Interview with William Dean Kleinert, a Vietnam Era Veteran. CCSU VHP

you're right I left as a staff sergeant before and when did you serve I went in active duty on Valentine's Day February 14th 1969 and I left on January 13th 73 well both I had started law school in the fall of 68 in 1968 when I was a senior and making my plans you could get a deferment for graduate school in February of that year the national security council met and decided they needed to end the deferments for graduate school because of the need to get more people for the draft so I went ahead I didn't know what to do I went ahead with the plans I had made I'd gotten into law school so I started law school in September and I got a draft notice about six weeks later and I checked all my options and it turned out that if I could go into the Air Force on what they called a delayed enlistment plan and join the inactive reserves by the date of my and that I was scheduled for the draft that I could avoid the draft and and choose the service that I wanted to go into that's what I did and my original draft date was November 20th so I went to the induction Center in New Haven on November 20th 1968 I guess it was actually and signed up for the inactive reserve for the Air Force and the deal was that you got to pick the specialty the training special you would go into and that you would start your active duty within four months of the time so I I enlisted and then just left and went home everybody else went off the service I just left and went home and then they told me they contacted me you know about two months later and said you have to report for active duty on February 14th within that timeframe oh yeah I knew it I knew it at the outside it would have been four months it was about three months so you just knew that was that was coming give you a little bit of time to make plans well I was living in New York City I was in I was at school so I was going to school I had an apartment over in the East Village and whisky the law school was down around Washington Square in New York but my home of record was Connecticut so all the draft activity and the enlistment went through the induction Center in New Haven yes yeah why did you join why did I join as as opposed to going to Canada there were a lot of options those days I certainly didn't support the Wars very much opposed to it and there was a lot of speculation what what would you do I actually the Barbara Walters stepson was in school with me at NYU and I remember one of the more radical proposals that we would form impacted and shoot each other in the foot so that we could avoid service that one didn't sound too practical there was you know the I didn't really feel I was a conscientious objector because that time that really was defined as being based on religious formal religious beliefs and I didn't feel with any integrity that I could make that claim I just felt on a humanistic basis that the war wasn't right I could have gone to Canada but I felt that had so many implications for the rest of my life I really wasn't comfortable doing that so I tried to make the best of it and pick the Air Force because I thought it would have the the least chance of getting me on the on the front lines and it would be the least amount of danger in a frankly a very dangerous time happy the choice of the air force well I have a wonderful story about that on the day that I went down for enlisting in in the inactive reserve the day I would have been drafted they have an induction ceremony where all the people who are going into the service are inducted at one time you go into the the induction room it's a wonderful military scenario it's it's a room fairly empty with lines painted on the floor and you line up on one of these various lines and the enlistment oath is painted on the wall with blanks left eye blank for your name you know that enlist in thee and it's left so if you're in the Air Force you say Air Force if you're in the Marines or say Marines you know and everybody does this all together and I had figured that if I was going to be drafted I would have gone into the army and while I wasn't in great physical shape and I you know had no idea how it would actually go through the rigors of that training I figured well it's you know it's the army but when we got into the room as we were about to take the oath a marine drill sergeant came in and he said I need seven Marines today who are the draftees and all the draftees had to raise their hands and he just went down the line and randomly picked seven of them so people who had arrived at New Haven thinking they were going to Fort Dix for army training ended up marching off to Parris Island and I think if that had happened to me I would have fallen over dead on the spot so that was always sort of in the back of my mind did I make the right choice well that that that was a frame of reference why did something I think you told us why you picked the airforce do you recall your first days in service yes well first of all when I when I got to New Haven we've had a very bad snowstorm in New England was one of those things that had shut down everything for a week so what you did was to sign in at New Haven there was a physical and a certain amount of processing that you had to go through and then you you got ready and you had to take a bus down to Kennedy Airport as a group once you once you had been sworn in and they had taken the information you were sent off as a group down to Kennedy Airport to fly to training which was in Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio so you know there was the hassle of getting to New Haven with with the snow and stuff I got there and I think I got there in time to eight o'clock in the morning but it seemed to take them till around one o'clock to get us ready to get on the bus and then it took four hours to get to Kennedy because of the the snow and the traffic so we left on our flight somewhere around six or seven and actually never got to Laughlin till about eleven o'clock at night and of course you're just greeted at the bus and they begin this whole process of just stripping away your humanity of this this indoctrination period so they just take took us and took us the barracks and just said get into bed we everybody's just sort of crashed and in the morning the next day the whole thing started when you get to basic training on a wing on a weekend as we did Friday night and ended up Saturday nothing formally begins until Monday so you're still organized into flights about fifty guys will all live in a barracks and you do everything together very regimented lifestyle so the first part of it we we sort of begin and finding out how to fallout how to get in line how to March but we didn't have our uniforms we look like everybody else on the base was marching around in uniforms we hadn't had our hair cut off we hadn't we still had this ragtag civilian clothes so you really stuck out everybody sort of pointed you so the that wasn't you know it was sort of a shock but it wasn't the Monday morning when everything really got going and you realized the the stress and the severity of the whole process you were going to go through basic training basic training Oh lots of things yes actually I felt that that the main person that we had but boot camp in the Air Force was six weeks it wasn't as long as some of the others he was I would have said an older person obviously younger than I am now I think he probably was in his early 40s he was Stern but but I had a feeling he was basically fair with whereas some of the other instructors should have had a mean streak I didn't I didn't feel he had that he could be a real pain but you know I at some level I felt there was a reasonableness to him I remember one of the things that really concerned me was just being able to make it through the processes that I wasn't in real good physical shape going into it I've always been sort of overweight as a kid and never never into athletics and there was a physical training requirement and probably the least rigorous of all the services but we did series of exercises and to get out of basic training you did have to do a certain number of push-ups a certain number of sit-ups and you know run some distance within a reasonable timeframe and there was a graduated training program so in physical training everyday you would start off with 10 repetitions and the next week it was 12 so you could you could work your way up but even at that it was it was hard for me so I was really concerned I used to do extra push-ups and things at night because if you fell behind in in the progress you're supposed to be making they would pull you out of your group and put you into one that was a week behind so in other words if it was supposed to be six weeks if you couldn't do the push-ups it might take you seven weeks at week four you might be pulled out and say okay repeat group four with this