Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Charles Sabatier, 1982 [Part 2 of 2]

Tell me you said a little bit about this being a second class citizen. You learned about it right away in the hospital right away. I went from probably what most people at that time. And I think most maybe not the young people but most of the people in our country probably viewed me as and I don't mean me personally but. White middle class young American that what they had much potential that would have been coming out of the Army hadn't been served in combat in Vietnam. I had a lots of pluses behind me. I mean my future was was it was limitless. You know I could do anything. I was bright and I knew that I could do anything. I went from that as soon as you know that bullet hit me. I went from like the general population group who was accepted. To to something I call today the UN general population group. And there's a lot of people in that group. Anybody who deviates from the status quo from the general population is thrown in this this is under general population. The status quo candidate a

fiver that for some reasons. So I became you know in the original cut population I sort of stand that I was now a second class citizen not the first class citizen when all the potentials. What are the things ahead of me but a second class citizen who is viewed as a pathetic as a as a burden on society as somebody who would not ever be gainfully employed. And I got labeled right away. I got called names like. Catastrophic Lee disabled. Yeah I can sit here and talk there's nothing wrong with my brain. I can do any job the president of United States can do need science all his bill sitting on the boats. But I can do any job the governor does that any senator or representative can do. Any mayor any for any official. I am an official of the state of Massachusetts. I can do probably you know 60 percent of the jobs that are being done anywhere. Citizenship. Yeah tell me about your. Time you

haven't. Gone to the states in a few weeks for this. Immediately upon arriving back in the States I learned you know that I was the special population growth that was being handled by hand. That was being restricted. I was being told what to do all over again I was almost I had as if I had no more right to determine for myself what should be done for me. I was never asked you know what was good for me and what I would like. I was always told that and that to me is second class status. Not having any input in what's going on in my life I got to American General Hospital just to give you a couple of examples of what I'm talking about. I was wheeling from my. Bed to physical therapy down the hall because I was really not in my wheelchair too fast. I got stopped in the hall. Now this is last probably a month

after I've been shot and got through I got through. I come back I'm going to the Hall of this hospital I get stopped by MP military police in the hallway and he writes me up some kind of warning. And I get three of these warnings for going too fast. I'm going to be get what they call an Article 15 which is close to a court martial and I can believe it I said wait what are you talking about. And he says you're going too fast and. Right cameras 786 out 20 73 Sanal it. Was. My introduction into what I now call the general

population in my initial feelings of being a second class citizen really began in the Army hospital. Immediately after I. Arrived in the States from the air. I've gone from this what I really consider to be a first class service and somebody would suck up to two. Second class status in the reasons I started feeling things like that was came out of incidents like trying to get from my. Bed to physical therapy and in peace stops me in the hall and gives me writes me up this morning which is similar to a ticket on the street that I was going too fast and endangering other patients. Whether that was true or not I don't really know but I didn't like the idea of somebody just stopping me and treating me in that kind of a manner without you know talking it over with me or informing me of

you know what I'm doing that might endanger somebody to tell the audacity to stand there and write it out this morning. I figured well. You know I've experienced a lot of bad things I'm. Going through this mental and physical traumatic experience and now I'm going to be harassed and treated like I'm dirt or something. I told the gentleman what he could do this morning. He didn't appreciate my comments and that warned me that if I didn't sign this warning that I would be facing the Colonel who was the head of the hospital. Well I found I thought very intriguing and I went mine facing the Colonel and done what I thought about the scout power. So I refused to sign he found me back to my ward and. I found out where my dad was and wrote down my name and my number from by Charlie went to the colonel the next few days I got the notice that I was support supposed to go to the Colonel's office I refused a girl just to see what would happen next thing I knew I had it

