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

we shouldn't have gone in because for recon team to get lost as they say in the jungle there was too much open that had been battles there before and a lot of trees blown away and the it was too inconspicuous but they needed us to go and the orders were that we had to go out because suspected enemy movement in the area so we went in no problem we got lost and we were there couple of days and we were on the side of a hill very bony Ridge lines that weren't hardly wider than six or eight feet and then drop off severe so the trail is right along the ridge so you try and keep off the trails as much as you can but you're pretty limited so in the morning it was first thing we had just finished having a pound cake or whatever ten and we burying him and it had rained that night so it was very quiet and out of nowhere automatic small-arms fire from up above right down on us and one of the guys was on hit hit so we returned fire and I call for immediate extraction and we just went up on the trail they hit us and left and so we got up to the trail and we started going down to the prearranged extraction point to the LZ and we didn't get too far and we were ambushed so they knew exactly what they were doing they knew where we were going because it was the only open area where the shoppers could come and get us and it was amazing it's like the end of a freaking world you you can't understand the terror and the noise unless you're there you know yeah there were five of us the guys next then so you know we went down and you know threw a grenade and you don't know what you're shooting at because at this point now we at least we had the advantage of being on the trail on the high ground and they were on the low ground a sloping hill and then it stopped for a couple of minutes and the guy behind me who was a as good a friend as you get he was from the Bronx and he was down I remember hearing him say I'm hit im hit and he was down blown back against there was a tree of some sorts that he was again against and the guy in front of me is withering and he's hit really bad the guy in front of him was a lieutenant who was going out with them second lieutenants are assigned to different infantry units and Recon none of us wore insignias or patches or the team leaders the team leader a lieutenant 2nd lieutenant has to go on so many missions in order to qualify to be a first lieutenant so lieutenant Chennault was with us really nice guy young second lieutenant in front of him and he was just sitting sitting there and the team leader who at this point was a point man was dazed he was kneeling down or kind of you know looking around you know so I look back at Danny and he wasn't moving and the guy in front of me is is withering and I took out some bandages you know and I was doing the best I can I mean he was bleeding everywhere I hardly knew where to start and I says lieutenant you okay you okay and he didn't say anything and I and I went up to him and the the sight of his head away from me was completely gone it was just like it was from his nose that way it was just the gray matter he's gone so I just left him sitting up and then the guy in front he had a big hole in his neck and I'll never forget putting that putting that data dressing over the wound and not knowing what to do with the strings you know put it around his neck but I had no choice so I did and of course not to make it too tight and he got hit in the hand and wrapped his hand up and his side and he was hit real bad whining for mom mom mom helped me Mom and went back to the other guy and called contact again on my radio and well what's what's the situation so I said well let me survey the situation so I went back to the other two again I took when I was away I started taking fire so I returned that fire and at this point I've got two dead and two so wounded that they don't know where they are or what they're doing and so I told them on the radio to ki a and two that have to be moved there they're seriously injured so I was informed that they couldn't get a reactionary team in there for good four hours and I ain't gonna make it I've got to get these guys out well you can't so wouldn't what do you do I says one I'm taking them out and so and in between all of this I'm shooting I'm taking fire I'm got my head down I'm throwing a grenade and so then a Bronco came a Bronco was a is is like a Piper Cub maybe a little bigger like and they do have rockets and their observers they go around and for the infantry and kind of can tell where the enemy is so that they can either put fire a little bit to themselves calling gunships or fixed-wing so this pilot and I were like of course I didn't know him from Adam but man was he good you know he went over me and you know I'm not gonna pop a smoke so that you know of course they knew where I was anyway but they didn't know how many of us there were so that was a little bit of an advantage although I was the only one firing and throwing grenades and with my head down and it's it's like in a movie where you hear the you know you can you can film and you're landing next to you and I remember this little flower what a little flowers doing in a jungle trail I don't know and I remember things so this is where I'm gonna die right here and so he went over and Mark mark and he came around again he says I've got your location and I says get as close to me as you can so he was shooting rockets and you can see him coming us Christ I mean it's like shooting a rocket right at you and but he did a good job I mean he was he was helping me a lot because then the fire stopped and you can hear