Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Douglas Sabel was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
Okay, this is Veterans History Project interview and we're recording at Purdue University on October 28, 2002.It's 7:18 p.m., and I'm interviewing Doug Sabel, who was born 1/29/49. His current address is 3113 North, 400 West--West Lafayette, Indiana 47906. He is a Vietnam Vet who served in the Army and achieved the ranch of Specialist 5. And I'm Alfred Fournier making this recording. Okay, Doug. Let's see, I wanted to start by asking you what was your life like before you entered the service? What were you doing then?
I grew up on a farm in northern Indiana, poultry farm and my--I had just graduated from high school in May and went in the service in July. That was in 1967. I led a very normal, normal life--
Uh-huh.
--arural, "who's your family life." I had three brothers and sisters.
And did you enlist or were you drafted?
I enlisted.
So just out of high school--so I guess you weren't married with a family yet or any of that?
No. I was the second. My sister was three years older than me, and she was already in college and it just wasn't financially feasible--
Sure.
--for my mom and dad to have two kids in college at the same time--
Uh-huh.
--and their--the GI bill was really good, so I was thinking about that too because I was--I had plans to go to college. So that was principally the reason, and then if you enlisted, you had a more of a chance to guide your military career than if you just got drafted.
More control?
Yeah, pretty much told you where to go, what you were going to do.
Okay. And what do you remember about your first days in the service?
The bus ride. Let's see, had to go up to Chicago--it really wasn't a reception center. It was a shipping point up there, and gathered everybody, put us on a bus, and than bused us down to Fort Wentorwood, Missouri for basic training. And the first few days in the military are "nothing days" because you--you're not assigned to anything. You go to a reception center and you're basically waiting to be assigned to a training unit, and I think I was there three or four days. It's very boring and just you don't know any of the military rules, so you don't know who you're supposed to salute or anything and--but everybody's in the same boat and so there's usually a sergeant wondering around who will come in and grab a bunch of you and line you up and do a policing detail, where you pick up all the stones and cigarette butts off across this big yard.
Yeah.
That's how you spent your day.
So what's the idea of that, just to get you busy or--
No.
--used to taking orders?
It was because you had so much to--yeah, to keep you busy, basically.
Yeah.
You were getting issued things, you know, getting issued your GI shoes, and clothes and uniforms and all that stuff, and that didn't take up all that much time. It was just a dead time.
Um-hum. And then what was it like once you went into training?
Well, then it's nonstop and basic training is you meet your drill sergeant for the first time and he explains to you that he is going to be your mother, father, sister, brother, chaplain, and everything else to you, and you will never see another human being except for him for about eight weeks. And that's pretty much true. My drill--my drill instructor's name was Sergeant Shaw. That's a name you never forget. He was a staff sergeant, had served two tours in Vietnam at that point.
So just how is the adjustment, or did you even have time to wore about adjusting?
I don't remember being all that homesick. I don't--I think it's just because you don't have a chance to get homesick. Probably in the reception center, if I can remember back that far, you know, because you're sitting around and you're not doing anything.
You're bored.
But once basic training starts, you're up at 5:00 a.m. and you don't go to bed until 8:00 a.m., and you're dead tired. I mean, you're just on the run the whole time, so it's--and it's seven days week. I mean, you get Sunday morning off and that's about it.
I hope this question makes sense from your perspective, but what did you like most about those days and the training?
The only fun part about the whole thing really was your--you met all new people and you got--the way they had it set up at Fort Leonard Wood, we were a eight man base, and so you got to know--and we are all in there my alphabet, so it started with rows and ended with Sharick (ph), I think, was the last guy. So there was eight of us in there, and we all got to be good friends, got to know each other really well. That--that was the only enjoyable part that I remember about Vietnam, except maybe at the end a feeling of accomplishment that you survived.
Yeah. In retrospect, later did you find--did you find you were grateful for that--that training and that punishment? Did you feel it came into play later, I guess is what I'm asking?
Not, well, I was--I was never in a combat unit, so it--it--it wasn't in--I'm not sure it would have been much use there anyway. It was more--what their job is to--is to take the civilian out of you and turn you into a soldier.
Um-hum.
So when you do get done, yes, you do know the rules and you do, but from that point on it is less rigid. Everywhere you go, it is less rigid. Everywhere you go, it is less rigid than that so . . .
Okay. Once you finished with your training, where did you go? Where did you serve?
Well, then I went to Fort Belvoir, Virginia for more training. That was for basic training and Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Belvoir was--I was trained as a cartographer and the engineering school is at Fort Belvoir, so that is where I went for another eight weeks of training. I think I was there for about 10, just because again you get there and there's this dead time between when you get there and you're--and the other people assigned to your training unit are all gathering, and finally you get started. And then I was there for probably a week or so after. It was interesting that it was during that time in 1967 that, in the fall--I think it was the fall of '67 or the spring of '68, where all the--I'll call them hippy riots in Washington where--where the peace--
Um-hum.