too in peace. In the medical medical personnel put me in my wheelchair. They pushed me down the hall to the Colonel's office and you're out in ministration office or something and I was sitting in there and he told me. That I decided to stick it. I had given this article 15. And what an arc of 15 years is just kind of a. You can get all reprimand or they can reduce your sour you're some kind of punishment. And. Three go back three okay. He said I would wait till she could sign it. OK. He said if I had incentives to go I was going to get this Article 15 what I did to really what he thought or what I was going to get. I was interested in was getting the hell out of the army and so I tell him he could show this article 15 where the sun didn't shine. I ended up getting

the article 15 had been reduced in rank from Sergeant. To spec for. Which net like $25 a month to pay me. I don't really care but. What they showed me I think was that I was a person who was not respecting. My. Ability to determine for myself what. Was being taken away from me. But I had little control of my life. And that was just one incident. They were you know a number of them. It was a matter of respect I think more than anything else and I began to lose my respect because I saw other people not respecting me because it was as if people were treating the Warriors are identifying the war with the Warriors because the war was being lost. The Warriors were losers and they didn't deserve your respect. And I mean that's what I was thinking was going on.

I think it is what was going on. Because we obviously lack the respect of the people around us. I think some people might have been jealous of us as Vietnam vets being the macho Vietnam vet and wanted to you know give us tickets because we were Vietnam vets and he worked for something. His thing was a matter of the way he commanded respect without being willing to give it back. And I was just once again a tool and the slow game that was being played just as I was in Vietnam Iraq. I mean you know in the in the chess game has been played there. I finally started realizing what was happening and that I was being you know utilized as a tool in this whole military game. It was a game that I don't have anything to do with the beginning to begin with. But I didn't know any better than to get involved and it was a mistake getting about and I want to get the hell out of this game. And. The next game I got into. I hope that I have more control over things that would be happening to me.

Only a little bit about how your feelings changed in Vietnam about why you were there when you were there. Did it change about why did you think about that. You haven't changed a lot. I went there as a very naive person ignorant. About why we were in Vietnam to begin with. I never even heard the word Vietnam before the ninth grade and which was like. For years before I don't know a communist from a socialist from capitalist. I was going really for a number of stupid idiotic reasons. I was going because I was being set. And if I didn't go I go to prison. I was going because it was warmer climate and it was humid like the South Texas. I don't like Germany which was cold. I didn't mind going there if I had to go somewhere in the army I just don't go where the

climate was like I was used to it. I had this strange ideas in my head that what we were doing there you know was right my idea for going there was I think entirely different from the reasons we were really there. I had these visions of actually helping people like saving people from something that was bad i.e. communism. When I got there and talked to the people those peasants in the fields in the rice fields in the villages those kids they didn't know the difference between communism and capitalism either. But we were over there Freeney from something that I don't understand and they don't understand and I'm killing the people you know to keep them away from these people. And then I started realizing that what this looks like to me is a civil war. It's the north and the South Vietnam just as our own Civil War was north and south. And if I had been in the Confederate army which I probably would have been in Texas. You know hundred years before.

I don't think I'd appreciate some foreign country company and you know helping the other side. And that's exactly what we were we were farmers halfway around the world. To stop something then you know that's what I was there I started thinking well if it's communism that we're afraid of and that we're going to stop here why don't we start stopping it 90 miles away from my shoulder. It's right there in Cuba. We could end it there. Why send us halfway around the world that's not very cost effective. I just cannot stand it. And if it's so important if it's such a bad cancer to me you know I identify with my own money. If I had a key and if I had two cancers and one was in my ankle and one was near my heart I think I try to stop the one near my heart before the one that stopped the one of my ankles in my analogy is that we should start the cancer which is coming as close to our shore before we decide to go halfway around the world to stop it. I think you know I've sort of thinking it must be another reason that we're doing to us and I think. We out of those original thoughts I started

