Interview with John Sullivan, a Vietnam Era Veteran. CCSU VHP

for seven out from Camp Eagle to the Asha Valley and that route was primarily used to supply the fire bases that were out there that house the 105 155 eight-inch and 175 and those giant artillery pieces would spend their whole time firing out into the aschoff alley to disrupt the traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail that was right the Asha Valley's right along the Laotian border and so we as engineers i wern't lived on all those fire bases right out to the Asha Valley when I first got there we had to be pulled back and I think was October because the monsoon was coming in and that part of Vietnam and that whole area is shut down the dirt road that we called five four seven was basically washed out very quickly once you get into the monsoon I ended up getting buried waist-deep in the mud basically because it was so wet it had to be pulled out with the winch of a bulldozer and I left my pants and my boots behind and be found a thousand years from now with my dog tag on the boat I was just pulled out half naked because I'm just glad to get out of it and everything else got pulled off but so we did live there on the Inuyasha Camp Eagle Bastogne Birmingham and rendezvous I did get sent for a brief time in April of 1970 I got called up and asked to take my platoon way down south to a place called Phan Thiet which was right on the coast it was just north of Saigon and we were there for about two or three weeks not quite knowing what we were doing doing odd jobs here and there until a general general officer called me on a Saturday night and said to have all my platoon out on the tarmac the next morning because we were going to be flown West fixed wing into Boop rang and then helicoptered into a place called non-call this would be on the Cambodian border and did we shut up out there still not quite knowing what was happening two days after that happened that just coincided with my already scheduled R&R to Sydney so I was pulled back from that got into Sydney got into a hotel turned on the newspaper but turned on the TV the first time in eight months I've been out in the woods the whole time and I saw the hell breaking loose Kent State here we have this think incursion into Cambodia I was involved in and I kind of didn't know the magnitude of what was going on or even what was going on I just was in it so I spent my weekend Sydney and then back right out into the Cambodian situation and that those were really the locations that I worked starting with your basic memory you said you did not go to boot camp but you went through ROTC yes total chasing boredom just a little bit about that and why you joined the army at that point did you boys yes they had a choice of of airforce and I believe there was something to do with the Navy but I didn't know much about any of them but I just felt comfortable on my feet if I ever got in a scramble I didn't want to be on an airplane that I didn't understand or a boat that I didn't understand but I was out in the woods on my feet I knew I could get out of there so I felt comfortable what my brother had been in the army 14 years earlier and he had many very interesting tales about it and I thought I just joined the army so ROTC was offered it was a shortened course because the war was building up in Vietnam I graduated from Florida in 1968 so I joined the army and I guess it was 66 for the first of two boot camps summer boot camps won an Indian town gap and then one had I forget when the second place was but nevertheless so I had a two year experience with ROTC which made me a commissioned officer when I grant whether from college and I went with a couple of friends and it was a kind of a thing to do I knew eventually I'd be drafted probably anyway so I might as well go as an officer and I had no qualms with the whole concept of the war to begin with I really I was on board so said let's go do you remember any of the instructors that you had to deal with yes there was a I remember a sergeant Cooksey tough southern boy probably not too many years older than we were but boy he was he was just a tough old guy old was he 25 I don't know but just an interesting character hard as nails but gentle at the same time forgiving understanding but drive you to the wall you know it was it tough tough how would you spell his name I think it was Co okay sey and he was from Alabama Lewis's I don't know he was down south someplace I really don't know what state he came from but he definitely had a yeah he's not a New York accent all right let's you mentioned talk a little bit about some of the experiences that you had let's go back to Vietnam what was it like when you arrived do you remember yes I I just arrived there I remember going and reporting in to a colonel and there was two of us two other people with me there was three lieutenants reporting to a new assignment and I forget exactly where it was it might have been camera but he laid out on a map that there was three major sections that the three of us would be going to up north was a very extremely violent high casualty rate the middle section was a moderate casualty rate and the lower area was a very reduced casualty rate and they had different type of engineering projects and so forth and of course I was sitting there in the middle of the two other fellows thinking