Say Brother; 1504; Bloods: Oral Histories of Our Black Vietnam Veterans

Like no other war in our history, the Vietnam veteran fought a war many Americans did not understand, a war many Americans hated, a war just for the hell of it. On the 27th of January 1973, the war in Vietnam was formally brought to a close with the signing of a ceasefire agreement in Paris. For those veterans who returned home, they were looked upon not as heroes, but instead as failures. A disproportionate number of the men who fought in this war were young and black. They were the poor and the jobless, and because of their inability to gain college enrollment, they found themselves fighting and dying in the jungles of Vietnam. A 1964 study revealed that only 18 .8 % of eligible whites were drafted compared to 30 .2 % of eligible blacks. In 1967, 64 % of the eligible blacks were drafted, whereas the figure for whites was only 31%. Vietnam was pretty devastating

for black soldiers, all the more so because they were susceptible to the racism that existed throughout the armed forces. When the black congressional caucus investigated racism in the military, they found that black troops received a disproportionately low number of honorable discharges, suffered harassment and intimidation for wearing afrohairstyles or black power symbols, and failed to win key command posts over less qualified whites. They got the most dangerous combat jobs and often received indifferent medical attention while in the field. While blacks were generally no more than 11 % of the total enlisted personnel in Vietnam, they comprised nearly 15 % of all army units, and in army combat units, the proportion was appreciably higher. In terms of casualties, blacks suffered nearly 17 % of all deaths in Vietnam between 1961 and 1967, although the percentage of black troops in Southeast Asia during those

years was only 12%. In 1970, when blacks comprised just 11 % of the troops in Vietnam, blacks suffered 22 % of the casualties. Overall, statistics show that more than a half million blacks served in the military during the Vietnam struggle. I had a story to tell back in 1971 based upon my front line reporting, and I carried that story to more than 100 publishers over a decade. But you must understand that because we had not won this war in a traditional way and because the war had divided this country so deeply and filled this country with so many scars, people from about

1972 on did not want to hear about Vietnam. Now the climate has changed. It's changed for a number of reasons. First of all, the simple distance in time. It is 10 years since the last Americans left Vietnam. Secondly, Hollywood has begun to take notice of the war, not so much of the black participation, but films such as Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and others at least has raised the image of Vietnam. A third factor is that there are Vietnam veterans who have stepped out of the closet of their memories of the war and have placed them in front of the American people. They will not even let the President of the United States forget their service, and they have marched before our television cameras into the hearts of many millions of people. So they're stepping out and saying we were there, and we're now proud to say we were there. My name is Ron

Armstead. I was in the U .S. Navy from 1966 to 1969. I served off the coast of Vietnam from 66 to 67. I was a hospital corpsman, and was honorably discharged in Newport, Rhode Island. Oscar Jackson, Staff Sergeant at the United States Marine Corps. Presently trustee for the Yarmus Corporation, which is a real estate development corporation. Michael Williams, First Calvary Division. C -Troup, 1st, 2nd, 6th years. Gucci, Light Care, Triang Bang. Helicopter, Dogunner. Clifford Ashmore, Roxbury Clinic now. I was in the 4th Division in Vietnam up in Placoop. I'm Ralph Cooper. I'm the Executive Director of the Veterans Benefits Clearinghouse. I was in the Air Force. I was a non -morse intercept operator. My name is Ronald Clark. I'm a veteran. I served in Virginia, and

I'm a German in the United States Army. My MLS was 94 Bravo, which is a cook. Alan Curry, I was with the 1st of the 6th, 1st, 98th Infantry, the Marical Division. And I was an infantry soldier. Ernest Branch, January 7th, United States Marine Corps, retired. I was stationed all over the Far East, California, Vietnam for the summer of 65 in Hawaii. My primary MLS was aviation radar technician. I'm presently engaged in doing counseling and outreach for the VBC. That's all. Here at the Veterans Benefits Clearing Center, Vietnam veterans can talk with other servicemen about their combat experiences, many for the first time since their return from the Vietnam War in the late 60s and early