becoming interested in politics and eventually went to college afterwards and got involved with political science. I started becoming much more aware of human life and politics while I was in Vietnam. I be I gained a grete amount of respect for humanity for human life and life itself. After I start you know how how easy it was to snuff life out. It was much harder to keep people alive. To upgrade the quality of people's lives than to simply downgrade them by calling them groups and kill them. We used to think that we are so barbaric in this country that we that we think we are so good that we can just stigmatize somebody as a good can snuff the life out of it like it's a worm. For the sake of stopping communism sick that society has to be second to to buy that. And I see it happening today. I see people refusing to sign up for the draft which is just one step in the direction of becoming a trained

killer like I was. People who have convictions who have time to think it over and decide. No I don't want to be part of the machine that kills people. I don't want to learn about the spirit of the billionaire. I don't want to have anything to do with it. If it's killing people that's all about I don't want everything to do with it. And that's the entire that's the entire object to the military is to train their people to kill everybody around the military helps the infantry in and that's what they're there for to help the infantry men. His sole duty is to kill. I respect those people who refused to sign up to put their names on the line that yes when time comes you can call me up. I don't you know those people are the heroes that have that not have the conventions and you know that will like sacrifice two and a half years of their life in prison right out of college you know might destroy their lives might might lose their wives and just for the sake that they're not they're going to stand up for Humanity and still insanity.

So tell me about if in fact was there any difference tell us between draftees listed. Was there a difference of view or was all the same. When I got to Viet Nam there was not much of a difference. During basic training there was a great difference. So the cameras 787 cameras 77 sound 12 everything. Yeah it's OK. Very basic problem. So there again. I was mentioning the difference of draftees and enlisted people how easy it was when I was in the States for people to get in a fight over whether or not they were drafted

or whether they were enlisted. You might be in a bar and if you had nothing else to fight about you would fractionalized yourself into groups of being of the draftees. And what they called lifers. It didn't matter whether somebody signed up for only three years. Anybody that signed up was a lifer. And so that was the stigma he placed on well you know you got to give everybody a name that you're going to hate. Right they were lifers OK. We were just. Gruts And so it's like the grants versus the lifers in the bar and every time you wanted to fight if you got it you just got a mood to fight. You call somebody a lifer they call you a grant. You start fighting over it and you people punch each other's faces off for no other reason than wanted signed up and one had been drafted. When I got to Vietnam it was like a totally different thing that the study probably ever came up and when it did it was just a matter of conversation nobody was willing to fight or punch each other out over some ridiculous thing whether they were drafted or whether they had signed up they were seen it was just more important things to do more important things to concentrate on people

wanted to survive just do the job hang out stay alive get back home. It was much more of come Rothery that I had developed a group of people in a you know halfway around the world. You had more important things to do and naturally I think it was a glue that holds you together. You have much more for me to do with each other. There in the states the same thing was true I think with respect to race as as far as I was. People in bars that they were going to fight over being drafted or being volunteers they'd fight over race and race problems were prevalent at the time I was in the service especially in Germany. It was you couldn't go into a bar without fighting because of race and so the class will you decide not to go. That was not the case in Vietnam seem to be much more of a brotherhood people because people understood that you know it was important to stay alive and life was more important and that. Colored once again was a rabbit to

stay alive. And he would forget all those stupid irrelevant things that they would ordinarily fight about. They would get together you know then a fight with each other's commonalities I guess you might say you know if you agree. It's just almost a shame that you can't have a Vietnam you know and have everybody go to Vietnam without the killing because it would bring people together. It would open people's eyes. Because I learned two years about racism and people been factionalized and do human zation loss of life things like that just you know go through an experience like that. Without. Sticking with you and then affecting everything you think or do the rest of your whole life. And what I'm involved in today with that advocacy movement it's a movement in this country at all I think reflects from my experiences in Vietnam. None of our look at our reflection anything before that result as a result of my life really began the time I can shout from the bullet severing my spinal cord.

