John Butler's interview for the Veterans History Project at Atlanta History Center

today is Friday September 13th 2019 and my name is Kurt Mueller I'm a volunteer at the Atlanta History Center and with me is Suvarov the director of oral history and genealogy at the Atlanta History Center we're here today to record the oral history of mr. John Butler who served in the Vietnam War during 1972 71 John's oral history will is going to be recorded for the Atlanta History Center's history project in partnership with the Library of Congress we're honored to have you with us today John and thank you for participating in this project to begin with please state your full name and date of birth my name is John Charles Butler and I was born December the 10th 1945 in Pittsburg Kansas my father worked on the railroad for 36 years but all of his brothers and my mother's brothers all served in World War two and our home was a very conservative hard-working home and family and it just never occurred to us that we would do anything but whatever our duty was when it was time to do it and so as I went through school and high school I knew I was going to go to college and early on after I graduated from high school in 1963 and started college the Vietnam War was heating up and in my heart I knew I was going to go to Vietnam so as a sophomore I made the decision to go ahead and go through Advanced ROTC and with her ROTC and freshman and sophomore years because at the time that was required anyway and so I went through advanced ROTC I was a member of scabbard and blade which was the Honor Society for ROTC cadets and we had some extra training and things we needed to do and when I graduated I actually had a few hours toward my master's degree and so I got my commission and asked for time to finish my master's degree actually just to work on it and I didn't expect to get enough time to actually finish it and the army gave it to me and so I finished my master's degree went on active duty in February of 2000 68 I'm sorry 2070 and my first assignment was Fort Sill Oklahoma at the officer basic course I was commissioned as a field artillery second lieutenant it was a 13 week course in Fort Sill it was very interesting because there were three different types of work that you did as an artillery officer one was the guns themselves one was a forward observer type work and also fire direction which is pretty complicated at the time and having a master's degree in math was actually pretty helpful for me to do that and I found it to be very interesting I was married at the time and our first child was on her way and about that time my ex-wife now her father died suddenly and so as I was getting ready to go on active duty I called that's the only way to communicate at that time I called the Department of the Army Field Artillery branch in Washington DC and talked to a major don't remember his name and told him what my dilemma was that I was getting ready to leave by the way my orders surprisingly were for Germany which I was not prepared for I was pretty good in Vietnam I was prepared to go to a stateside assignment and then Vietnam or straight to Vietnam I was not prepared to go to Germany so as we're scrambling to prepare for that change in direction my father-in-law passed away who I was very close to and so I called and asked you know what my options were and he asked he gave me an extra week to take care of the personal matters there but assured me that I could go to Germany and be there a minimum of nine months or I could go to Fort Fort Riley Kansas which is close to where I lived and be there for a minimum of nine months we had several options and we decided I would go ahead and go to Germany my wife would have the child and she would come to Germany to meet me so that's what we did went to Germany about 30 days after I arrived in Germany I got happy news and had orders for Vietnam which was the same week I got noticed that our child had been born Julie who's now well doesn't matter she's she's a mother she's wonderful and so it took a couple of weeks to process out by that time I had already bought a new car Volkswagen everybody bought a Volkswagen I bought a Volkswagen I had to hurry up and ship at home which I did and we had about a week at home and then I went to Fort Lewis Washington for processing with all of my gear my boots my greens I don't think I took my dress blues which I bought which I never wore one time and as soon as I got there they said here are all these boxes put all of your uniforms all of your boots everything in these boxes we're going to ship them home because they're gonna issue me general fatigues and jungle boots and all that stuff and it was in October and it was cold in Fort Lewis Washington so the acclamation I had that intentionally tried to do to be ready for hot weather was ruined by a week or two in Fort Lewis and so with jungle fatigues on which breathed all that cold air we were shown a demonstration of an m16 but I never fired one I actually qualified years before on an m1 ancient m1 rifle that was so bad that the the I'm sorry the where does a round go in its chamber the chamber I'm sorry the chamber was so pitted that and we were in like a concrete tube in the ground and we were standing in that firing out of it and the each round would freeze and the chamber because the chamber was so pitted and I would have to bring the rifle down inside the tube and use my boot to eject the room and put a live round in which of course I'm staring down a muzzle of the live rifle as I pull it up I did qualify but if that was distracting it was very difficult to qualifying with that with that kind of distraction going on so anyway so back to fort Louis out of fort list we flew to Anchorage Alaska and then to Japan and then to Vietnam most likely as I recall was benoit the receiving station we were told we were given a place to stay for a day or so and while we were getting our assignments worked out and somebody there that seemed to know what he was talking about said you're probably gonna be a forward observer since you're a field artillery on a lieutenant but you don't want to go to the Leben Thurman CAF because they're always in trouble they're always looking for for contact so if you're gonna be a filler observer hopefully you'll be with another unit so sure enough I got orders to be a forward observer with the 11th armored cab which was my dream let me rewind a second and