Interview with Raymond G. Baldwin - Vietnam War Veteran

United States Marine Corps has frankly sergeant I enlisted shortly after high school I attended one semester at Sacred Heart where I did not distinguish myself and I wanted to do actually enlist right after high school but I was 17 and my mother would not let my father sign me up so I had a wait till I turned 18 when listed on my own well I've been asked that before and I grew up in a family where my father my uncle's all my friends fathers had all served in World War two and some in Korea as well and the Vietnam War seemed like the it was our generations war and I felt an obligation to enlist and I thought if you're gonna list and listen the best so I wanted to Marine Corps I actually listed on December 18 1966 and went to boot camp on April 10th 1967 now you went to what Parris Island this well Parris Island we started off actually with I think 85 recruits and we graduated was 8 or 10 weeks later with 55 so they dropped about 30 this was during the Vietnam War when they were looking to get as many recruits out as they possibly could but the training is pretty typical for that error is pretty tough but I had gone through Catholic Grammar School Catholic High School so going to boot camp at Parris Island really didn't faze me all that much the only one I remember Staff Sergeant Anderson was our the head drill instructor in our platoon er Patil 163 we were in the 1st battalion at Parris Island they had old wooden barracks from World War two so yeah that was that was where we trained of he was he was tough but he was he's a pretty fair guy the other junior drill instructors most of them are pretty good there was one corporal that was a little tough I think more so than he needed to be but the Marine Corps just gone through a period in 19 I think 56 where they had actually had a drill instructor drowned about 10 or 12 recruits in the Tidal Basin behind our barracks so the the atmosphere changed somewhat and so they weren't nearly as physical as they probably had been a few years earlier from there we went to Camp Geiger of Camp Lejeune for advanced infantry training and that was another month or six weeks and then from there we went on our different assignments I was slated to be in communication so I went to MCRD San Diego for radio communications training you don't choose anything in the Marine Corps they choose it for you so actually I joined the Marine Corps so I could you know get out of school I wound up testing very high so they put me in communications so I want to actually go back to school in the marine corps for a while absolutely not I had no communication experience at all they felt that that was the MOS that I would be best suited for so I went through radio communications and electronics training out in San Diego I have to say the San Diego is a very nice duty station to be at it's convenient to the airport Lindbergh Field so I had a cousin the second cousin who lived up in San Francisco at the time with four other girls so I used to fly up there at least once a month and they'd take me all over San Francisco and all over the area so it was actually pretty good duty for about ten months about ten months well most of training was basic electronics and communication those of us who finished higher in the class then went on to an advanced communication class where we were trained in crypto technology and didn't do a lot of that over to Vietnam in fact when we all got shipped over to Vietnam most of us got assigned to pretty rudimentary radio communications so we would I was assigned to up in our Tillery battalion over there so we did a lot of fire direction center work and also sometimes case we went out in the field and did a fall work classroom in the beginning and then some practical application afterwards how to actually use the communication equipment how to fix it you know how best to use it the bread and write on a bear in barracks in San Diego which was really nice they had since shortly after we graduated from that class they moved all the communications up to 29 palms in the middle of the desert so I was very happy to have had the opportunity to spend the time at San Diego rather than have to what 229 pounds [Music] yeah we did too had week well actually we had we had to leave after graduation and then we came back and had two weeks of jungle survivor or survival training of the Camp Pendleton other did basic very basic skills of survival the Marine Corps code of conduct enforces code of conduct what happens if you get captured and general survival training I think we were all pretty much assured that almost every one of us is gonna was gonna go to Vietnam this was writing 1968 the early part of 1968 the Tet Offensive had taken was taking place so they were interested in getting as many people overseas as possible they have owners in probably April upon graduation from radial schools yeah but yeah graduation from Radio school then we all got our assignments to do Vietnam now we went as individuals they they needed communications people so there were probably I'm going to guess 40 or 50 of us in communications that flew over at the same time and then once we look we earned Danang or in Okinawa camp Hansen for a while staging and then we got shipped over to to Vietnam to Danang and then from