whole new group of people of course that's stressful because you know there's some comfort and getting to know the people so you'd have to meet a whole new group of people and then just think it's gonna go on longer you know I want to get out of here so that was one of the things for me the the press to make sure I could could keep up either yeah I stayed with the flight was able to do that it was tremendously regimented and to me it well the whole purpose of basic training I think is to get you to stop thinking as an individual and start thinking as part of a group so I guess my basic operating philosophy in life is if you try to do the right thing and show that you're making an effort people will recognize that and try and work with you well that's not what they're doing there no matter what you do they want to make you feel you're wrong so they'll break your individual spirit and make you feel like you're part of the group and until you begin to realize it the whole thing seems totally irrational and antagonistic and I think there was there was a point when I when I got there first of all I could never believe that I was actually going to be in the military I mean I I just never conceived of myself as someone who could you know even meet the physical requirements and I kept thinking they'll see this you know they've you know they've obviously made a stupid mistake and at some point they're going to realize we don't want him we don't there's no way that you're gonna be able to do this and and they'll send you home and at some point you realize that's not gonna happen did no this is it well yeah I mean it was like about the third or fourth day and you know it said you know I this is it and I'm in this and it's gonna be four years and it was like no you're I was 22 a lot of people are 18 at that point but you know he's young and four years seems like a lifetime and there was my reaction at that point was complete depression I mean I was walking around hoping a lightning bolt would hit me I mean I really I was I was just so overwhelmed by this that I just wanted something to come along and end my existence and then I think it was somewhere you know within the first week or go so someone did in one of the classes sort of explained the idea that why it was so important to to feel that you were part of the group and had to follow the rules explicitly I think the example they use that if you were an aircraft mechanic for instance and the manual required that on f4 a certain bolt had to be tightened to a certain you can't stop and think about that you have to know that if that's what the manual tells you to do you have to do it no matter what happens and I could begin to see the logic of that and I guess it but it helped me to accept it which Wars did you service well I was a vietnam-era veteran now now what what happened actually I didn't realize there were two stages to basic training that you know it was six weeks and I thought oh boy I'm getting out of it it was interesting it was punctuated by sort of inappropriate holidays I went in on Valentine's Day and left on April Fool's Day and and what happens basic training is it's six weeks it's how to salute what the regulations are it really doesn't prepare you to do anything it doesn't vocationally it's it's simply the indoctrination to military life and the second part of it is you go to your skill training and that can be anything from a six week program to almost a full year program depending on you know if you're going I think some of the munitions programs you were actually like a 42 week training program when I went in part of my deal in this delayed enlistment program for the Air Force was that I was selected to go into photography as lab lab technician emotionally I was supposed to work in was still photography but it switched to motion picture photography you're gonna be trained no well they know they they gave me a choice I mean it's kind of odd when somebody sits down I tested very well when when you go in as part of the elicit process they do a series of tests they've had four categories electrical mechanical general and engineering I don't know they're you know range of them and you know I tested well very well and could go into any one of the ones I wanted to so they said well what do you want to do and you know it's as well what do you have you know it's kind of hard to make a choice and then they also fill out have you fill out a form with what what what you did in high school what courses you took what your hobbies were and I put down the photography been on a hobby so that's how they selected that I would would go into motion picture photography my brother for example sort of faced the same situation he was 18 months older than I was he had worked in a hospital he went into hospital administration as his field and he while he was in college he had worked in a hospital in Baltimore in the personnel office so of course they tapped him for hospital administration well the skill training was a 12-week course and and these skill there are several these training bases around the country the photography program was run out of lowry airbase on the outskirts of Denver so on April 1st I left Texas and went and of course you feel like you're getting out of basic training and you're so thankful to get out of there you get on the plane and and go up there and then you get to the airport and and Lowry and bang someone hit you said you start yelling at you again and you go into this same kind of indoctrination it was it was very regimented I was in my class met in two separate time slots they it was almost a 24-hour operation school was six hours a day and there was one set of classes from 6:00 a.m. to noon a second one from noon to 6:00 p.m. and a third one 6:00 p.m. to midnight so you were either on the a B or C shift and lived your life accordingly if you were on the a shift you got up at 4:30 in the morning and and again you lived in a barracks the the the barracks and basic training was just to open bays that half the guys lived downstairs and half the guys lived upstairs and in a big room with with a line of consonant once we got to Lowry again they looked like sort of World War 2 era wood frame buildings but this one was divided up into four person rooms so you'd have them downstairs it was central hall and there were rooms off each side with four four guys in each room but but you still functioned as as a barracks so at 4:30 you had to fall out there was a procedure you had to get dressed you had to leave the room in inspection order so there were you had to make sure the bed was made very certain specifications everything was dusted everything was lined up where it needed to be your shoes were in a certain order then you had common duties that you had to do he had to make sure the halls were swept the latrines were clean and you know that those and you get all those things done and then you'd fall out so maybe you you the lights would go on at 4:30 someone will come in throw the switch and everything was suddenly light and you begin this frenetic activity to do all these things get dressed he has to get into the bathroom at the same time you know and get out there and then you fall out at five o'clock out in front of your barracks and then all the other barracks are also falling out so you have this whole collection of of maybe well you let's let's say you've got 40 guys in the barracks and-and-and 10 barracks in your area so you got 400 people who then all warm up in the Phalanx and you march to chow which was about oh I don't know how far there maybe a quarter mile down so so you march down and then you line up and you fall out one by one and you go from your formation right into the food line and march through the food line get your food and then you go out to a table when you get into huge cafeteria you would if if there was no empty table you would you would go to an empty table and you'd hold up your hand and the next four three people would have to go to that table until the table was filled then you sat down and the next person went to an empty table that you see say they're very regimented you eat you know why you at least you could talk while you ate and then you had like maybe between your eating and and a little break time you maybe had 10 minutes but then you had to fall in again outside the chow hall and you all marched over to the school in the same exact oh yes yes yeah and it was all arranged by height though there was a whole procedure taller tap you would line up and if you were taller than the person in front of you you tapped and you know so you get this thing and and it would column before and you did this March and and and then when you had to get in a single line the left column went first and then the right said so then we would all March over to school and then we break up when we go actually school was relaxing cuz you know that was it was