say that from the time that I was in college especially after I'm with her OTC I knew I was going to Vietnam I knew before I went into ROTC and there was a quality-of-life issue that I remember vividly that if I was happy if there was something really good going on in the pit of my stomach I remembered yes but I'm gonna be going to Vietnam and I did not want to go but it was the only choice it was the only option for me it never occurred to me not to follow through on what I considered to me my duty as American citizen and it was befuddling to me that other people would avoid it because it just seemed like that was what you did so that nagging concern at various levels stayed with me even in Germany I thought well maybe I'm not gonna have to go but maybe I am and then I got the orders and it was it was frightening so I go to Vietnam and the first night there we got incoming in the camp that I was in and that was scary and then I got orders to be a forward observer with the 11 CAV 11th armored camp and that was scary but my mom was home praying for me I knew she was and one way or the other I did get through it I wasn't sure if I'd make it or not I always wondered if I was going to make it so the they transferred me via bus through Saigon as I recall to Zeon which was the base camp of the 11th armored CAV and there were a few very few people there all of the unit's I was assigned to the to a troop of the 1st battalion of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and they were as all of the company sized troop they call them the units were independently deployed in different places so I was able to get a ride in a jeep with the trailer with some other guys to wear my unit was too near where my unit was interesting story we were on I think he was highway 1 I don't know it was a highway it was a two-lane paved road the driver was I believe a spec 5 I don't think he ever really got a driver's license but somehow he was our driver we were behind a Korean army a rock they call him Republic of Korea adduce and inducing a corps of do's and a half with full of Korean soldiers and there are four of us in this Jeep I'm in the back right side it was a trailer with our duffel bag with all of our gear in it so we're driving down this Highway and our drivers decides to pass this truck and he gets about halfway around the truck and the truck decides to pass the car in front of it so the driver rather than putting his brakes on just rolls over onto the left shoulder and we're still going full speed whatever that speed is without slowing down and there's this huge pile of rocks coming up coming up on us fast and we're not going to be able to get around this pile of rocks or go over it so the driver again rather than slowing down decides to go back into the lane where the truck still is and I remember the tire of that truck coming up within a few inches of my face as we embraced the tire of that truck which caused the Jeep to go out of control the Jeep was turning one way that trailer another and the driver did exactly the opposite of what you would do when that happens which caused the problem to exacerbate until the the trailer left us back in the highway somewhere all of our gear was strewn along we ended up going backwards into the ditch on my side slamming into the into the ditch on the side there everybody escaped without injury thank God it was terrifying and I thought it's just the way I'm gonna die in Vietnam he isn't a stupid car accident but we got all together got our stuff together we can joined our unit the way we joined our unit is the I was the forward observer I had a track with four guys that were my team and they came to meet me at a place it was predefined on the road I arrived with my gear we spent the night there and then we joined the rest of our unit the next morning when we joined the unit one of the first things I remember is we pulled in and I heard some guys cheering Buick Buick Buick I thought what is that it turns out one of the guys was sick and was throwing up and they were cheering him on calling out Buick and I thought this is an interesting bunch right here and there was an interesting group turned out these guys were none of them really wanted to be there that I could tell but they really cared about each other I was 25 the rest of the guys in my unit on my vehicle there was a spec five that was a driver he was a TC they called it track commander a driver and then two Gunners on either side where I sat in the middle they were on there they were all teenagers they were all just kids but when we went into contact or when we were on a patrol and we did what we call reconnaissance in force where we would make quite a scene it was quite quite he was quite comforting really to be part of a unit with that much firepower when we went on two missions now we did do some dismounts where we walked that was not as much fun we did a few patrols or just one or two track vehicles that was not as much fun but when we were in mass it was it was pretty gratifying to know there's a bunch of a bunch of other support around us and the guys really cared about serving together and helping each other even if they didn't want to be there and that was very very helpful grete gratifying to me one of the missions that stands out is we spent about I think it's about six weeks on a mission to protect a company size unit of Rome plows our own plow as a d7 or d9 caterpillar bulldozer they call it a Rome plow because it's a special blade on the front of that caterpillar that's actually made and was made in Rome Georgia and it was designed specifically to clear jungle it had a Stinger on one edge of it and it would stick it in a tree if the tree was too big just to push over and split the tree in half and then hit it again face on and it would knock the tree down so we our mission was to clear a path about a hundred yards wide as I recall through fairly dense jungle that at one time had at one time had had had had a road in it and so we were really defining the road and so for the most part we we made the road where the map showed the road would be there was really no other indication where the road actually was and so we patent we cleared a path and our our vehicles are tracked vehicles our armored cavalry assault vehicles they call them we'd go along and space out along where the plows were working to keep them safe and we would stay in an NDP at night defensive position for