him running and then of course he's got to come around again and he couldn't see him because a cloud cover and and so I I took the lead guy throw him over my shoulder and carried him as far as I could and then put him down went back and then got the guy who was in front of me who was all shot up in the front I didn't think he was gonna make it and carried him until he who started screaming so bad and and put him down then take the other one ahead and I kept leapfrogging like this and then when I was going back I'm taking fire and the Bronco wasn't much help at this point and the choppers couldn't see me so I finally got down to the LZ point which they barely had enough room to land it was just sheer and I had the two guys down there and I I couldn't get back I mean I'm taking fire and the the two guys that are way back up they said it was 250 meters that I carried him out I had to leave him what do you do they say Marines never leave their own and we didn't but we went back to get them but I had to leave them then just like any other battles in world war two whatever you're fighting a war and when that battle is over then you clean up you're dead and my radio wasn't working I had no contact and choppers are going around and around and around so I threw a smoke out and so a chopper finally did come landed and I'm pointing up there so I had a fifty caliber machine gun helping me out a little bit and and then I got the two guys on the chopper and away we went and went down to the mass unit they landed and a couple of the corpsman you know they were there were three of us there so they pulled all three of us off and they threw me down on a stretcher of course I'm just covered with blood from head to toe and I said no I'm all right I'm all right I'm all right I had a gash on my knee but compared to them so I took a chopper down the vent down the stud where they dropped me off I had to go into the sea the colonel at the contract there was some confusion as to how many guys were still out there and so I cleared all of that up and the colonel had to frag a team to go out and so when I got back to clang tree I had to go to intelligence there and then when I got back to my company the company for a sergeant had me in his quarters and he had big map I had never been up to his private quarters second floor over the over the clerk's office it was just it looked just like a mash in the TV show mash it was just like that only his quarters were second floor and I got out there showed him exactly on the map you know where we took fire and where the ambush was and he gave me attaboys and this and that and walked down the street went past the empty hooch three Charlie one and and I just sat on outside the door and was a two-step thing to get into our hooch and I could hear voices in there and I was afraid to go in and I sent here and cried and cried I guess they heard me and they came out and and it was like I thought they were gonna be mad at me you know because our best friend was killed it was all my fault I know strange emotions you know it's just just awful and they as it turns out they had heard everything on the radio which means we were less than 25 miles away from the base camp and normy was so cool and calm and how did you do it they discovered that I didn't have radio contact you know when I got down I had no radio contact and the reason for it is because my radio was all shot up so if I didn't have my pack on I would not be here now and but the two guys lived we went over in the next day they weren't not they couldn't be moved they were both there and the guy that was in front of me had taken 23 a.k rounds in his stomach he was castrated he was shot up real bad the guy the point guy he lost part of his hand and he had a huge gaping hole in his neck and lost the part of his arm but he he yeah after a few days they were taken to the hospital ship and then from there they went to Japan and they say that if you make it to Japan then chances are you're gonna make and many many years later I heard that from somebody that was in my team that there was a third Battalion Recon Association and people guys started contacting me and so I got the names of the two guys that were alive and they were you know many years later they married and had families and I did sent them a letter and one of them responded to me but it it wasn't a hey old buddy thanks for he wasn't total shock and he thought he remembered what happened and what he remembered wasn't what happened at all and I just wanted to let it lie so I I didn't respond but the pilots put me up for the Medal of Honor and and then the commanding officer of my unit did all of the paperwork and all of that and sent it in and headquarters sent back saying that tonight put him up for the Navy Cross and it's a done deal and they did and then they see this was about eleven months into the Marines had a 13 month tour everybody else had a 12 month tour and so they had said that to take me out of the jungle because I was up for possibly the Medal of Honor the Navy Cross they weren't sure what was going to happen but they couldn't allow me to get killed so he took me off the team and I did some work within the company and and then they couldn't carry me so they transferred me to headquarters battalion and I operated a TSE 15 van it was about five miles away it was well technically a part of Quang tree base but it was just headquarters in a motor pool and some communications and this TSE 15 van is is was the largest most powerful radio known at that time if they had another one on the moon I could have communicated with them my job was to patch-through generals in Vietnam to