how can i play this so i get to the least violent environment and we discussed a little back and forth and back and forth and at the end of an hour or so the colonel looked at us and said okay north middle south the designation was simply how we walked into the room and I happened to be sitting in the middle and I realized the arbitrariness of life at that point rather than a great deal of logic to it so I did end up in the median place I was immediately sent out to the ostrov alley just before the monsoon and we just it was quite a change obviously would like discipline yet all as soon as the Sun went down at seven o'clock or whatever it was he just went into you cave and went to sleep underground bunkers and you didn't smoke or light anything use flashlights until the next morning when the Sun came up so this was quite a change I just remembered as being a great adventure you're all of 23 to 24 and but that's all my initial impressions of the corner could you if you had to put everything together describe a typical day for me well we wake up have some depending on what our assignment would be but we'd be our job was to build the platforms on which the big 8 inch and 175 artillery pieces were replaced or we do mine sweep or we build bunkers we do have different projects but it's basically waking up organizing your troops into a procedure for the day and just basically getting the job done breakfast lunch supper dinner and pretty much go to sleep all right do you have a couple memorable experiences and 20 right there never Apple experience sale the whole thing was a memory anything stand out in your mind male just all the just the friends I met I suppose it wasn't any particular in that was the usual Rockets at night getting dragged out of bed for that that was being fired out a few times it was a few kids that we government that we lost which was tragic but I guess I can't say anything terribly any noteworthy incidents other than making some good friends that I've held onto for 40 years now so yeah I know at one point you mentioned that the donut at least came out yes they did right can you tell me what that memory is um they came out to one of the fire bases how I believe it was Bastogne that they came to the firebase Bastogne two young women and they were playing various games and entertaining the troops I didn't have that much dealings with them I was kind of the platoon leader I was always doing something else but and they were there to I guess relate to and and give some solace to the troops and I suppose I wasn't supposed to need that of course I did but I was busy but I do remember you know they were just very nice women very cooperating helpful and so forth of course they were also very beautiful girls and and people just just remember that it was nice to see some of these human beings these beautiful young women and say well someday I'm going home going back to the world as the phrase was so I really didn't meet any of them but I knew they were just in our unit okay did they stay out there do you know do you remember a few hours they didn't spend overnight in those places this weasel you know not a good environment to be mmm you mentioned that you were building different platforms was an doing mine sweeps was there a particular format for building the different platforms or did you have different crews that did the mine sweeps yeah well we uh I mean the mind sweep was the time we did mine sweep was various techniques but one guy had a great technique he took a five done tongue tongue dump truck revved it up as fast as he could go and ran down the road with it on the basis that if he set off a mind would blow off to the rear into them and in the back and not hit him in the cab so his approach was to just tear down the middle of the road as fast as possible very effective and he did well he whenever he did get hit with something it did blow off the back tires they were not anti-tank mines that would have completely destroyed what he did but it was effective the only time we were the main time we were not did not get sniper fire on a mine sweep was when we had the quad 54 50 caliber machine guns on one butterfly trigger when we went out with the quad 50 on the back of the dump truck or reduce and a half nobody shot ass it was just they didn't want to risk it because when that quad 51 off had just set the whole woods on fire it was an amazing weapon but we always felt comfortable going out with that as far as the actual engineering projects it was it was fun I remember what I enjoyed about it was for the first time organizing people to get a project done and we had I was not an engineer by education I was a business major but the army decided we don't need business majors do need engineers you are an engineer so fine but in Fort Belvoir we learned to organize work such that you know these three fellows would be sawing you develop a critical path so you know the sixteen steps that would be needed to get the job done over a certain number of days and you'd stop three guys working on step one and these guys would finish in time to meet step four and he still so it was just taking 30 guys dividing them up into the various pieces of the job pieces of the project and just trying to time him out and try to work it and just see it just became a big game to see how efficient you could be how quickly you could bring it