Kansas Stories of the Vietnam War

it fifty years ago kansas soldiers joined two million americans who fought in the vietnam war and came back entire today on k pr presents kansas stories of the vietnam war an oral history project sponsored by humanities kansas kbr is one of twelve organizations across the state to collected their stories of vietnam veterans for this project their stories will be archived at the library of congress veterans history project we'll meet our vets in just a minute but first did you serve in vietnam did your brother or data or other family member did you wear a po debbie bracelet or remember watching the war unfold on the nightly news what do you remember about the war join in the conversation right now on k pr is facebook page now let's hear from some other kansans who served in vietnam my name is jay baldwin i served in the army activity

from october nineteen sixty six october nineteen sixty eight during the vietnam conflict and my name is stanley were out borrowed early my name is bob peck my name is david hand david a star alan demean be i double and bubbly and my name is donna lee i live in sioux city iowa however i was raised at hutchinson kansas graduate julia ritchey of kansas and graduated from key use producing program my name is david l time when us by six four three two one niner zero sir basic training you met the bus at the county seat which was senator kansas county seat of the martini my dad drove me they're my mom didn't go alone and it's one of those things that sticks in your mind and probably ten fifteen twenty years later i asked my mom why she hadn't come along and she had

an answer she said i watched my mother send my brothers to war world war two and i just couldn't do it and it took me all those years to be able to pass that so the boss then drove you down and you wound up at fort leonard wood missouri for basic training and basic training is what strip you of your identity i mean you are stripped naked your hair shaved off and suddenly you're our us five six four three two one nine or zero and we got to a ford they would in the middle of the night people when to lock up the area and nine to put all these lights on the house we off the bus and you don't really know what's going on and the sergeants all star young age and for senators on that ship you'd fallen in rank stress red dress a whole coal miners there was three of us together to bombard jim boston myself all went to school together or withdrew

high school graduate together and we have a gym teacher in central junior high court mr deaver mr deaver was ex military and he taught you have fallen rank centers for trips when we got the bus and they started hollering out as jim lyon i'm pro right next seizure that we fell where we did drescher actress and remember sergeant looked at us and holler know if people like these guys right here and i'm so they don't think you missed or do for you did him proud what he did us goods but the first thing they do is they cut your hair make a stanley cup on some yellow footprints which is time to this day that it made me realize i was posing a marine corps and that's the only time in my life that over been afraid and then it wasn't afraid of the core and he was afraid that it would lead to court they strip away who you are and make you

make you someone else so you come in at night you're lost her disoriented you have large men yelling at you the first day you lose your curly locks and all the while you're here or harassed and the goal is is to make everyone her tough mentally tough and learn what you can do i used to joke that if my if mice when coaches in high school college had been able to get a no felony as michael surgeon did then i would have been a better swimmer because i was ahead too much left in the tank at the end of the race the army top i always had more to soon as you stand on those he'll put pressure you know your life is changed irrevocably had four weeks

of michael breaking in training or whatever were really we learned the ropes and for as far as always standing attention when you spoke always asking permission speak never sitting down and never walk always as well as it's a double time he usually has the case are you learn the march first thing in marching that got me was what is a known as the the drill instructors cadence unsettling one two three they go are left right left ago my old ride oil and they each have a distinctive cadence of the ransom to different melodies and some so they all pride themselves on their canes and as a recruit you must recognize your drone struck his cadence so you do not get confused by another drill instructors barked commands for example to our left like laughter whatever the what it was going to be an imposition do you have been a world crumble course when i

went in the marine corps and generate sixty five i was five foot nine and two hundred and ten a little roly poly little when i went home after that i was five eleven and one hundred and sixty pounds had no hair they had no fat and it was all muscle into the folks didn't know me why i was at fort dix in the wintertime fort dix it's very cold very cold and we were doing a grenade trying to pull pan and hold it for a certain time and release it we were not allowed to have gloves you would ordinarily have plots but no lawyer and tray or either rather be my hands start to agree i couldn't