the Pentagon or to Okinawa or to Washington and that was pretty neat aDNA but anyway at that at that time President Nixon was bringing home the troops and third recon got orders that they were to be relieved and moving to Okinawa so I only spent 12 months actually there and and went home with headquarters battalion I came home on the USS Iwo Jima a ship it took us 22 days to come home interestingly the Iwo Jima is the is the ship that retrieved astronauts when they were plopping them in the ocean and I remember we came back from one mission and putting our grenades and stuff at the ammo dump and there was the Stars and Stripes laying there announcing they had landed on the moon no see I'll be cut to him I can't what landed on the moon and I had a picture and everything us holy Christ they can land on the moon but we have to be over here in Vietnam can't they figure out this and all they were arguing about was the shape of the table and Geneva to negotiate with the North Vietnamese well after this mission I only went out on one more mission the first sergeant went to the hospital because he had gout while he was there my team was fragment so I went out with him and wouldn't you know it we had a firefight a big firefight there too and we made it to the LZ and we were behind these big termite mounds they get to be like ten feet tall and eight or ten feet around and we were behind the termite mounds and the NVA was in the treeline and I'm with the chopper pilots trying to bring them in but there were a lot of big broken trees and it was really iffy and we were in a ch-46 which was a long helicopter with two rotor blades and the back tailgate came down and you went out that way and boy it was a close call and my hearing is still not right and it's getting worse and worse because I'm on the radio with my right ear with the chopper pilot trying to bring him in and the team leader is leaning against my left shoulder firing and it was all right here and I had blood in my ear and severe pain and I couldn't hear a thing for a good two weeks and they told me it'll probably get better and and it did slowly over the months and now I've been diagnosed with the sudden hearing loss syndrome or something like that and tinnitus and and I have constant ringing in my ear they said it'll never go away but we all made it and we got up into that ch-46 and we're all shooting out the window and on each side the Gunners were there 50 Cal and the shells just landing all over the metal floor that chopper was just rocking you know we thought we were gonna get blown right out of the water and we were taking hits everywhere and but we made it out and that was my last mission and left Vietnam like I said 22 days to get home and went into went under the bay bridge I have pictures of going under the bay bridge and went home for a while and then spent my last year in Camp Lejeune I was assigned to the second Marine Division and my job as a radio operator was partly to retrain some of the people within the battalion because they were phasing out the on toast the on toast was a small tank with om tos on toast it's a small tank with three gun three 105's on each side and it was an obsolete equipment and they were phasing them out so we did that and and so that finished out my tour there were five of us by that time I have I was awarded the Navy Cross on the Marine Corps Birthday in front of something in excess of 20,000 Marines the commanding general of Camp Lejeune his name was general Ryan he invited my parents to go to Camp Lejeune to be a part of my family my brother and sister my girlfriend went all expenses paid and they assigned a lieutenant or a captain to give him a tour of the base and they were treated with royalty and they had escorts everywhere and all kinds of pictures and they they didn't know what I was being honored where they had no idea no interestingly at the ceremony sitting next to my father was General Omar Bradley ain't that something he was pretty old but one of the one of the the best generals one of the best generals in the history of the world certainly you know him and Patton were work without them we may not have won World War two and this poor ol guy sitting there could hardly walk and after the ceremony with my I was in dress blues in my Navy Cross they had this ceremony with pictures and all he walked across the the the big gymnasium type thing with me and he says your Navy Cross is worth more than all five of mine put together and Isis sir I don't think so but he he was very nice you know he was just he was trying of course a lot of the generals you know I'll put you in further Navy Cross you know and he was in the general area but he earned things and many years later long years later like 25 years later out of the clear blue I get a call from my first sergeant and you know I recognized his voice immediately and I stood straight up I answered the phone and he's the son this first sergeant and he was attempting to reopen my case with the Marine Corps to upgrade the Navy Cross to the Medal of Honor and wanted me to know that and he was doing everything that he could as it turns out the the Marine Corps has a very strict policy about the Medal of Honor it's a very strict requirement that you must have two witnesses on the ground well I did but they were in shock total shock that they knew nothing so they were unreliable and even though you had witnesses that heard everything on the radio and the and the pilots who saw everything and knew what I did they got their rules so it was not meant to be which is fine except in one I always thought that if I had received the Medal of Honor I would have been a member