together and that did I think you know help me see that I could get certain things done because before this I had just been a college kid and all of a sudden now I was doing this thing and of course that had certain you know relationship to what I would eventually do in the world that when I get out and and grew up but so I found that a real education was a lot of fun a lot of teamwork a lot of good guys out there and that's that's what I remember about it let me ask about some general issues then when you were over there how did you stay in touch with your family at the time mainly through letters writing letters and sending tapes back and forth we were able to get little tape machines and speaking to them at the time and send the tape back home so they could hear it and then one time they introduced I was there when they introduced the telephone service where there was you could call from out in the woods you would schedule a time it might be 8 o'clock the next morning which would be 8 o'clock p.m. back here in New York the area and the unfortunate thing was my mother got on the phone she didn't know I was calling she gets this phone call this is my little old probably late 60s 70 year old mother and I'm trying to explain to her mom I'll speak to you and when I'm finished speaking I'll say over and then it's your turn to speak and when you're finished speaking you say over then I'll be John are you all right and mom listen the his Hallett words John what's wrong are you all right listen mom and this one she didn't get into it at all it terrified her she had no idea what was going on with this call out of the blue from her son who she was worried about obviously in Vietnam so that was one of the most memorable communications I had that just didn't work I tried to calm her down that I was in fact okay and I hopefully she got the message and that was it but the rest was mainly letters and so forth do you have any of those tapes tone unfortunately I do not I thought I had one and I went looking for it a couple years ago and cannot find it anyplace because I recorded it during one of the times I took it out too mad minutes on the firebase I know you're familiar with mad minutes but it was an outburst mad minutes was random random and random times throughout the night everybody on the perimeter would simply open up everything they had grenades machine guns everything and just spray the whole place so that for anybody was in the wire and sappers were coming through the wire they were out of luck at that point so it was a random cleansing of the system well I took the thing out there they were recording out and and spoke into it and recorded mad minutes and sent it back for everybody's entertainment and but unfortunately I cannot find that tell me well the food was lying long you were there well we ate a lot of sea rations because we were out in the woods a great deal of the time and of course that was the ham and lima beans and whatever and all the good stuff with the spork cigarettes pall malls and Chesterfields in the pack and so forth but if you were back kind of in a fire base or even back at camp evil the food was pretty good I kind of enjoyed it of course you know I guess I liked it because I was used to the sea ration so a real hot meal was great I mean I mean you could have the hot sea rations they take c4 and put it on the bottom they can light it up it fizzled and you could heat your you can of lima beans or what-have-you but I didn't find any problem with the food I thought it was fine I don't remember anything specific about it but it was good you know yeah how about supplies do you have plenty of supplies were you short on any I think we had as much as we needed we didn't need much it was I had some difficulty getting some lumber at times and another lieutenant stole my lumber that I had ordered and so forth so there was there was shinanigans going on all the time but we had the equipment that we needed the bulldozers the wood and so forth but to get the job done yeah I think we did all right [Music] not really I remember one period of time someplace were out of water it was just and ease and they brought in these big tanks of water and it was all black for some reason it just got black it was dirty or something well though they said it was chemically treated and very clean but I couldn't get into drinking it somehow and I remember being very dehydrated for a few days I just couldn't get myself to drink this water but that was just one incident I forget where that would have been the cambodian escapade where we were really reek going out someplace and but so but generally I don't remember being short of anything that I truly needed did you feel pressure or stress at any point it stands out in your mind I think you felt a nervous pressure all the time getting rocketed at night or just being alone I mean I remember one time when we when we finally closed down Kent firebase rendezvous on the Asha Valley before that pun so there was a Colonel blackjack at the head of the battalion that was running the 101 at the time 100 and first that was in charge of that things and he said he wanted to leave behind about 10 of us engineers to shut down the base after the hundred and first infantry had pulled out on helicopters and our job was to deny the enemy to destroy the barbed wire to destroy the wood to destroy everything