Remembering The Vietnam War: Jim Frey

so to begin with can you just talk about what your life was like before Vietnam before you went into the service I was I grew up in Buffalo Wyoming I was raised strict Catholic went to catechism and CYO and all that stuff and then I my last well in high school I worked on a Black Angus ranch did a little rodeo and stuff like that my dad was a pro at the Powder River Country Club and I started golfing when I was nine and the senator at that time dick green lived just a block down the street from us and he was a regular at the golf course and he asked me when I graduated what I was gonna do and I said probably go in the army and he says don't you don't you sign anything yet I gotta get back to you and his red jacobi was athletic director at the University of Wyoming so two weeks later I had a full golf scholarship down there and it only lasted a year I went into secondary education that's what I was going to major in and [Music] after that I didn't have a high enough grade so I got my draft notice and when I got my draft notice I didn't want to go to Vietnam so I enlisted not knowing I was going there anyway training training was a breeze because I was we had we got wrestling in our school my last year and I took third and State and we just worked out all the time a friend of mine and I stacked 3,000 bales a day at two cents a bale and so we were not only the two richest kids in town but we were pretty buffed out and stuff like that so basic training was a breeze I was supposed to be a field postal operator I went I went to AIT for that but anybody that went to Nam was was their first MOS was 11 Bravo that was infantry although we didn't get infantry MOS I stayed in I stayed in the postal for a couple months and then I started volunteering for different things and and I ended up a squad leader eventually on a reactionary squad we had 12 guys in my squad and they put us way down by the wire and the compound and just left us alone so we'd go out at night and do our thing and then come back in the morning sowhich day be for you be like for you average day was hot and muggy sweet and except for the monsoon there just wet all the time but get up at daylight and and we'd have a few drinks of stuff during the day and then sleep it off and then get ready to go out at night that was the average day luckiest yeah we had I had a lucky day I don't remember I don't remember dates or anything hardly over there in fact there's a lot of it I don't remember at all but we had a we had a 122 rocket came in and took the last two rows of sandbags off of our bunker and then blew up behind us that was a lucky day because when I rocked one on one on the one two twos blew up you could put a Jeep in the hole and not see the top of it of what worst day I don't know I think they were all that way I knew when I got off the plane that Cam Ranh Bay it was like a hundred and ten or 112 degrees and and the stench of that country that's always embedded in my mind that in a smell of blood does those things won't go away I lost four four guys there a night I see I see two of them splattered on the wall quite a few times during a date they took a direct mortar round but the guys in my squad were all real tight we all looked out for each other if you didn't then you know they got rid of you or something what was it how many years did you end up staying in the surface and the in Vietnam 2 years 3 months and 16 days coming home was like when I first went to Nam it was just a chain everything had changed so much that people didn't they weren't too crazy about us at all when I when I got off the plane when I D roast out of Seattle they told us to get to the airport is don't be loitering around just get to the airport but when there'd be three or four of us sitting at a table at the airport or go in there to sit at a table than people would get up and move away from us Seoul never thought too much about it and just thought their buncher bunch of rude asses anyway yeah the reason I stayed so long is when I left there I was my first love I we were gonna get married when I got out of the service and my best buddy was gonna keep an eye on her for me and stuff and he got her she never smoked dope before hardly ever drank and he got her on wacky weed and and booze and knocked her up and and so I had a death wish i I volunteered for just about anything I could I didn't want to come back home what do you think people should know that it wasn't our fault the politician sent her ass over there we had nothing to do with that otherwise you'd end up in the pen either that or run to Canada and hope that while Willy Clinton had let you back in like he did it's it's a brotherhood that that nobody will understand unless you're part of it because we understand each other and we can talk freely about it and you try to explain that to the regular civilian population and first of all they're not interested and the ones that are there doing it it seems like just to be cordial to you know act interested or something but I haven't found too many that that have done that most kids don't even or Vietnam was when you got back and restarted your life and here what how did you end up here how did you I came back to my dad had a Frigidaire wolf whirlpool RCA store and a little town of Buffalo and I remember in high school I helped him deliver some washer dryer and refrigerator out to [Music] trying to think of his name though I had it on the tip of my tongue he Robert Taylor he was he was the star in the true detectives and when I came home it was early early in the morning I didn't want to wake my folks up so there was a cafe there called a Larry at Cafe and there was a pickup there an old power wagon