of the medal honor Medal of Honor Society and those guys are really ambassadors and they go all over and and I'm good at that you know I I could and they do wonderful things for people and and not just the military but and not only speaking engagements but they do wonderful things for raising money and and helping out with very large functions and and I and then of course they're given special projects by the president they might be asked to go somewhere do something and I almost thought that I could have been useful doing something like that and and not for the metals part of it I mean what value was that actually but back at camp lejeune it was rather boring and five of us sergeants that were in the same area we got really friendly and there was only one of them that was married so we volunteered to participate in the International NATO war games in Greece that was in 1970 1970 yeah 1970 I was I came back from Vietnam in 69 yeah it was may May 7th 1969 that I was in that ambush that ultimately led to the Navy Cross May seventh 1969 the May and then in 1970 was the NATO wargames went to Greece and of course he was radio operator and lead I was assigned to Jeep and another guy and we went up on this mountaintop and we had some homemade bread and homemade cheese and grapes and a bottle of wine and our whole mission up on this beautiful mountain top we set up this big antenna and every hour I had to pull out this thing that was in the radio and reset all of the dog ears because it was a crypto radio and the guy on the other end of the radio had to set exactly the same sequence that I did in order to be understood and that was our mission we were only there a day and we got word to pack everything up and come down that we had been killed we did get strafed Wow not actually but the Royal Air Force swooped down on us and it was just a couple hours later we were told to abandon ship we'd been killed him they had the wrong coordinates and and killed us so the rest of the time over there I took my watches as sergeant as in the in the main would he call it communications tent and then we went to Italy and we went to Spain went through the Strait of Gibraltar but instead of the what they call the Med cruise at that time Marines were going on for six months the NATO war games were only for two so it's only for two months let's go have fun and we did we really enjoy it we had a lot of fun and then in January 15th 1971 I had a last request from general Ryan and from our division sergeant major which is the highest rank you can have any enlisted rank he and I got friendly and because of the Navy Cross and all this I had it made they were giving me special assignments things to do really exciting things but they asked me to stay in personal requests from from the commanding general of Camp Lejeune - you're the kind of marine that we'd like to see we'd like to see you stay in the Marine Corps and I came that close I almost did what made you to say that well I I really wanted to give college another try and I was falling in love and I don't know Barracks life you know coming back from Vietnam and going to Camp Lejeune it was so boring and you know nothing to do on weekends and you know I knew that more than likely I wouldn't have a normal family if I wanted to get married and and ever have any kids that you're just bounced all over the world and but yet there was a big part of me that that's what I wanted to do I'm a marine and a damn good one I wanted to go to jump school you know and get my wings and I wanted to do this and you know and I liked being a teacher of different things and I knew that I'd go on special assignments and but I didn't and I got out of the Marine Corps well you write letters when you're in base camp we didn't receive mail very often one thing we did do is take turns all of us every once in a while a team as kind of a perk would go to a relay station for a week ten days maybe and a relay station is a very high point where you can set up a big radio and communicate from the base camp to the teams out on the jungle so you might be given three teams to give situation reports to and you're their link to the world without you with this relay station that teams out in the jungle unless they're on a long-range mission but otherwise you're their only means of communication so that wasn't great duty because you're on this mountaintop and there's only six or eight of you and they're always trying to overrun you and you've got booby traps all around and you really have to have good centuries out and you know half for you or on watch all night and the rats are unbelievable I mean New York City rats because all you eat up there are sea rations and you just throw everything over the side of the hill and you're your your bed is ammo crates with a poncho on the top with kind of a a-frame hug together ammo crates on top with a poncho on the top to keep any rain off out and the rats come in there at night and they jump on you and jump down to the ground we tried to tell don't eat in side eat outside and then wear the radio is a heavily reinforced sandbag compound and you go in and it's like a tunnel and at night you can't sleep it it just gets to the point it's ridiculous so you volunteer to take radio watch or you just sit in there and play cards and I was on relay x-ray or Romeo forget which one and we got socked in if you get bitten by a rat you're in deep because you've only got a short time to get out of there and start getting shots or you're gonna die yeah for rabies and guys died in Vietnam from rabies it's a big problem so we were socked in I had to spend like an extra I think I was up there for