three to five days three to five nights at a time and then move to stay up with the plows the plows would build up a berm all the way around our perimeter pretty good sized perimeter because a couple hundred guys stayed there the vehicles all the vehicles are in the middle of it they would do maintenance at night we would the the armored CAV guys would would form the perimeter and with the vehicles facing outward up against the berm and so we we did that for about six weeks or so we would one of the things we did that entertained us and it was actually supposedly a mission value I don't know I think it was mostly to keep us awake is we would have a med minute once or twice or three times a night where every vehicle would open up firing into the firing out of the perimeter with whatever weapon really wanted to fire and it was maddening that's why they call it a mad minute I tried to record it on a tape I have no idea where the tape is now because it was quite an experience and as I said it was comforting actually to know that there was that much firepower at our call the enemy contact we had probably probably missed mostly because we had so much firepower at our disposal was but they call H and I are harassing interdictor e fires were mortars or Rockets would come in especially at night when we were trying to sleep into the our perimeter so that was the majority of that we did spend one one one one of the last NDP's excuse me we we held or we lived on or whatever you call worse more positioned at was Hill 562 it was a very high point a very high peak it was higher than any other surrounding area for many miles and it had recently been occupied by the NVA and the reason we knew that is we there was a lot of equipment still there there were tons of not literally necessarily but a lot of 20 millimeter casings from airstrikes that have been here at US airstrikes that had been engaged there so we stayed on that for a few days that was kind of the end of our as I recall that was the last night defensive position that where we we stayed it was Christmas when we got there we knew christmas is coming and all of us have had mixed emotions about how this is going to be and we decided to with great bravado that we would plan to have and we did create a giant Christmas tree in the air using hand-held rockets hand-held flares is really what they were and so we started collecting for a few days we even had our supply helicopter bring us some and pulling together our red white I think Green maybe yellow handheld signal flares and then at midnight we had a rear supply physician back in song Bay we radioed them and told them to look at look our direction around midnight and sure enough at midnight we all hit the flares they went up in the air and the song Bay told us yes it looked like a huge Christmas tree in the air hanging over our position so that was very gratifying we felt really good about that and of course we stay we lived in these armored personnel carriers there's a box metal box and we we lived in those we slept in those at night and and somebody always had armed forces Vietnam radio on afvn they F me re or whatever they call it a radio station that was for GIS and it was about as I said midnight when we I mean launched all these when we made this Christmas tree and after that we someone was the radio was playing it was dark it's pitch black the excitement was over and the song comes on the radio I'll be home for Christmas and each one of us one at a time kind of went off on her own it's and dealt with that that was I'll never forget I'm here that's long I think about Hill 562 so anyway that was our last mission that I'm pretty sure that was our last mission before the unit the 11th armored cab which means we went back to ultimately back to Zeon and started decommissioning or cleaning up our vehicles and our equipment turning it in which parent Lee was turned over to the Arvin's and then we then I was reassigned it was about six months by halfway through my tour and the but the battalion s1 who I think was a captain said I'm gonna do you a real favor I'm gonna reassign you to the to a heavy artillery battalion up in Military Region one up near Danang because they've got concrete shot you've been living in the jungle this whole time they got concrete sidewalks they got hot showers you're gonna love it it's gonna be great so okay so I'll do that and by the way I'll tell you why the way we slept in those vehicles those armored cavalry assault vehicles is we had mini cans they call caliber artillery caliber ammunition cans were about 18 inches wide flat on the top we'd line each side of the inside of the vehicle with that and then the floor was plywood over the you know and then there was a line there was a tray of 50 caliber cans across the front which was not as wide as the length so I slept on one of the rows of 50 caliber you have mini cans when the other guys stepped on another row the TC he was a spec 5 we gave him the honour of sleeping on the floor cuz that was the most room and then the our drivers it was a kind of a short guys name was Felix I don't know what his real name was that so I remember today as the name was Felix he slept on him on the 50 caliber cans across the front and the only way to sleep was to you could not put your arms to your side and you couldn't lay on your side you couldn't lay on your stomach you could lay on your back if you cross your legs and cross your arms over your chest like a corpse and that was the way I learned to sleep and it was fine and four years after I got home that was the only way I could go to sleep it's just is asleep like that with my my legs and arms crossed and another side bar as it went is when we knew we were going into contact with the 11th cab there was a lot of dark humor that we used to help mitigate the fear that we all felt whether we admitted it or not and I'll never forget the first time I've heard it I heard it was that someone started singing you're getting ready to go into a contact and someone started singing you're going home in a body bag dude dude and everybody starts thinking and thinking back on it's kind of sick but it was very distracting as I said and it was a way to just process that so he my got reassigned to the second the 92nd see I don't forget another the unit you new nomenclature was a heavy artillery battalion and sure enough it was headquartered in Danang and I arrived nobody was there I saw they