from what i could release of detroit and but a fire opened up my hand a little bit it would start ticking and invested the time and i wasn't the kind of grenada was pulled the pan and you're released and then you throw and i could go into a river and finally have a sergeant so what was going on you just pull the man was i think our refining it rips disconnect it was that no idea put to your tongue on a pole and the cold a metal bar or something like that before i left i got orders to go to the pacific air force general survival school park or for space the philippines which is one week school really touch to bugs to eat and how to get water clean water and water trading don't eat monkey bananas which he's gonna bananas and then they also taught us things like the miners good that you are prisoners are using illinois children and

your same sentiments because of the jungle i had a sure fire for a day and a night living in the jungle and i had that moment phillip brutus was searching for us which of the founders and they get ten pounds or price so there's this any form in most people died captured and the bottom line was the whole thing if you get shot down a north you can try to escape and they as much as you want however the locals from an area they know every inch of the land and you will be caught that's don willoughby david did named stan raul david haye an odd it can baldwin and david tang men seven of the twelve veterans i had the privilege to interview as part of the kansas stories of the vietnam war it's an oral history project sponsored by humanities kansas as part of the library of congress' veterans history project did you serve in vietnam did a loved one what do you remember about the vietnam war

share your memories on kansas public radio's facebook page i'm kenny macintyre you're listening to kbr presents and kansas public radio let's meet the rest of our veterans hello my name is bob harvey i insert that as an enlisted individual in united states army security agency in september of nineteen sixty seven and left active duty in june of nineteen seventy one my name is robert carlock and my vision them express was branch of service was a young army with seiji branch assignment my name is david are one served as a captain in the us army corps of engineers from january tenth two december twenty fifteen during the vietnam conflict my name is a h c palmer live in lenexa kansas i was finishing my first secure residency appears to kansas medical center in

internal medicine and april i received a draft notice and found out from us some of the people at the medical school at that actually fifteen hundred doctors had been drafted at that time and my name is john steinbach how i entered united states marine corps or private april four nineteen sixty six and i was red the rank of certainty five one i left in late july of nineteen sixty nine the first impression was that sweat pours our every portion of your body when the plane open and i know that they put us on a bus and the bus driver i'm sure quite deliberately took us through the village and you're looking out at a world that is totally alien and foreign anything you ever grew up with and you know the old cliche at kansas

total use set foot on this country that is so it has been so devastated for so long and there you see all these men walking around with guns at you know you needed to train with them but you can send that many men with guns at any one given time for sam or about vietnam is a weed when overweight and had a transmitter basement cut off the jet and the heat and humidity kitchen they put us on a bus to take his two replacement center one of my memory my most vivid memory of that is as were driving through villagers tend to build community and that got us all people all kinds of people put all our training in two basic any idea cases you know the viet cong were black pajamas the viet cong were black pajamas were driving to all this community and everybody had on black pajamas and my first thought was okay so that one out one because as

normal work i was my first impression of him we got all done not be on buses their really heavy screens on the windows i mean i'm not that's green screens but wire mesh and n and we all know what that was for because in previous years before the sea head thrown and brazen ease and so this would make them bounce off we actually first landed in july an amphibious landing just like going over the side just like in the movies and i we stayed there one night and then so the state of july so this went on farther north which we did we adopted the name and we did another activist lending although not empty out the mike those it was on what i think made called atlantic ships dock lsd where have a huge ramp that went down and because i can get large equipment on the basis of so then they proceeded to the name like i mean it's the company was the third force servers regiment and

we first got there we were we were so molded in the greek minister said the uniform of the day is role of slaves were liberal or slaves and marty didn't really feel or stamberg interview is part of course is it would end up being in the marine corps your first a rifleman which means of the heavenly thing to do hard work whenever they got a catchy matter what your voices and so i was often not often ever known that our i was put in a road guard on trucks and first time i got in the year the driver says take your flak jacket on before or not like it had ambushed or the day anyway but if we get a minor help save a late maybe when you're first in country you don't know the difference in sound between and enduring artillery around our tours every explosion