It was almost as if my whole future opened up in front of me was like the Red Sea opening almost like I knew where I was going on. It took me a little while to get my own self together. It took me a while to to regain my self respect and the respect of others. After I'd been shot I came back home. I remember like trying to get those people who love me to hate me because I think I hated myself. I didn't like my new body image. I was I wanted to be the six foot £290 macho dude that I was before. I was I was never going to be there. I went through that. Traumatic physical thing and nobody ever thinks seem to put much emphasis on the mental trauma that I was going through or the Vietnam vets were going through. It was as if they just when you got back they want to forget you. They want almost you know they actually dehumanised you in the process. You had almost given your life in 56000 people did the same people at least those those young people who

died there died for reasons in their mind that were totally different than the the reasons the politicians the senators there I think you see they died for it to really save these people to help sort of create equality their lives they died for good reasons they weren't bad people but the people back here because you were identified as a loser you were demonized you were degraded you were tricked you were treated with disrespect and we respect on in bars people would want to pick fights with you if they found out you were Viet vet. If you want to argue the pros and the cons about it without understanding anything about it much less understanding what went on in your own mind and your own life what you experienced you know no idea of that. They want to treat you physically because that's all they could identify with your physical bodies and what they did was they didn't like your physical body they didn't like your physical presence. They totally ignored the middle of your emotional state. They start they would start stigmatizing you as a disabled person. Once you were disabled by putting negative connotations to the things they talked about like you were now confined to a

wheelchair. It took me years to realize I wasn't confined to this chair that I didn't bathe in it that I didn't sleep well. I mean that I didn't make love in it that I didn't get in my car. You know I'm not confined to my chair more confined to the shoes on my feet but those people the medical people say I'm confined to my chair and they start confining me restricting me in their minds because to them I was confined I was restricted I was a pathetic I was a handicap I was a catastrophic I mean it was circ what they were laying on these people instead of like giving them programs to put them back into the mainstream of life to give them jobs that they could pay taxes. They want to sustain them on benefits you know money give you money we don't know any other way. It's the American way. You know it's either technology or money but no feelings no feelings. Nobody nobody want to identify or talk you know try to help you emotionally. It was like he's he's a pathetic. Put him in a wheelchair call him confined dump some money on him and he'll be fine. And that was our system. That's how we treated our

disabled vets. And you wonder why bring home some of the disabled vets have a hard time because nobody's treating. You know what's bothering them their over their wounds. I mean you get over your wounds that I was I thought was healthy. Three months after I'd been shot but emotionally took me years to finally be willing to try to get a job. It was eight years after I got shot. I was still sitting in a parking lot afraid to get my Wiltshire out of my car because the public was coming by walking by. I mean I sat there in their car thinking Jesus Christ I'm shaking here in this car because I'm afraid to get out of my car and I will cheer because I'm so ashamed of the way I look and why am I ashamed of the way I look. Because I've been trained by the medical people to be ashamed of the way I look because every time I go down the street people stare at me because I'm a deviant. Because they've been trained to think of you as deviant. I mean I'm obviously so pathetic I'm confined and then I started realizing I'm really not confined this will cheer is not a

confining object. It's a liberating object is the thing that gives me the freedom that I have of if I don't have the chair I really know what confinement was about. It's not confined to this chair is the thing that liberates me. But people want to put you in a corner to put you in a general population to keep you there to keep you down as a second class citizen. You know it's the ironic not ironic but the thing about it is no it's not an attention or systematic. Well it is systematic but it's not intentional. And people I've learned. From the time I was in the V.A. hospital until today that once somebody has a policy they'll do anything to maintain that policy no matter how stupid the policy. Well that there will create a policy bearing on people's lives and I'm talking about disabled people there's thousands of policies dealing with disabled people without ever asking disabled people what the hell their needs are. They will make policies without ever being aware of what their needs are and without being aware of what their needs are. They can never be sensitive to