actually I enjoyed the school it was fun and then you know at 12 o'clock school was over you formed up again and you marched back to the chow hall and you had lunch and then you had some free time to go to the BX but then you had to you know at 1:15 you had to form up again and then you marched back to the barracks and you had a work detail and then you would do when the work detail was over then you had an hour for studying or something like that but then you had to fall in and march back to to the chow hall have supper and then march home and then you had maybe an hour to clean the barracks and divisions you you were in bed by 9:00 o'clock at 8:30 or 9:00 was was lights out now the the good thing about that as opposed to basic training basic training it was seven days a week this at least you had the weekends off so this was like essentially Sunday night you know at nine o'clock you felon and Friday night you know at six o'clock you know when you when you came back from your work you know you were released and then you were then you're on your own oh yeah oh yeah yeah and actually I the sort of I think the first or second weekend I was at the base I went down to I don't know if you know Denver at all the sort of the main drag is Colfax Avenue that runs to the town it was a couple blocks off the base and I found a used car dealership and this was like 1969 I bought in 1960 Corvair three hundred and fifty dollars it was you know basically four-door thing and so I and Colorado was beautiful I mean I really loved and I went up in the mountains and explored and things like that the other nice thing about it was that they never inspected the cars so you know everything in your room had to be you know folded and clean and you know so your junk you just throw in the trunk of the car he worried about it was sort of an escape valve for that so yeah that actually are you asked about the the the instructor for boot camp the guy we had as the at the squadron not not at the photo school but but the guys we had at the squadron were more the kind of nasty irrational hard asses so that was a little bit unpleasant but basically everybody got along that was it was a fairly decent time and then that finished in August and I was following that I was assigned to Vandenberg Air Force Base there was a photo lab Vandenberg is out north of Santa Barbara it's in California it's about Oh 150 miles north of Los Angeles and 350 miles south of San Francisco it's beautiful too open country it's actually the Pacific Missile Range it's where they fire missiles from the from the west coast a lot it was a Strategic Air Command base one of the what they did that was the time when we had all the missiles planted all over the country to shoot at the Russians in these bunkers and periodically you had to test so if you were in North Dakota you know and and assigned to to be a missile squadron out there periodically you'd have to test your missile so you your number would call up and you picked up your missile and put it on the truck and came out to California and you shot it off and then because you didn't want to waste anything you'd shoot it way down in the Pacific and then there was a detachment the Navy had down at Johnson eight Hall and they took practice and shooting them down fortunately none of these were armed I don't think they were armed and and so that was the the other part of the game but it was it was a huge bit have had coastline very bad tides you couldn't go swimming because there were really bad rip tides but it was beautiful piece of real estate I found it very tranquil after all this training and I was I was there for about got there and run around Labor Day and I was there for about two months September and October and there was an opportunity or I got assigned to go back to Colorado for a second training course it's sort of an advanced level course and I should have realized what was happening it was called calm dog combat photo but it was it was sort of the same thing we did and you know how to process the movie film and so I and I was looking forward to it I enjoyed California but I really wasn't making much money as an airman I think after I I traded the old Corvair in for a newer Corvair and had it had quite an adventure getting out to California the starter motor gave out right outside Las Vegas and yeah the car was old so I traded in and you know they said well you know you've got a salary now you can go to the credit union get a loan so I did that and I think after paying the loan and and my other expenses I had about nine dollars a week to live on me all your food was was provided you know through the through the chow hall and gasps did costs 25 cents a gallon and you know prices were different but I didn't have a lot of money so you know I like being out there but didn't have that much freedom so I went back to Colorado and I remember one day while at lunchtime while we were doing this school we walked over to this point you didn't have to March anymore either when you went back for these upper-level schools you were treated more like a guest scholar if you will and we just had a an informal we lived in the in the barracks but it wasn't as nearly a structured as as it had been the first time your time was your own and we walked over to the mailroom after lunch southern fellow who'd gone out with me from California and he got a letter from somebody else back in the in the squadron at Vandenberg and he's we're walking along and he's reading this letter he's going and comes to the line says oh me Jones mr. Toth got orders for Vietnam today or me meet Johnson Clinard got orders that's the first I heard of it you're reading this letter from this friend of mine that I had gotten waters to go over to Saigon yeah well I wasn't happy but you know I think I understood what was happening a little bit more first of all the photo field was fairly narrow I mean it was you know what it wasn't like 5,000 people or anything like that so I knew the detachments that we had over in Vietnam I knew we had the main photo lab at Thomson Hood which is the Air Force Base the headquarters based right right at you know part of Saigon there was another major facility up in Danang fairly close to the DMZ and I knew that one was more risky people liked it I never could understand it they said it was a beautiful spot and people liked the service over there but they were forever getting shelled so that that that didn't seem to be too cool to me and then we also had bases in Thailand and there and that was pretty good service but when I found out that I was getting my orders to Thomson Hood you know I I knew I had some sense of what to expect that it was the headquarters base that was fairly well protected you know I knew some of the people who were there I mean basically what they were doing were training of all of us so they had to have a cadre of people who could rotate because your service and Vietnam was a year and then you could come back so you had to have some place in the States to work Wow while you're waiting for it to be your turn to go over there and and staff the labs over there so I wasn't I wasn't quite as flipped out about it as as if I'd been in the Army I knew I was gonna go over there and go out in the front lines and slosh around through the jungles that was probably right around this time of the year mid no I think it was actually early December and I was going over in writing around the 1st of February oh yeah well the whole process was kind of interesting for one thing I I went home for Christmas back to Connecticut and I decided I wasn't going to tell anyone because you know I mean I guess I had a sense of what it was going to be and you know I I think sort of a realistic sense and I knew my family would have a completely irrational sense and you know and and they would probably figure they'd look at me like a dead person already and you know I just didn't want to do that so I went home and I had Christmas for it was like five days and then I went back and finished the training and then I went from Denver back to California and picked up my car and I drove east and I sort of arrived with my car and I said well you know I didn't want to tell you but I'm going to Vietnam and that was I sort of waited to the last minute to tell them so I left my car in Connecticut and all my stuff and then packed off and what you do I from Kennedy to San Francisco I think I actually had a flight that left it in like 6 o'clock at night and got into San Francisco about 4 o'clock in the morning or some some crazy time and then you got a bus you always shipped out from Travis Air Base and then it got up to Travis and you had to sign in there and it was it was like a huge paddle Depot almost there were all these people that were going over and you waited around for your flight and everything in and the flight itself was was kind of horrendous because you did it in a series