had four concrete sidewalks and a big outdoor shower area but nobody was there and I went to the headquarters building and our battalion s3 he was a major and he was there and he greeted me and welcomed me and I said major I said where is everybody and he said let me show you and they showed a map on the wall a huge map probably six eight feet from side to side which was the entire DMZ from Laos to the Gulf and it was he said we are right here and he pointed to a spot right on the Laotian border just about an inch below the DMZ and I thought holy that's not what I said but I said well what are we doing there and we're in this operation we're supporting Arvin's insertion and Laos and so we are as close to the ocean borders we can get because we're not allowed to go into it in delay us and this is a unit that's that had 175 millimeter guns which were the same chassis as an 8-inch howitzer but it had a longer tube and it would fired about a hundred pounds of powder the projectile was about 175 pounds and it would go 25 miles and was huge so each battery had four of these big guns and I was assigned to be the battalion fire Direction officer since I was at that point a first lieutenant Wow Wow so I got out to the unit our battalion fire Direction Center was in the middle of one of the firing batteries and so the battalion fire Direction Center consisted of a radio truck it was like a five ton truck with a big van and there were multiple radios in there and the battalion fire Direction Center had radio contact charts and we had a fade act they call it a field artillery field artillery digital automatic computer or something weird like that very peculiar huge thing that we would calculate firing data and we would calculate firing data the the battery direct fire Direction centers would also calculate firing data and we would confirm the firing data to make sure we had correct firing data so our my team was in the band on the radios and I mostly set outside the van in the ditch the ditch the the the track the truck was essentially buried in a ditch that was dug by bulldozer deep enough the top of the truck was leveled with the ground and then we would have we had these huge wooden beams that went across the top of the van and then covered it with sandbags and everything so it was protective and a vein was basting underground so this at this point the the the spreed esprit de corps was non-existent these guys did not want to be there they did not care whether you whether they followed instructions or orders the guys and the guns did their work and then at night they didn't care whether they slept or not for guard duty and that was that was actually the scared just the most scared I was is being there we were so close we did get incoming from NB a artillery apparently because we were so close we had Air Force jets come in sometimes try to dislodge the artillery because apparently they were positioned in the side of mountains and we couldn't reach them with artillery and I remember seeing him flying over sometimes you could count the rivets and I thought I'd rather be there than here maybe not but anyway it was frightening to be there because the guys mostly because they didn't care I had guard duty periodically and we'd walk the perimeter and it was not unusual to find guys asleep in their foxhole and it was kind of scary we were supported by oddly enough an air defense Artillery battery which consisted of two quad 50 trucks and two dusters and the Duster is looks like a tank with twin barrels and it fired I believe it was 40 millimeter exploding rounds they were designed for air defense but they made a hell of a perimeter defense and the quad 50s was again for 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the back of a five-ton truck facing toward the back that were synchronized so when they fired it was awesome but the crews of those for whatever stupid reason had been racially divided so there was a crew of one race a different crew of a different race and different crew of a different race and they did not communicate with each other they now care for each other and I'm not sure they were actually helpful them to be there one night I was walking they were typically we positioned them we stayed in that same position for a long time actually actually another lieutenant and I dug our own trench to sleep in we dug a y-shaped trench for us to get down under the ground level and dug it deep enough where we could put a cot but the edges right next to the edge of the trench and and we call hollowed out underneath the cot so the cot was about an inch off of the ground and we can sleep under there but but anyway I was I digress I was walking perimeter one night and the oh I know the the the four field artillery crews were positioned at them strategically most vulnerable points of our perimeter which is an again another concern but the quad 50 truck was out at the end of a kind of a point of land it was probably it's hard to remember 20 or 30 yards a little diversion in the regular it's not a round perimeter so I was walking out toward the truck and there's a bit of a breeze behind coming from behind my back and the crew was in the cab of the truck which faces the middle of the perimeter already a bad sign so one of the guys gets out of the truck and walked to the front of the truck and I hear the unmistakable round sound of an m16 round being jacked into the chamber and he's standing there and I holler I hollered out I said I said what's up or I forgot what I said except but he ya identified myself and he said well he said I called a I call for the challenge and you didn't respond with the password I said well who the hell do you think I want us he's well I couldn't tell you know they were troublemaker so I think they were smoking pot in the cab of that truck but I'm not sure and then a few nights later our battalion commander is his he had a tent set up in the middle of the perimeter of the position of the firebase and had sandbags up about 3 5 3 feet or so all the way around it and a few nights later there was an explosion and it was a m79 grenade went off in the sandbags of his tent and it came from the direction of that crew and coincidentally that crew disappeared a few days that day or so later I don't know where they went but we were relieved it that they left so as I said it was a frightening time because we could not count on each other as we could have as we were able to