so that the abandoned base camp would not have anything left behind for the enemy I remember going into him and saying you know the night before everybody was leaving I said you know I'm kind of nervous you leaving 8 or 10 of us out here engineers I mean I hope you're providing some some support for us we're gonna be out here alone while the entire a couple of hundred guys pull out he said don't worry I'll send you a pink team pink team at the time was a loach which is a light observation helicopter and a Cobra or maybe two Culver's I forget so I said fine that's great they were gonna fly us in but I thought it's gonna take all day for us to drag our bulldozers end over the 50 miles or whatever it is back into civilization how are they going to be up there anyway I didn't think that far out the next morning when everybody left the aid of ten of us engineers was sitting out there waiting for our pink team and all I heard was the ground shaking the ground started shaking and it was tax I said oh my god Thanks or somebody's coming down because they noticed we've abandoned it so we all honest to god we locked and loaded fixed bayonets and I was very very nervous I mean I thought just head east I know where East is just start running when things happen and we were ready to go for it there was only eight or ten of us and then you talk about the psychological warfare of tanks and it was very true I mean that Brown was shaking and the noise you can't tell exactly where they come I was terrified it as to where's my pink team where's the famous painting long story short he was American tanks the colonel without telling us had realized what I kind of realized that the helicopters aren't gonna stay up there he sent a couple of Tanks out to guide us back from rendezvous back to there but I didn't know that all I had is that terrifying 10 or 15 minutes listening to his approaching tanks thinking they were the bad guys and just we were cooked that was very nerve-wracking weight being woke up at night just traveling the roads trying to get in before the Sun went down because you had to be off the roads I went through Pleiku enroute to the cambodian thing I visited a friend and plate who it was just a constant set of nervousness or I wouldn't say Tara was never terrified of anything happens thank God nothing ever really happened to me directly that was so so the median is so confrontational that I was really terrified but there was exchange of fire there was Rockets and just just the general or of it was just a constant state of being nerve-racked okay okay why don't you go ahead and talk to Grandma about it okay yeah did you have anything that you carry it is a good luck charm yes and I still have it our next-door neighbor we lived in the Bronx when I when I grew up and a next door neighbor Patti Quinn for some reason gave me a little 3 or 4 inch high cross made of glass which was a vessel for holding holy water paddy Quinn gave me this thing and I took it and I put it in the bag I thought my god you know a piece of glass with water in it gone through a whole year in Vietnam that's not gonna you know that's history the truth of the matter is that I dragged it around with me the whole time and it never broke and I still have it and it's still inside so I guess I mean I never intended it to be such but it's sort of halfway through that the six months I look that simple I have this list and it did and so I guess that would be my good luck charm it's very nice how about Eric a nurse did you have entertainers come after your firebases yes see any of them yes they did we had Australians come out there and Filipinos we built with the engineers of course so we built a stage with a little roof on it out in the middle of nowhere and that was used by I remember Filipino people and I remember Australian cup groups coming out there and they come out once a month I think so I remember seeing five or six of them and I did while back in camp Eagle get to see Bob Hope and the gold diggers and the Christmas I guess it was Christmas Day of 1969 I came back we can't we're all coming in out of the woods to kind of have Christmas back there in camp Eagle and I hopped in a truck some place and got to the other side of the camp and I saw Bob oh so it was so that was good that was any impressions about semen to see him or seeing the gold-diggers of that point only that I knew it was an absolutely wonderful historical event I kind of had the feeling all the way through this that I was I was you know watching history in the making today I kind of had it in the back of my head as as horrible as everything was and some of the things were unpleasant I just knew it and I just remember saying ha I saw gold I saw the gold diggers and Bob Hope on Christmas and 1960 that's one I mean I was so far away from the actual image you know the actual people that it wasn't it wasn't like I had a front seat to see the entertainment whose images at a distance and so it was entertaining but it was more the idea of having been there more so than being there you mentioned you yes I went to Sydney Australia right for a week in May of 1970 I also took a leave later on and went to Hong Kong with two friends but Sydney was the first yes Hong Kong was a week that there was a seven-day leave as was no I visited Hong Kong Sydney Laos Cambodia and Vietnam now question do you remember