--marches, and our unit was called in full battle dress to get--we all got on buses, went into Washington in the--in--and guarded the Pentagon. That was, we set up rope barricades and things like that during the night because the peace marchers were coming in during the day. When we got done with that detail, we set up all the--all the ropes and all of that stuff. Then they brought in units from the 101st Airborne Division, and they did the guarding. And I don't know if you remember, but the famous pictures where the soldiers are standing there, and some hippy puts a flower in the gun barrel. Well, that's when that was.
Okay. No, I don't. I don't have that context. I was born in '63, but my oldest brother also served in Vietnam. Although to say I've never really had a discussion with him about it. Maybe I will now. And also my dad, I was thinking of you _____+ 101st Airborne Division is what you said, the other unit they brought in?
Right, and they were combat troops. I mean, they--they were a pretty rugged bunch. Us engineering trainee students wouldn't have exactly put forth an intimidating presence here. We were just pretty much dirty in our fatigues from working all night.
Uh-huh. But you were--you were local. I mean, Fort Belvoir from what I remember is--
Fort Belvoir is very close, yeah. The 101st Airborne, they had to bring out from Fort . . . Where were they stationed anyway? I forget, but they're on the east coast, in the Carolinas some place.
Okay. So just for my own reference here and reveal my ignorance, but cartography, is that map making?
Yes.
Okay. Okay, good. I got that ____+ question right. I couldn't remember. And so once you had your training, what was next for you?
Well, we--they had trained us. Some of us cartographers graduated from the basic class and then they--and this was all at Fort Belvoir--kind of just a continuation. They trained us in a specialized area called Decca navigation, D-E-C-C-A, and that was a project, an experimental project in navigating helicopters at low levels in bad visibility. And, so once we were in that class, I pretty much knew where I was going when I graduated. So it was after--after the Decca class that I was going to Vietnam.
So then after basic, the basic cartography, the Decca navigation training, then you shipped off to Vietnam--
Yeah.
--at that point?
Yes. That was in April, got there where we shipped out April 7, 1968. There are certain dates you never forget.
And what was it like when you arrived there?
Well, at that time, they were--we were replacement troops. The days of shipping units as a whole on big ships was pretty much over. We were just going as replacement troops. And so they flew us in and we were just on a regular airliner, and we flew into Cam Ranh Bay. Cam Ranh Bay is a huge air base up on the central just on a regular airliner, and we flew into Cam Ranh Bay. Cam Ranh Bay is a huge air base up on the central coast.
Cam Ranh Bay?
Yeah. C-A-M-R-A-H-N-B-A-Y [sic].
Okay.
And I remember, you come flying in there and you'd see this beautiful, lush, green country laying out there in front of you. And when you're high enough and far enough out, you can see the ocean and everything all in the--in context. And you say, wow, there's a war going on there, and I'm headed for it. And, so it looks so peaceful. We landed at Cam Ranh Bay and the first thing they do is in the--is probably etched in every GI's mind that ever got off the plane there. You immediately are put onto a bus, and the bus has wire guards over everything. And we say, what the hell is that for anyway? And you get kind of laughed at because some of the guys that are on the ground working the ground crew and stuff, they've been there for a while. And so they make fun of you because you're brand new--
Sure.
--and they--but eventually, you learn that's because Vietnamese will come up and throw grenades through the window. So that's your first taste of--I guess its for real. And Cam Ranh Bay is so huge. I mean, it's just--it's like--it's like, O' Hare. It's gigantic, gigantic expanse. And that was the main where everybody was coming into. That Cam Ranh Bay and Tan Son air base down by Saigon really were the main entry points.
So,I guess maybe the best way to just ask is what--what came next once you were on the ground and got over that initial shock, I guess? And--
--yeah then you're--then you get taken to another collection point, a reception area, and you are--if you don't have your unit assignment by then, which I did have, then you sit there and you wait to be assigned to a unit. I knew that I was going to the 16 Signal Company, which was the Decca Company, and it was way down in Saigon. So I just--I can't remember if I was there for a day or got right off one plane and onto another or what happened. But they transported us, several of us. Our class only had like 12 people in it, our Decca class, so we kinds of stuck together. I don't remember if we are all on the same flight going or not. But anyway, they put us on another plane and fly us from there, from Cam Ranh Bay down to Tan Son Nhut, which was near Saigon. And then--and then you--of course you don't--you're just green. You have no idea where you're going, but somebody was there to pick us up and haul us back to the Signal Company. And you get processed in. And it's just everywhere you go. You get processed in and you get processed out. You get issued all your Vietnam gear and stuff like that. We probably actually got that stuff at Cam Ranh Bay, come to think of it. But, I mean, it's different fatigues, different kind of boots, different--just different gear all together.
