Interview with Norman W. VanCor, Vietnam Veteran, Part 1 of 2. CCSU Veterans History Project

which war did you serve in Vietnam and which branch of the service the United States Marine Corps what was your highest rank sergeant e5 can you tell me in which general locations you served while in Vietnam were all together a quaint tree that was our base base camp in northern I Corps up near the DMZ I am listed in Ashfield Massachusetts so can you tell me who made you decide to enlist and why did you pick the Marine Corps my motivation I was doing very poorly in college Greenfield Community College and it seems like most of the the guys in my engineering classes were attempting to get good grades so they wouldn't be drafted and doing so poorly I I just needed a break and I knew the Marine Corps recruiter personally he was from Asheville so I went to see Klem record and is a good salesman a good recruiter and I wanted to join the Marine Corps because it was tough you know because Marines always seem to have more pride more good smile so I joined the Marine Corps and left and February of 1968 for Parris Island not here it was as difficult and as demanding as advertised there were it's quite a bit different now through the years it's changed and become more friendly but but back then it was it was all business and quite frankly when we got the terrace Island I was as as terrified as as I was when we got off the plane and stepped into the runway in Vietnam and today it was frightening it was quite an experience the the drill instructors were constantly shouting screaming right in our face and you go in the the the first thing right away is to get your hair cut and it was just our human right over the top and everything came off and pulling and you didn't talk unless you were spoken to there was absolutely no chit chat with your fellow Marines there were 70 of us together and in our recruitment platoon and we did everything together so it was it was quite an eye-opener but by the time we graduated from boot camp and and actually were were called the marine you begin to understand a little more what the philosophy was you know breaking us all down we all looked alike we all acted alike and if there were the the fat bodies or those that for one reason or another may be psychological just plain couldn't deal with it couldn't handle it well they were weeded out and I suppose that the the drill instructors and the senior drill instructors had a pretty good idea of who was going to make it and who wasn't and every phase of it whether it was throwing you off a 20-foot diving platform simulating jumping off a ship or drown proofing and or the rifle range or or the long marches in the running and running and running through those different phases a lot of them would drop out so out of 70 I would guess a good 10 or 12 didn't make it at all and three or four or five were set back two weeks to go through that phase again if they didn't qualify on the rifle range they were set back to a platoon just coming in so it was a lot of pride a lot of pride when you when you got out yeah it was 12 weeks 12 weeks of boot camp there was classroom yeah we would sit sometimes in an outside arena sometimes in a classroom similar to this we didn't take notes there was no tests except each one of us was given a little red notebook and we had to memorize absolutely every word in it of the Marine Corps philosophy that Marine Corps history all of the ranks of the Navy keeping in mind that the Marine Corps is a department of under the Department of the Navy so we have to learn all the Navy ranks as well and again the history and so while we get out of the mess hall and standing at attention waiting for everyone you had that little notebook out and you better keep your eyes on it and study so periodically we were given a test on those things and we have to pass a test to get through our recruitment to be a marine they pile the saw a bus and we went to North Carolina to Camp Geiger and that's where we learned more of the weaponry learned how to throw grenades live grenades crawl through mud under barbed wire with life machine-gun fire over your head learned how to shoot a mortar a flamethrower all of those kinds of things off hand shooting with sixty caliber machine gun so we learned all of that advanced weaponry and then from there we went home on leave for 30 days and then each of us were given orders that were ever the Marine Corps wanted us to go and in my case they sent me to San Diego to communication school did you have a choice in that or the Marine Corps say no and their wisdom they they separated us by our background you know we would do a little bio when before in joining the Marine Corps and they would look at it and they saw that I had some college and had graduated from high school some aptitude so that was something a little more complicated I went in on the buddy system with a good friend of mine and his father was an accountant and he had was good with numbers and he went to accounting school and spent his whole entire time in Washington DC in accounting and I went to San Diego and learned voice radio I was a voice radio operator I learned every radio radio procedure and how to operate every radio the Marine Corps had at that time it was some of it was very sophisticated including teletype we had to pass typing and of course we had to learn all the procedures and to fix them how to treat them and how to set up all the big antennas and so forth when you were in communication school in San Diego did you know that you'd be going to Vietnam not in the beginning we had no idea at the beginning but about halfway through I think it was like an eight week course we pretty much knew and as a matter of fact I can say that we had the first class that a hundred percent of us volunteered for Vietnam so we went as a class to not directly to Vietnam but we were given the distinction of and they bragged about it you know this this class a hundred percent of them volunteered to go to Vietnam we probably would have gone there anyway we did yeah after our graduation we again got orders my orders were to go to jungle will a jungle warfare school and I'm and that wasn't Camp Pendleton