for like 15 or 18 days so you don't get mail you know and then you go back to the base camp and you've got all of this mail you know and you ask for things in the mail like fruit walk and fruit or I took a special liking to bone chicken these little for whatever reason you know bone chicken it was just wow and of course cookies or something like that but just to get mail just to hear oh just so disappointed that none of my classmates or friends really wrote to me while I was in Vietnam but I got mail from home and I did I wrote a lot after the incident of March of May 7th I didn't write for like two weeks i I just didn't know what to say I just didn't and so I when I did write I just said that you know we had some problems here a couple bad things happened and let it go at that but I found out after I got home you know my mother said the Rosary every night loved that I was gone every night yeah my mother she says it's a good thing that I didn't and she said no idea that you could have done 7 was passed out I almost fainted knowing that what you did you know what you went through yeah yeah we did nothing like I said nothing fresh everything you know powdered milk powdered eggs yeah sometimes we get a fresh beef or a big ham or something or real potatoes but you know potatoes in the big cans and but it was hot you know we'd have mashed potatoes with powdered milk in it and you just get used to it but they had these flying cockroaches which are enormous and you know plop right in your food you know and you just got so you grab them and throw it out and keep eating things like supplies clothing ammunition did you always have sufficient yeah yep we did we of course the only clothes we wore were the camouflage utility uniform and then when we're back in the base camp we had the the regular Marine Corps olive drab uniforms we didn't wear helmets in the jungle they make too much noise they're too heavy we didn't wear flak jackets we just wore soft camouflage cover but yeah we we had boots if we wanted them that'd have to be ordered I mean you couldn't go in to the store and say jeez I need a new pair of boots size 10 you know you'd have to give them some time socks we went through immersion feet is a big problem over there and sometimes we'd come back and we'd have to go to first aid and they actually have to cut and peel your socks off because your your feet are actually starting to rot and the skin would just kind of grow right into the socks they were like one and you'd have real tender feet for a while and have to put salve on it and break in a new pair of boots or something but well yeah we the food was you like I said you get used to it once in a great while we'd get in a pallet of beer and everybody could have I think three and but yeah when you opened it you had to kind of have your mouth ready because don't forget it's like a hundred degrees every day over there at least and you open it and half of its gone just you know it's like shaking it no sodas or fresh fruit or any of that that's just unheard of did you do anything special for good luck hmm no I didn't carry a charm or I you know we had our dog tag and I don't remember that any of us did in particular you know have these little things that they couldn't be without for good luck no he didn't didn't do that well waiting for the chopper to come you're ready as you can be to go and well I'll tell you the sound of that chopper coming in you know we had the the typical the the landing pad was this monstrous steel panels that walk together you know for the most part and when he's coming in it boy you start feeling it and I saw it's like a dread you're not shaking and then when you're in the chopper and you're going in it kind of starts to go away because you're there and you don't have time to be afraid and when you're in the jungle it isn't so much fear as it is to be constantly thinking all five of us are constantly thinking we're looking we're listening the least little thing and when that happens you freeze and I mean out of all the missions and you have contact or you have firefights four times or five times or or if you do go in a bunker system that's scary I mean I don't want to go in and you see bowls of rice out there you know that they're out there are they watching you when you do see a cave or a bunker and yell chew I chew hoy which means surrender and then just throw a grenade in in the infantry they have the tunnel rats you know the little guys that go in headfirst and hope that they don't run until a snake or a booby trap or something but we couldn't afford to do that that's not why we were there you know we were there to determine how big the bunker system was and the strength of the enemy if we can't see them we don't know so we would go into the system only as information-gathering not as a confrontation we didn't we weren't looking for a fight and when we did observe them from in the jungle then the team leader would you know take notes with a pencil or something and not call in and long-range missions sometimes we would take a sniper not usually I went to Sniper school I want it to be a sniper but I might my marksmanship came just under the level I was good but not good enough for sniper that's a whole different level but I wanted to do everything I volunteered to go to the Philippines not to get out of Vietnam as much because it it's true these these guys come back from Iraq or World War two or whatever they want to go back in because that's their guys and the bond that you have it it's just different it's something that it's almost unexplainable but I wanted to go to deep-sea diving so that I'd be qualified and they had an