70s. It appears the time is finally right for these men to share their stories, their fears, and their pride with the American public. Specialist for Richard J. Ford III, Washington, .C. Lerp, 25th Infantry Division, U .S. Army, Hill 54, June 1967, July 1968. It was right after the 4th of July and kids were still throwing firecrackers. I couldn't deal with it. Hear the noise? I hit the ground. I was down on 7th and F, downtown. I had this little 22. A kid threw firecrackers and I was trying to duck. And some guys laughed at me, right? So I fired a pistol back at them and watched them duck. I said, it's not funny now, is it? I didn't go out on my way to mess with nobody, but I demanded respect. It was kind of a fear factor. It was the first time that I found out that I was not

some kind of a superhuman person. I thought I was like Audie Murphy and John Wayne and some kind of real hero kind of person until I got into actual combat and I was in infantry. And I had finished college when I got drafted into service. when I found myself really that frightened. I mean, right into the point where I could not function properly, I could not react like I thought a man should react. I didn't like that feeling in myself and I had to come back to the states with this kind of feeling, that maybe I'm not a real man, maybe I'm not as much as I should be. And that was something that that kind of fear factor that I think other people can deal with. Do you feel that the combat units were really effectively prepared to fight a war in a country like Vietnam? We sent the best prepared army the world has ever seen to Vietnam. Many of the men had special training in guerrilla warfare. Many of the men

knew how to fight behind the lines. The trouble is there were no lines in Vietnam. The enemy was everywhere, it was behind you, it was in front of you and on either side of you. The people that worked for you could be pro Saigon government by day and Viet Cong killers by night. I was suddenly found myself being terrified and it was difficult for me to bring back here and say, hey, are you a coward? Are you a kind of scaredy cat? It was hard. I think for Vietnam veterans, there's the factors of age. Whereas in World War II, people were 26 years old on average, which meant that they had gone through their early adolescence, their young adulthood, and they more than likely had found some sort of career path before the big war. The End All Wars came up and they went off to the beat of the patriotic drummer. As in Vietnam, it was different though, because the average age was only 17 or 18. And so you find that people were

basically in early adolescence. Just beyond high school, I heard one veteran describe it as, I went from the high school prom to K -Song. But something that's even more profound for me is that I was in Vietnam when they were riding in Watts. The same racial experience that I experienced prior to going to Vietnam, and black folks were coming into their being, we was doing the same thing in Vietnam. At one time, we'd be out there fighting with each other, and at the next minute, we'd be fighting each other. We had some times, I'm trying to deal with two different identities all at once, you know? That was a tragedy in itself, because many people, they couldn't and they wouldn't. And even now, they think about it. One day, me and my mother and my wife were coming home from church up Illinois Ave. I made a left turning, it's four white guys in a car cutting in front of me and blew the horn. They had been drinking, and they gave me the finger. Man, I forgot all about my mother and my wife was in the car. I took off after them, I had the 22 and was fine, I had to

wind them. I just forgot where. And Vietnam does that to you, you forget where you are. It was open season, I was shooting out to wind them. My mother said, oh God, please, please help them. Got home and it was, you need help, you need help. I was like that. I just couldn't adjust to it. Couldn't adjust to coming back home and people think you're dirty, because you went to Vietnam. There was the war that existed here between blacks and whites and the suppression. Institutional racism subjected on blacks by whites. And one of the reasons why I joined the Marine Corps was one, it was supposed to be tough. I thought it was pretty tough. And I found out I was tougher than the Marine Corps. And what they experienced though led me was to, I was evening up now. When I came back out, don't any white people bother me, okay? Because I am the Constitution. I am the Bill of Rights now,

okay? But when I came out and I saw, you know, all the blacks were being bothered in all these discos. I started at Harvard Street and Brighton and finished at Clarendon Street in the South End. It was 109 racist Italians and Irish people broken up, you know, in the course of five months. I got so much anger, it's just phenomenal. I mean, you grow up seeing blacks hung. You come out of one Baptist church and you're black and then next Baptist church over here is grabbing the blacks and then hanging them up, you know, what's this? Southern trees bear strange fruit. Blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.