do when the what the 11th camp so when we finally finished that that the mission was called lumps on 719 and it was an intentional invasion into kimba into Laos to try to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in the carbon units apparently there was all kinds of issues that happened about that at the time I had no idea I just knew that what we were supposed to do we basically fired 24 hours a day seven days a week not several rounds a minute it's just that we were always firing on missions including the night one night I was sitting in my little chair and the whenever I had bought up I think it was $5 a little the cheapest lawn chair you've ever seen the vietnamese sold those and i was sitting on the slope next to the truck in the fire direction center below the ground and there was a tremendous explosion every time the 175 went off the sound you never got used to how much noise it made it was unbelievable but this time it was different there was a huge more even more loud sound and the inside of our trench was suddenly filled with dirt and debris and we thought we had gotten incoming and we started hearing some hollering and we discovered that the breach of one of them 175 guns had exploded and it killed a couple of guys and the wounded some others and we needed to call in a medevac he was a knight I frankly don't remember now where the medevac came that night her I almost I don't remember cuz it was our it was alright fire Direction singer they called in a medevac I just remember being scared to death frankly and then when we finally got things settled down he may even been the next day re-examined what had happened and I was where I was sitting I noticed there was a hole in the sandbags to my right and another hole with a piece of metal sticking out of it on the sandbag to my left and it was the breech bolt it come through the sandbags and I ran a little sight line and realized it had missed my head by maybe an inch so again I think my mom was keeping me alive with her prayers but it was a frightening time to be there so eventually we we broke down our equipment can came back and were positioned in a the nicest facility I was in when I was in Vietnam it was near Phu Bai between who food buying way I'm pretty sure it was adjacent to the window first Airborne's rear headquarters we had plywood buildings I had a room with a cot I had a fan I had a mosquito net pretty nice I bought a used refrigerator that was about two foot by two foot by two foot and someone had painted it yellow and wrote top-secret on it so I had the top-secret refrigerator in my room my little room and we had hooch mates and they would at that time the battalion commander decided we needed to polish our boots first time I'd ever had to do that so they would wash our our laundry forests and polish up boots and we had a mess hall we could eat a hot meal once or twice a day we had a very stylish canister that used to had had used had one time held one 75 millimeter powder turned and dug into the ground with a very classy screen on it and that's what we could pee in because we're no longer just peeing in the one jungle we're peeing in a civilized environment so it was very classy the hooch maids used the concertina wire to drape our fatigues over them so they would dry so that's where I spent the last couple of months I guess of my tour was at Phu Bai and your food by the battalion commander when it was about time for my year to be up gave me the pep talk and even though I now know they were drawing down he must have known who I was or he thought I was cool or something because he talked to me about staying in and I said colonel no offense but my first assignment was to Germany and four weeks later a tourist Vietnam and two weeks later a brand new second lieutenant in Fort Sill came to replace me any organization no matter how big that's that messed up on the way they treat their people I have no interest in and whatsoever thank you very much so I decided to leave when my 365 days but who's counting was up and when I got my orders I had four months of active duty left but I was discharged so I arrived in the United States unemployed with a child and no idea how to find a job but I was so glad to be home upon arrival I was I had read the news but of course our news was filtered a bit we read the Stars and Stripes is about the only news we saw we weren't I don't think oblivious that they were good they were trouble there was trouble and and protesters but it for some reason it didn't sink into me that it was real people normal everyday people who actually despised soldiers until I landed in San Francisco and that was a shock I was not prepared for and I did not know how to process it and I had seen a lot of hurt death in Vietnam and somehow I feel like I was able to process that because I was expecting that I wasn't prepared to process the disdain that I felt and so the only in retrospect at the time I just I realize I got the time I just didn't really know what to do how to deal with it now I can look back on it and realize that what I actually did was to become emotionally unavailable whether or not I mean my I have two older brothers and a younger sister a mom and a dad who loved me my at the time my grandma my great my mom Butler my dad's mother who was precious to me and she will be the most encouraging letters in Vietnam you can imagine we're all in my support system and it probably was my fault but I felt like we didn't know how to communicate about anything about this we didn't talk about it and I didn't necessarily feel ashamed although I felt like there was shame that was assigned to me but not by my family but it was such an awkward it just was better not to even discuss it so we just didn't talk about so for years I that's a choice I made again looking back my ex-wife mentioned more times than I can count that she wanted a divorce and I don't know but I suspect it was because I was emotionally unconnected and unavailable and so I'm sure they had a lot to do with it I haven't you know now so we did get a divorce a few years after I got back Vietnam and I tried to figure out a way to be okay with being single finally got to the point where I could deal with that and then I met Susie and we've been married 38 years and she's the best thing awesome she's awesome I don't remember what year it was I suspect it was after Susan I met but it may have been before may have been during that