with the horse trader behind it and so I went in there and I sat down at the counter and there he was and we started BS and because he remembered me from delivering appliances and stuff and he had couch [ __ ] on his boots and everything else and just a normal guy so that's that was my first day home I think I was by then I self-medicating pretty good when when we talk about post-traumatic stress disorder what do you think people don't understand that who have not experienced it what's it like for you how do you live with it how do you I worked with guys that were a little on the ignorant side that would that would call us crybabies and because we were talking that way you know but the last guy did that I told him why don't you go over to the black wall in Washington DC and call one of them guys at cry-baby I said they'll cut you in a lot of pieces so you know by then you were real careful who you talked to and and what you talked about I didn't know I might I had 13 co-workers in maintenance up there and different departments that were Vietnam veterans and you could always tell a Vietnam veteran because they were real conscientious they did a good job they were on a mission they got their jobs done every day and then never put two and two together nobody knew who we didn't even know each other until I don't know my my accident precipitated that the PTSD I had a 4,000 pound role come down on my hand and cut my fingers off and and stuff and all I seen was a rocket coming in and after that I was going I was seeing three counselors and they put me on meds and all that kind of stuff I hold over you when you went into being into the war I spent the one year in college so it's probably I was still 19 I think when I went in well you know it's funny I see when we've gone on vacation I see these young little kids all dressed in uniform and stuff and and I always say to my wife is it boy that's sad when they take a little guy like that over there [ __ ] we're the same thing but they when you go through basic gear you're a man on your killer what when you come out of there you know you guys survived it's just it was just everyday thing you just did when we talk about everyday life in this cool comfortable we think it's hot when it's 90 yeah how how does it compare what when you were living in it there I'm in 120 degrees 100 yeah I don't I don't know what hell was like I've been there yet but that's I remember I remember the 504 thin piece went down and and they got a Deuce and a half full of beer from the black market and the bottoms of the cans were rusty it's a little steel cans you know and they brought them up to camp Holloway there and selling them for a penny a can so I you get a case of beer and a penny back but when you pop the top half of the foam came out first and we were trying to cool some of them down with fire extinguishers but we had to say that to freeze the rats when they had rats that you could dam her right around the place but they get in a wheel Welliver up in the wheel of a truck and you drive it forward and then drive it back and they try to go up and back and then while the other guy pulled a fire extinguisher off and freeze him we had the most rat kills in our outfit so you're dealing with just awful living conditions and you're dealing with danger and you guys were out at night yeah that must have been unbelievably dangerous well yeah you're asked to be awful tight sometimes we'd go if anything happened to come through and you'd always see a blood trail or something if you killed one of the Dinks you know they'd they'd drag their dead off so you couldn't get a coupe count but we'd make a little sweep we're where we were had some action or something and if there's somebody there we'd pick him up throw him in the in three-quarter-ton and drive him back to base camp Sol and they'd dump him out by the gate there and put a sign there saying that this is what happened to you if you if you're a VC or a sympathizer just making sure that everybody was ready to go and had all their gear ready would you got new guys cuz I stayed here so long I talked a couple of them into staying with me for an extra six months and then they did they said you're crazy and they left then I'd get new ones in what would you how would you prepare these guys for what they were get it deal with just just give him you know tell him what to do and tell me usually only got one or two chances so better listen up you learned pretty fast I think there anybody that I served with yeah yeah I got a little captain over there he had I slipped up and told my counselor down there the VA I still wanted to kill him he kept me from getting rank for about a year just a little weasel he had lost his boots and he had thick glasses and just a tiny little [ __ ] that walked around like a rooster you know but then a guys in the groups they don't mention killing anybody because then they'll have you over there and looking at another shrink so I just shut up but that one stands out my mind no not not at all not at all you know I think it's [Music] [Music] good but I would like you to make sure that what you like people don't learn from it or learn from you the one thing the big thing the common thread with all of us is that I think the first year I was there we were winning the war they'd take a hill and they'd put a firebase on it and pretty soon they'd take it all off of there and and they'd let the Dinks back up on it on the hill and they'd dig in and and then they wanted to take it again I know a doctor the 173rd airborne lost a company the first day because they were all dug in in the hillside and you're going up hill and they're throwing [ __ ] down hill you know it's just stuff like that so we didn't