the tang we were quartered there for a couple of days until they found the unit so we were going to be assigned to so once we got into denying all of us and communications got you know sent out to different units for assignment okay now it's only a three or four day stop and it's probably one of the craziest places I've ever been to in my life because everybody at Camp Hansen was either on their way to Vietnam were coming back there were really no rules there there was really not much control and so people were pretty wild there so it was pretty crazy place oh well the first oppression Danang was first of all we know were in a commercial airliner and I all I remember is coming over Danang and they're saying that they were gonna take a steep descent into the airport and they weren't kidding I couldn't believe that a jet could or a commercial jet could almost go vertical to come down to land but they did it to avoid ground fire so it was pretty the flight it was quite an experience you know I'll go to Vietnam and then they opened the door and you came out and then the heat and smell just hit you right in the face no actually this was May of 1968 that I got over there in Danang two or three days and I couldn't wait to get out of Danang because we were billeted at the airport and every night there we got rocketed so you know they were targeting as obviously the aircraft and I just I couldn't wait to get off that get out of those barracks at the airport [Music] then I probably should have rethought my options I'll see a couple year or so ago they sent me to 4th battalion 11th Marines it's an artillery unit and I was just you know stationed basically at headquarters battalion we had 3 e batteries out in the fields kilo Lima Mike batteries on Hill Hill 6555 Hill 10 I think was another one so we would go out to the various batteries and working coordination with the Gunners out there [Music] 100 buddy was there were shared duty so I was technically a radio repair reboot repair and operators so I would go out to the batteries to make sure all the communications is working properly and then while you're out there you stood to share guard duty you went on patrols you went on convoy duty security so you know you did your your day job and then you did the rest of your stuff to us in the field were using a PRC 25 which was the back radio you can carry it on the back was also stationary unit they had some other larger units but for life me I cannot remember their name so then they had crypto equipment which was probably world war two vintage crypto equipment that we were trained on that they had that really didn't work all that well that's pretty dated stuff so it's tough to keep it operational pretty solid radio whoo if you carried it usually carried it with three large batteries one that was operational on two backups if you were fortunate enough to have a lieutenant that was not trying to get you killed he didn't put a whip antenna on it it had two types of antennas with long whip antenna it's about 15 20 feet high and then a tape antenna which was one you could pull down into your strap so you could conceal it a little bit well you did both your shared duties so if you were finished repairing radios and some group was going on in patrol or they had an operation they needed somebody on you went out and he did that in that yes the same generally I was within a within a 20-mile radius of of Danang basically between danang and July Liberty Bridge area you were known others we didn't have barracks we had the best accommodations we had were hooches which were plywood side tin roof places back at headquarters when we got in the field most of this stuff was either crates of ammo boxes you filled with sand and they do it inside of a makeshift good partner probably 70% of it was spent on the field typical day now it wasn't that nine-to-five well typically if you were you were working on your communication stuff during the day there wasn't a lot for us to do during the day unless we had fire missions to to make or one of the Marine infantry units make contact or we had a fire mission that had to be fired on so during the day make sure all your equipment was was good to go because most most of the activity occurred at night so you got done with that you grab some chow maybe grab a little sleep and then you had your guard posted to take care of war if you had to go out on a patrol alone on a patrol at night well if you're lucky nothing nothing happened at all you know you sometimes you get probed sometimes you'd have there be fire fights sometimes most of time good part of the time I have to say really nothing went on but when I went on it was what they call the mad time some I I can't say that I saw it every day by any means but yeah it's awesome you know there was a lot of situations I remember crossing a graveyard and taking fire from the tree line and ducking down behind these makeshift headstones and you know firing back from on top of the it's the cemetery stone into the into the tree line you couldn't see anything to see some muzzle flashes maybe even too much but yeah it was that he had rocketed and order have we had one instance where actually two of the hills I was on once they were overrun but we had people get inside the wire and blow up a motor pool with a couple of guys a