although further north in California and that was interesting because it was both a an aptitude type thing and after two or three weeks they started to separate us I was a sharpshooter I was at the top of my class in radio school and I was sorted out to be a recon marine and that was a little scary because even Marines are afraid of well I won't say afraid of but respect Recon Marines when we went to advanced infantry training there were a lot of other battalions that Camp Geiger as well for different reasons and at night with lay there in our bunks and we hear this boom boom boom boom on the pavement and it would get closer and closer and then we'd hear recon recon and all we could picture these guys with bayonets in their mouth you know and holy Christ those crazy guys recon you they're nuts they're all crazy man they'll kill you and Here I am a Camp Pendleton singled out for recon and it didn't quite sink in at the time we we did a lot of jungle training learning how to observe spider traps where the the the North Vietnamese Army would pop up shoot at you and then trapdoor would go back down and you'd never find it looking for a lot of the sign of the enemy and so forth and that was pretty specialized and we would go through all of these mock training exercises to simulate jungle warfare and then from there orders to Vietnam and went home and had my leave 20 days and then when you were in your communication class you said then you warfare school dude your whole class goal or did you start splitting up at them they split us all up depending on where they need that most of them went to infiltrate every every platoon in every like 9:1 every infantry unit had a radio operator for the commanding officer in the in the platoon and they went through a lot of radio operators because you know we had an antenna that long sticking up and it's a great target and the life expectancy of a radio operator was pretty short I was the only one that went to third recon there were other recon the guys that went through the training with me assigned to recon but when we actually got our orders well let me put yeah that's true to jump ahead a little bit by the time we went got to Vietnam I was the only one that got in that six by to go to claim tree so I was the only recon and they would drop guys off as as they went along well we went from I'm not I tried to remember exactly where we left from but I I'm I'm pretty sure that it was back to Camp Pendleton and we took a bus to the 29 palms or somewhere and flew on Continental Airlines they were contracting with the military to ferry troops into Vietnam and we went to Okinawa refuel and we stayed on the plane and there weren't any first-class can we get you another drink sir there was none of that it was pretty somber we slept them kind of nervous chitchat when we went into Danang which is 90-mile about 90 miles south of claim tree it was raining so hard I've never seen rain like that it was monsoon and just getting our our duffle bags getting off the plane and heading into the headquarters the big tent you know if the receiving tent was really something because you can hear the mortar in the background and it wasn't like Camp Geiger this was the real deal you know and then all of a sudden the holy [ __ ] I'm in Vietnam what was your first impression when you landed is that it was yeah yeah it was like I'm here I'm we're really here I can't believe it and then you go into the tent and you know they're checking your shot card and and you lay in this bunk and toe that was quite late at night when we got there so in the first thing in the morning torrential rain I mean it was like begging rain and then they you know ok such as you know they go down through the whole list of the guys and you go out to that six by which is a big open-ended truck there was no canvas on the top or anything and I mean you were completely drenched within 10 seconds and you know they threw your rifle in a magazine and my name came up and I got in the 6 by and sat down in the rain in the back of that 6 by in a way we went up the muddy road and they'd stop better base somewhere and call two or three names and Camp Carroll you know Dong Ha Con Thien and claim tree so I got off a crane tree had nope where to go and it's raining and you're soaking wet and shivering you got this duffel bag and you're scared and hungry so you go to report in and they assign me to Charlie Company third recon I [Music] reported to Charlie Company and they they gave me my teen which is three Charlie two third Battalion Charlie Company second team so they had the street like Charlie Company was all this mud path and I went down all the way almost to the end the second to the last one it was a tent like a world war two time a great big canvas tent with a mud floor and opened a flap and walked in and announced myself and recon is a special breed it's if you don't want to call it hazing but they treat you as a nonentity they don't know you they don't care about you you're not one of them until you are you're kind of on the outside so I had this bunk which is again a world war two canvas scissors bottom cot with a poncho liner which is a very thin camo flies pretend to be blanket and I had my tray with a wire going through it with a with a fork and a big spoon and a cup and now I'm a recon marine and and they taught us everything I was the new guy in the in three Charlie two and every morning with my pack put a sand bag in there you know about 70 pounds and run five miles and then again in the afternoon and then go out with the team in the morning and learn immediate action drills a recon team is five members five-member team and each man has a designated spot in in your walking order once you get in the jungle and being a radio operator I was right behind the team leader and so if you do have contact you have to learn how to peel away and what to do and where your area of scope is to look and what your responsibilities are you go over all the first-aid stuff and who carries what and how to pack your pack you each get a case of C rations to take with you obviously you don't carry a case of C rations a typical mission would be five days five to seven days and most of us