time when I was single and kind of lost I met a guy at a very peculiar event in southwest Missouri called rendezvous and a friend of mine invited me we slept in a tent or a tepee I think we slept in the tepee and they had hatchet throwing contests and muzzleloading rifle shooting contests and all kinds of weird things and we were sitting around the campfire one night and this guy had been a major I'm sorry had been a sergeant in the Marines and somehow it came up that I'd served in Vietnam and he I can't think of his name he expressed to me for the first time at least that I can hear that I heard it that he appreciated and it was an honor that I served and he was honored to meet me and I wasn't prepared for that either but it was like you know maybe it is okay that I did that you know I didn't I still didn't want to talk about it but at least it was a it was an opening to a perspective that I just had not considered and I remember it distinctly today so let me let me back up a second when I first got back from Vietnam it was in October and I didn't have a job as I said and I was fortunate enough to run into a chemical engineer in the small town I lived in who had created a way to apply a polyurethane material for athletic surfaces on gymnasiums and outdoor tracks and he hired me knowing it was a temporary position that I needed a job a real job he hired me to go around the let the four-state area Kansas a Missouri Arkansas Oklahoma and go to colleges and universities and meet with their athletic directors and so on about his product and while I was in one of those trips I was in Oklahoma City in hotel and a little blurb came on TV and it said jobs for veterans and I quickly wrote it down before I before it went away and I called the next day and they had one job opening for someone with computer experience or skills and I got that job it was in January and I started it was a startup company and that company was a start-up in Shawnee Oklahoma a little bedroom community near Oklahoma City but it was a job as a real job as great and our daughter our second daughter Jane who was beautiful wonderful daughter was born in July of that same that year in Shawnee and then about a month or two later the startup company went out of business but the mainframe company that we were using was a UNIVAC mainframe realized that I had gained about two years worth of experience in the nine months I worked for them for this other company and their requirement was that she had two years of experience to be able to be considered to be hired but they hired me and the reason I mentioned that right now is because I really found that the work that I did was gratifying the other issues in my life were troubling difficult so I worked all the time and so when Jane came along I was not as well not as connected as I should have been with her I'm sure and neither my older daughter at that point was about just about two years old exactly so I don't know how good of a father I was I was I was a lot working a lot I would come home and eat dinner and go back to work so my relationship with my daughter's I'm sure suffered and of course with my ex certainly must have suffered because of that as well so I when I got home from Vietnam I it took a while to find my first job I had a master's degree would have been a computer science if the college had had a computer science degree at the time my thesis was on computer based stuff but it was actually in applied mathematics but I got a job working for a technology company a mainframe company and poured myself into my work I got a lot of gratification out of the work I did I was first a technician I say a technician as a software engineer and did a lot of fairly sophisticated programming and things and then I became a sales guy and did that for a while and went through about 25 years in the computer business and was successful at that wasn't that successful in relationships I don't think Suzy was very tolerant of me we ended up getting married as I said 38 years ago a few years I think it was 10 after we were married we actually went to accounts learn learn how to argue and fight which we didn't know how to mostly because I was oblivious and little by little over the past really not that many years I've learned about PTSD the deep felt I don't know throughs entman is the right word but the inability to respond appropriately to emotional situations Suzy and I had a son have a son he's he's 29 almost 30 and our relationship particularly in his teenage years he and I had a very very challenging relationship and much of it was in again I took me a while to look back on I can see looking back on it was my over responding overreaction to what should have been normal stimulus and it took some time to be able to learn that and and to process that I did go to the VA my cousin who we were very close with all the way through school we assess kids all the way through he's a Vietnam veteran he served ahead of me he was an infantry enlisted guy and phil hammered me for a long time to go to the VA and register with the VA regarding Agent Orange exposure and I said why would I do that he said when you got to do that and so what triggered actually as I needed hearing aids and he said you know you got to go to the hearing aid I'll go to the VA maybe didn't give you hearing aids so that's kind of what what I did plus I had was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 16 years ago and that was no fund but he again kept challenging me that prostate cancer is a presumed diagnosis for Agent Orange exposure I really need to go to the VA so that's when I went to the VA finally and that's actually I think that's when I actually got my hearing aids which was very very helpful but I did go to one session with a shrink at the VA and I just didn't really want to do any more but I I felt like I just being aware that there's at some level and it wasn't that I wanted people to thank me it wasn't that it really was if I did something especially if I extended myself to serve to help somebody and they threw it back in my face it really affected me deeply and that's kind of what I was feeling with my son in retrospect it was totally inappropriate for me but I understand it now and he and I have a good relationship a great relationship now but it was tough for a number of years so every now and then I'll get a trigger and I'll say that's that's that watch that so I'm I was in the parking lot of