of jumps you that they had these planes that were run by sort of I think it was trans America Airlines or something the sort of a contract air carrier for it and they took the old 707s and just made them all one class you know six seats across like a big cattle car in it and you had the series of 5-hour flights you flew from Travis to Honolulu Honolulu to Guam Guam to wake wake to the Philippines and then the last one for the Philippines into Saigon was only about you know three hours shorter and a nice break little break in that because my brother was stationed in the Philippines at the time he had gone in about six months before I had and his overseas duty was at Clark Air Base where the plane stopped so my brother and his wife had joined him over there and so my brother and sister-in-law came down to the plane when we got there and we had a chance to visit about an hour to visit while we were there that was that broken up a little bit but I mean you're getting exhausted you know you you've left it I mean you have no concept of what day it is you're flying across the Dateline and and all of this and when you got to Vietnam they they operated the I never quite understood what the issue with American currency was but it they forbid you to use American currency in Vietnam it was it was against the law to possess green you had to trade in your money for what they call military payment certificate so it was sort of monopoly money all bills no coins so you had a like a five cent bill they didn't use pennies everything was rounded to the nearest five cents in co2 five cent bill a ten cent bill and 25 cent Billman and dollars so you owe every place yeah yeah absolutely it was absolutely free I there was for some reason they said the the Communist Viet Cong was trying to get green dollars and allowed them it was I never understood the economics I've ever put you you know that was a big no-no dealing in American currency so you had to trade in your currency you had to do that first and then and you arrived with it with everything packed in a duffel bag and you didn't bring a suitcase and so you went to a temporary holding barracks rather than going to your actual squadron where they just had you know beds and latrines and what you did was you've got you got a bed and you took your duffel bag and paddle locked it to the to the headboard and went to sleep and I passed out and it was it was like I have no idea how long I slept you would you passed out and you would see ice would sort of open and you say not yet and pass out again and you know at some point you know you're ready to to resume consciousness so I got up and then I went to I went to the squadron and checked in but as I say you know I knew some of the people already you know I was in the field so it wasn't a it wasn't that much of a shock and we had a fairly decent living conditions over there we had a compound we had we actually had two barracks for the for the photo people yeah Taunton had air bases right on the outskirts of Saigon and there was a there was actually a helicopter the the heliport was in one area and the barracks was immediately adjoining it I think there may have been eight of these barracks in in the compound and then when you cross the street the photo lab was directly across the street so you'd go from from the barracks right over to the photo lab we had you know a fairly heavy work schedule we worked I think from seven to six six days a week you got one day a week off and you know when you say it was from 7:00 to 6:00 it sort of depended on them on the schedule of what we were doing when when the lab was operating we we did a couple of different kinds of jobs one of them was processing the the sort of automated film the film from the automated cameras that were put on the gunships so for instance if somebody went out in a bombing run the night before they would have cameras actually mounted on the white guests on the wing of the planet on the way they were exactly and as they were going along you know dropping bombs or something the cameras would go on when the when the firing mechanism was activated so you had these clips of film that so they when they came in from their run one of the the ground crew would download the camera get the film out of it and ship it off to the phone processors every morning when you came in there was this load of these little pieces of film that had to be processed and movie film gets is it's essentially like like slide film and really long strands so what you would do is to take the individual pieces to a film and splice them into one large piece and then you would run it through the processing machine my my primary job wooden lab was quality control so it was my job to make sure that all the chemicals were at the right temperature and the right strength and and that the process would go over so when you go in the morning first thing you do is turn on the machines get them up to temperature and you run a test strip through the machine kind of want to get too technical but they're like seven or eight different chemicals that it has to go through and each one has to be at a certain level and you can process a strip of film with various shades of grey on it and you can do density readings on that and you can if if the reading is off and in one area you could say well that's the developer and if it's something else happens you say well that looks like the bleach isn't working right so you would do that analysis and you know if it's okay okay run the premium you're okay to run if it isn't you had to say well we've got to change that chemical or do something like that so that was one of my jobs but operational basis we used to do also was to make up this film so every morning you had to go into the dark I had a little dark room that I worked in and would take about 45 minutes to take this film you had to check it to make sure there were no defects and you know that it wasn't torn so that it would break going through and put it together in a big roll and I had a tape recorder and I'd go in and put on some Beethoven or something and and listen to it and work in the dark it was it was fairly relaxing and you know you do that and then you take it it was ready to go and then you'd run the run the thing and there were there were certain steps in it where there were times when you had to wait so in other words you'd get it make up and do the initial run and then you might have an hour break before the next step needed to be accomplished so you could go back to the barracks or you know take a long coffee break or something like that so it wasn't it wasn't you know 12 hours of physical labor temps like that so was reasonable well we also we had photographers in addition to this sort of automated film we had photographers who were covering what was going on in the war sometimes they were they were covering combat operations and we did lose some of the photographers that was it was hard I you know I I didn't go out because I was tied to the machines but the photographer's did have to go out in the field and then the other thing that was happening that I I got there in nineteen seventy in February of 70 took me just about a year from the time I'd going into the service and the the Tet Offensive had been in 68 and that had really freaked out the military and and what they had done as far as I could tell following the attendant ffensive was to go out in the area surrounding Saigon and just devastated so I think if you went out you would have found of a band of desolation that no one could really get through and so it tended to make the base very safe you know because they you know the the Vietcong had infiltrated two years before and they wanted to make sure that wouldn't happen again so I think in because the war was going so badly and they were so desperate to find a way out what they hit on was this vietnamisation strategy just turn everything over to the to the Vietnamese military and and strengthen the government so they would be able to take over on their own strategy which ultimately didn't work of course but we spent a lot of time documenting this vietnamisation process they would be forever going out and turning over a set of tanks or training of squad to do maintenance on something and they would want to document the ceremony so we did that and actually got into although we were set up just really to to process sort of front line you know to get the original graph we we sort of became a mini production studio so that we did a little newsreel that we put together and then we'd have to make 90 copies of it so you have to make an original and then run it through the printer and process all these copies and that was that was a different kind of work that we got into no no we had we had guns but they were in their wisdom they made sure the guns were locked up we had a locker it was a steel Locker within the within the photo squadron and your