During the years 1970 to 1971, my father served in Vietnam as a Lance Corporal in the 7th Marines. In November of 2005, I interviewed him for the first time, at length, about his experience. Note: some quotes taken during the interview were translated for purposes of ease of readability.
The house was a big place, I had a job. Struggled to make it really. All through elementary and middle school I had odd jobs to try and help [my mom and stepfather] make it, and also anything [I needed]for school and anything for myself, whatever I needed. It wasn't a great upbringing. Nothing fantastic to talk about.
I think [Vietnam] made a better man of myself, you know, discipline. I knew that from that, that if I had my kids I was gonna do what was good for them. You know, screw it, everything, you know, is 'coulda been'…I always wanted to be a cop. That was my goal but I wasn't able to do it.
Basically it was a way out for me as far as trying to find myself, you know. That's one reason I joined, but it wasn't for the Vietnam war…I didn't know about the Vietnam war until I joined the service…Orders told me I was going to Vietnam and I said 'what's Vietnam?' and they said 'you'll find out when you get there. Just keep your head down.'
The majority of us were unaware, we were young, joined the service and just got over there. It didn't really matter [what we were over there for once we were there]. You could be killed and not make it back so I think basically we were just concentrating on getting back, just staying alive. Couldn't think of much but home and staying alive.
I guess [basic training taught me how to] stay alert, how to use a weapon. How to really be like, uh, how would you say that, um… I want to say alert but its really motivation, like they break you down and build you back up to take orders and realize that you know what you're doing is not a kid's game you know its for real. You know its real life and I guess they just wake you up in a way. You know you're not with mama and daddy no more. Either you shape up or you're gonna ship out. I think that's basically what the training was all about.
[Being there] was scary. I guess. You didn't know what was goin on, what's gonna happen. It's like the beginning of that movie Platoon, body bags and stuff…basically like that. Once you get into your company then they tell you this company is going out…you go out on patrol and at night there's a 6 man team that goes out on an ambush and they stay out basically all night. Then they come back to the perimeter. It was kinda scary because you could wander into some [VietCong].
Our daily routine was going out really, 'into the bush', wherever they would say there's some vc's located in [this] certain area. They would chopper us over there [in] one of those zanook's and they would drop us off wherever they had heavy concentration of vc and then we would like just sweep the area, find out if it was true or not and most of the time is was true and we would get ambushed. [We'd] go through the whole routine of pushing them back or them pushing us back. Never know what was gonna happen. Also had to watch out for booby traps majority of the time walkin through the bush. Vc, you could hardly see 'em. There was a lot of snipers. Majority of people would get killed by snipers. It was pretty rough.
Most of time we'd go out maybe for…a week maybe…no when we came back into the hill where we [rested]. It's called 'baldy' that's the main hill where we would come back and rest for about three days, then back into the bush. After six months you'd get an R and R, three-day in country, or three days, you could go out to Bangkok or whatever out there. That was about after six months. I took mine in country, there in China beach. [Me and my friends would] go out on the beach and get drunk. [Lots of] laughter; basically we just stayed drunk really. You know what was so funny, that the Vietnamese would take R and R also, [and so there] could be vc. You could never tell. It's just like you were taking vacation with the enemy. That was so weird.
We were able to like, we sometimes didn't have any stationary paper to write on. We couldn't use anything to write on really, just like a c-wrap box. Your food came in in a box, it was brown. We'd write a little letter, tear the box, a little square piece of cardboard really and you'd write a letter. Instead of a stamp, you wrote the word 'free' and you sent it off. We didn't need no stamps or anything. If we sent it in an envelope you'd just write 'free'. [I wrote to Aurora, I knew her way before.] Yeah cuz I used to hang around with Homer, [her brother]. And we'd hang around, go around, drink and stuff like that. After a while then I started writing to her, [but] not at first. After a while I started writing to her. I think we wrote about the whole time I was over there almost.
(scans over a letter, takes a moment) In boot camp, sure did. Started writing to her in boot camp. I remember because [she] picked me up at the airport [.]