trust the government very well and now they're trying to cut our benefits and and I've got a lot of friends that are that we're over there that saw a lot of stuff can't even get there I talked to a service officer said that they're just doing 2014 claims now he'll we're all getting up there seventy years old or whatever and might not ever see a claim and now they're talking about adding our social security to our VA benefit and then tax on that they're talking about our spouses when we die they get eleven hundred and something a month for the rest of their life plus medical insurance they're talking about cutting that out this is all stuff that people are trying to bring up to the legislature and stuff like that so yeah our trust for the government doesn't hold any water that's the most common thing that's a heck of a way to say thank you yeah well they start having all the parades for the Iraqi guys and stuff like that and that's that was fine but then they started they stirred it's almost like they felt ashamed of themselves so they had to recognize us it was like a forced thing and and that's the way just about all of us felt I wouldn't go to a parade if they had one yeah you stood out like a turd in a Punchbowl exactly no no it was almost like everything they've done to us has been forced and the Iraqi and Gulf War vets wouldn't have nothing if it hadn't have been for us you know break in the waves for him they wouldn't had absolutely nothing the guy that the guy that pulled a cover off a Saddam Hussein in that spider hole over there he filed a claim when he came back they didn't even have him recorded as being in the in the military and he's got all this documentation and stuff and they denied him and denied him and here it was on national TV that's all it was just stuff like that our service oh absolutely yeah most of us the PTSD I don't think a day goes by where I don't think of Vietnam at least 2,000 times a day it's just it's one uh it's the biggest part of my life [Music] if I go to if I happened upon a car wreck or something like that and and there's a smell of blood or just everything flashes back because blood smells different than than other stuff we put this we drug one one of them zippers in one day in the morning they were going to court-martial ist's we had him we had him laying in the back of the three-quarter-ton he dead he was just a just a skinny little thing and he had the bottom of his sandal was had a kind of a big wear mark in it so we hung a little signer it said I'd walk a mile for a camel and and we took some axle grease and put around his eye and said I'd rather fight than switch and then all them cigarette sayings you know and they wanted to give us all article 15 s for for it wasn't just destroying the end it was defacing the enemy but they could take one of our Marines out behind out pass the wire and skin him alive and listen to him scream all night that was ok they made big pits with snakes in them punji pit punji stakes and everything in there and that was you know we couldn't do that so our hands were tight pretty much the last year I was there if you got incoming fire you had to identify the fire call in for per meter yep call in for permission to return fire yeah it was pretty it's pretty sad so you felt like your hands were tied oh yeah yeah they weren't they weren't afraid to court-martial you for any of that kind of stuff when lieutenant Calley went through melee and all of the civilians of stuff you you didn't know you didn't know which ones were VC or VC sympathizers or anything like that we all thought he was going to get decorated and here he was hung out to dry during the Tet Offensive at Camp Holloway three of the three of the barbers that used to be on the compound were shot dead coming across the wire with satchel charges on their back and every once in a while I'd have one of them guys skinned my neck with a with a razor and and they'd they'd be you couldn't understand him but they'd be giggling to each other and whatever and and then they got done he had some kind of orange stuff they'd slap on your faces like kerosene and and that was your shave you know I was that was really taught not stuff but they we thought I mean who would have thought that they were there was there was sympathizers inside the compound it would put a tripwire across one of the boardwalks are going into a hooch and and blow the legs off of one of the chopper pilots or whatever and I was okay no because they're doing it over and over again over and across the pond and the sand same thing they could ended that war and they could have went through there and ended that thing so fast it and a lot of us were in Cambodia a friend of mine he just got awarded I wrote a couple letters for him and stuff he was in Cambodia and when you were in Cambodia then they didn't they they didn't make a record of your service over there and he's he was out of there for I don't know since 69 and he just got his award last year because it was top-secret to be in Cambodia oh hell we were my base camp was ten miles from Cambodia they could shoot the 122's right from the border and land them in you is there anything else you would like to add that you feel is important that I didn't give you a chance to say I don't know I they were gonna they talked about starting a mentor program for the Gulf War vets and have us mentor them and somebody in the government apparently thought that that would dredge up too many things so that wouldn't work and the thing is you're it's a warrior talking to a warrior you know it would work but that that went by the wayside so consequently that's why there's a lot of suicides a lot more today than it was with Vietnam veterans yeah that was too