Strange fruit hanging from the popular trees. There were so many blacks fighting on the front lines that the front lines were referred to as Soulville. And blacks as a result accounted for 23 % of the combat fatalities in the first two years of the war. They did not have the resources to go to college and stay out on a student deferment or to flee to Canada or to Sweden or somewhere else. And some blacks would not have wanted to flee to what they considered another white country and one even more alien than the one in which they live and are a part of. These new black soldiers who call themselves bloods because of their common bond that they felt against the discrimination back home, the discrimination which they saw on the battlefield. These new soldiers, these bloods,

also were the veterans of the civil rights movement. And their sympathies were very strong towards the civil rights leadership and its progress even if they had not marched in Selma or marched in Birmingham. They were also there because a judge told them, son, you've been caught rioting in Watts, in Detroit, in Newark, in Harlem, and you either go to jail or you talk to the Marine recruiter over there. Now, he arrives in Vietnam with this close identity with the civil rights struggle in America, but he has something else too. A new found black pride, a belief in black power. He's been reading Malcolm X. He's been listening to Stokely Carmichael. This country has never cared about black people. They don't give two dams about us and all of us always turn around worrying about what's good for America, what's good later for America, what's good for black people.

When I was in Vietnam, at one time there was, I was like an RTO, know, that's a radio telephone operator, know. And they called back from base camp to ask for someone to come back to be a company clerk and a fuck driver, which were very good jobs to get out, anything to get out of the field. And I was in the field area. the captain said, I don't know the people who I hear that well, but you can have anybody except a nigger on Mexican, you know. Well, I was holding the phone because he didn't know what I was, you know. But this is what, you know, this is the racism that was over there, you know, that you have to deal with when you're out there like you're doing hard jobs. If a black got

won a bronze star in battle, he probably deserved a higher award such as a silver star. And somehow he was discriminated again in terms of the awarding of medals for valor. And he would find it, and he would find too, that those coveted rear area assignments after time was spent in the field would come his way more slowly than it would for the white trooper. Or he would find himself on point a lot faster. As a matter of fact, I uncovered a document in the First Marine Division, which suggested quite strongly that blacks who were considered militants, probably because they clinched their fists or gave each other black power handshake, or wanted to live with other blacks in an all black hooch or congregated together, that they were seen by the marine sergeants and white marine officers as militants, as black power advocates, and

that there's no room in this Marine Corps for any color but Marine Corps green, despite the fact that we know there are light green marines and dark green marines. So they were hassled actually because of that consciousness? More than hassle. They were placed under a death sentence because one of the points made in this secret document, this confidential document, was that these militants were being transferred to the TAOR, which meant the northern most part of the target area of operation of that particular division, which was the DMZ. So that's how black militancy was being dealt with in an extreme way. As being a combat soldier, I was over in Vietnam and I did what I was required to do, and when I got back here to the great place of our country of America, I expected to be able to live like any other human being. And by, I was the first

black in the history of this city appointed to Engine 52 in the black neighborhood on the fire department. And from seeing how racism actually affects a person's life, it really affected mine because due to the results of it, I'm retired from the fire department from taking a shower. Now I went all the way to Vietnam and by being a combat soldier, ducked and dodged bullets and burning buildings here in Boston, which is a very dangerous occupation. And from taking a shower, my comrades took upon themselves to, whether it was playing, call themselves playing a joke or trying to get rid of me, put some muriotic acid in the shower. I inhaled the fumes and from the results of it, I'm retired from the fire department on a disability and I'm taking medication that I'll be taking for the rest of my life. And I'm very bitter about the whole factor