carried nothing more than like fruit cocktail peaches whatever fruit there was and whatever can of fruit there was and pound cake and you tape it together tape them end to end with electrical tape and learn how to pack your pack to you so there's no noise you can't have anything rattling around in your pack so most of what you carry we each carry five canteens of water that's one canteen of water a day and that's all you're going to get we each carried the 25 round of 25 magazines of ammo and what we did is take the magazine's they hold 20 rounds each we put 18 in so that it prevented or helped prevent jamming and again with electrical tape tape them end to end and then put them in your we had a harness we learned how to make your own harness so that you could get your canteens of water around you and your 25 rounds of magazine taped and the end so that if you are in a firefight you take the magazine out of your weapon and just turn it around and put put the other one back in when you're done with that one you just throw it out grab another one and put it in and each man carried smoke smoke canister about three grenades that we would clip on our harness I had the radio I had that sub PRC 25 and I had a fresh battery of brand new battery in it and those batteries come in a very thick plastic sealed case so I had to carry an extra an extra battery with me in my pack and you got to be real good because a good radio operator can change frequencies volume and everything without looking I first went when we go up to the chopper pad to be inserted I'm communicating with the chopper pilot so that's one frequency and another frequency would be for the relay station once we're inserted in the jungle and then a third frequency would be for fixed-wing if they came in so I could talk to the pilot yeah well not that often would we have faith we had fixed-wing that came in we're in trouble so we had those things in our pack we had a little bottle of bug juice military bug juice that we kept in our pouches we carried several different types of battle dressing in our pants pouch and in a tube of camouflage paint we would paint up before we went out and we had long-sleeve camouflage utilities with handball gloves with the fingers cut off the handball gloves were particularly good if we were going out to the Central Highlands and and we were in the elephant grass elephant grass is about 20 feet tall you can hardly walk through it and and it's sharp as a razor so we kind of parted the that Recon Marines out in the jungle or not like World War 2 where the guys are hacking with a machete you know the the the whole idea of recon is to be completely unseen unheard the whole purple we would go to intelligence go to g2 to get our orders and they would give us two maps of where we were going in the jungle and they would pick a place any place they each thousand by thousand meters is a clique they called it so we would be responsible for say 10 klicks and pick any spot and make a mark and call it nuts so you don't give coordinates when you're talking on the radio you give from nuts down to write one half and then they could tell exactly where each team was out in the jungle and so I had a map and the squad leader the team leader had a map your point of walking is your point man the point man everybody take the ends of the their barrel with electrical tape electrical tape was a good thing and Vietnam good thing we had it and it kept water and mud out of the barrel and the point man always had a string around the end of the barrel and up over his shoulders so that he could always walk like this and and be ready so that if we did initiate contact he's right there and he would peel off one way the second guy is the team leader and and then followed by the radio operator and then a rifleman and then the guy in the back is the m79 man that's with a short barrel and with a with a high explosive canister in it and that guy could he could knock the top off of a flagpole from a thousand yards I swear I'd never seen anybody like this guy and he'd be responsible for the rear kind of making sure no one is comprised of teeth well you won't cross train and everybody else's job we know you just worry about your long job well we all knew how to use the m79 you know I mean well unlike what we qualify for an in boot camp which was the m14 we carried the m16s and in 1968 there were still a lot of bugs you know they jammed a lot particularly when when it's wet and you know you're out there and the monsoon end so you actually went into Vietnam in 1968 yeah yeah so we get back from intelligence and then you know you learn why you're going out to this area suspected Vietnamese movement stockpiles something they've seen from an airplane or the infantry needs to go up into this area they wanted to know if there are any bunkers how many VC well we're northern Ike or northern South Vietnam where we spent most of our time there wasn't any VC it was all North Vietnamese Army which compared to the United States Marine Corps they were the best trained army in the world at the time I mean they were the real deal you know they were they were better uniforms than we did except that they were there they could be there for five years you know those kids would go down and and they were there so we would learn where we're going pick a landing zone where the chopper would get you in and you would agree on at the end of five days that such and such a time here's where you're going to be extracted from and so we get that the night before we were going out on a mission and we get our C rations and pack our pack and would it's funny how after 45 years it I didn't think of you like this thinking back on you know the letters that you would write you know it you didn't want to scare your mom and dad so you didn't wanna go on a mission to Ireland you know the area really sucks and where you know there's suspected of Bunker complexes and you don't say any of that you know yeah please send more bone chicken or something you know and so you go up in the morning and you know you're all painted up and you got everything you need and then the chopper comes and you check your frequency and and the finalists most of the time