Kansas Stories of the Vietnam War, Part 2 - Encore; Unknown

today on k pr present we're hearing from kansas veterans of the vietnam war and kate mcintyre public television stations in topeka kansas city and across the country are premiering a new four part documentary american veteran which will air tuesday's october twenty six through november sixteenth we're revisiting some of our veteran stories from kansas stories of the vietnam war an oral history project sponsored by humanities kansas our program continues with john saul but dan will be david tang men and david darwin i do know walking through a villain shirley early when i was their beautiful village in northern country province the captain had to stop the river made of shall wash her clothes and take that were so we could make a good impression what went through the village and we marched through the village there was a french priest has set outside the church he was ninety years there were

the enemy is out in the field serve tending to the rice crop there were women in the orchard taking so christians and other things you'll ruin the orchard there were nuns during the children into the church they were singing in latin off a maria song well i sang when i was a boy and church and it on this forward protect their people like this whitmarsh country that know that the next time when through the village the church had been totally bombed out and you can read on the altars set off a maria yeah but the church was gone the altar was still there the well had been came in there were napalm casings were the rice paddies and then me and trees are all split up in the orchard that button that the village had been abandoned so we didn't

i'm a good day for a lot of yelling get a good nation years successfully you saw bad guys he never taken out to her all but i mean it's just a variety of things that create them the good a lot of malicious a commemorative of the guys because you're all going through the same thing that you wore and if everybody came back there was a good day you know you know please ma'am gunshot and in everything else but embodies back so that's a good holidays were miserable that's the worse the loneliest time the first christmas i was in the field and it's always and they sent out some cooks who terrified with our little pa containers of hot food whatever which was actually pretty terrible and then the second christmas i was in the rear and there's two stories involved with that we get care packages from home and instead of

eating and we save them and combine them for christmas dinner which was old i guess you'd call a potluck out of mccann and one of the best meals family or for christmas meals with in a family of necessity that i had any other thing was piled a serious jan is an excellent gift giver so she sent me one of those little christmas trees or fake christmas trees old honey about two feet tall maybe and then she took pictures of everybody in the family and cut out the head and she made a little egg shaped fry and in the strain on to hang on the tree with a note sense you can't be with us this christmas parade set you can be with us this

christmas brother we will be with you hannah my life is the best and the most considerate thoughtful loving president i think i have ever received and probably will ever received we were we were polly fifty mile summertime and it was getting late and we had general we're on a roll coming back up and as a roadblock there and this is one of those not someone really smart things that in my life i went through the robot and was booby trap he was it was really trapped by the by the vietnamese army and i we had to weigh the movie road blocks my my driver and i all over the place around the air field and so the venerated been in the area they had grenades and at that point i remember much of all as i went into shock immediately my mind i remember things and i woke up in their forest convalescent hospital and i can't say that i really i was really stupid on my part but that was

in my career in the company and they said oh this is a really important company and we can we've really get out of the hospital and on how long you're going to be in hospital and sorey an assignment to another another captain who is this coming year and so i was actually at the time lawyers looking at i was upset that i lost my command it turns out there was a hustling for a week and i was back on duty and september twelfth nineteen sixty eight we were attacked the mortar attack and rocket attack and we have scattered and i dove next to a wall and long of my name associate a friend we would just go one company another person go down as well or mortar round hit with him in ten yards of us or sell and that was on top of me once that was done i got slammed against the law and we went i dragged him into the clubs and

looked and has yet been wanted an alarm and i did smoke crack and heaven forbid think innocently as i was able to seal his long walk with a pennsylvania came from a cigarette and held it there until the medics finally came and then i left and never saw him again and i had to run and get down to the line is interesting back in when facebook first came out maybe two thousand two thousand fine for whatever reason i've got a post from <unk> <unk> and for that what his name was and the question was written does anybody remember september twelfth nineteen sixty eight alan zweig type back in now and you know i can never fussy and

that was the most one of the most memorable september twelfth he saved his life i mean how would one now there was a lot of things going on there was a guy had little infantry guy by five six or seven that came walk and now i want one morning after there was some fire on the perimeter kmart in amman and scratch on the top of his head is carrying his helmet with a bottle and so that when anyone out that came in the front when out the top so you know i was there was a mess pretty interesting patient and all it took was a little the us foreign elements and back at militants and in fact that's one lucky guy i thought that i'd been killed and my face had been two inches further to the west or for that least i wouldn't and then i