couple of our guys were killed yeah mostly mortar and rocketed well it depended one of the bigger Hills was Hill 55 and that was a pretty large hill up there and so there were a lot of artillery units on that location the base camp where we out was Hill 34 there was an Army Army artillery battalion that was attached to us that had 175 guns which were long-range guns and they also had eight inch which were kind of picking circular around the artillery and I was with had 155 self-propelled that people civilians mistake for a tank but it's a self-propelled artillery piece and then what they call one five five toads those are ones actually tell on the back of a truck so different Hills had different configurations some would have as as many as a dozen of these guns some would have you know a few if you went on an operation you were supporting 16 combat operations when I was in Vietnam and sometimes they would hell if the artillery pieces up to a up to a hill up to a the fire base and they would man the fire base for whatever time period time the operation was going on and then take everything back out again well you know somewhere something were short duration somewhere only matter no operations only lasted a few days some lasted you know upwards of a month you know most of the most of the really heavy combat work was done by by our infantry folks they were really squared away guys they were very and they saw the brunt of the action the most part we were just firing support for them they call in artillery or in some cases air support and once occasionally I would be able to feel this radio operator for a forward observer so for observer usually an officer and he would take charge of the situation call and the artillery I would do the call and and so forth you would if you were on a fire base you probably were in and out you know you're out for a while we were in the center I want stories how things happen is they have a fire Direction center so the person out in the field would call in or an infantry unit would call in most often you would have coordinates that were pre registered so if you know a marine and it was going on in a particular area and you knew the area that we're gonna be in would pre-register your fire you know where you they're gonna have to fire out if they make contact and one night in the fire Direction Center I was on the radio there were two marine units that patrol unit said he'd go on out and they were supposed to be paralleling one another at some point one of them crossed into the path of the other one and thought it was the enemy and they started a firefight with each other which was going on for about five or ten minutes which is an absolute lifetime in a firefight five ten minutes is a long time finally one of the radio operators called in who I knew I knew both radio operators one called in calling in artillery on a position and we're just about ready to fire and the second radio wiper called in to call it artillery what he thought was the enemy and I'm we're looking there's it was two of us they were looking at so what we met they're both firing at one another so we told him to check fire check fire you know you're firing at friendlies and so they cease fire and what's amazing a couple things are amazing one is that we were able to stop at the second once nobody got hit so nobody got hit and has five or ten-minute fire fighters so that was that was one of those moments we called in you know there was really pre determination by the by where the field commander was as to how close the artillery was to commit obviously you don't want to hit friendly so but if they were really really close you called him pretty tight to their unit maybe I kinda knew that and the North Vietnamese knew that too so they figured as close as they could get to the two to one of the Marine units more the armed units then artillery was rendered pretty much useless they couldn't couldn't do that we gather calm pretty close we have six six guys our unit were killed yeah one in particular I remember we actually came back off of patrol and we were we're done with the patrol and we had left our gear by a kind of a dirty pond at the bottom of the hill and had one of the new guys watch our radio watch my radio watch our rifles and I hear and so forth why we went in cleaned up this pond and don't forget it there was a village there and I watches this eight or nine year old kid came running up to the marine that was sitting here I don't remember his name and he was wanting to just caught me that caught my eye and he threw a grenade and then ran off and killed the guy and we were all the rest of us were all the water pretty helpless so we jumped up right away the guys came down off the hill I don't think they ever adopted the kid that was not uncommon regulation uh just a pretty standard ones the Vietnam campaign Vietnam service that old life in terms of getting getting these across the gallantry Combat Action Ribbon well was all by letters there were no no emails no cell phones so was all letters and that was probably one of the most important parts of the day this mail call it may help it was pretty pretty cool if you had a girlfriend she was nice enough proof you money I blow up that made a big difference to I wasn't too bad if I knew I was gonna be on the field I would