any particular humorous events or pranks yes I mean when we were back in the base I remember one time and there was three loot at was three or four lieutenants these were guys I'm still friends with one guy was Dennis Kieffer and I remember kie fer then his keeper and we would stay up drinking beer and so forth late into the night being Dennis and Frank and juice' from Brooklyn Co n GI e us ta Franken juste ax and a couple of other guys we stay up drinking raising hell at night and I know that every morning Dennis would come out of there open this little refrigerator grab a canteen of water open it and just downy they eat down anyone a quart of water in one shot so when I got the bright idea one point to empty the water and fill it with scotch and waited for the explosion the next morning when Dennis came rumbling out of his bed down opened it chugged half of it and then just barked and just threw it all out there when it got finally his body reacted to what had happened so that was just practice that we pulled there was there was a lot of other things right now but we were always joking around about something or other it sounds like you had a good time yes it was an entertaining and entertaining year that's for sure you mentioned that you have a disc that direction yesterday from any of those particular slides that are meaningful to you well the slideshow why do you put it together that way well it was just a chronological presentation of my time they're taking me from camp Eagle and the rats that we had there in the that out to the Asha Valley and all the children that we met along the way and the people a lot of the Vietnamese people we really had very good relationship with them when we built that route five four seven I remembered to be in the Meads coming and asking us I couldn't could they use it for their logging for the pulling the logs out and at that time the area we were in was very heavily wooded and we said of course you can use it they did have a an accident one time with their truck and we had to call that helicopters fly the Vietnamese out to him I guess I don't think went to our hospitals I don't know where they actually went for we we call them to medevac T those people are working on it but what I do remember I did go back to Vietnam ten years ago eleven years ago in June 2000 2001 I took my 19 year-old son back because I wanted to go back at that time at the thirty-year point to see yes the entire to attend Quan tree provinces were bald all the trees were gone the logging now is bringing logs down from the Asha and Cambodia all the way into the South China Sea the entire place of the Perfume River that I knew all those fire bases in all the areas it was hard to identify anything because now it was all bald I knew it as a jungle as a treed heavily treed place and so it was just a fascinating situation so some of the pictures I have pictures of the people that were on those routes the children were always entertaining you fascinating to me and of course the cambodian experience and just it was just life work a lot of the progress a lot of the guys at home with and so forth I'm still in contact with Kieffer and conduced both basically guys I never knew before but before I went to Vietnam and we still get together at least every Christmas and quite frequently other times done where are they looking dennis grew up in Long Island and it's now down him he retired and is down in Virginia Frank was a grew up in Brooklyn and is still in Brooklyn he his career was as a fireman in Brooklyn and after 9/11 he left the fire department he was having some heart difficulties and so forth but anyway Frank was the guy who stayed behind an extra six months in Vietnam to adopt a child basically a newborn baby it wasn't his at all but it was just he had been doing part-time work in an orphanage just north of way west away along the Perfume River and he just wanted to bring home a child and he did his wife had given birth to their child their own child at the same time so when they met at JFK and him returning he brought the Vietnamese child and she was carrying their child anyway that Vietnamese child Laura he is is now in her 40s and she's had twins herself and she lives in Brooklyn but then so we still all of us kind of still staying company do you remember when you ended your service I yes I I do remember when I I remember I remember coming home in the sense of I was scheduled to fly out of full buy down until I believe Saigon or Cameron fixed-wing on a certain time there's going to be a one o'clock in the afternoon flight or whatever it was and of course Kieffer and conduced that came by and said look why don't we have time we go out and have a beer before we send you off they were staying on once behind me so I came back on time but the plane had left early so I spent the next two twenty four hours laying around in a an airport and flew by because I missed the flight so I was kind of fuming over that but it wasn't my fault they really did miss move the flight up but I was off celebrating with my friends but I remember finally getting it down at the camera and I suppose and finally getting the tremendous sense of elation after a year of tension my whole body didn't realize it I just relaxed somehow realizing that I was going to get a second chance I had really assumed somehow or prepared my mind mentally for the