that should jump until you become used to the outgoing rounds and then it's just like a train going by terrorists for hours on the mainline you you don't even think about it that's an ongoing around so the new guys the effigies as they were called were jumpy armed with each are going around then when an incoming around gay man that's that's when you know when you needed to take cover and of course you you didn't hear it before the first explosion so i am i don't remember the first incoming around certainly would've been intensity i do remember probably the closest call i had was into union

city hall the filipino teachers they had the sand bags sides are sandbagged rolfs three layers of sand bags under oath and what's important that way where these pieces of ps peeling together the pst that they use for airstrips and the hooch next to mine it must've been some but sometime between ten o'clock at midnight that next order which took a direct hit from a one twenty two rocket fortunately it did not have a time delay fuse that is as soon as it hit the first sandbag it exploded and also fortunately it it was it hit directs center aisle which meant that in addition to the sandbags in

the p s p it had to go through oh probably have a four by twelve inch would be i'm supporting the p s p through the center of the building if it if it hadn't yet there it would have gone on an end probably killed the occupants as it were it broke that four by twelve inch beam and fell onto the lady of one of the sleeping troops there broke his leg but he was he was definitely a survivor that was one twenty two rocket it stands about five six feet tall that was the the biggest rocket the biggest piece of artillery that that was generally in the hands of the enemy the first night we were there or somebody some vc's apologetic tone sean a

couple times from somewhere probably mayor are in a cave forty seven and one knows when the shots went off the whole perimeter started shooting out there would be 50 caliber thirty caliber and sixty machine guns and sixties some and forties as well endowed it was allowing stores are live and i was i don't know perimeter but that there was a poem sudden into the sectors are weakened country and i thought man i have never been i've been shot at nights i said this is scary stuff now about my head on the ground i have never heard anything like that was enough to scare the economy we were actually taking the fight to the enemy we were building roads and so the enemy would occasionally bring the fight us but during the time i was with the five at night nobody shouted me actually the whole time i was in vietnam we were out in the middle of the country

with them if they are the vc want to kill us a curve because are we were just soldiers out there are work or were engineers soldiers manned know we didn't have armor artillery or anything like that rebecca so in general here and morale is very high certainly high compared infantry artillery armor we had to go face to face with that with the enemy and i think that i think that the ceo some worry they said obese guys are building roads for a scientist told us wrestled with the lead and build roads because a vision and then maybe somebody thought they were going to take to lower these roads ammo at the klan members go back in the nineteen nineties so says twenty five twenty six years later and rosa so there they were doing good and i haven't been going on how they're doing now but they were the roads were still quite serviceable are the ones we have put in the young men that i work with their job and oh well we were one of five to tie and some scattered along too well for which is eight

they for highways like us and if it is a way of five the tires scattered along that road each one had a segment to build that road added we have proms building roads no because a friendly guys called it common or they've made they like the road to say could use it but they didn't let us know that they were there they would dig a hole the road rice plants on another mud explosive in those polls or at nothing so what we would do is a lot on her end of our kids we just kind of blow the road rebuilding dusty bought them even the economy or the emmys go downtown to the oak park place to see the us army's don't they don't know what to do i was in charge of the translator pool we we had about twenty vietnamese south south and central vietnamese who worked there all of whom spoke at least one dialect of vietnamese and loved

french and english a little bit of english their english was was not great but to prove few of them i should say most of the lebanese army officers had gone to use our ceo in france actually newer a little lived in britain a n they spoke french my preference on military matters they didn't have the words in vietnam is formed that many military things most of the words that were ultimately got into the enemy's armies on military matters what translated from chinese from english chinese an inmate and then when it went back and forth so that the point is that the people that worked in my office working from up via the maze to french to english and so they would have problems in their english and they could explain to me in french what