write letters in advance to my my parents and date them out and then have somebody put him in the mailbox you know every other day or so yeah I guys yeah it was pretty good yeah well if you were at our headquarters battalion wasn't it wasn't bad you would get hot meals on the field oh yeah you'd get three males two meals a day when you're you're back at base camp in the fields you know it could go anywheres from one hot meal a day and the rest C rations or you're on sea rations all the time well we've had you know they can you have bacon and eggs or ham and eggs you had cans of fruit you had packed the cigarette jet pack it's a chocolate trying to think of some of the other meals just spaghetti and meatballs you know everybody would fight for the fruit everybody wanted to prove the peaches and peaches were a big one nobody wanted to ham and lima beans they had a very they had a bit at a very vulgar term for ham and lima beans food they had feet just sticks out in my mind though peaches pears no actually no not really we were pretty well supplied the only time I could never remember it was funny when I was about 12 years old I was in the Boy Scouts and we run on a camper and then their scout master took us on a very very long hike and we had our canteens and we we all drank our water we were all thirsty because we still have a long way to go and he set us down for a lesson he said look there's two lessons to be learned here one is always conserve and prepare and know what you're gonna do the second is there's for every problem there's a solution so he said on everybody to pick up a very small stone clean it up as best you can and put it underneath your tongue and that'll keep you salivating so you won't be thirsty and so we did that and it worked out well well seven years later outposts in Vietnam and we didn't get resupply we didn't have water so I said the guy say look you know pick up a little stone wash it off put it underneath your tongue and it'll help you salivate of course I got ridiculed a bit for that but ones that tried it say hey yeah it really works it works out very well so I had was called the thoughta Boy Scout that was it and it expletive for Boy Scout photos but it worked it was kind of funny that seven years later the Boy Scout experience helped out how did you stress you know everybody was kind of in the same boat and you're watching out for you know the other guy you were with it's the reason they send nineteen-year-olds over to Vietnam because they tend not to have the same fear factor you certainly were afraid you know I can't say you were not afraid anybody says they weren't afraid but ya know I can't say that I did anything special music was a big thing everybody everybody had tape recorders that they at least did I think cassette tapes were probably involved then so mostly cassettes occasionally there be USO show that would come in so you have to go USO show so I saw a Bob Hope show around Christmas of 1968 in frite what's called Freedom Hill Hill 327 he came in and we were we were probably about a thousand yards away from the stage but Joey Heatherton was there and aunt Margaret so that was kind of cool I actually got to go in our in our to Australia so I went to Sydney Australia for R&R that was 7 days and it was fantastic the Australian people are probably the nicest people in the world and they they treated us so well you couldn't go into a bar where they'd let you buy a drink the women were very friendly and the weather was beautiful there was one or two other guys I went with but you know there was a planeload of us two went there in fact I think we're among the first to go to Australia and are an artist is January 1969 and I remember that because they had just finished the Opera House in Sydney Harbor had just been completed yeah I go in there opera house that was not about this my list of things to do I'm for the most part of the officers we had were pretty squared away they were pretty good I know issues with any of our officers well I would just know how great a bunch of guys are rather serve with there's about a half a dozen of us to stay in touch in fact we went down to the dedication of the Vietnam statue in 1984 and there was five of us that that met from all over the country Oklahoma Arkansas New York State after New York State Wilding yes yeah yeah there's yeah we're on with email makes it really easy so there's there's still about the six of us to stay in touch and what am I gonna go see in less than a week Cody Wyoming Marines tour duty in Vietnam was 13 months so I was I was there for the full 13 months I lost that tape on June 18 to 1969 there never was like being a short plank or leading up to everybody had a short-timer calorie even if you're there in country two days you had a short-timer calendar and so yeah everybody kept track of it you know in the beginning it really didn't matter much at all you didn't pay any attention really to the calendar until you started getting you know over the hump and you had you saw the end was coming I remember there was a certain amount of sadness leaving the guys that were there because you know we didn't go over as a unit and we didn't go back as a whole unit you know went back you know a couple of guys at a time so yeah I was you know it's kind of sad in a way because you'd spent 