opening and in our company and I volunteered and it was to the Philippines for two weeks to learn hardhat and you'd be you'd be both scuba and hardhat qualified not like in the Navy where you're a master diver and all that but qualified as a diver we went down to the Quang Tree River which was there and if you know somebody have a rifle and kind of looking around because it was outside the perimeter and froze our ass off swimming up and down the Quang tree river for a couple of hours when we were back in base camp all ready to go had our orders and we had this joint operation and they couldn't afford to let us go so never did go but that we didn't have we had cards and would shoot the ball a lot but when we're back under where were either busy we had this big drum with some kind of a shoot or a stovepipe or something on the bottom and we had thousands of bags so somebody hold the bag no the guy would shovel sand from a big sand pile would fill sandbags all around our hooches and headquarters and perimeter and so we we didn't have a basketball or volleyball court or for much of anything to do you know just write letters you can't go for walk you know we did physical training and it not like mash you know where you got all of these stress relievers we couldn't go to the club you know we didn't have a club so I don't know you just cope we didn't have drugs yeah everybody got what seven days hour an hour I went to Hong Kong you could either go to Hawaii Hong Kong or Bangkok if you wanted to go to Hawaii you probably couldn't get R&R until you've been there about eleven months because everybody wanted to go to Hawaii and after eleven months why bother you know you need a break so about halfway through I caught a chopper went to Danang one of my cousin's was in the army and he was stationed in Danang at the same time I was up in Quang tree and so I stayed overnight with him and it's holy Christ you know like three-quarters of an hour helicopter ride and we're out getting shot at and even in our base camp that's very unsecure and he had a maid to come in and make his bed every day and shine his shoes and put them back under his bunk and whorehouse across the street and real food and booze and his own Jeep and I see Ronny come on this is amazing he's like I've got a 45 somewhere he says I know damn well I do because New Year's Eve we were up on the roof shooting you know but I was happy for you no I mean I would no no so I went to Hong Kong I came back and he picked me up at the airport there and I got a hold of my first sergeant I begged for an extra day and he gave it to me so I stayed an extra day with my cousin Ronnie and and then went back to the real world of recon but yeah that was and and Hong Kong was a major disappointment because it's not like Hong Kong of today no one no one spoke English and the driver did that pick picks us easy pickins up at the airport and to bring us to the hotel he spoke it you know and just all he wanted to do was fix you up with the girls and the and the this restaurant were they everybody worked out of and hooked me up with the tailor of course so I mean with Hong Kong being famous for its threads and beautiful cloth and all of that I had a lot of silk shirts and suits tailored made for me and everything while I was no it's five days are in are not seven and you couldn't even order something from a menu because nothing was in English you just had to point and get you know fish heads and chicken claws and that sort of thing and then when I got home from Vietnam I had totally forgotten that why you're in Vietnam you lose 20 pounds so I got home nothing fit so my father inherited a lot of very expensive clothes and I bought gifts from my family homecoming well we came back on a ship went under the bay bridge and as we were getting closer and closer to the dock we're all out by the rail 3,000 of us know about 3,000 I forget how many Marines do I know that they didn't the Navy guys did not want us on that ship every 15 minutes the the ship's captain was on the horn you know begging us to take ship showers because we were depleting their water supplies right away I mean stink oh oh in Krang tree the only washing that we did was a civilian that would come in and get our clothes put it the bag and take it away well the only way they could dry our clothes was over a fire and their fuel was a water buffalo dung chips so I mean that's how our clothes were dried over the smoke and heat of water buffalo crap so and there again you get used to it you don't even notice that it's a clean clean clothes to you you know also the ship so we're getting closer to the dock a huge crowd signs and all kinds and then you pull into the dock and it's like what did we do wrong they're yelling and swearing and spitting and big signs baby killers and go back to where you came from we don't want you I got hit I got hit by a orange and I picked it up and I thought boy what I love to have had that in Vietnam and here they are throwing eggs and stuff at us and we didn't know why what we weren't we weren't caught up in that craze back home on the Vietnam avoid Vietnam and the draft and I guess I was when I was at the time I was joining but excuse me I was a little oblivious to it but at home you know he got off the airplane and you know they didn't have the tubes that came out it was the stairs and my family was there and I had got in the car my father went the wrong way on 91 and we ended up in Springfield instead of going down at the Hartford but that was fine yeah it was nice it just seems so funny well I yeah I was going to Greenfield Community College and I was renting a room in Greenfield $9.00 a