So what was your job once you got to the 16 Signal Company?
My job at that point was to get oriented to what the company was doing. We had--the 16 Signal Company had its troops assigned all over the country, because we were there supporting either assault helicopter units or assault support helicopter units. The difference being the assault units are the hueys. They called them slicks, and they carried about eight or nine fully geared infantry people. And they would take them in, fly them in, drop them on the ground, and then fly out. So, and they also were MedEvacs, and they served all kind of purposes. But in the assault support helicopter units were the big CH-42s. Those were the big Chinook helicopters that had a rotor on each end.
Um-hum.
And eventually, that's where I ended up, actually supporting way, way up north. But--but the first couple weeks we spent in Saigon getting oriented to what everything that the Signal Company was doing and getting oriented to where things were. And my job was--was to make up charts that fit. It was the very earliest version of GPS flying, flying body. But obviously, there were no satellites back then, but the Signal Company maintained two systems of transmitter towers, which they were about a hundred miles apart. And they transmitted on different frequencies. And as you flew through these radio waves, the helicopter had a computer on it--
Um-hum.
--that would sense these. And then it would triangulate where it was in relationship to all these towers, and then it would transfer--transfer that information to a console that was on the--on the dashboard of the helicopter. And that's where my charts came in, because it was basically an X-Y axis. It would roll up and down with a chart on it. It was on a scroll, and then it had a--a--what's the right word? A stint, a pen that would--didn't have any ink in it--just pointed at things and it would go in that axis, so you can go up and down in this way. And that--the theory was if you had the right chart in there and had it programmed right and you were getting good signals all around, that thing would point to exactly where you were over the ground. And our charts were all real detailed. So we showed mountains, and hills, and creeks, and trees, and all that stuff, well not trees, but houses and stuff like that, so that these guys could fly real low without having to really see the ground and still know where they were. Not very many of them trusted it.
Yeah, I can--there's--there's a lot of factors there.
Right.
Now we have the satellites that can see so much of the ground.
It's much more, I mean, it's far more reliable now.
But you still hear about mistakes.
Yeah, but--but those--if--if you got the wrong chart in there--if you, you know--there's a thing called a key, which really is nothing more than a brass rod that we cut, you know, pieces off of, so that when you slid it into the key holder, it would make connections at the right places, and it would tell the computer what chart was into. And so then it would know.
Um-hum.
And it was a pretty complicated thing. In my unit, I--eventually, when I left--when I left Saigon, I was assigned to a little town on the coast called Qui Nhon. And Qui Nhon was our monitoring station for the northern transmitter system. And our job there was to sit and all--all 24 hours a day and monitor those signals that were coming from all over our transmitters. We were in the middle of things, so we could--we had--we were at a good vantage point. We could measure every signal coming in. And we measured it to make sure that it didn't vary by, you know--we had a real close tolerance on frequency and strength and all that because all those things were factors that would throw those little needles on the charts off.
Sure.
So we sat there and monitored those, and that was--that was the usual progression. And everybody wanted to be a field cartographer and eventually after, I don't know, about six weeks in Qui Nhon, I was assigned to this assault support helicopter unit in Phu Bai, which is way up north by the DMZ. That's actually a marine base, but it had elements of the 101st Airborne up there. And my 352nd Combat Support Company was part of the 101st Airborne. And I had three companies of eight helicopters each that I was responsible for maintaining. And I flew with those guys and tried to show them how things were, but like I said, most of them had no faith in it, especially way out on the fringes of the system. Your signals were weak. You could only get two instead of three extra--unreliable. And so usually, I was just going along as an extra door gunner or as an extra hand for the crew chief but . . .
So part of your job was teaching the troops how to read?
Teaching the pilots.
The pilots?
Yeah.
How to--how to work with the system and how to read it? How to--
Right.
And--
And yougot to remember Diesel. There were--there were new pilots. Most of the pilots in the Army--helicopter pilots are warrant officers. And the crusty, old ones had been doing it for a long time. They weren't about to listen to a crummy "speck four" tell them how to do their job. And the newer guys that were, you know, just out of college basically, they're only a few years older than me. And I had a few of them that were interested in--thought it would work. And they let me help them. But those old guys said--just said, get the hell out of here. But, yeah, you just had to know. You knew when you got on that chopper that the likelihood of having someone listen to you was slim.
Um-hum.
But you'd still try to set your equipment up. You had an obligation to do a report at the end of the day, or at least said what you did. A lot of the time, the conditions were so bad. There was humidity, heat, vibration, dust, dirt, impacts that were very tough on this equipment. And it usually just didn't work. We had black boxes. And those were the guts, the brains and the whole thing. And we would be pulling those blacks boxes out all the time. And the Army did not have anybody trained to maintain those things, so they hired British civilians who worked for the Decca company. Decca was the major navigation device in Europe at the time. That's all the airliners now created.