them are insensitive to them. They're totally a little oblivious to them not tell you if it's if it's one thing worse than somebody treating you badly but somebody's ignoring you completely. Just you know and ignoring your needs completely. Don't disrespect the switch to. The board. So again when you were in Vietnam what did you think of when you heard of you or me or what. I think when I was in an anti-war movement was going on. I don't really I wasn't really pro anti-war because it was hard to be pro anti Wal-Mart while I was the killer. It was really a strange thing that you were going through a mentally. I mean as I'm learning here I'm not here because I want to be here another the people around me were there because they wanted to be

there. But they can hardly a pulse what they were doing they had to go out on the search and destroy mission. They had to continue to kill people just to make it through their one year tour to get back. There were no what if they're not well. 3 percent maybe enjoyed the killing. I mean that happens everywhere in every war. But 97 percent of the people that say we're just guys on the block that your neighbors back home just just regular guys who get caught up and found themselves in an uncompromising position and got shipped off really as a slave. I mean that's what the whole draft was about. And they they weren't in favor of the draft or in favor of the war just because they were they are they were a pawn they were a tool and they've been they've been suffering for it ever sence. And I think so we were just there trying to ignore the anti-war movement as much as we could because we didn't feel comfortable you know taking part of it. But we weren't we weren't my pro-war either. We were just there to live out our tour and get the hell out of there to get back to you know the real world as we called it.

Because it was if we were in some strange foreign. You know alien place that none of us had in business being and we knew that a year later we'd be in the room we're looking at. This is the TV piece 0 0 7. Twenty

seven eighty four picture seven eighty eight. South fourteen. We used to hear about the anti-war movement Julian two ways through television and through the Stars and Stripes newspaper U.S.A. we used to hear about the anti-war movement two ways by television when we were back in Gucci which is very seldom are in the Stars and Stripes newspaper and generally would be like in the third or fourth page. The front page second page would be full of how we are winning the war and the body count to ten to one you know our side and. What a great job heroics of different people around the country. So if you got to the 34 page you might read a small column about something happening on some campus

generally back home. So it was downplayed there we didn't get a whole lot of information on it. On television we would get. Scenes of the riots. And it was always the status quo knocking heads of the students. The dumb against the smart type thing and it was interesting the path there is that the news would come one right after the Witan moral Combat series which we count on and then the news would come on showing the anti Worthing and the news would be by a military guy in a military uniform talking about anti-war and so right after the combat thing. I guess they figured you know that the propagandists in the military machine will figure that after watching come that we'd be so up you know seeing a great big battle and a victory by Americans. That we would oppose the anti-war movement and when it when thing would come on we would all be yelling you know. Everybody started moving the television sets when the police would come out sort of getting heads. It was just

a strange circumstance we've ourselves in moving the status quo for being the heads of the young people who are opposing what we were doing in Vietnam. I thought you know really crazy and it's really very very very good. So the promo code for that interview. This is audio only as much a lot of times in the evenings when we sit around. Our tracks. Our little areas there in the premiere we'd be playing poker and just messing around. And we need to discuss a lot. About what it might be like to be on the other side. I think we had a lot of respect for our enemy and we talked a lot of you know about them trying to wonder you know what was in their own

minds. Especially after a firefight. We talk about the people you know that we just killed. And it was it was quite interesting and you would see somebody you know laying right in front of you that you just blown away. It's got you know big bullet holes in them. You can't help but wonder what what their life was like back you know if you. Want to meet their mothers and think she getting a telegram and thinking like Americans get up in the middle of the night and out I don't know. But we used to talk about I want to help me inform my parents you know or whether they even know you know I suppose and a lot of those people that we killed you know we just would bury. And probably most of those people never had enough occasion on them. We just opened a home and thought up their parents their fathers or mothers still living their wives their kids. They're probably wondering maybe they're just like Americans now. I want to save or capture something that's still being held.