gun was kept there and you I think I think there were only two occasions in eighteen months when I had to put on my flak jacket and helmet and go get my gun and be ready for something which never materialized so you were in a location no we had there were as they say once or twice there were the sirens went off at night and they they had some reason to believe that someone might be watching an attack against the base but it never happened on the other hand I had the barracks were there was it was sort of a semi tropical climate so this was a building that had walls the walls were essentially screen screening material there were wood frame buildings and they had wooden slats partway up and the rest of it was just open screening and then then a roof over it and there were a couple places in the roof where there was some shrapnel marks they say you knew at some point something had happened and then of course the barracks were surrounded by dirt bunker that was was built in that was about chest height so I mean you certainly were aware of of the potentiality of threat but it wasn't it actually was it was a a very calm time for Saigon within the context of the whole war I was lucky in that did you ever leave Saigon while you were stationed there yeah not often I I did go out one day and I was absolutely struck by how quickly I mean Saigon was was was an amazing city first of all it was it was a magnet for all the people who were fleeing the chaos in the countryside so it had been a city of I think something like three or four hundred thousand that had grown to four million and had absolutely almost no traffic lights traffic traffic in Saigon amazed me first of all there were a lot of motorcycles bicycles motorcycles we used to ride on things that were called sicko lows which was essentially a motorcycle with with little two seats mounted in the front so you you sat in look this is a little two-seat thing and the the driver was a Vietnamese person sitting behind you on that sort of motorcycle sitting up above you just a little bit and going along and then a fleet of renault taxicabs that been left over from when the French had been in Saigon and then little Lambrettas which was sort of a little cart that would take maybe three or four people sitting you know facing each other in the back and the driver was sitting in a little cave and have sort of a handlebar and driving and they the the Vietnamese currency was called the piaster so these were called pcaps who'd pay certain amount of pee cab he asked her to go in lemon and you might get the Vietnamese were smaller people they might get you know 10 people we if you could get eight guys and one of those it was big but if you're going downtown to have dinner or something and get a peek a band and go down but you know this was unregular ibly smoggy there was there were a lot of exhaust fumes and things like that but whenever you came to a major intersection it was it was kind of an organic process because you'd have traffic going basically in this direction and then you'd have a major cross street and what would happen is the flow of traffic was pretty constant and then these people were here and it's they were waiting they'd sort of surge you could watching his throb and and then there'd be a little break in this and these people would break through and then they became the prevailing it was a set of traffic and the other people were sitting here and they would begin to throb and then when there was a break they'd go so that's you know it was there was no traffic light but really it was sort of an organic process and substituted for it so it was it was quite a place oh yeah I mean it was it was a very interesting time I got to almost feeling as though I was living like an outlaw I got certain heavily involved in in marijuana and and some heavier drugs later but I mean I never I never missed work I mean I and I never went to work stoned but we did have an apartment off-base a couple of times and we would a lot of times we would just go after work and stay for three or four hours and and then come back to base and then later I actually lived down there but but then periodically the sort of the terrorists threat would get worse and they would close the base and you would go back and forth as to what you could do but it was it was fairly hedonistic time they did have some wonderful restaurants the the French had taught the Vietnamese to cook so there were there was there was some good food there were some incredible some night clubs there there was a Filipino band that could imitate almost any American rock group and they performed in a series of venues the largest one I remember was called the Fillmore Far East this was it was it was a huge room with with banquettes and you would sit around and this intense rock would go everyone was stoned it was the plea I don't know why the military police didn't crackdown they certainly could have it they wanted to but maybe they figured it would just cause too much resentment and they would get into some heavy metal stuff and and one of their one of their climactic events I think was doing in-a-gadda-da-vida Iron Butterfly this place would go insane and they would would do that so I remember a lot of those kinds of experiences how long were you actually in Vietnam huh yeah well that's that's a real interesting way they they first of all they made a wonderful offer if you would extend after your first full year if you would extend your term for six months you could get a free 30 day uncharged leave in other words you could take a 30-day leave that didn't come off your leave balance and they would give you a ticket to any place you wanted to go in the world for free so that was that was quite an inducement within the 1-year period you did get a 7-day R&R there were different sites you could go to and I I in December of 70 I went to Hong Kong for a week and really enjoyed that trip I was it was nice and then February came up and it was you know I had this option the other thing was you have to realize that it wasn't a real great treat to be a service person in the u.s. at that time because you stuck out like a sore thumb you had ridiculously short hair and everybody hated you whether or not you believed in the military or not a lot of guys had wigs that they wouldn't wear when they when they went off base you didn't have a lot of money you know I was still enlisted and and still near the you know the early part of my term and the lifestyle in Saigon is to say you know it it had a certain appeal yeah I sort of sort of this romantic notion of the desperado I guess I was who sort of enjoying that so I decided I looked around the world and I had studied Latin when I was in high school and I said I wanted to go to Rome so I put in for my leave and I got a ticket on TWA what you did was to take a military aircraft from Saigon to Bangkok and once you got to Bangkok you then went into regular civilian aircraft so I had a ticket that went from from Bangkok to Rome I actually had a 24-hour stopover in in Bangkok tonight I had a friend who was stationed there so I hooked up with him and variety of things happened including horrible attack of food poisoning so I Layton your death in this very bizarre hotel wondering it you know should I call the Embassy or what should I do that finally got that I was able to delay the flight so I was 24 hours late and a little weak getting going and the flight left at 11:00 p.m. from Bangkok and it was announced other flights were you know you just lose your own mutation of time but we flew from Bangkok to Bombay India where the plane had some kind of electrical problems so we had a three-hour stop there and then we flew on from Bombay to Athens had another stopover and then finally arrived at Rome and it was it was an interesting time it was funny because I I had lived in a foreign country for a year and and thought I was really good at at adapting and and being cosmopolitan you know completely ignoring the fact that it was just an American suburb hey you know it was a complete extension of it wasn't really a foreign country at all almost and so it was a little bit of a shock to actually get to a foreign country where where people didn't really understand English Rome in February was deserted I had a wonderful hotel I think it costs like $11 at night or something like you to falafels hotel but it was hardly anybody in it and and I and I was suffering from jet lag so I I never got to the Vatican because it was open to the Sistine Chapel because was open from 11:00 to 2:00 when that the cert didn't coincide with my waking hours I'd end up being awake a lot at night when nothing was happening just sitting in the hotel but I did find one restaurant over near the Pantheon where there was I went in the the menu was completely in Italian but they had an Egyptian working in the kitchen who was on his way to London to study economics and so he