I see.
But--and it was a British company and so they had brought those British civilians over where they were located today. So every time you had a black box break, you had to load the dumb thing all the way down to Da Nang, which for me, from where I was up in Phu Bai, was, oh maybe 80 or a hundred miles. But no way I wanted to drive it, so I flew it. So we had travel orders that would get us all over the country.
Um-hum.
I could go anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted for no good reason. I just had travel orders, which was a pretty neat thing to have.
Yeah. So that a--were you a pilot yourself--
No.
--or were you just--you'd get the orders and someone would fly you down there or--
No, they had--I guess it's hard to imagine if you were never there. They had a--there were Army planes and Air Force planes flying back and forth all the time that were carrying people on them.
So--
You know, it was like going to Indianapolis and catching a flight to such and such. You're going to Lafayette--the Purdue Airport and catching a flight to so and so. It's exactly what it was. They had little Army airports everywhere.
Um-hum.
And if you had travel orders, you could jump on and get a hop anywhere you wanted. I flew in everything. It was kind of fun, too.
Yeah. I want to go back to something you said earlier and just ask you a question I was just curious about. You were talking about when you were at Qui Nhon in the Monterey station--
Yeah.
--the way that you could read all the signals. Did the Vietnamese try to knock out those transmitters or was that something--
The transmitters really were in pretty secure areas. I don't know of any that got attacked, so to speak. They weren't real serious tactical targets. Yeah, I mean, if they knocked one out, it was no big deal. These pilots are going to fly those choppers anyway, so it's not like you could cripple the whole helicopter system in Vietnam if you knocked one out. So I don't think--
Especially--
--it's a high priority.
--especially, if pilots don't always use the system--
Right.
--to begin with, huh?
But they--the transmitter towers were in pretty safe places really. Qui Nhon was a pretty safe place.
Were there any times that you were going about your job and business that you were with the unit that came under heavy fire?
Twice. Once with the helicopter unit. I was flying in the sordee (ph) and the assault support helicopter units. What they do--they're these big transport helicopters. Their basic function is to resupply in areas that you just can't got to any other way. They're capable of lifting 33,000 pounds. So you could pick up a lot. So a typical day's mission would be picking up tanks of water and bringing them out to fire bases that are out on top of a mountain, and resupplying them with water, or picking up pallets of food and other kinds supplies, and bringing those in and letting them down. And the way you do that, you never landed. There was just a hook that went down through the middle of the floor and a big wench on top and you'd reach down and it would be strapped together and you just put a hook on it. And the helicopter would lift it off, and then you'd fly along. So that was a typical--milk runs--just, you know, going out and resupplying. We got on one of these. We got this urgent message to go in and pick up a platoon that was being chased out of a village, and we had to land in kind of a mucky area. We were dead empty at the time, just--just a crew.
Um-hum.
In fact, I was dead weight at that time, cause we had two door gunners, a crew chief, the pilot, the co-pilot, and me. I was dead weight. I thought they were going to throw me off. But we had these 30 guys in this platoon all come running out of the woods and jump on, and they definitely were--I don't know if anybody was shooting at us at the time. I couldn't hear very well. It's really noisy in there. And there was no extra holes coming through the side of the ship. So I guess we were--but--but we put all those guys on there and then we were fully loaded at that point. I mean, we had a load, and--and we got stuck in that mush. And I knew enough about flying those helicopters by then that I was--and I usually position myself in a companion way between where the pilot--pilots went into the cab area at the back. That's an area about that deep. That was a little hallway.
Um-hum.
And I was in there, and I'm watching the controls. And they've got the tort meters pegged all the way over to the red. We can't get out. And finally, the one old guy, that's the pilot. He said, oh, the hell with it. And he just jams that thing all the way forward. And he finally breaks it loose, and we just--just lug out of there--finally got those guys out. That was one time that was kind of scary because if we had gotten stuck there ___+ for our two M60s. The machine guns we had, we wouldn't have been any better off than those guys. We were getting overrun. And then--and then the other time was later. I had--I had basically two, two careers, when I was in one year of Vietnam--
Oh?
--because the Army discontinued the Decca system after I had been there for about six months. They said, the hell with it. This thing doesn't work. So they got rid of it. And they reassigned all of us that were cartographers to other various jobs in Vietnam. And I was assigned at that point to the 41st Engineer's Company in Long Binh, which was way down south by Saigon. 41st Engineers was a port construction company. They built wharfs and docks and things like that around the water. And we had--a major project we had was a bridge over the Fucon (ph) River, which was about 20 miles away.
To build the bridge?