idea that that I may be killed or or or harmed in some way over there and now here I was sitting waiting for my flight back to the USA our DeRose day and coming to the realization that I really was going to get a second chance and that was a feeling that it was a memorable experience I just that it was very very memorable I just it was it was quite an experience and then we flew went to Canada Fort Lewis and I just turned around and took the best picture of the whole year the flying tiger lines playing and all the guys getting off in the US soil and I just took that picture and that was it I don't remember much about there was a lot of paperwork and so forth and then there was a flight home but I don't remember too much about that ok did you go back to school you came yes I signed I was getting a master's degree at Iona and MBA in finance starting in September that I got back did you use yes I did yes now you mentioned that you had several good friends that Dennison Frank specifically right others that you have stayed in that you remember oh yes well Jack Dunn was a fellow I went to college with and actually went through ROTC with but I didn't see him in Vietnam in Vietnam just visited with him he was in the fourth Division the Ivy Division him played cool and I passed through and took a day off a helicopter ride to say hello to him and that was enroute to Cambodia but that's about it I think I mean there's a lot of the college friends that I still hang out with now who were in Vietnam hmm but I didn't I wasn't that close to them then although I am more so now drugs any veterans organizations the VFW here in in Connecticut yeah just in Connecticut yeah in Westport okay do you are you part of the border no I have not actually participated in general membership and I enjoy the newspaper and so forth okay any reunions you've been to no we have not been able to find the reunion other than with my own buddies but we as far as a unit reunion we've we've never heard of it I've kept my eye open for it but no have you been down to Washington yes I'm very mixed feelings obviously with the whole concept of Vietnam was it was always a very young I mean when I came back from Vietnam I I was very troubled for about 10 years because I thought we had lost something mmm and I had I had here we had committed 58,000 lives - and more than that considering the casualties and somehow we banned this Vietnamese and and I was quite saddened by that but I got a lot of support it was just funny a completely unrelated to Vietnam I would decided that I'd read the great books long story short I read wonderful somebody sent the greatest book ever written was war and peace by Tolstoy said fine let me read that I read it and I found much my amazement that Tolstoy had written this about the Vietnam War a hundred years before Vietnam occurred he wrote it back to me mid-1800s and what happened it gave me a certain feeling of that kind of am NOT alone situation that this has happened before the whole idea of napoleon hands-down winner going off to fight with these Oh a these very poor generals and Russia had never been at war before didn't have the experience didn't have the manpower didn't have the facilities at all they could not possibly win against Napoleon what are we the same going off the most powerful army in the world going well fighting with people in flip-flops that bit there but that was only one there was a million relate there was a million similarities between what happened in war and peace or what happened to us in Vietnam and somehow I got a great deal of comfort and realized and this is just a part of what Tolstoy would say is the cycle of you know the energy that's created and so forth that you know no one person controls it was his concept and the laws of polling really wasn't in charge of what happened going up there nor were the Russians in charge of beating beating him it just happened and they they weren't in control and we know Nixon didn't really want the Vietnam nor did Kennedy nor the Ho Chi Minh nor the Russians nor the chain nobody wanted this war seemingly yet it happened and raged on for ten years but anyway it gave me a great deal of comfort it wasn't until until years later that I put it in put the whole thing in perspective and realized my god I look at it as really the most successful and most influential war of the second half of the 20th century not to be compared to World War two but as far as the second half of the 20th century the fact that you looked at the history of communism and so forth sign with the Bolsheviks right through to putting putting nuclear weapons in Cuba those people were extremely aggressive and very determined take off your shoe pound that we will bury you they were rolling tanks into Hungary and Fidel they were very aggressive China right up to the point of the Vietnam War suddenly when Viet Nam's happened everything quieted down for that ten years only one incident Czechoslovakian 68 did they let us remind us that they were ready to roll through Europe but other than that the whole world locked itself down in this proxy war we avoided any nuclear issues had there been a fight in Europe or a continuation of what was going on in Cuba it could very well have gone nuclear but this was a proxy war we burnt all our energy for 10 years 14 years after the fall of Saigon the Berlin wall comes down