an office where I worked and at that talent time I had gotten brave enough to put a little tag frame on my tags and a Vietnam veteran and a guy from the AV VBA drove by he opens window and he said are you about Vietnam veteran I said yes he said I want you to come to lunch with me I have a meeting I want you to attend I said what isn't he system it's Vietnam veterans I said I just really never had an interest in that he said I want you to come to lunch with me just come one time if you don't like it don't go again so I went and I met Curt I met a roomful of normal people and it was very cathartic to me to know that a Vietnam veteran could be a normal person not like the news portrayed and I've established some deep deep relationships friendships with the with the folks from the guys of Vietnam from the VA v VBA and I say it's guys almost all of our guys because at that time there were that many women who served so I'm very grateful for that I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my story whether anybody's interested or not so thank you well you have really expounded on a number of great things and quite interesting to what you experienced I'm going to go back into when you were in Vietnam and have you think through your number you listed a number and a number of situations but is there one or two significant events that happen and happen to you in Vietnam that made a significant impression on you that you think have maybe made an impact in your life today I don't know how to answer that I watched a guy burn to death I don't know how to how to I don't know what that I don't know what to do with that I saw a guy get his face burned off from an explosion of fire of a blasting cap that was left in a backpack and he's permanently disfigured for his life I care to get to a medivac with a hole in his head from a round he was still alive I don't know if he made it or not those are the things I when you when you asked me about singular events those come up whether they affect my life today what affects my life today the most is the was and to thank God is not now is the unexpected treatment on my return I just did I could not get my head around that and it wasn't so much that people spit on me or anything I just felt a sense of disdain for doing what I felt like was the honorable thing to do doing my duty not only for my country but for my fellow soldiers and to have that thrown back in my face affected me for years well thank you for sharing that with us and I can really appreciate what you're saying is that we all know who has served in Vietnam and we realize how precious life is I think today right and especially when you're involved in combat situations and situations which we have no control over and you see the repercussions of combat and how it impacts lives and it was another second lieutenant came to join ER when I was with a cab he had just had his first child and he was killed the first day at least the first week he was there and I remember helping to extract his body it was like this guy had everything to live for and this off his life is over and like you say you realize and manole if-- is precious even in that environment so there is this there is something I'm not sure if I should say this on tape or not but there is something that I believe if someone has served God bless him if they've served in the military they ain't they've ruined the sick they wrote the same blank check I did but there's something different about having served in combat and where it is clear that your life and those life and the lives of people around you are at stake there is something that does change the way you see things and I am honored and pleased to thank anybody who has served but I know from a few personal experiences that people who did not serve just don't see it the same way we do if they I'm if they didn't serve in combat in testing we're not I'm not better than them it's just a different it's just a different perspective it's some deep level so I don't know if that is appropriate you might want to cut that out but I mean that's that's that's what I feel about it no I think you it's a good point one other thing that you mentioned the particularly the esprit de corps that you saw and the camaraderie that you experience when you with 11th armored CAV down south and Zeon you move up on the DMZ or close to that area during lumps on 7:19 with the second I think you said 94th artillery battery and you saw at that point in time a real I'm gonna call and lack of esprit de corps and where people as I would call it people were not looking out for each other right and what do you think was the reason for that knowing the situation that your unit was involved in because that Lam son 719 what's considered probably one of the most biggest combats we faced that was in some ways was not successful in a lot of ways but we were even though we weren't physically in Laos we were up on the DMZ what do you think the cosna I that's a very good question and I don't know the answer it wasn't because we weren't in danger because we did we got incoming we were we had people killed that would just be on a on a in the you know maybe when one of our officers a major was going from one battery to another and got blown up in his Jeep I mean it wasn't like we were not experiencing danger which was what I would have originally thought that's what it was because we were experiencing danger constantly with the 11th armored cat or at least very very frequently we lived in the jungle and we and we experienced incoming and we we went out I mean our our motto was find the bastards and pile on I mean we were looking for contact the second ninety-fourth we were in a defensive position even though we were firing artillery into Laos we had contact with the NBA we had artillery coming from the NBA there was a very real possibility we would get overrun and yet the guys didn't care I think I'm guessing they were smoking pot maybe I don't know because frankly not long after we got back from that jungle that assignment that that location back to near Phu by the the army instituted a I forgot what they called a gray spit not a grace period program where have you turned yourself in for drug use you would be able to be treated and you could go home without a mark on your record if you voluntarily turn yourself in well there were guys and I I mean I was I was one of two at that point in fire Direction officers I mean