week and weekends living in Ashfield with good friends and so you might say that my my residence actually was in Asheville and yes I joined when I joined the Marine Corps it was from Asheville but my family was living in Connecticut and that's where I finished high school in Connecticut and then went back to Ashfield and lived with the riches while I pretended to take engineering civil engineering have you stayed in touch with any of your friends from the Marine Corp I didn't for many many years just totally lost contact and then through the third recon battalion Association and they found me and then through that association they knew of others and we're trying to find everyone who was in third recon and I did find the the guy who the little short Mexican and that was had our rear security with the m79 he lives in Phoenix Arizona and I did get in contact with him I got in contact with our point man who lived in Tennessee but he had spent most of his life in Oregon Oregon in the logging industry and he was pretty well used up he didn't he was pretty bad and our team leader from San Diego got in contact with me and I didn't recognize him I did I did meet him he came to Connecticut only four or five years ago and a slim guy who was rugged and tough guy was this huge guy with long hair and a red fat face and I saw Lee Christ you know I he had had heart attacks and all kinds of problems and he was practically destitute came out here with friends and but he used to call me every Christmas Eve for years and years he called me every Christmas Eve and we talked on the phone and I haven't heard from him in a about two years so who knows he and the guy from Phoenix you know I mean he he was a long-haul tanker truck driver heavy into drugs and marijuana our little Mexican m79 guy who'd that amazed me and he found God and and he went through found a church and went through a course in marriage counseling and he's a marriage counselor so and they have a reunion every year which I don't go to no my wife and I came very close to going to the one in Washington DC in 2002 but my dad passed away right at the time and in cleaning the house and everything I shattered my heel and ankle and just a few days before we were scheduled to leave and we couldn't go look no we haven't been to any of them I did yes I did and I I went back to Hartford State Technical College and an amazing thing happened all of the problems I had with understanding math and I don't know what it was but I was a changed person I got it I don't know if it was maturity or something but you know I I got nothing but solid DS all the way through every math course I ever took and trigonometry suddenly became easy you know I could fly through all the stuff on a slide room well I took a one year certificate for land surveying and did so well with that that I stayed and got a degree in civil engineering with strength of materials and all the physics courses and calculus and all of that jazz and because of the land surveying I got a job at Connecticut Light and Power Company in their real estate section and I was a rod man so I'm one of the few people that did not join the utility as a meter reader I joined as a rod man well it's on a it's on a survey crew and they would send a survey crew out to to re-establish the right-of-way or to stake out guy wires for a new pole or or and and that's what I I did and then I was promoted to the insight to oversee draftsman and do the calculations to send the crews out to the field and they needed more people in their gas division and I couldn't see myself getting promoted there anymore so I volunteered and was interviewed and the guy says yeah sure so I went over to Cheshire Connecticut in the energy management services department and became an energy consultant and went to a lot of training and schools and classes and and it was really marketing I did residential if somebody wanted natural gas I'd go deeds figure out how much gas they were going to use and would put a line in and do it and then I got better and better and through my classes and so forth I became an energy consultant and finally I was promoted to a senior energy consultant and handled all of the very largest customers our big manufacturing plants like Pratt and Whitney and and the big companies and solving their energy problems that was the best job I ever had in my life and I set my own schedule made my appointments I knew what I was doing a lot of lunches a lot of public speaking and going to Rotary clubs and every Chamber of Commerce meeting so then northeast utilities split off they were ordered to divest themselves of the gas business and I elected to stay with the electric side and the the new vice president of operations called and invited me to apply to be a marketing one of their three marketing managers so I did went through interview and they selected me to be a marketing manager so all of a sudden I'm working for the new gas company we didn't have a name yet and I had to start interviewing employees and my office was literally a broom closet in the back room at Connecticut Light and Power Company that they were reluctantly giving us gas guys and so I hired eight men had to hire a secretary and took off from there and I had three offices one in Enfield Connecticut one in new one in mystic and one in Danielson and one in Willimantic actually four and we did really well we I went to meet the chief of the Indian nation the Pequots and with their big plans to build a new casino which I thought yeah right well we ended up with a multi-million dollar contract and we got gas into what's now one of the biggest casinos in the world and we got gas to