during that 24 years between the start and the end the only major things that happened in a communist world as they went after Afghanistan good luck and Angola ooh that's all to happen it gave it in that 24 years gave the communist theory the ideology x stew in his juices and proved itself to the world that it was so fallacy in a now obviously it took a lot more between Reagan and the Pope and leper Benson every every thing that went into it but the Vietnam War put a lid on it let the steam off to let these things play themselves out and again so I see the Vietnam War is the absolute pivotal point in the destruction of communism because it didn't lead to something far worse than it could have led to so but I guess your question was about the wall but the wall just brings back wall these kind of thoughts to me and to look at the and all those names and all those people it's very sad but at the same time it's not wasted at all let's move on and just to kind of wind this up what did you do as a career after more basal guy I spent 33 years with GE General Electric General air to the capital financing the airline industry shipping the railroads just providing financing leases loans the soulful throughout the whole world which was interesting it you know we had leases them to Vietnam too so I negotiated many fields any particular place in the world that you enjoyed oh well I loved Istanbul I like China fact I took my wife back to his Danville three years ago we were a Iceland I was in Iceland I found that very interesting up we're all in South America there's so many places that I enjoyed going to want to go back um I'll just have to do it now that I'm retired in general when you think about the war and then you've just briefly talked about it they need to talk about the military has is there something that stands out in your mind other than which were just talking about at the wall of the experience about the military what influenced your thinking you put that into words you mentioned once it gave you the organizational skills well yeah I think what I when I came back from Vietnam especially in the military in general I think I was but I think I was always an adventurous person even as a kid but I did not want when I came back a very staid life I wanted a kind of an adventure and that's why my personality fits so perfectly the beef with the adventurous life we had a general electric I mean it was a very people oriented going all over the world cutting deals making deals there was lots of wins and losses that was great relationships that was great esketh it was very episodic life and it was not a run-of-the-mill kind of situation every day was different every day was crazy but it was so much fun that it kept me juiced and I I came back from Vietnam with the confidence that I could do that you know that that that I could do something more than just kind of a kind of a staid normal job I wanted something for fun and so that's why I was a me and G he worked very very well did it affect your life in any other way do you think I don't know my wife says it does she contends that and it's true with a firecracker goes off I'll jump through the roof it used to be I'd get very very sad about speaking about Vietnam if that's not been the case for the last 20 years but I will say for the first 20 years I was very I'd get very depressed I'd get very upset and again it's not because I had some particular incident that I saw it was just the aura of the situation and the horrible feeling that maybe we lost something mmm you know that would that benefit maybe it was pointless that was a devastating feeling to me but I've since again come to realize its importance in the course of events over the last 60 years but yes I did suffer I guess depression and you know and so forth but not - not to the point where I couldn't function yeah I was able to function but it would say away I was so upsetting with it it was upsetting experience hmm is there anything else that you might like to add that we haven't not really I think I think that was it we have to go back and visit it 10 years ago and I have the help I wouldn't mind going back again but but that's what did you some think about it well he was God wide he was very fascinated by it in fact he dropped out of college for a year and went back to Vietnam and stayed there for nine months and took a motorcycle all over the place out to the Asha Valley and everyplace else he just went around and saw this hole he really lived in it for about about eight or nine months uh he was very taken by a very fascinated by it made him a world traveling in that up in Thailand and he went through Cambodia went through Laos and so forth and so yes he was very taken by the experience and taking a nineteen-year-old I mean as I jokingly said - I said look your major thing in life is your boom box doesn't work come on let me show you something yeah settle um but he enjoys yes again anything else you'd like to come no not really I think that's that's all all right well then I thank you very much sure try this off great

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 3,441

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: Sullivan, John, Vietnam War (Military Conflict), War (Quotation Subject), Army, Interview

Id: Ttxl1lm_IKs

Length: 47min 44sec (2864 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2013