Yeah, but our unit was located in Long Binh. Long Been's significant because it was the biggest base in all of Vietnam. It was a huge logistic center, and the U.S. Army Vietnam headquarters was there. So General Westmoreland and later Abrams was--that's where they were housed in, at Long Binh. And they had a gigantic headquarters building that was about a kilometer behind our unit, which sat right on the perimeter. And so that--that became significant later on. I didn't realize the significance at the time, but during tet, which is late in January, actually early in February--this was in 1969. The north Vietnamese Army managed to infiltrate a couple of divisions down around Long Binh. And where our perimeter looked out over was just open country. It was just a vast expanse for 10 miles of nothing but open country. And they managed to dig in out there and nobody knew it. And so on. I think it was--I don't remember the dates exactly, except I went back through all my stuff to look. I think it was on February 12th or 13th, somewhere in there. They attacked, and we were on alert at that point. But again, we were not combat troops. We had--we had a stretch of perimeter wire that we were assigned to defend.
Uh-huh.
But here this is--to give you an idea. I mean, Long Binh was five miles square. It was absolutely gigantic. It took an hour to drive across it, and it--so the idea that these guys would attack Long Binh was beyond anybody's belief. And here they come. And they hit our--our part of the perimeter because we were the closest to the Army headquarters, U.S. Army headquarters. And so we had--and we were not given the modern firearms of the era either. We had old M14s. And they started issuing those things to us when they started handing out hand grenades. I said good grief. They sure don't trust us with hand grenades any other time. I guess it doesn't matter if we blow one up when somebody comes over the wall. So, we were in a pretty good fire fight there for a while. And then the--what saved the day for everybody in Vietnam was the air support. We just had free reign of the air. And so from Bien Hoa, they scrambled gun ships, fighter planes and everything. And it was--you're sitting there behind a sand bag wall and poking your head up and getting a shot off every now and then, and then all of a sudden, about 50 feet over your head comes this huey cobra gun ship screaming in. And they have giant rocket pods on both, one on each side, with about 30 rockets in each one.
Wow.
And they start going like this right over your head and everything blows up out there. And you say, how and the heck can anything live through that? And it--and it--and it just--it--I remember this just as clear as it was yesterday. It rains down the stuff that fires the rocket haul. That spent fuel coming out is red hot. And it comes down and lands on you. So we're sitting and picking these red, hot things off of . . .
Oh, man.
Honest to God. So our clothes, our clothes had holes burned in them from these things. You go, holy smokes. So yeah, that was about a three-day affair, and we--we saw every kind of air armament that the Army and Air Force combined had to offer. They were dropping Napalm out there and everything. That was--so that was by big battle. Then, if I had to do that very often, I can see how the combat guys, you know, are very happy to come home. I never felt like we were in a whole lot of danger of getting overrun, but when you got 30 to 50,000 enemy troops within five miles of you--you, I guess, have to take them serious.
All it takes is one bullet to kill you.
Yeah, and they were flying around. I mean, one of the things we did was, so we could move through the compound, we took our dump trucks and picked the backs up and parked them with their back-ends all the way up in the dump position.
Um-hum.
And that way you could go from one to the next, and they gave you pretty good cover against small arms.
Um-hum.
And that, that worked pretty well. So . . .
Wow. So, can I ask you, what goes through your head in that, you know, in that kind of situation?
Well, for one thing we weren't used to it. I mean, and--and so to--to me, it didn't seem real. And the other thing that was unreal about it was the ABC camera crew was there. And they were running across our compound. And they were taking pictures of this. I'm going, maybe I'll be on the news back home or something.
I often wonder about those journalists.
And yeah, I don't--I don't really remember being all that scared, I guess. But--but--and there was--I--they weren't--it's not like the Vietnamese were coming over the top of us or something. We were managing to hold them off. And there was no--I mean, with the fire power, the air power that we had, it just was really unlikely that you were going to be engaged, you know, getting stabbed with a bayonet or something or getting killed with an enemy grenade. But you're right. I mean, you got these stray bullets flying around. And if you stood up at the wrong time, you could--you could definitely get hurt. So, I just--I don't remember being afraid. It was more like you were in a dream or something and . . . And after a while, like the second day or so of this thing, it was still raging. The battle was raging, but it had moved off, so we all kind of got back to our normal routines. But you could still see the armor and stuff like that way out in these fields. But it was--had gone away from us. And after the whole thing was over, there was a little hill. And they had actually dug trenches in top of this hill. And they were all dead in there. And we sent one of our bulldozers up there. And they bulldozed that hill down. And so you had all these--and they didn't bother picking up the bodies. So it was just dead Vietnamese shoulders, and their arms sticking up out of the air, up out of the ground. And it stunk like death. It was awful, but . . .