their problems was so they were learning more english in a way for me through french and they were doing a translation stunned and i have you know i knew i was anti military but i hadn't awful lot of respect for the office is that i meant that bag vietnam and that was a military assistance advisory group vietnam am and i am at and on that vietnam was a well run program with hugging sam williams was the general in charge he was the hanging sam williams from the nuremberg trials so that's what i was doing i was i was mainly doing translating work and working with the vietnamese so i went to the field i was an infantry man eleven bravo turns grant cannon fodder hand for that time then you're assigned to a squad

once it's mike in the i was in the first spot whatever and carried a rifle and you you did the things that are assigned to do which is at some point you walk point at some point you walk fly at some point will drag chopra through jungle with a machete you walk through rice paddies with it as your boots come out of the mud and then at some point in there i carried him seventy nine which is basically like a sawed off shotgun and later later in it in those three months i was in the field i was i carried a radio the pr twenty five which as extra pounds to your weight that you're carrying and has an antenna that sticks straight up and it's like okay you're no fool so you've

banded santana and then you take a plastic spoon so it stick it out right in front of you because a classic is kate fleet vc or whatever or an intent and clever and intelligent which they are now they're going to shoot the guy in front or behind the radio and on the radio so take care i was into the first half of which was to base camp was an entree and so i guess in that there's been about a week and they scanned going through orientation or training i'd listen to come in the field that there were some people to do or its patrols which was not something to do something that you had some inherent dangers with it so me another guy martin was my best friend where i'm going with the field again i'd never met him before but he really got thrown in together because we need as we had to go do the warriors patrols this web ad essentially a clearer body out of that area and how they'd be depending on what they wanted in england's insert a petroleum aaron you would

patrol around in your duty was to record and transmit any information on enemy movements and things like that there and in the way we did it to compose with was we would patrol to an area and we say okay this is what's been the night but we would stop there we would go on a waste stop to employ about dusk and then go back to the airport or to be a separate perimeter we set out for the transcription errors one yards and we would have to do it and that what we call cigarettes which as situation reports we have radio as he sat there and you have the squash turnout real world where you could barely hear you have to have a clear the whole time you knew you'd get a call and i'll give your call silent to be ranger for cigarette and what you do you do you never talk all you use breck squelch watch for good or twice for in trouble but and in every night when you set up the parameters we

have a fallback position where if we got here this is we're going to be to this if we're going back to this if we're going to be disorder meet up and so every night i would always laid out my feet blowing north so i know which direction if i woke up you know like which was more south which where i had to go you could just off the same place every night galloway's patrols we didn't dig holes reading set up was so great wouldn't cover anything she put the same thing same place arena to remember when martin who did this and miller night or sometime during evening with a trick first one often when the rejection off for sing marvin gaye whose credits roll in his head and in eastern kurdistan eastern morning and go now and he put his grenades in his helmet and we put his helmet on the screen at this hit

as you don't and that was just one of the things that stick cinnamon you about the victims is that a good a good danny what i enjoyed over there and felt like at some point when i figured out that we were the enemy and they had him we did a lot in that what we call madcap work miracles election patrols and we went out the little villages and treated people for this and this and that mostly kids with their skin infections and so forth that we delivered a baby or tomb but that was rewarding because we went out there and did bad and i know we treat is the ceo there because it would mince words that were compatible with shrapnel or something like it in their wages and as maya ceo assume you what we do with these guys we think are dc and he said doc you do which are what do with them which are counted so it does which is true laredo and while people would agree with that presumably that you notice again but hey we're inner city near death of her country in iowa

for that and for going to sort of us do some good h c palmer can baldwin david ten men and david did mean for other veterans in k pr as kansas stories of the vietnam war it's a state wide oral history project sponsored by humanities kansas in partnership with a david would scamper veteran's foundation the veterans history project at the library of congress and the veterans voices writing project i'm j mcintyre kansas stories of the vietnam war will continue right after this you're listening to kbr presents on kansas public radio from the university of kansas we are ninety one five lawrence and eighty nine seven and korea were on the web at kansas public radio dot org or you can find a more interview excerpt and photos from kbr is kansas stories of the vietnam war project if you have memories of the vietnam war that you'd like to share go to k pr is facebook page