13 months pretty close with these guys than you were gonna leave them and you know by largely what I see him again flyback reps right to Camp Hansen again yeah survive camp Anson landed El Toro Air Station in California no I wasn't discharged I would still had plenty of time left in service so I then el Toro and I took a flight out of I think LA to come back home I was 20 or 30 days leave I remember coming back and it was kind of it was in the middle of the night it was like I got a did bridge board around 12:00 1:00 o'clock it's a cab up to about a mile or two from my house and then half the cab driver dropped me off and I just walked along my hometown home just to kind of get the feel of things I was it was I needed that time just to get it's funny what growing up my father was the very devout Catholic used to go to a church st. Theresa's church about two miles from our house and I remember walking with him on you know Blizzard's you know he'd always go on a Sunday if it was obliterated and care who's gonna go and I used to walk along with him so there's about a two mile walk and it was you know it's kind of quality time so I had the cabbie dropped me off at the church and then I walked from there to my house and surprised my parents loved one or two o'clock in the morning they know I was coming home you know a couple of things couple thing that I remember very vividly about that time one is uh the night before I left to go to Vietnam I'm one of my best friends I grew up with two daughters away from me we went to grammar school in high school together and Wow we double-dated and all that he had gone over to Vietnam a couple months before me and he was killed the night before I left to go over I thought where's his family found out that he had been killed the night before I left to go over so all of a sudden became not so much an adventure as this no this is real stuff so coming back home I knew I have to face see his family and that was difficult they couldn't have been nicer mark glad to see me I was still I was very tough Robert Vesco so why did you do that yeah one of the things that really helped during that period of time was another high school close high school friend of mine came back from Vietnam we didn't know it we didn't know we were coming back at the same time we came back then probably 15 20 minutes of each other and so we kind of we kind of hung together the whole time we were on leave you know it's it was too much of a jump and that short period of time to come from Vietnam back to back home you had nobody to talk to so you kind of stayed very close that that time I'll never forget another high school friend of ours Ron Barnaby his father owned a big construction company and owned a huge cabin cruiser and found out that we were back and he had us come down and I'll never forget that he took us on the bogie he had cases of beer took a silver report Jeff had a big lobster dinner I mean he just went out of his way for for us whenever I got stationed at Camp Lejeune place called Courthouse Bay signed to second half track battalion I was a charge of communications for the ham track battalion and I I was one of the few guys in the outfit there was a few of us but not there was more newer recruits there than veterans there and one the top sergeant there said you know this we were 25 miles from main side of the base so we're middle of nowhere I said you know you don't really stay here so I'll give you a choice I'll send you do Marine Corps barracks Honolulu Marine Corps barracks Washington DC or you go on a Mediterranean cruise for the Sixth Fleet so I immediately took the six bleep cruise going to the prospect of going out to Kauai and I would be too close to going back to Vietnam Washington DC in 1969 was not a place for anybody the military to be in fact we were put on call at one point time for the protest up in Washington you prospected having to go up there and do anything with you know probably some of our friends were in the crowd was not something many of us wanted to do so going on the Med Cruise was a great way to decompress six months that was probably the most six months the most fun I've had six months of fun I had in my entire life the only problem was getting over there we were on of the USS walk hit what keep him County was an LST and it took us 17 days across the Atlantic an LST yeah and I don't think it was meant to do that but we did we crossed it and four days was so rough they couldn't open the mess hall somebody how to eat C rations Rebecca and C rest but once we got in the Med it was great we had we went to Spain France Italy Greece Malta we had landing operations in Sardinia and Corsica and course go we had joint operations for the French Foreign Legion but ya know I'm travelling around here it was a lot that was great mostly bread listen to music it was if the weather was good were up on top of the deck doing PT or you know whatever they do you had maybe two your Brady equipment was good if you had too much steam to burn off we would box down in the tank deck sailors and Marines always found a reason to fight so we go down the tank deck box came back to Camp Lejeune and I don't think I was there very long I had just enough time to maybe go for a short tour back to Vietnam but the mornings was starting to get pulled out at that