from the government drafting me out of high school. And I come back to my local government and give up the willing to let my life be risked to save others. And now I'm a veteran that's out here in the street and more or less you might as well say somewhat drug dependent because I have psychological problems from the factor of it and the fact that I have to take medication for my lung condition. And I'm quite bitter about it. When the marches and the demonstrations broke out down south, I was one of many blacks that pointed the finger and said, no, that's not Boston. That's down there in Mississippi. That's down there in Alabama. That kind of stuff doesn't go on here. So I guess my little adjustment issue deals with what I have seen take

place in Boston since I've been back and I feel like Oscar, you know, I've done my part. You know, I've gave it to office where it counts. And I came back with certain kinds of expectations. I didn't really, I wasn't one of those people that at eight years old said I'm going to be a doctor and life was like that. You know, but I had some sort of idea that I had contributed that things were going to be better when I got back. It's like I've lived to see a complete cycle where Boston people can't point the fingers anymore. And I kind of experienced two kinds of stereotyping. mean, one is the uncomfortableness for a number of years I felt about being identified as a Vietnam veteran. But secondly, within the last like six, seven years, it's being identified from Boston. So for me, the issues of black unity, black folks coming together, those were very strong emotional issues for me. And to

come back to Boston and see people going off in so many different directions and still kind of living out this facade that, you know, it's better for me. But seeing Blue Hill Ab didn't look like that when I left. You know, there was buildings, houses on both sides of street. was car lots, dealerships, recreation halls, theaters in the black community. You know, it's like I didn't see it was like somebody snuck in the back while I was fighting the war to save our country from the Vietnamese taking over Malibu Beach, Los Angeles, you know, and ripped us off. You know, our community, mean, I'll probably never be totally adjusted to driving down Blue Hill Ab and seeing it like that and getting to a point where I internalize that as the norm. Or getting to the point where I can internalize the fact that I cannot

go to South Boston, I can't go to Carson Beach, I can't even, it's not safe for me to take my kid to go see the Bunk Hill Monument. Now, when I get that adjusted, where I accept that as the norm, then I really think I need to go and get some help. Because I don't think that that's the norm. I think that that's the maladjustment that the city and people that didn't go to the war, at least we have the excuse we went to the war. I mean, but what's the city of Boston's excuse? You know, where was the war here? War, nor fear, nor racism could stop these invincible men. Former Staff Sergeant Oscar Jackson of the U .S. Marine Corps continued to live his life as a radio personality and entrepreneur when he returned home to Boston. Oscar Jackson

believes the time is now to talk about the way it was in Vietnam and the way it must be here. It's almost to me like many of us had to hide or keep our experience. We weren't in a position where we could regale. I remember when I first came back, I had 11 operations. I was an athlete before I left and came back a cripple physically, both legs broken. And I couldn't share my pain and experiences with, say, my peer group. Because the folks at BCN or BUR, I mean, they were all anti -Vietnam vet folks and, you know, you had to have been crazy to have gone in the first place. Why now the system itself rejected us in the context of what Ryan said. terms of the system, the society rejected us. We had no way to really communicate our experience because there was still a political argument is how to justify and rationalize it in terms of the system, the government as it were.

The VA, for example, was stopped pretty much by Second World War people and career people, career people rather, who blamed us for losing a war. So even there, in terms of what the institution, Veterans Administration, it was supposed to serve you. Medically they served you. They sewed me up real well and made it possible for me to keep my legs. But in terms of their psychological and their humanist interaction with us vets coming back, it wasn't there. Now it seems like we're getting the kind of support, at least the sensitizing on the part of, say, the VA and the society at large. And then again, we get an opportunity to interact with ourselves now. mean, many of us, you know, for the first time. This is our first time really talking to each other and sharing with each other the experiences. Next week, Bloods Part Two deals with Agent Orange, male

-female relationships, and delayed stress syndrome. It's kind of a need, you know, that for me as a combat veteran to dump some of this stuff, you know, out of my system in some shape or fashion. When I first came out of service, I think it took me 15 years before I went into reserves for active army reserves five years. And I think they helped me kind of to work through this, like, delayed stress syndrome because I could talk with other veterans about what I had gone through. Watch Bloods Part Two next week.