support for kbr comes from the leed center for selling a canadian brass christmas featuring festive classics of the season favre brass standards sunday december ninth seven thirty pm tickets are available and leave doug kaye you doubt you today on k pr present kansas stories of the vietnam war an oral history projects sponsored by humanities kansas to mark the fiftieth anniversary of america's escalating involvement in vietnam twelve organizations across the state collected oral histories of kansans who served we invite you to share your own memories of the vietnam war like a pr is facebook page and now kansas stories of the vietnam war continues with john saw about done will be david ten men and david darwin i don't know

walking through the village early when i was their beautiful village in northern country province the captain had to stop the river made of salt water clothes and take that were so we could make a good impression we went through the village and we marched through the village there was a french priest has set outside the church 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 your trip there were nuns wording the children into the church they were singing in latin off a maria song that i sang when i was a boy and church and it and this is why we're here to protect their people like this when

marshall and through that you know if the next time went 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 said then the trees were all split up in the orchard that button in the village have been abandoned so we didn't i'm a good day for a lot of yelling get a good notion your successfully you saw bad guys you never taken out you risk oremus america around the area again just as they will scrounge up you know firemen or conditioner from another unit you know and trades and make a semi just 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 ember is back so that's a good holidays were miserable that's the worse the loneliest time the first christmas i was in the field han felt fortunate that our platoon didn't have control on christmas day 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 a can and it's 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 hard 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 a strained 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 you fifty miles from where time and it was getting late and we had to tell 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 struck 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 they rated the new year the hangar in tampa 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 though this 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 one 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 the well 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 for leaking and then i left and never saw it 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 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 look 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 came off in yemen 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 position and how it took was a little the us foreign elements in 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 has a deep as it is high and i crawled into that eloquent with another person leana wen shire 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 could see history not any cut the travel out of my head with a razor blade it it is stirring us with this election match up 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 he used to 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 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 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 or could stop so when i shoot i hollered

turn china back up the hill in a grenade when all familiar to so i jumped over in the bushes my dear and you know i'm still in one piece a little silly things 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 simple i had surgery a service in michoacan our for about two to wait for recovery that i don't want a setback when i guess until canal and i'm laying in dayton in to make a monument in with that clean urine soaked a fine and so those wickets to 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 their mom 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 at as the plane was taking off i noticed i was looking up the gasoline was spewing family gas tanks on the site a video store it's the guy's a word about rand to the rapture the end for the front end till

so my brother when i tell them that he was always in balance officer in the air force also were want to i told a recent david no you're not here yet that caught that plane would've caught on fire and i would be yet somehow it didn't and then they go up and then it just that all fueled come back and land again so we had we spent three days and quadrant and i know 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 a 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 news 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 into i was sitting in a recall sharpshooter hamburger joint they're in there in the 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 and things had changed so drastically that pretty much i came home i didn't tell anybody i was common so i got back to topeka in her took me a while to fortify my father because he had moved in and told me he was going to do a very heady 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 she says may help you know it's 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 doctor mom for a while in my little sister cable

and a win in an sat on the couch in the living or twitter she says 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 to me well you're just like the wrestlers baby killer 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 three of that 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 a hint 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 love came home we were back in the villages of the register a new federal bodies had a close friend from a person he was a waltz a way 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 tense 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 start my family saw him my wife vocally is he saying wise debt equally we're at the wall and it was oh it was probably 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 fell camp ahead of us 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 at all 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 wall 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 all the ones i know are very anti war and they understand or worse 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 information the navy near first debate never lost a 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 i could do it but i do know what the overall mission was a former doing that i did my duty i was the marines i served with summer at the moment they can take me alive kept them alive and those of us who we're willing to subject ourselves to so much that people will never have to pay 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 in the know they're in effect today but 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

and government to craft everybody's government is time 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 cancer 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 facebook page a final thank you to humanity's kansas and moral 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