Kansas Stories of the Vietnam War, Part 1 - Encore; Unknown

today on k pr prisons public television stations in topeka kansas city and across the country will air a new four part documentary american veteran starting this week i'm kay mcintyre the first episode of american veteran will air october twenty six with weekly installments through november sixteenth in connection with american veteran we trace the experience of twelve kansas' veterans from the vietnam war it's kansas voices of the vietnam war are part of a statewide oral history projects sponsored by humanities kansas kansas voices of the vietnam war originally aired on keep your prisons on november eleventh twenty eighteen that poem fifty years ago kansas soldiers joined two million americans who fought in the vietnam war i'm kenny macintyre 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 now let's hear from some other kansans who served in vietnam my name is kimchi 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 candace payne graduated from key use produce food 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 niners iraq and we got to afford it would in the middle of the night people when to lock up the area and nine but 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 senator as i mentioned you've fallen in

rank stretcher address 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 had 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 at us jim lyon i'm pro right next seizure that we felt when we did jewish riders and remember the sergeant at the venice 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 and he did us goods yet 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 put in the marine corps and that's the only time in my life that ever 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 and 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 the age old footprints 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 in a whirl trouble of 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 no i had no fat and it was all muscle into the folks didn't know me like i was at fort dix in the wintertime fort dix it's very cold very cold and we were doing a grenade training you pull pan and hold it for a sermon time and release it we were not allowed to have gloves you would ordinarily have plots but no lawyer and trey already them are

out of date toffler my hands start to agree i couldn't throw out 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 fighting over adding it rips and steer 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 light rain water out of water trading don't eat monkey bananas which he's gonna bananas and then they

also taught us things like the minor scholar did the car 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 they have the moment will agree to this 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 innovate 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 name stan raul david haye an odd it can baldwin and david ten 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 answered 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 experience was branch of service was a year army with daisy 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

h c palmer live in lenexa kansas i was finishing my first secure residency appears to kansas medical center in internal most some in april a receipt my draft notice in tampa well from 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 i entered united states marine corps or private april four nineteen sixty six and i was red the rank of certainty five why left in late july of nineteen sixty nine the first impression was that sweat pours our every portion of your body when the plant opened 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 toto 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 big when overweight and had a transmitter basement got off the jet in 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 have gotten so people all kinds of people put all our training in two basic any idea they said 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 going to cause 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 brazenly is and so this would make them bounce off we actually first landed in july an amphibious landing his leg 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 bassist so then we proceeded to other name like i mean it's the

company was the third force servers regiment and we first got there we were we were settled in and 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 i would i was put in a road guard on trucks and first time i got in the year the driver says take your flak jacket off to put on the floor we're not likely to get ambushed or the day anyway but if we get a miner will 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 every four hours on the mainline you you don't even think about it that's an ongoing around so the new guys are the effigies as they were are called were home jumpy home with each are going around then when an incoming round caveman 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 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 iran and probably killed the occupants as it were it broke that four by twelve inch beam and fell onto the leg 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 shaw 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 m fourteen says will end it was allowing stores or i was i don't know perimeter but that there was sort of 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 how 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 i work or were engineers soldiers manned know we didn't have

armor artillery or ease and like that to back a 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 i think that i think that the ceo sorry they said well these guys are building roads for a slump has dogged us wrestled with the lead and build roads because of a vision and then maybe somebody thought they were going to take that over 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 it went 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 economy 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 the right place 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 know 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 end central vietnamese who worked there or home spoke at least one dialect of vietnamese and burp 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 sell a ceo in france actually newer a little lived in britain may end they spoke french my preference on military matters they didn't have the words in vietnam is fort mcmurray military things most of the words that were ultimately got into the enemy is our own 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 mag vietnam and that was a military assistance advisory group vietnam am and i am at an arm 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 are and working with the vietnamese so i want 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 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 it'll 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 carried a radio the pr twenty five which as extra pounds to your weight that you're carrying and has an

antagonistic straight up and it's like okay you're no fool so he abandoned santana and then you take a plastic spoon so it sticking 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 or on 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 large patrols this web ad so slick there everybody 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 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 to 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 state reps which as situation reports we have radio as you said jeremy have squashed or no 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 calls i were to be ranger for cigarette and what you do you do you never talk all year was break 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 affordability 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 a north 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 which 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 trip 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 then there was just one of the things that stick cinnamon you about the victims is that a good good good day 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 treat people for this and this and that mostly kids with their skin infections and so forth but we delivered a baby or tomb but that was rewarding because we went out there and did that and i know a truce in dc out there because it will commit suicide or 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 that you do which are what do with them which are counted so it does which is trim window and while people would agree with that presumably that should menace again but hey

we're inner city near death and her country in iowa for that and for going to sort of us do some good h c palmer can bob when 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 the 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