came out and translated the menu for me so I went there for lunch every day somebody I could talk to any figure out what I was eating but you know I spend about six days and and I saw the ruins and all the things that I studied it was it it was fun and you enjoyed it but you know you then got routed back to Saigon through through California so I had to go from Rome to New York to California so I was going to have time to to stop home and I had been away a year and what I found very interesting in comparison to the the Gulf War one and and and the other military operations that we've had recently I mean I really was going for a year I did not talk there were opportunities to use the phone to call home but I really didn't use them they did they weren't particularly good technologies and I I really did not speak to people for an entire year I was much more kind of I think now the soldiers who are in Afghanistan and in the Gulf or in Iraq are in email contact phone come test cell phones whatever I think you know the distance is there but I think there's there's much more contact with what's happening at home where I really was you know in a very remote location for that so you know I hadn't been home and and all you had to do all I had to do was go down to the airport and say I want to go home you know it was sort of an open ticket so after about six days if I guess I'll go so I went back to New York and spent about three weeks and then flew on to California and back to Saigon again for the next six weeks six six months that was that was the strangest part I had not anticipated the level of alienation that I experienced when I got home I felt I I read a lot when I was was over there I mean you know one addition of the other things I was doing I didn't have a lot of time to read and I really felt it was important to try and understand you know how we had gotten into this mess but and I've read a lot about Chinese history and trying to understand the area Vietnamese history and things like that and I I really I was absolutely convinced that we had completely misread the dynamic of what was going on in Southeast Asia if you looked at the history of that area it's a history of people coming out of the the north from from China from from the steppes of Central Asia and progressively trying to move down into the more fertile areas the more economically productive areas that's the history of all the dynasties in China one they all came out of this area and took over these civilizations as they got old and tried to move forward and of course Vietnam was the breadbasket it was it was sort of like the prize so the thrust of Vietnamese history was to resist this to resist the push of the Chinese and here we were predicating our whole policy on the fact that they wanted to align themselves with the Chinese which they really didn't want to do so you know I had you know you go from there to sort of a radical view of US history and what we had tried to do with the Cold War so I really had developed a pretty radical worldview there seem absolutely obvious to me and I really felt that when I came back on leave and I talked to people they would understand this and they would all say yes and you know it's awful and we've got to do something to end the war and what happened when I came back somewhere between when I had gotten drafted and 1970 everyone has started wearing leisure suits and Hawaiian shirts the whole fashion had gotten kind of mannered and and superficial and I wanted to I couldn't believe that this was taking place while this whole horrible thing was going on here that they were absolutely ignoring and I just found I couldn't talk to anyone and it was tremendously isolating and then I made a particularly stupid mistake I bought I think a Thomas Hardy book to read on the on the I think you can't go home again I don't remember what what it was that I read Thomas Wolfe I guess with a very depressing novel on the trip back to to Saigon which was sort of a a fluke but I went into a complete depression when I got back from Saigon I've I thought I was sort of manipulating the system and and sort of making the best of a bad situation and I guess when I got back to Saigon that sort of hit me that this whole thing was was morally reprehensible so that was a hard time different for you than the first year yeah yeah when you went for the extension did you have the same job in the same location oh yeah no that made it easier going back I knew I knew all the people but I think a real sense of personal defeat that I couldn't do anything about it and felt guilty I guess for participating in it yeah there were there were a lot of strange things that were going on some of the some of the black soldiers that I had gotten to know and I thought I really understood began to develop a very separate kind of consciousness and they saw this much more and then the heavy casualties of the black soldiers as a really racist issue and that while I could might be sympathetic I really couldn't understand what was going on so there was there were a couple of cases of alienation from people that I thought I knew on a personal level that that I began you know there I would cut off from for almost by my class and that was that was kind of strange and there were other people who you know I I don't think they were sort of annoyed about it but they realized it was going to pass and I don't think they saw it as morally significant as I did would you awarded any medals or citations there were there were a couple that were standard I was like a Vietnam Service Medal and the kind of things you just got there for showing up there was an issue my my lab chief wanted one to give me the Bronze Star because he thought I was was doing a really good job I I thought I was doing a good job but I just didn't think I I was I was I saw that this was going on I saw a lot of people were getting medals that you know supposedly for distinctive heroism I can understand if you were gonna make a career of the Air Force that it was necessary but I felt it was really degrading the whole process so I didn't want to do it and there's had a little conflict with him over that and what was your rank when you left I guess I gotten be what they call the McNamara's sergeant I had three stripes which it was what was it you started off with with no stripes than one strike two stripes was an airman first class and three stripes was a sergeant and I guess it was an e4 we saw was one more than the your grade was one more than the number of stripes so if you were a sergeant you were an e4 and you had three three stripes the the three stripes originally had been an airman classification and McNamara changed it to sergeant and made them and see it was the break off when you became an NCO as opposed to whatever else you you are and a lot of the long-term people resented that so they called the McNamara sergeants but I was I was a sergeant at that point and then when I left Saigon I had one last duty station which was at Edwards Air Force Base the the test base out in the Mojave Desert in California and I did get another stripe I was there from November of 71 until I got out in January 73 and I was about halfway through that I got my fourth stripe just got to be a staff sergeant while you were in Vietnam how did you stay in touch with your family he said he didn't use the technology so you didn't come home did you write letters yeah wrote letters and I also made audio tapes we would send audio tapes back and forth which I listened to I there one or two of them I have unfortunately I would get kind of stoned in you for it I have no idea what they thought of these rambling things I would sit out on the back porch and I'd go ramble on for an hour I do actually the food was pretty good we had they serve four meals a day there was there were there was a big child she could go to breakfast lunch and dinner and the one that I love which was midnight Chow midnight Chow was sort of brunch I guess it was both eggs and you know the things you'd usually see it breakfast as well as burgers and french fries and stuff it was a lot of times we would go off and spend the evening getting stoned listening to music and then you'd come home and have the midnight chow like that that was pretty good it was the first time that I realized fried chicken and and Mexican food were staples of the American diet there was a Mexican food restaurant on the base to go to and in fried chicken places I hadn't I wasn't particularly partial to either of those foods yeah all right and from the East Coast I don't think we were into those as much better did you know plenty supplies are there any shortages no there there really weren't I mean you could get a lot of stuff get wonderful stereo equipment at rock-bottom prices I mean the some of the advantages of being in the war zone first of all you had you paid no taxes you were exempt from income tax I mean you