cut a small piece of shrapnel about the size of rifle and that in my school i did lose consciousness i went to the ground when i hit the ground i can still hear those rounds coming in i could smaller tnt burning tnt and i can hear people running a screening under the hole in the ground about half the size of his desk and about as deep as it is high and i got into it with another person leno over the site with a flashlight the put upon shore the tops of like escape it was about two o'clock in the morning and we didn't know anyone can see us are not any cut the travel out of my head with a razor blade to it it is stirring us with this election match right there in the whole political issue to do and

i just got back with a company from allergies and we were not true except brewer coming from but we were going down to the bone song playing that morning our platoon had point or squatted point it was appointment was served i was assigned to the point was some degree on our are the news can lead the next morning when he was a little bit deterred about the fact that he had to walk point that morning and before he could leave gone on our size of a house volokh points were so we started out they were going down on a rather steep incline and i was walkin point and come around the corner and the trail you're being real careful look over stuff if you're a steep incline there's there's times when you you don't have both feet underground you know you have one other for you said no and devil comes

out well right about that time i saw the trip wire i couldn't stop so when i shoot i hollered turn china back up the hill in a grenade when all familiar hit i jumped over in the bushes my dear and you know i'm still in one piece a little feel a bank like shark was sitting i do it to have any pain now serving quieted down somehow it out pays anybody at time holler back yes they said who i said me and how bad is that i don't know can you walk i haven't tried to make their gear they condemned and pick me up a medivac me on in simple i had surgery a surplus of milk on our for about two to wait for recovery that i don't want a setback when edison to okinawa

and i'm laying in dayton in jamaica monument and what would that mean you it's ok fine and it's two jets and hydrogen peroxide well i had bandages on several parts of the body and then they were cleaning always and when i sing what they were doing the rich one part where my body that now for skill that i had something in common and telling them right and a lot of them and they said ok we get along necessary yet he demo undertaker the other parts i was not going to roll over and now we have a horrible horrible trip coming back from vietnam we are the plane and it at as the plane was taking off i noticed i was looking up at the gasoline was spilling from leaking gas tanks on the site have come up with a video stew

it's the guy's a word about rand to the rapture that for the front end till so my brother when i tell them that he was always in dallas officer in the air force also were want to i told a recent david no you're not here that that caught that plane would've caught on fire and i would've done it somehow it didn't and then it up and then it just that all fueled come back and land again so we had we spent three days and quadruple and in every place we went there was a problem we finally went from a whole why tall and when we arrived on the back to oakland air force base global supply i was there standing only then i was posted they flew us into el toro

grenier station just outside of la and they put us on buses that had blacked out windows windows at night because it is there were people who didn't like us being there you know and so i had a few hours for my plane to leave to go to kansas city and her i was sitting in a recall sharpshooter hamburger joint they're in an airport and i looked out of the little restaurant there and there was a person and this person had the most beautiful long blonde hair and then as i was sitting there contemplating this it turns around and has a beard down its belly dance a guy at home my god i've gone off the deep end that was so that was

my return to the states so they were like that when i left that much you know that was just thirteen months of the things that changed so drastically that pretty much i came home i didn't tell anybody i was common so i got back to topeka and her took me a while to fortify my father because he had moved in and told me he was going to do in very head wheat crop that cross paths that i finally found my dad and then a couple days later i went to see my mother so i stopped and ring the doorbell she came to the door and she says may help you know on cause i was very skinny and the last time she'd seen the house's apology and there the single mom how are you and she recognized me by my voice

so i went in and i sat down dr montfort wall in my little sister cable and i went in and sat on the couch in the living or twitter she didn't she didn't take any time at all and she said and she was a freshman at the washer and there she asked me what i thought of the vietnam war counsel kathy that's that is a very important thing that we're doing there are those people really really needed to stare and she said that to me well you're just like the wrestlers baby killed or so i got up off the couch walk out the door and i didn't speak to my sister for thirty years it like it's beyond their ideas and then you put the nation argues back together

they cook on was down the road to go to get training site you have civilian car five push national guard trucks off the side the road actually run over for years but we have probably as we're brought the light and so we had great kids those guys stayed within we get the job done when the vietnam memorial wall opened in washington dc my parents went when it first opened because they were living in new jersey not terribly far and the wall all the names on the wall the casualties are listed a chronological order but they also have a call for the rectory and my mother like him get to getting the old phone book looking up your phone number so she went to the off a directory and she opened it and saw harvey robert george that level night at just