Wow. Are there--is there any other memorable experiences, I mean, anything at all that, stories you wanted to share, apart from what you said?
From over there, no. I mean, it's, you know--you meet friends. And I haven't seen any of those guys for a long, long time, but probably could track them down if I wanted to. My best friend over there lived in Brooklyn, and I did stay in touch with him for a long time. You know, it's the friendships that you have and stuff. From there, then I came home. And I was assigned to Fort Bliss, Texas. I still had 14 months left and they had a--they had a program where you could extend your tour of duty in Vietnam by six months. And then if you had less than a year left after your six-month extension, they'd give you an early out.
Um-hum.
And I just wasn't interested in staying over there another six months, and so--so I came home and they assigned me to Fort Bliss, Texas for no apparent good reason. Typical Army logic, because they had no jobs for a draftsman or a map maker. So from when I got to Fort Bliss, it was--I showed up at the personnel office and say--announce I'm here. They say, well, we don't have a job for you. Why don't you go over and talk to Colonel Bronte in the Inspector General's office and see if he could use you. And so I said okay. So I went over there and interviewed with Colonel Bronte, who got to be a good friend of mine, actually. And he had a need for a driver for their IG team. And, you know, I'm just a crummy enlisted man. I don't--
What is IG?
Inspector General.
Oh, right.
And so I said, you know, I'll take anything. I just want to get my 14 months over and go home--and ended up I never did ____+.
Okay, so you were assigned as a driver for the IG team?
Right. And I never drove once because after I interviewed with Colonel Bronte, he said, you know, you're a pretty smart guy. I could--we could use an assistant for the Sergeant Major. And I said all right, whatever you want me to do. So I became the lowest ranking enlisted man in the Inspector General's Office. And I was the Sergeant Major's assistant. And basically, that entailed posting regulations in their library of Army regulations. And the IG has two functions. It takes complaints from soldiers who think they're being mistreated, and they conduct compliance inspections of every unit that's assigned to that post. And so my job was basically supporting all those functions. And that was fun actually. I was--they're weren't too many people that worked on general row, as we called it, because it was the Inspector General _____+. And generally, oh, gosh, I can't remember the names of all the offices there. And then the Commanding General's building was across the street from ours. So it was the headquarter's company is basically what I was assigned to. And it was fun living in Fort Bliss, Texas. And the IG team were all really nice guys, all career type soldiers. So they sort of laughed at me all the time because I had no interest in being a career guy. And I teased them a little bit, and that's where I--I ended my illustrious military career.
So you were at Fort Bliss for about 14 months, is that right? And, and you said earlier, I think, you were in Vietnam for one year?
Yeah, 12-month tour, which incidentally, is why we lost.
Because you weren't over there longer?
Because I wasn't over there longer. No. It's because it never got treated like a war. When Lyndon Johnson would not declare it a national emergency or a war, then the way--the way you went wars with the military is you get--you keep everybody in, so you have continuity. You have trained people fighting the war. Vietnam turned out to be all backwards because when Lyndon Johnson said well, it really isn't a national emergency. Then that--that allowed everybody to end their enlistments on time. Nobody got held over. And so with that force was these 12-month rotations. So you'd get guys into Vietnam and rotate them into their units, and by about time they learned what they were supposed to do, they were leaving.
Good point.
You'd get maybe five months out of them that was--that was good, good trained time.
So--
So how do you win a war with that?
--sothat was the--the rule. That was the rule. Most people were just 12 months, and so there were--
Everybody rotated out.
--very few that stayed?
Only if you wanted to.
Most people--
Most people had, you know--whywould I want to stay here? You had a handful of career guys that, you know, that was--if you were an officer, especially in the infantry, and if you wanted to advance in rank, you had better have some combat command time under your belt. And that was the time to do that, so those guys wanted to stay, and--but nobody else did.
That's a good point. Did you a--I meant to ask you, were you awarded any citations or awards.
In Vietnam, everybody got a Vietnam service medal. That's for showing up. Mine has four battle stars on it because I was--happened to serve at a time--I wasn't in all four battles. But I happened to serve at a time where there were these major campaigns going on. So I had that. And otherwise no. No. There was no brawn stars or distinguished service crosses or anything like that. No purple hearts either, thank goodness. We had a guy in my--up in the combat helicopter support unit was sleeping in his tent, and a mortar round came in about--oh, it probably landed 50 feet away, which usually won't hurt you that much. I mean, a mortar round isn't that big of a deal. But this sent this dime-size piece of shrapnel flying through the air, went through the tent and got him right here, and lodged in his ribs while he was asleep in his bunk.
That didn't wake him up?
And that woke him--well, yeah, that woke him up all right. But he got a purple heart for that. We all got off--all over him for that. Except, you know, the hell, I nicked myself while shaving. So . . .