didn't have a huge income but at least you didn't have to pay income tax plus you got hazardous duty pay and there was there was a small overseas pay differential that you got anyway but but fairly substantial for being in the war zone and then no taxes so you really had a lot of sort of disposable money and then you had access to all the stereo equipment at really good prices which you could ship back when you left duty-free so everybody bought fancy cameras and great stereo systems and the PX would have you know about I don't I don't know that you really needed a whole lot I mean life was sort of taken care of we had there were Vietnamese women who came in and sort of maintained the barracks they would come in and wash all our clothes they just had big garbage cans and they would they would that the barracks was organized so when you walked in you sort of walked through the bathroom part of it and then there was a little screen door and then into the room area so they would just sort of flood the bathroom and you know and and you know three times a week and do the laundry you you just give leave your land they'd wash the fatigues and everything and hang it out and iron it and do that so you didn't have to worry about wasn't it you had to church and her stuff like that and the day-to-day stuff they certainly provided I remember there were certain things that amazed me that they would stock at the BX they they had an endless supply of escargots you know these things where you buy the the little tin with the snails in the bottom and then the shells on top and the plastic thing is it you know who really wants this but the escargot was always that the DX but there were there were records tapes and things you were sort of able to keep up with with that we had the movie the base movie theater which would get all the movies they played like one or two nights so they circulated a lot of things but you really kept up with the movies good based library there they always had access to to you know current fiction and stuff what are the kinds of things did they have for entertainment I know you talked about restaurants in the nightclub did you have anything else for entertainment did you ever get to see the whole show no I never did see I never did see Bob Hope I don't know if he well I think for one thing we were sort of low priority on that because compared to the rest of the country we had a lot going on I mean I think they really tried when the USO thinks came over that they would would go to the zones or out to Danang or the more remote areas we did have a USO it was a nice drop in place they've always had burgers and things ready but I just it just to go I mean when you got a full work schedule you know just just to get off work get yourself organized go down to Saigon have supper look around and come back would would make a pretty full day did you do anything for a good-luck charm or any Goodluck rituals not so much my my younger brother had had made a ring I guess used to be able to take quarters and sort of melt them down it was it was a silver ring that was out of that he gave me that I wore that I felt that was like kind of what this was about the only thing I did you guys play pranks on each other or anything like that well the I mentioned we had these these dark rooms are our photo studios were built in converted house trailers so what they had was there was this little area and there was a a cylindrical door it was it was about or maybe like two feet like a little like a circular phone booth and it had three entrances and there was there was in interior drum that would go around this whole thing was painted black it was a light trap actually so if you were facing this there would be an opening and you would step in this and then you would spin and you would spin no no this is the entrance then you would spin the door like a third of the way around and would open into a room over here and then you would spin it again and you would go into a room over here so that you could you could come in you could you could have the lights off and what these were small little rooms I mean they were losing my office actually but it was maybe the desk was maybe four feet wide and that we maybe the whole thing was like four feet deep I mean they're very small little little room but you'd have your lights off and then someone who if wanted to come in they could come into the light trap turn the door and then come in while you were in the dark so one of the things we did do was to you know to yeah play tricks if someone was working in the dark you'd sort of sneak in and and and stand there they wouldn't realize you were there and then all of a sudden yellow or something like that because you really worried our it was it was in when you're making up the film it was you you had to use your your fingers to feel everything you always very careful to put out all your tools No so we would do things like that I remember another time that someone decided one new person came over they decide we needed to increase the maintenance level of the lab so we had to strip the floor and relax it or something like that and it came out with a completely ridiculously high level of loss which was extremely dangerous it was terribly slippery it was the stupid thing to have done and our captain it was kind of a jerk came in went to him he had a fairly fast pace and he came in through the thing and came in we'd just on this and he just feet went up in a belt right on his ass that that was pretty funny we sort of snickered and then of course we had to strip the floor again and put down a low a low finish not I I do have I've got slides that I took I because I used to be able to process them a lot I had my own I was interested in photography and I I would take slides than I could process them there they're holding up pretty well I actually made a movie one time and I found it it went downtown with one of the photographers and we drove around and a couple of years ago I took it and I thought it would try and get it transferred and unfortunately it was obliterated it's there's there's almost you can barely see the image it's it's just dissolved off the film that I really missed because that would have been fun to sing but you know I watched the the movie The Quiet American that came out recently and it's amazing it's a very accurate depiction of psyche on the Continental Palace Hotel that's where I had my 25th dinner birthday dinner yeah it was very evocative of what Saigon looked like and I wish I had you know more pictures to that what did you think of your fellow officers and your fellow soldiers did you develop it in any relationships with your fellows yeah I had some some very strong friendships they tended a couple of them lasted for a few years after after the service but I'm not in contact with anyway I really haven't been for years I think people went in different directions and I think basically they wanted to move away from what had happened yeah well I was stationed at Edwards and I I got a month early release I was gonna get out on January 13th and by the time I get back to Edwards it really was was a desk - not a desk job but a but a day job the layout worked from I think I worked from 8:00 till 4:30 or something like that and I was in the NCO barracks Edwards is it's the largest base in the country with the smallest population it's it's a it's out in the middle of the desert it's built around a dry lake Edwards or Rogers dry lake which is a lake bed that's seven miles long it's completely different when you look at it especially from the air you see this whole lake it's even got some islands in it there's just no water most of the year and it becomes like solid pavement so of course if you need a real long runway that's why the Space Shuttle landed at Edwards of course I was there before the Space Shuttle it's it's it's much more developed than it was then but we very few people out there and we had a it's not that far from Los Angeles it's only about an hour and a half close to Palmdale and Lancaster but the base itself is pretty remote so you know I I had a room in the NCO barracks again I did a lot of reading during the week and then I would take trips up into the mountains during the weekend I was there for about a year and and you know I was had no intention of rien listening so you might listen it was was going to be up and you always got a certain amount of time to out process at the end so I went into the the photo lab there was primarily one by civilians who worked for the Air Force with with the Air Force personnel a sign for certain tasks it really was some place for us to be stationed while we were waiting to be rotated and back overseas so it was friendly and it really didn't have a very military sense to it it was it was you know I just happened to be wearing a uniform and so I went into the lab chief you know right right before Christmas and I