time so I wound up going to the career planning officer and finding out what opportunities there were any said of you if you join police department they'll pay for college for you you know for every two years spent up this department to pay for a year of college there was a [Applause] but not this was separate and apart from the GI Bill it's called the Omnibus safe streets Act 1968 and so I rolled the University of New Haven when I got back and in criminal justice program and was accepted on the New Haven and Trumbull Police Department the same day so I took the Trumbull Police Department and did my undergraduate degree well I was on the department then what the law schooling at my law degree oh yeah I mean the difference in that four years was tremendous I mean if I had stayed in college right out of high school I would have probably barely maintained the C average and I certainly would have gotten into law school but when I came back I was truly mo I was motivated and certainly more mature so it was on the Dean's List through college and then well a guy was able to do both so the safe streets act like they said for every two years on Police Department forgave one year of college so the money I got for the GI Bill actually helped pay the mortgage on the house sometime in August 1970 yeah I do actually I thought it was really pretty neat they there was a couple of us who were getting out and they had a platoon formation all the other units we served with this is a Camp Lejeune courthouse Bay and they the commanding officer of our came out get a nice speech about us and wished us well in civilian life and you know it was pretty they did a really nice job of seeing us off some I do remember at that time the probably the biggest issue that was going I was a lot of racial there's a lot of racial tension service having all the branches and service but so they had her fair share down there and it was a very difficult time because in Vietnam it served with a lot of you know african-american guys and they were great and they're the you know we're still I still stay in touch with one it was difficult coming back you know things changed the country was changing there was a lot happening in 1969 it wasn't pretty and so it was a good time to get out because was getting very very ugly because changing the country you know why I was II didn't I didn't feel like like I said that that leads from Vietnam the guys name was Russ Benjamin and if it hadn't been for him I don't know you know I probably would've made it through I'm not gonna be overdramatic about it but it would have been extraordinarily difficult to to be at home you couldn't talk to anybody about the experiences and I really couldn't wait to get back to a duty station you know to be around the same guys again so it was it was very uncomfortable and you felt very much out of place like I said I rolled in college actually it was it was a few of us that were Vietnam veterans you know people nobody we're trying to grow our here as quickly as we could so that nobody would you know associate us this Vietnam there's nobody aside from those of us were nobody we didn't talk about it with anybody else we didn't want anybody to know in college did you stay on as a trouble officer while you get your law degree yes I stay I was on the Trumbull Police Department for 14 years I did I joined the law firm and I practiced and about the same time became involved in politics practice for about little shy of 20 years and it was elected first selecting her mayor of my town Trumbull eight years well I enjoyed it I liked to the I liked the action I'd like to what the people and the party Democratic Party in trouble we're doing for the community I thought they were doing a lot of positive stuff and I just wanted to make sure the town grew in the right way you know you know the guys I served with were really good guys really solid guys and still do anything for any of them and I'm very proud to have served in the Marine Corps there was a transition period probably for three to five years after Vietnam that you know you didn't talk about it really was kind of a difficult transition time wasn't quite sure why and then there's something going on but I didn't know what but I just was not I don't know just something was wrong it's coming to terms with it didn't come until much much later probably in the last 15-20 years it's you know I've been able to come out and speak about it and be comfortable with it yeah I came back and I joined the VFW American Legion was populated primarily by World War two and Korean veterans and frankly at that time they weren't all that comfortable with Vietnam veterans and their meetings they mostly drank a lot and argued more than others so it wasn't they were good guys and they certainly served but there wasn't beyond just talking about their military experience it wasn't it wasn't something else they were doing again yeah I support of still a member of the American Legion and VFW they still do you know some really great work but it just wasn't that kind of an organization for me on the other side was the Vietnam some of the Vietnam veterans groups at the time were pretty extreme and I didn't relate to them either so I've kind of somewhere in the middle as we're a good number of guys in fact when we