I worked 12 hours and the other guy worked together 12 hours so we were in a bunker there were five guys in there and we were became we can we were very close and a couple of the guys that in my team turned themselves in which shocked me well I found out later marijuana had been easy to detect heroin was very difficult to detect so guys that were smoking pot started smoking heroin they got strung out on heroin and that's why they turned themselves in because they were hooked on heroin and one of the guys I'll never forget is this the sight of seeing him his wherever he was wherever the treatment center was I saw him walking across our compound wearing a robe like a seersucker stripe white and blue robe or something he looked like a skeleton and I realized he had changed little by little by little until now I saw he was different than the person I remembered because I had seen him change so gradually hadn't noticed just a couple of weeks went by and I saw him so it may have been that pot was so pervasive that people just didn't give a crap and they were sitting in their foxholes pot smoking pot and they figured I'm gonna go most will go high I don't know that's the only explanation because we were it wasn't like we were in a rear position with no day as I said it's a good question I haven't I've not quite figured that one out you are yeah at the time that you spent in Vietnam you know did you build any strong relationships with individuals that you stayed in touch with today and who are on tell me about those people ironically no I had to call several years after I got home from one of the one of the guys that I served in the the last part of my skewer he was one of the guys in the in fire Direction center van LeConte II was his name and he called me and I immediately recognized his voice and I said Dan Locati and he said John Butler and we had a great conversation and that's the end of it I can't even remember the names of I stayed we always stayed pretty close to the troop commanders track in xi cap his name was Mike McCrary Mike Mike I'm sorry I'll think of later he was a West Point graduate a great guy I never connect with him after the war his his track commander was from Kansas he and I connected when we were there I don't remember his name i I'm embarrassed to say that my track commanders name was Frank you could we called him UConn but I've never talked to him since Vietnam No was the out of curiosity was the 11th Armored Cavalry German commander George Patton jr. when you were there no when I was there and I say okay well as we wrap up here if we want to thank first of all great stories great information and I'll ask sue if you have some any follow-up questions or anything you like to ask you asked it and thank you for asking it yeah I was curious about that too because kind of the motivations for fighting and fighting for each other has always intrigued me and I'm really fascinated by the fact that you have such different guys between the two units at basically the same time in country what's that it basically the same time yeah and that's that's the other thing that people in fact there's one of our I won't mention any names with one of the guys from the vvv a questions about it was questioning me and why do we need somebody from the outside to explain about the history of Vietnam I can tell you I was in two different units at the same time I was there they were completely different experiences so do I have the right perspective sure do I have a complete perspective hell no you know even if you're there at the same time it's a different different very different perspective so and I you know I didn't intentionally disconnect I just it was I think part of it was I wanted it behind me so I never II really never pursued it I've never been to an 11th armored CAV reunion I'm thinking about going now not because I'll meet anybody that I know probably but it's just that that unit served so well together and like I said it wasn't because we were motivated to be there we just decided collectively we're gonna do this right while we're here and it's kind of impressive really looking back on yeah I think that's a strong strong indication of the type of leadership that you were exposed to in the two different units probably well as we wrap up here I asked probably one last question for you is there is there a particular message or something you like to leave with us ya later to your experiences and once I have thought about that even while I was talking if you can imagine most people think men can only do one thing at the time only women could do two things but somehow it's been resonating with me and I'll go back to the reason I went to Vietnam at the time I grew up it was common it was common to have an extraordinary sense of responsibility and duty that the world was bigger than me it is not common today and this is not preaching I'm I'm saying I want people to know if anyone hears this I want people to know that there is a sense of deep satisfaction and gratification to do something that has no value to you directly especially if you can benefit somebody else to do something for somebody else well there's an individual a group of people or certainly for our country you can't explain you can't really appreciate what that's like until you do it and when you serve frankly I believe God made us that way I believe God made us to love actively others people we don't even know and when we do it resonates deeply within us even if we don't think about it we just do it it happens because that's how God made us that's what I believe and so when you serve for the benefit of somebody else there is something in you that is so blessed and it's a deep benefit don't do it for that reason but if you do you'll be you be you'll find that what I'm talking about is true so that's what I would leave people with well John we want to thank you very very much today for your interview and your time with us I think your stories and what your the message you have left here with us is we'll stay with a lot of people for all time thank you very much chef thank you thank you for your service and welcome home thank you had

Channel: Atlanta History Center

Views: 5,955

Rating: 4.6744184 out of 5

Keywords: Veteran (Profession), Atlanta History Center (Museum), Library of Congress Veterans History Project

Id: OamZyzH8xjc

Length: 66min 29sec (3989 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020