There's probably rumors going on that we've taken take all of these people back to America or something and slave them. We should talk about things like that and. Especially when we find somebody that had to have been in a vacation on their own. We give the unification of it people who suppose we were to inform them go through the channels and found those people but you know we doubt seriously whether that or they ever got informed. We talk about the VC When we come up on their own. We see where they were living like 30 minutes before they still might be coffee heart far or surprisingly small now it's to be a candle lit and everybody says that the smoke is clear. Which is a strange feeling you talk about in the evenings about these people and just talk about their way of life and what it was that made them I think those were the kinds of conversations that got me thinking about our role here because we

saw how can dance. Those people were you know it was during those conversations that we began to realize that if somebody will actually live out here in the stupid jungle they tunnels all day long live in these tunnels for 10 years just to find us. You know when we're there to do good we may just start wondering you know if they want to go through all that. You know if I must have met you know that those things weighed on our minds. Maybe if it had been a different kind of war we would start thinking like that but the the troops who were actually out there doing the killing really began to respect. The people that they were killing much more self I think than our military leaders in the United States can ever respect these people because they have been stigmatized by being called gooks. And when you come from far away it's a lot easier if you keep your face up you know face to face and so we have a lot of respect and we talked about them a lot about the people and way of life and then you know we didn't you know even though we call them

gooks I think we you know we all knew in our own minds hearts and souls that we had a great amount of respect for these people and we did our sleep begin to question. It was through killing the people that we began to question. You know. The reasons for ourselves being there. Because we started to understand. Here we are. Killing people who are so. Convinced of their own right instantly willing to go to these extremes and live life as to fire us and we start understanding of course we'll be doing the same thing in our own country. Can you imagine if we had lost we were to win and we were being occupied by Japanese. We would be fighting guerrilla warfare today. We'd be living in the hills around here and in Massachusetts we'd be digging tunnels will be doing anything we believe we can right here in the United States. We never give in we couldn't give then this would be our country they have no right here we do everything we could get him out of here and we started you know and they're analyzing the situation and said Of course they're right.

Of course they're right. We have no business there. And they know what you know about our leaders and our president. If our generals don't know what hell is these people know it and they want to die for it. It was pretty simple to us to make you feel conflicted. No question about it. You know you are killing people in CIA I gain more respect for those people than I did my own leaders and you can see it on the films of what you see in Ally films. The disrespect Americans have for their own leaders. It wasn't really a disrespect for somebody being young necessarily lead him it was a disrespect for the whole damn system that would put them in that position to have to kill in order to stay alive. We after a while we were killing those people because they were communists. That was absurd. We were only killing people to keep ourselves alive. We had you know we don't know what the hell communism was and we didn't like it. Once we found out that the only

reason we were killing was to stay alive we know we work and can we had no convictions with no commitment and in this country and it took people 10 years to find out we don't have it there. When I was there I had the day I landed there. I was there as a naive dumb ass kid and I have to kill a bunch of people just to keep my own butt alive and people around me alive. I never I never killed anybody there because he was a damn Communist. That's ridiculous and you know through those kind of conversations in the evening I think we all we all understood that we all understood what was going on here. We began to realize that communism might not be good for us but it might be good for somebody else that our system of government might be good for us because of a lot of different factors and bad. But it wouldn't work somewhere else and everybody ought to be entitled to their own kind of thing. Granted somebody might be forcing the system on them but didn't we do that. I mean didn't we do there are Indians didn't the Indians here didn't like our system what we

did with the good guys and I know what the answer is only your words. Would you do it. I would fight and die for things I believed in but I'd never fight and die for whatever it was we were striving for because I don't see their own state now. But I'm smart enough to know when something's worth fighting for and I think the young people in this country are smart enough to know when something's worth fighting for and worth dying for. And I don't believe there's some politician in Washington has any right trapped in their home and slaving them into the draft making them die for something they think is right making them die for some slogan like the domino theory making them die for their system for their status quo. The young people die. There always are the the impression the people die. The ones from the mines were open who don't know what life is about in the up do the killing and doing the dying.

I think you know it's yours that makes you a little bit wiser and it's an experience in your life. I've had much more of that at this time in my life. I think I'm a lot smarter and wiser and that's why they don't try to drag people my age. They track the people.