we went on with the Huey which is an open-ended with the runners the slicks we call them slicks and on each side there was a gunner each of them had a 50 caliber machine gun and then we went out with a gunship the gunship had Rockets canisters one on each side and they had a 50 Cal machine gun plus the it seems like they had something else but but anyway none of us nobody wrote on the gunship they would go in with us but they wouldn't go in the LZ with us they would stay up and go around and it was always the team leaders final decision whether you went in in or not when we were going in to the LZ you try and go in quick and get in there if it turned out to be a hot LZ and we were taking fire than you'd abort if not you go in we dump out of both sides of the chopper and and and go on this on the edge of the jungle and if if everything is secure then it was up to me to wave them off and get them out of there as soon as we could and then we just get lost we have to get in the jungle as quickly as we could because if we were seen or heard going in that's a chopper over there you know and that held head to that opening so we would get lost in the jungle one and then kind of regroup and decide where we were going from there and begin our mission how many missions would you do how many days would you be on mission and then have a time off well we would go on a mission for five or seven days and we'd be back in the area back on a base camp and pull guard duty and and do what we had to do whatever duties we had probably for four days sometimes three days sometimes one day but typically would be in the in the back for four days and they would rotate missions I'm credited with 14 long-range missions which we were out for extended periods week and a half ten days yeah seven to ten days and it could be less but long range can also mean that we're way outside of the scope of range where recon would normally go in other words they would tell us you don't have any support you're on your own man so get in do your thing and get out we've been in areas you know Cambodia we've crossed the Ben hai river in other words we've been in North Vietnam and for the for the purpose of determining how big the supplies might be report particularly along the Ho Chi Minh Trail that's where they're bringing trucks in and they're stockpiling rice and ammo and stuff we would go in typically and and spend find them and then spend our time observing them making notes you don't have to worry about the radio because you had no you're way outside of radio range and so you can't call in the fixed-wing you can't you you have to be at a certain location because they're coming in to get you and you've got to be there if you're not there that can be a problem and unfortunately Recon teams sometimes would just never be heard from again if we do have contact then I call in for media extraction in a rare event that we get a prisoner and remember the tents I told you about the easiest way to get a plywood hoots we call them with a plywood floor and a roof on tin roof over our head would be to get a prisoner so if you want to you get a prisoner but shortly there that lasted for maybe I was in the tent for a month and a half or so in plywood became more abundant and they started building them well a short-range mission would be a typical five-day where you where you they would take you either in on a six by two content and you'd walk in from there looking for enemy looking for the NVA where they may not know there was any there or they wanted us to verify the mapping is the water good or the maps correct landing zones or it looks like we had a landing zone here but can shoppers actually land there or that or do we need to clear a landing zone first and you know go in on the ropes and and rappel in and go from there so after every mission you go back to your basic laundry that's right that's right well we go into Vandergrift air base a lot of times the chopper would bring us the table Andy which was probably ten miles away or so and that's where they had a lot of choppers and they were all going in and out of there that's where they housed them so they would bring us in there and then we would get a get a chopper to go out to our destination and they'd bring us back to Vandy and then we'd catch another chopper - they called it stud Vandergrift base and they'd bring us back to crane tree which was our base camp but we had a motor pool but it was well with thousands of men no no it was a battalion so you know we had you know four companies and and that in a in a big motor pool but we didn't you know and this saw was the danger of being overrun and so we all had shifts you know guard duty the that we had to do everybody had to do that and we had a a mess hall that was very very similar to the mash program there wasn't great differences in equipment they made improvements in an ammunition and weaponry but a lot of the equipment that we had in Vietnam was equipment that they had in Korea very similar you know look at the the tents and the cots the whole the whole time I was in you know we had those candless cots where you always with the same group was your week our team that's right that's right until yeah you do you get to know exactly each other's idiosyncrasies and likes and dislikes and and how to take care of each other my life depended on each other in the infantry as commonly known there's a lot of lot of drugs a lot of pot in recon it's absolutely not tolerated there will no marijuana Marines were not allowed alcohol in Vietnam we were the only branch of the service geez the Air Force had clubs for quite a lot with hamburgers and french fry we went down to to quantity yet down by the South China Sea and to us it was a perk after you know we went on ambush missions at night and we wore white long johns because the sand was pure white and there was a lot of problems with the the NVA coming in towards the Air Force Base with mortar you know so we were out we go out at night all night long on ambush missions and one night we were able to cross the river and went into the club and we couldn't believe it air conditioning and waitresses with round eyes and steak and hamburgers and french fries