Well, I want to ask you maybe a couple quick pedestrian kind of questions, but maybe a little bit about--I don't know. What was--what was the culture like when you were in Vietnam? What was the food like? What was the people--what were the people like?
Okay. I did not trust their food. So I wouldn't eat it. It was all really an unsanitary place, but GIs all--I mean, we all got our food either out of a can or in a mess hall. One or the other. I was lucky most of the time. I was eating in some mess hall some place. And, you know, we griped about the food, but I'll tell you what, hot food was better than canned food all day long, the sea rations. And so I never really indulged in the local delicacies. But the principal food there is fish. The major agricultural industry is the sea. When I was in Qui Nhon, I had a chance to--just absolutely beautiful like Bally High, just a beautiful town that set right on the coast--and we had--our little detachment had an--there was only like 10 or 15 of us there in the whole unit. And we had three vehicles at our disposal, so we could grab the Jeep or the truck and go on little jaunts--
Um-hum.
--around there--drove up the mountain that was adjacent to the town. And when you got up on the top of the mountain--I got some slides of this that are just stunning--and you look out, and it's cool up there because you're up--you go up about 2,500, 3,000 feet. So you're up there. It's much cooler up there than it is down by the sea. And you look out across there and it's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And you say, you know, this is a pretty nice culture here, if we just leave it alone. But the people driving up to the mountain there--there was a main--the major fishing part of the town was there. There must have been a hundred of these sand pans that were fishing boats. And the people would take them out. And there were all peppered with little islands all out in the bay. And they would go out and they'd fish all these all day long and then come back with their fish. That's how they made their living. The most backward people I've--the most unsanitary. It just stunk to high heaven. When you would drive by this thing, it would stink of dead fish, of--just dirty, beautiful to look at, horrible to be in amongst. Our little--in Qui Nhon, our little compound was kind of cut out. We were on the edge of the main base. And we had, I don't know--I--we didn't. Somebody had commandeered a local--a little building, and that's where we lived in. And it was part of this complex that was--our building was separated by a perimeter wire and the rest of this has been a medical complex at one time. You had a hospital. You had a mortuary and a crematorium. And--and then there was this school, and I think they were training monks in it or something, but I suppose it must have been for medical students or something. Any ways, it was just this complex, and we just kind of hung out there--in there, and when we had--when we took guard duty, we were up in this tower that was about 30 feet up in the air of ___+ guarding in the direction of the perimeter. And you could just sit there and watch as the villagers went about their business. People, I tell them this and they do not believe me. This is the truth. On a typical street in a town like Qui Nhon, the public restrooms were the streets. The folks wore fairly loose clothing. It was real silky kind of clothing, and the pants were especially big. And the reason they were is because you--the way you went to the bathroom there, if you were Vietnamese, is you pulled up one pant leg and squatted down and went.
Wow.
And then got back up, and just like that was, you know, part of the deal.
Yeah.
And so you would have all this fecal matter, human, pig, you know, chicken all mixed together in the streets.
Wow.
It was--you had to watch your step. Like I said, it was really a backward culture that had no real desire to ever get out of it. And even in the big cities like Saigon and stuff, you didn't get a whole lot better. There, people would at least--they had restrooms and things that you would go off, but same deal. We'd sit up there in this guard tower and watch the goings on in the hospital area and all this. No--no air-conditioning or no screens. No nothing on the windows in the hospital. And every now and then you would see people flinging bath water out the windows on the second floor. They must have used the bandages over and over again cause, you know, I don't know where, you'd see them washing them and stuff.
Wow.
They had this big tree out in the middle of this yard, and it was a shady spot, and it was a place where everybody came out and went to the bathroom. And so, you know, the patients would come hobbling out, pull up their pant leg, squat down, get back up, hobble back in.
Wow.
That--that's just--you say, you know--these people are--their culture's from a thousand years ago and the fact that they had--whether they had electricity or not, it didn't matter. They were--they went about their business no matter what. They lived in homes that had dirt floors. They cooked over little fire pits in clay pots. I mean, that was almost all I ever saw. I never really saw people who, you know--you know, cooked in the kitchen like we do. It was all of that. The other thing about those people that you soon learn is that they are patient. It--they think in terms of accomplishing things in generations, where we think in terms of minutes or hours. If--if it took them 10 generations to run us out of that country, they would have done it. It doesn't matter to them. They are patient. And they're relentless. And they--that's why, I mean, that's why we lost. We were in the wrong. We could not have ever won. Even if we won, we would have lost, because they would have eventually gotten rid of us. They would have outlasted us.
Interesting. Did you--did you bring any--anything that you wanted to share, any photographs or anything like that?