dedicated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Trumbull we've kind of made a big deal about it invited people to to come to the dedication and I was seeing it and I said you know at the end I said you know with all the Vietnam veterans in attendance please stand by the flagpole and there's probably 30 or 40 guys came out of crowd guys I had known in town for 25 years 30 years never knew that they were in a military let alone in Vietnam and you know at that time everybody started sharing experience so it was Thoris for everybody we there there actually was a Beautification Committee and a woman's last name was havea I can't think of her first name right now but she approached dr. John Willis who was an army surgeon in Vietnam who was wounded and I about doing some fundraising to put together a Vietnam Veterans Memorial and so we've got some grants and we raised some money and we had we had this park built and we had a bridge going over the river the chronic liver built in honor of the six Vietnam veterans from Trumbull it would have been killed and we had a small sign that was up there which was a replica of a Vietnam Vietnam campaign ribbon and a friend of mine dick Condon who would never he served in the Army to peacetime but he drove by it one day said you know that's not a fitting enough memorial for this part and with his own money paid for a beautiful granite monument that's still in place you know he's in place now it's really is his gorgeous is very very nicely done we really haven't had any reunions now I have not I visited with a few of the guys and seeing them but we have not had a formal reading the closest thing we had to that was the dedication of the Vietnam Monument the statue down in Washington DC when they built first built the Vietnam Memorial none of us were really particularly crazy about that or the design we were thinking something more traditional so none of this went down to the dedication of the monument itself we went down to see the statue of the three servicemen that were it's adjacent to the monument but once we got down there and saw it it just blew us away and you know we kept we were there for three or four days and you know we'd be back at our hotel room and had some I'm gonna go outside for a smoke or something they would disappear and go down to the memorial just sit there and all of us were doing it but nobody was telling anybody else that they were doing it and it's it's pretty compelling how do you military service I think for the most part very very positively as I said it certainly motivated me educationally terms of being more mature and getting my degrees and I don't think we've accomplished any of that having not been in the service it taught me how to think and act well under very difficult situations not to panic is you know I've met some tremendous friends who last a lifetime affected one of the story side I think I told you about the marina was killed and a young boy threw the grenade like I said there was a whole bunch of us in communications that had gone over at the same time it got separated but we stayed in pretty much in touch with one another and so you know the old game telephone somebody says something gets passed around and the word got back to everybody that the not that the radio got blown up but the radio operator was killed in that incident so I rotated back to the States and this one friend of mine Tom Brennan who had gone through boot camp with Parris Island from New Jersey and went to radio school with in San Diego he thought I'd been killed so again he groups later about every year around Marine Corps Birthday you have too many beers and you get on the phone trying to reach out to people and after 15 years had gone through the phonebook of Montclair New Jersey for Brennan's I finally got his mother and told her who I was and said he lives in Sparta New Jersey so I called his house and got his wife and I said that's who I was he gets on the phone he started screaming I don't know this is this is down Carrie Lou is not a funny joke this is rape walden was killed fifteen years ago I was a friend of mine so for 15 years he thought I was dead and then I convinced him I wasn't and we got together and my my wife and I went down to visit him and his family and he was a burly guy still a tough guy and he put a bear hug on the others gonna crack my ribs she was so happy to see me thought it was dead for 15 years so that's one of those stories that come with it probably none repeatable on a tape but now the you know I think the Vietnam veteran served his country extraordinarily well and with dignity and the representation was made of them post-war I think was a very unfair characterization they have been very very successful generally speaking and in business and just about every professional walk of life they could be in statistics bear this out that they they earn more they're they're good employees good leaders and I think that experience had a lot to do with it they didn't lose the war the government

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 3,868

Rating: 4.6078429 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam, Veteran, Interview, Connecticut, Marine, USMC, 4th Battalion, 11th Marines

Id: JboZ4j5-YC8

Length: 58min 24sec (3504 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2017