[A] lot of us would get like a care package [of things] we'd ask for. I wrote to my mom and I told her I sure did miss the tortillas and she sure as hell sent me some tortillas. They were a little green on the edges but we tore them off and ate them anyway. All the way from home all the way to Vietnam. Whenever someone got a package like that we'd just split. It was like Christmas for us you know. [Or] sometimes they would send us our music that we liked. We had stereos over there you know and we'd go off base over there and go into the villages down in Da Nang. You could buy whatever you wanted to listen to, tape recorders you know how you could listen on cassettes, that was the big thing then. Eight- tracks and cassettes, basically cassettes though.
I spent one of my birthday's over there, [20 I think]. We were drinking what they call rice paddy wine [and] I went kinda cuckoo on a float. Right by the hill there was a little river. The guys had to catch me cuz there were some Arvins, Vietnamese on the hill also. [The Arvins] had to go get my buddies to go and get me cuz I was on my way down the hill, telling 'em that I was gonna go home. The guys caught me, they were like 'Where you goin?' and I was like 'I'm goin home.' They had to take me back and they put me back inside [the tent] and they kept guard so I wouldn't come back out. That was one of my crazy nights. In my mind I was gonna float all the way home, shit.
I remember one time I was on a hill and that night it was my turn to watch and we were there about an hour or so in the hole with a rifle just [standing] watch and we'd just take turns. We got hit by mortar fire and one of the rounds hit our radio, a radio shack. I was maybe about, maybe 10 feet away from there but I was in a foxhole and we got hit by mortars and they happened to hit right on that comm[unication] room and they blew it up and the guys that were in there, they didn't make it. The hole I was in, I was trying to dig another hole. I ain't lyin, I prayed to jesus that night that I'll go straight or whatever…sometimes it got that bad. I think that's what helped me make it back. Basically I think my, really it was me as far as wanting to get back home and I knew that if I didn't you know take care of myself and pay attention to what was going on around me and not care really I think that maybe I wouldn't have made it back..a lot of guys didn't pay attention to where they were walking…a lot of guys didn't stay low enough so they would get sniped at. I think basically that was in my mind.
I don't know what day it was, [the day I left.] [Maybe] a week or two into march, I'm not sure. We're all at, uh, at Okinawa. Well not Okinawa, we were in Da nang, they call it da nang, where the base was at, where the airport was at. Basically we were getting all our shots, getting ready, getting our c bags ready to get on the bird ya know? We all board the 'freedom bird', that's what we call it, the 'freedom bird'. Basically as we're taking off we just start hollering our hoorah cry, that basically like, we're always saying semper phi do or die. We were just cutting up you know. Its hard to describe because a person really has to, has to be there. [I mean] you might come home, you might not. You never [knew]. Is today your day or not? I guess that's what it takes, being across the world.
We went from there to Okinawa, then I think Honolulu; it was about a 16 hour flight from Vietnam, Okinawa all the way across; it was a long flight, one of the longest flights I'd ever taken and really didn't give it a second thought. Hell we could've crashed right over the ocean. We went back to LA and [in Vietnam] you didn't have to cut your hair [so] we all had long hair. When we got back to base in LA, Camp Pendelton, we were like Vietnam longhairs, hippies; we never thought anything about it. A captain stopped us, of course he wanted us to salute. Hey we had to get back into the field. He said,
'How bout you guys get a haircut?'
We went into a bar and we still weren't of age to drink when we came back. We went into a bar expecting some drinks. We were just 20 years old coming back, so it kinda blew us away. We could fight but we can't drink?
[When] we got back from Vietnam we had to get used to being back in the states and you know, knowing that even though we went and fought we still didn't have the rights [for] drinking and stuff. It was kinda rough. You think back about all the friends you left over there and not too many people would talk about it. It took me a long time to talk about it. I was kinda like shell shocked at first. When I heard backfire over here I'd throw myself to the floor.
I asked myself a lot, 'why me?'. I thought about the friends that I left behind. Why, ya know? I'm still not over it, but I think my faith helped me through the bad times. I always figured, 'He' had a plan for me, ya know? I'm proud of the fact that I was there, that me and a lot of my friends survived to come back, so I could have my kids and lead a life that would help them…ya know?
[I remember] I first saw the traveling wall in, '95 I think. A bunch of us from the company met up and just stared at it for hours. I had this one friend, Joe Torres was his name. When I went to go see the wall I looked him up. Yeah it was hard seeing his name on the wall. I have pictures of him. It really hurts a lot; I can still see their faces.