that collapsed so that robert g harvey that's on the wall he was from often i was he was a marine was killed or this attempted nineteen sixty eight so i get it takahashi rose bracelet after that with his name on it and i word every day and it's i mean he'd painted because of the blackest coming off of laughter so many years what it brought back to me is what parents went through when your kids at nineteen and twenty are halfway across the world and so much more thankful for the parents and for those who also suffered through vietnam like at home when he went back in the villages of the register a new federal bodies

had a close friend from a person he was a wall things away when over here's a sign that the ex officer liaison to show up only be killed in action how the world of picks off or get killed in action well he a transfer or good a unit trained as an advisor and both he and his civilian eyes no provider or bulls killed in that parade there are forty plus a large section of the members that had come back and as i could find him on that wall to my children are especially to my son who's going to be forty one next month is is deaf and he was six maybe seven something like them and i went to the wall my look un panel

forty nine west line forty and thats where robert g harvey is listed and i started a family saga my wife vocally is he saying wise debt equally we're at the wall and it was a lot less power ten degrees there were twenty people at the low and useless back and wrote this after we came home last winter at the wall begin slowing and very cold it seemed we were alone until a man and a woman reflected in the granite from behind us for a long time our watch them inside the stone when i turned

i saw men weeping do you have someone here i ask just the two of you she said the first time i went i went with my cousins kid that eric vale camp and i told him if that if i had a kid i want to be you is just a lovely man he was nineteen years old and at that time i was in my forties the statistical age of the drafty of the soldier in vietnam was nineteen years old i know minimal and there's a difference between weeping and crying and being wracked with grief and starling my cousins good eric all the sudden i am wracked with grief an awareness that i had never in my wildest imagination thought ever that i wished i

had died in vietnam and that my name would be on that will show that my name would be with bodies and friends forever and ever what would you like people to know about your military service police arrest me that well first floor like them to know that i served and i did my duty my job that i'm glad i got to do some work with civilians i'm glad that at some point for forty years after i started reading about it because it's been healing for me although i didn't have any horrific things happened to me personally and i'd like them to know that

other writers like myself that write about war usually almost all were all the ones i know are very anti war and they understand our wars are caused by people in government and that basically when you're out there on a war you're just killed somebody just like yourself the war in vietnam heated issue sharing income measure the navy near first had begun battle but we lost the war the war's political who's the domino theory and i understand the logic new people discuss melo was bad model joe you're talking a long time ago the doubters about ten years and is still as it is still is kind of valid i i guess my keys evidence can kiss

that i knew what i was doing every day that we can do what mission ahead and i could do it i can do it but i do know what the overall mission was a forward doing that i did my duty i was the marines i served with summer if they can take me alive you kept them alive and those of us who or willing to subject ourselves to so much that other people may or after you did it because it was an honor to do that because we had to go because it wasn't hard to do it in my day there

was a draft so some of us didn't do it voluntarily but today it's all volunteer so it has led the way for those of them there are in effect today that they did much like i did because it was something that i felt needed to be done i didn't do it because i wanted to go out into the world and global edge people up there were people out there that wanted to do that and i wanted to stop and even though our government let this bail in nineteen seventy two we saved a lot of people we get a lot of good that was a privilege to do it in a heartbeat because over the years i truly believe

that we were hoping for the people of vietnam are not government run government to craft everybody's government is i am but the people i've met so many wonderful people from vietnamese people that have been able to come here as the years went by i realized that's why i was doing this for knowing what we were trying to do to help them we won that man you've been listening to kansas stories of the vietnam war a statewide oral history project marking the fiftieth anniversary of america's escalating involvement in the vietnam

war as special thanks to the kansas veterans who shared their stories can bob when david darwin bob did david did named david hammond bob harvey unlike h c palmer stand raul john saul by david tennant and down willoughby a very special thanks to john musgrave not only was he instrumental in recruiting fellow vietnam vets my interview with him last year was the first step in my involvement with this project you can hear that interview on our website kansas public radio dot org today st pierre presents features only a fraction of these veterans' stories go to our website for more interview excerpts as well as photographs kansas public radio invites you to share your own memories of the vietnam war at kbr is paints a final thank you to humanity's

kansas and mara read offer their help with cancer stories of the vietnam war this project has been sponsored by humanities kansas in partnership with a david would scamper veteran's foundation the veterans history project at the library of congress and veterans voices writing project i'm kate mcintyre at our present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas in it