and beer and alcohol you know it seemed but we in Vietnam you know an hour away and we're reading condensed everything you know we had no fresh milk or fruit or any of that good stuff we did have hot meals in the mess hall but it was all reconstituted everything well your year then you went on a lot of missions together as that team can you tell me about one or two memorable missions that you went on well the there were a lot and and like I said the whole idea was was to avoid detection that was our main job and our rule of thumb is if if we're out in the jungle we typically would stay off of the main trails this is their backyard not ours and what you don't want to do is to have a confrontation on a trail because with five of us we're probably going to lose if there's water we liked it hated it but I mean it's quieter in the water and a lot of times you've got Triple Canopy meaning that you get filtered Sun you know it's a hundred degrees and it's so humid you're soaking wet I took at least two big salt tablets every day because I perspire a lot I always have and so you'd walk in water if you could because it was less work and then excuse me you come out and that little bottle of bug juice that you had its purpose was not to put on because the mosquitoes might bite you it was because if you put a drop of it on you the leeches that were all over you would just drop off so a little drop of that and the leech would drop you know and you're pulling them they won't come off but just a little drop of that bug juice and they drop off but our rule of thumb is in the jungle if if we saw one or two or maybe even three gooks we call them gooks NVA particularly if they had uniforms on if they had their if they had a pack on and a rifle then take them off blow em away take everything off any patches anything in their pockets everything put them off to the side of the trail cover them up with whatever you come and then get the hell out if there's only one of them and he doesn't have a pack on it probably means that he's out collecting routes or some damn thing for dinner and we try and get a general direction of where he's going and what he's doing so that we could find a bunker complex so you you kind of have to be careful if you're gonna if you're gonna what we call blow them away and kill them that's a lot of noise and if it's not just three guys passing through and they're just walking point for a team or then you're in a world of hurt so we we really had to pick and choose when we would ambush somebody and at night all five of us would sit down and lean against each other you never take your pack off you put your rifle over your lap and I had the radio the handset and every hour the relay station would say moleskin moleskin sitrep situation report yeah our team every team had a name that I just thought of that was one of them moleskin and I would key the handset twice and it sounds like squelch and that lets them know that at seven o'clock all as well and I mean and then we would give my handset to somebody else and that I try to get a little sleep and at the end of that hour then you give it to somebody else and in the morning we'd have a can of fruit cocktail or something and bury the cans never any cigarettes or any of that stuff and in the jungle and we fulfill our mission try not to get lost it's tough it's you didn't have a lot of landmarks you know big outcropping or maybe a water or something but we did pretty well we could pretty much tell exactly where we were and then just barely before dark the team leader would say maybe 200 feet away he'd say see that high spot over there he didn't say see that high spot over there he just kind of not to it and everybody would have to acknowledge he says study it you know that's where we're going so after dark we would very very slowly cautiously go from here to there and more than once in the middle of the night two o'clock in the morning where we were would beasts hellacious noise grenades and small arms fire they knew where we were and if we hadn't moved after dark then it never found us again did you do that every time every time every almost every time I mean there were there were those situations where we were in grave danger we had been spotted we were in a bad area we would pick our high ground put a claymore mine out which is semicircular and it has explosive c4 and a with hundreds of small ball bearings and you go like that you run a wire back and you go like that and it just the big blasts it goes out so you set two claymores and and hope you don't get hit at night and sometimes the choppers can't fly they can't come out and get you and if you are spotted do the best you can man you don't dig foxholes and you know you've got your semicircle and you've got grenades and your claymores and yeah just that I you know I can tell you about you know the the incident where I was awarded the Navy Cross but I'm not sure I can get through it give it a try we could stop to take a break like I said it's amazing after what 45 years how seems like you think about it nightmares and God what would their life be like if they'd live you know and it's just natural I guess when in in war I think well they sent us to an area well first of all my team got back from a mission I was like 4:00 in the afternoon and the team next to us three Charlie one came over and wormed we need help you got to go with us you got to go with us the radio operator mm-hmm had a broken finger broken hand or something I don't know what exactly happened but he couldn't go so they needed me to go out with him and of course I knew the guys really well and norm you gotta go you gotta go so I didn't even bother to take a shower and of in the rancid water that that we used I just got my sea rations and rations and repacked and went over the map with it with the guys

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 22,938

Rating: 4.7665372 out of 5

Keywords: Veterans History Project Of The Library Of Congress American Folklife Center, Vietnam Veteran (Literature Subject), Vietnam War (Military Conflict), Interview, Quang Tri, USMC

Id: EDYVWaszpmQ

Length: 51min 31sec (3091 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 18 2014