the sub-basin gratin and the Pfizer and they said oh yeah Norma's marketing manager he's the elephant hunter because we brought in the biggest loads ever for the company and then VP called me into his office and invited me to be manager of public affairs so I thought about her over the weekend I took the job so now I'm the corporate spokesperson I became a registered lobbyist in Washington DC and Connecticut I had all the responsibilities format a multi-million dollar budget for advertising I had all the corporate advertising travel all different places in the country the member of the get American Gas Association New England Gas Association I had all of the Department of public utility control responsibilities I had the the the corporate annual report I had to publish every year and the newsletter the the billing inserts that go out every month to every customer bill so I had a lot of hats and discovered that I'm a min wash I'm in Hartford lobbying for a bill that we have a lot of interest in and we have a major gas leak in Waterbury so I'd have to run to Waterbury deal with the press get us out of the press or do what I needed to do to there so I got to be known as a part-time lobbyist so I had to hire a lobbying company to help me and and started through the president of the company told them we can't do it this way and I started divesting myself of some of my duties and when I at the my last job was director of law technically Director of Communications but it was really government affairs and which was mainly lobbying and the governor's office and all the municipal heads and then in 2000 quirk of fate northeast utilities was now able to merge back with the gas company first they were ordered by the SEC to divest themselves from the gas business and then they passed new regulations that said well now you can so when they merge back together I could see the handwriting on the wall and at NU my job was a vice president and the officers at Yankee were being interviewed and not all of them were being accepted and they were just go get a job somewhere else I was a director and at Yankee there were only six people out of six hunt out of 700 that had a bigger job than me there were there were five vice presidents now for vice presidents the president and the CEO they were the only people above me a 10 you would be lucky to keep my job so I asked for a severance package and I went in to see the CEO and I said you owe me big man I made a lot of millions for this company I want her an officer's severance package and they gave it to me I didn't retire I got a severance package what I didn't get was at that time he had to be 55 and 30 years with the company the magic number was 85 you know well I had 30 years I had 27 years of the company now was 55 so I didn't quite make it he wouldn't give it to me and so I didn't get the medical that goes along with the thing so I looked for a job for a while and wasn't everywhere I went geez at your age you ought to just retire or you would be bored with this job where we can't afford to pay you what you were making there it's I know what I'm applying for him so I had some tough luck and so what I did is went back to school training and passed the test and I was became an intern what they call it an intern through the Department of Consumer Protection in Connecticut for home inspector and then I had to get a supervisor and go on a hundred home inspections and do that and go through all of that business and have him and then passed two two exams and then I could be a home inspector so I did and I became a licensed home inspector and had my own business and then did that for a while and then I retired I I've looked up the numbers at Yankee energy and discovered that I could get the maximum retirement so I applied for and I retired and then I had a massive blood clot in my right leg and long story short some of it spun off into my lungs had trouble with my right long went in for major lung surgery and they were able to save the lung at the same time we were selling our home in Harwinton Connecticut and so we sold the home as I'm recovering from lung surgery and we lived for a year with my cousin in Agawam mass and and then we did find a home in New Hampshire so we've been up there about a year and a half now greatly to a great extent I've always been a Marine Corps man and part of its the civil engineer training and the regiment I like planning I like knowing what I'm getting into and the Marine Corps taught me how to think how to reason how to be an individual how to overcome adapt and that's carried through my whole life loyalty and I've used it in everything I've done the training process you know and after doing extensive reading when you get out and figure out what the hell is Vietnam all about anyway you know and yet you start looking at the politics of the world and and the reality of of different governments and how things work and how I fit in to everything I began to understand a lot more about the Marine Corps why they did what they did and how they trained recruits and why and that's really helped me too because I've done an awful lot of volunteer work in in my life a lot of volunteer work and I've used in many times the same principles that I've learned to teach inmates or whoever or to approach meetings and my planning and that sort of thing based on what I learned in the Marine Corps

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 28,882

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

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

Id: n11vCjfgIt0

Length: 78min 16sec (4696 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 18 2014