I--I didn't--most--almost all of my stuff is slides. I took--when I first got over there, I grabbed this little Fujica camera, 35 millimeter, hauled it around with me everywhere, and it took terrific pictures. I probably have three hundred slides that are good slides of things. And I--I put them--I put--I put two presentations together while I was still over there for my mom and dad. I numbered them. I had the wherewithal to number them and then write up a little sheet of paper--a little narrative for them so that they can show them at home, and then read the narrative. And they saved all that stuff. So I--I just, in the past few months, I have gotten all that stuff down and started going through it. Well, the slides were all out of order, but I had been smart enough to number them. And I numbered each set with different kind of inks so I could tell the difference between this number 25 and this number 25. I set them all back in order, found the original sheets of paper that went with them. And that's the only reason I can tell the story to you today, because I couldn't remember it before I had gone all through this is stuff.
Oh, okay. Neat. So you didn't--
I didn't prepare it. Well, I just had--had gotten an interest in getting that stuff out, and--and it set for all this time. I never even opened the box.
Okay. Well, I'll probably wrap up pretty soon, but I just wanted to ask you this question. What was the first thing you did when you got back?
Well, got off the plane, hugged my mom and dad--never saw my dad cry before in my life. And--and when--when they met us, he cried for about two seconds. And that was it. Tough old chicken farmer. He--he showed too much emotion. And then after that, had a cold beer, because the beer over there was all old and stale and hot. Well, you could cool it down. But it was--
You still drank it.
--but it was--it was--it tasted so much better over here.
I'll bet.
A bottle of beer. Yeah, and that was it. I still couldn't drink when I got home, by the way. I wasn't 21 yet.
Oh, gosh. Wow. That's amazing to go through all that and . . .
Yeah, that's what my kids say. You know, here, we're--but, you know, my son says, dad, when I was 18, I was worried about going to class and college.
Yeah--yeah, I think maybe we're growing up slower, but I don't know. I mean, the age for the military is still 18, is it not?
Oh yeah, we just don't have any wars going on.
Yeah. Well, I did want to ask you one more question. I guess I lied, sort of overarching. But how would you say your experience in the military has influenced your life since or being in the military since?
Well, as much as I hate to admit it, the military brings order to your life. And if you're a logical thinker, and I am, the way--like here at Purdue, I've got 21 people reporting to me. And there's not a day goes by I don't think about the equivalent of, okay, I'm like a captain and I got these three people and they're like my lieutenants, and they've got their little platoons, and this is just the way things get done. And it brings order to the way you report up, you know, up a chain in command. And it all makes perfect sense. Now you can't treat people like you get treated in the Army. There's a big difference. In the Army, if you don't follow orders, people get killed. In civilian life, you don't follow orders, you're just a bad employee. But so you have to go about that a whole lot different. But the whole notion of orderliness in the military makes perfect sense to me. And so I think about it that way and there's--you can't discipline people in civilian life like you could in the military. But you learn how to be pretty straightforward with folks. You know, there's no use to beat around the bush. When you got something to say, say it. And I guess, you know, that's an influence. That's for sure. I don't think you ever--anybody that's ever been in the military comes out of there and ever forgets it. The--even--and my dad's 86. The five years he spent in the military during World War II, I think, were the most profound years of his life. He remembers those--those. It's what his memories are about.
Um-hum.
And he spends a lot of time now thinking about that, reconstructing and staying in touch with his old buddies, all that stuff. It's just--it's just an incredible time. And those guys that were in World War II came home, and they had just saved the world from a tyrant, and they knew it. And it would--it's got to be an amazing feeling to come home and say, I just saved the world. So I don't think anybody ever has their military experience and just walks off and forgets it. It may have been very bad, and they may have hated every second of it.
Um-hum.
And it made it worse, but I think for most people it makes you better, because when you're through with it, and your 21-years-old, you say, what can anybody else do to me now? I mean, I can't be intimidated. Who can--what are you going to do? I've seen people killed right in front of me. What are you going to do to me?
Wow. I never thought of it that way.
I mean, there's nothing that can happen to you that's any worse.
Is there anything you want to say that we haven't covered or haven't talked about?
No, no.
Great.
That's good.
Then, let me just get one last thing down, which you told me at the beginning, before we started our interview. What's your current position here at Purdue?
I'm the director of procurement operations. Here, I'll give you one of my cards.
Okay, great.
I did remember that. I've got the contract here too. So--I have one of the longest titles here at Purdue.
Okay.
Purdue is a bit like the military.
I've noticed that. Well, I really want to thank you for your time and also, you know, thank you, you know, for your service as a veteran. I mean--
Oh, sure. You're welcome.
Enjoyed it.
Yeah, thank you. It takes a little time for you guys to do this stuff, I know. It's a good thing. I can't imagine all this information is going to flow into the Library of Congress, and somebody is going to have to sort it all out some day. But maybe--maybe it will make sense after enough compiling goes on, I suppose.
Yeah, I...