said well you know I'm getting out on the 13th and and you know how she was he said well why don't you work through the 23rd yeah it was gonna be the last day we were working before Christmas and then you know just just considered that your last day of work so you know I had the Christmas break in the the out processing time which you know I could have done like in four hours but they gave me like three weeks I had to have an exit physical and you know fill out some records and things and process and I I spent most of the time camping and went up into the southern Sierras for New Year's and with a friend of mine we camped out at a hot springs it was very very tranquil and peaceful and then I went back to the base and on the 13th I we're wearing civilian clothes I went down to the main administrative building and signed a few papers and got in the car and drove away it was amazing to me for something that had so controlled your life that it just evaporated you know you uh oh no no no it took me years to get back in into what I would call a productive lifestyle three years well I was I was returning back to to the East Coast from you know from California I had a lot of friends who were stationed down at in Santa Barbara at another Air Base where there was a large people I had known in Saigon who got shipped there as opposed to Edwards and I used to spend a lot of weekends down there and I went down to see them I had had sort of unfortunate incident in October before I got out Veterans Day was scheduled for up in October in those days I don't know if you remember but at one point they changed the federal holiday because they wanted to make them all three-day holidays they had Columbus Day and then two weeks later they had been Wednesday so like around October 25th I was going camping and we were going down an area outside of San Diego and I got arrested for possession of marijuana I had had a like a joint rolled up and a little baggie in a in a shirt pocket and we're going through this little town of Ramona I had a VW bus it was converted into a campers it was sort of suspicious looking vehicle and policemen pulled me over because you know I guess my taillight was out and he searched me and I smelled dope and so I spent the holiday weekend in San Diego jail in the felony tank and ultimately I pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor or being in a place where marijuana was being smoked but and it got resolved I never really had that was handled through a lawyer and and when I got back to the base the commander said well he said you know I'll tell you what wait till you get the the civil justice things taken care of then come back and let me know what happened and we'll see if we need to do anything as the Air Force because it got resolved I was getting out so nothing ever happened in the Air Force with it but I just felt like you know III his escape so I went back to visit these friends in San Bernadino and lo and behold they had just gotten busted really fluky incident with they lived in a two-story house and the woman downstairs was being investigated by the police and the police had come upstairs to ask them some questions and they saw hookah or you know bong or something so then they came in and got a search warrant and arrested them so all I could think if I had been here and gotten the rest of the second time so I I thought it's time to get out of town out of Dodge I had another friend who had been stationed in or who lived in Las Vegas he gotten out about a month I am before I had he'd grown up in Las Vegas so I went over and spent a saw him and then I had another friend from Vandenberg who we had been saikhan together we were real good friends and and he had bought and bought a VW van when he got back from overseas and we decided we were going to drive back to the East Coast in tandem so the we he met me in Las Vegas and then we headed out on this adventure across the country yeah my his was brand new his was whose luck mine was old and and had some problems and one of which was the heating system was was almost gone in it and this was January and we took the route through northern Arizona across old 66 and I can remember that sometimes it would be 60 miles in between towns and not only that the the other fault of it was that it would pop out of gear so I had to you know shift it into into fourth or whatever the gear was and I had a bungee cord that would hold it but even that so sometimes I physically had to hold it and between holding the gear shift and my feet getting so cold because there was no he I thought I would get frostbite before I could get to the next place and go into a rest stop and have a cup of coffee and warm up but finally we made it back to the East Coast neither there was a special unemployment where you could get six months of unemployment benefits without without a whole lot of questions I there was a special line when you went to the unemployment office there were all the people you know a through F and G through whatever and then there was the the group X there's something so special so I got to do that and they didn't have Celeste as much as they did the regular piece and so I lived on on the unemployment benefits for six months and I had a good friend from from high school whose family had moved up to rural Maine so I sort of split my time between sort of hanging out in Connecticut and hanging out in Maine and ultimately moved up to rural Maine I came back I got out in January of 73 and I began my first serious job in October 75 it was a fairly long cap in-between I read subsequently that Time magazine had sort of identified my situation I was in the post-vietnam psychiatric syndrome hanging out with a great deal of lethargy and a drug-induced state something sort of described it was it was not a good time what did you do as a career after the war I know you were in law school before the war continued that now no I had I had sort of dropped out of that and four years later I really didn't want to participate in anything that smacked the establishment law school was about as establishment as you could get I wanted around some things and ultimately there was a a Labor Department program cita the comprehensive employment training act that had supported employment for different categories of people and I ended up getting myself declared eligible proceed and then you go out and find a placement and actually found a placement at the University of Maine in Farmington in the Grant's office and that's quite by accident that's how I entered my profession research administration do you attend any reunions no did your military experience influence your thinking about war about the military in general yes I think [Music] war is only possible if people are willing to fight it so you know I'm very ambivalent about the military and I think the country has been I mean it took us a long time from the end of of the fall of Saigon to the point that we were ready to to look at action in the Gulf I think I think the first Gulf War probably was justifiable I don't think that the current one is but you know I I don't know whether you I it's unrealistic to think that you could allow soldiers to vote on whether or not they want to go to war but certainly if it weren't such a rigid structure it would be harder to get into such unreasonable activities as we got into Vietnam unfortunately I think we're engaged in the kind of unrealistic activity right now but but there's still a fair level of patriotism as unpopular as the war is the soldiers are supported to a miraculous degree that was not the case in the Vietnam War find your service and experiences affect your life yes I draft eclis different I think I was programmed to go in a certain direction and that got completely derailed I had no way of knowing what kind of neuroses that would have run into and I going on the other track it's absolutely no way of knowing it there was there was really something very healthy about it as much as I resented what happened I think it brought me into contact with a much broader segment of the population that might have ever met and that I am appreciative is there anything that you'd like to know I don't think so there were some things they really don't want to talk about but I think I think this is a very positive experience and in the beginning I didn't get the Jew tones your full name address and your birthday yeah my full name actually my first name is William Dean is my middle name but I used that so it's William Dean kleiner and I live in Farmington I'm at 26 Tunxis Village Drive in Farmington Connecticut zero six zero three two if you need those simple April 25th in 1946 been fun

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Keywords: Kleinert, William Dean War (Quotation Subject) Vietnam War (Military Conflict)

Id: PAOi-Dx800I

Length: 87min 12sec (5232 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2011