into the commo bunker, the command bunker, the communications bunker and you could make a phone call or get a phone call… so, one of my friends actually called me from Vietnam, he was in another company a couple of hundred miles away, and he’d call me and we’d talk every once in a �Spiker 8 while. But that was bellow the radar (Chuckles “Yes sir.” –Spiker) ...there was always an emergency phone call if somebody at you home needed to get up with you, you could, it would have to bounce all over the place to get to you, and there was no guaranty that it would get there, but you could make a phone call to the states every once in a while. It was not something that was easily done, at least in my unit. I meant to ask you, your buddies from high school, did any of them get assigned to your unit with you? No, I was the only MP. The rest of them, I think maybe about half of them ended up in the infantry and I know one of them became a medic or maybe two of them. Two of them became medics and I don’t really remember the rest of them….Did have one that went to Chemical Warfare school. Yeah, I remember him. He went there, he was a pretty smart guy. They grabbed him up, and I don’t think he went to Vietnam, he went to Washington and, or some place, kept him stateside. He was real, he was a smart guy. After your three years was up…or did you spend all that three years in Vietnam? I did not. When I came back from Vietnam I was stationed in Maryland at Fort Meade. There were…Fort Meade was Basically riot control for the city of D.C. at that time, and this was when, you know, everybody was rioting about everything. There was always some kind of march going on somewhere. So, that’s where I was, and I applied to Gaston College and got an early out to go to school. I got about four months out early to go to college. That was just like, exciing like going into the Army. It was great. I was ready for college then. Did you use your GI Bill to go to college? I sure did. I got almost four years of college out of three years in the Army. (“Nice” – Spiker) Yeah, at that time it was a full, about a hundred and ninety dollars a month if you weren’t married, so, I think it went to a little over two hundred dollars a month if you were married, as I recall. But you know you could live cheap in Boone, it was a hundred dollars a month in rent… (“So, you went to Appalachian State as well?” –Spiker) I did. (“Good, good.” –Spiker) Were you married to Harriette at that time? We got married the year that I transferred from…it would have been my third year of college. We got married just after I graduated from Gaston. I got an AA form Gaston and then we got married and she started graduate school because she was ahead of me by four years. And, I had just started my third year at Appalachian. Did you retain any friendships from the service while you were still in college and throughout life? A few but unfortunately they have gone by the wayside, most of them. I can’t, only the ones that are from Lincolnton that I went to school with I still see them occasionally. Most of them are, you know, you just lose touch. (“I understand.” –Spiker) While…studying at Appalachian State what was your major? I was an Art Major. �Spiker 9 Art Major, and did you go on to fulfill your dreams in art? Well, I got out from Appalachian, my wife and I were married, we moved to Dallas, NC and I started teaching at William C. Friday Middle School. What did you teach there? I taught art, my degree was actually art education, so, either being an artist or being a teacher was…either way. It was convenient and there was a job…I didn’t know I was going to like teaching though. She talked me into…I was just going to be an art major, she’s the one who talked me into being an art education major she says you might want to teach, you don’t know, you know. You might not do well as an artist when you first get out. So, why don’t you just do that, it’s just a few extra courses. I said, “Alright.” …and I kind of like teaching. So, you continued to teach until? Well I taught for about…six years and then I went to work for a mining company, but there was financial incentive. Yeah, I got a pretty good raise to move into the mining industry…I went to work in a lab for them and got to do all kinds of wonderful and interesting things in mining and in a lab and chemistry and special projects…mainly why they hired me was because I knew a little bit about chemistry, I knew a little bit about ceramic engineering, I knew how to weld, I knew how to do some electrical work, so that art background of kind of knowing a little bit about a lot of stuff, but not being an expert the said, “Well good, we’re going to put you in special projects.” So, for about twelve years. It was a good job, excellent, I was never doing the same thing for very long they were always pulling me around and making me do all kinds of crazy… I mean learned how to survey, learned how to use a computer. Just everything. After that job you went on to teach again? Well I stated teaching college off and on as an adjunct professor, not a full time professor, but just in part time. And then I’ve done that ever since. I worked as a computer programmer at Doran Mills in Shelby. I worked in the printing industry for a couple of years as a trainer, I would install systems and train people on how to use computer systems and use programs like photoshop and how to do touch up editing and I was a font expert I guess you would say. And all of those electronic font things…and then I got back into teaching again in middle school. An then…this will be my tenth year and last year. And I will retire. (“Well, congradulations.” –Spiker) Well, I think that’s pretty much all I have. Is there anything else that you would like to add to… No, I enjoyed talking to you. I have as well. I have as well. I do appreciate it. � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/1bdd75cdd11a394d9998334fae93d20e.mp3 33274ab687bac5808732c11c00bd0f44 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. Gilbert, Richard Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Spiker, Cody Interview Date 10/15/12 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:35:06 File name 2013_063_Gilbert_Richard_interview 2013_063_Gilbert_Richard_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 Richard Gilbert, 15 October 2012 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Spiker, Cody Gilbert, Richard 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. 9 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Subject The topic of the resource Gilbert, Richard Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Veterans Personal narratives, American United States Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Richard Gilbert served in the army for three years during the Vietnam War. He was a volunteer right out of high school, and figured the military was his only way to get to college. He was stationed in Pleiku, Vietnam and worked as a military police officer. He saw very little combat but his base was ambushed a couple of times. After the 3 years were up he majored in art at Appalachian State and worked as a middle school art teacher. army Fort Gordon Georgia Fort Meade GI Bill military police Pleiku Vietnam