easy oh yeah yeah see the thing that would I understand from a nut dart to some Gulf War vets that came before they were shipped back over here they went they came back into the rear and they wind him and dine him and for a couple days and ask him health how things going at all really good well that's what they put on the report they're doing really good yeah there's no problems there there's no PTSD there's nothing there and so then they come back and and they go to the VA for help and all we can't see it for another two months we're all booked up like a woman shoot themselves yeah it's a crazy world you'd think that serving your country like that would count for something but it really doesn't no no no they don't in fact when the VA was given out when they did give you an award they didn't want like my buddy Gunny Bob they put him down as schizophrenic whatever the other half of that is they wouldn't put they didn't want to put PTSD down because they didn't want they didn't want to be labeling their people with PTSD cuz see world war two is shell-shocked and and battle fatigue that's all PTSD my ex-father-in-law served in France and Germany and he had PTSD so bad his whole family just thought he they just called him a ornery bastard and none of them knew that I knew what he had what he's dealing with no nothing nothing when you get too old the Givi and ibuprofen and a diaper and tell you shut up [Music] go home and die make life miserable no not at all history repeats itself over and over and over it'll never change when you're 90 you'll be you'll be down here interviewing somebody that was in the second grade yeah no I mean oh they yeah the ones that have been there yeah sure they got memories every day anyway the only thing the only part of it is we've got a couple guys that are Vietnam veterans that they don't have any documentation as far as what they did or this and that in the other and they want to be part of the they want to be part of the guys that did and so that's where you get the you know you get a lot of made-up stuff and stuff like that I don't know how many times I've gone into a store with my hat on or whatever and okay I tried to go to Vietnam they wouldn't let me go ahead and grow toenail in bhagavad they were taking anybody back then didn't matter I know I called him Ray Charles when we were out hunting I said hey ray you see the animal use your other eye and if he still got it just shoot what shoot left that's why they made him machine gunners because he couldn't see how to cite a rifle there was guys that were panties they'd still they'd pull him down give him the finger wave anyway they didn't matter bed-wetters same thing basic training no wet the bed you sleep in it that's all you're gonna go marching the next day anyway just a lot of cannon fodder that went over there so when you flew in to Vietnam did you know like what was your initial impression like when the door opened and you're in on that will hot like that holy man hope it ain't like this all the time but you'll always smell that even down in Minneapolis they got they got the Vietnamese neighborhood and the moms and I don't know down in st. Pauls there's a Hmong community and Vietnamese down there and they've still got the carts in the out in the curbs the mamasan still have there there's straw hats they got the beetle nut teeth that are black and that same stench you don't know if they're cooking up a cat or a dog or a monkey or whatever they're doing but it all smells the same oh man yeah just like you never left that's just stuff that you know and they the VA said oh we we think we have a cure for PTSD what we're gonna do is is we're gonna have you dredge everything up and then deal with talk about it every day every day every day and it'll go away well it don't go away you think about it that many times a day it and it still don't go away so you know so I mean is that when everybody just has to to know that this stuff doesn't go away it just you know once you're once you got it it's there's no cure for PTSD not at all the only help there is is like the old guys used to come back from World War two in Korea they would treat him down at many apps are the ones here or anywhere I guess they called it the Thorazine shuffle did fill him up with Thorazine and throw a diaper on him and they'd shuffle down the hallways like that drooling and they had a bib on him so they didn't have to deal with them oh [Music] no not even close I'd say go and file a claim right away at least get into the to the VA and get yourself a good shrink and get into a group of like people veterans that understand you and and you understand them so what you have a little common ground anyway that'd be the first thing I'd tell them for veterans oh that's that's a place where you can go and talk about anything talk about the war talk about anything else and we all can relate because we all been there done it and even if it isn't talking about the war it's still all related because that's the behavior that we have everybody understands there's guys in in our group that if they didn't have if they didn't have the the veterans in their group they wouldn't go anyway that's one attractive thing is that that you can go there and feel free and everybody looks forward to going I mean our group Monday morning rolls around we're all down there so for all of those families of the guys out there all of the families all of the kids all of the spouses I mean do they understand well like my daughter she did a lot of papers in high school on Vietnam and she wanted me to go speak I don't know numerous times but I didn't never did but I got a collection of stuff I got I got some battle flags from and I got some hand-to-hand stuff I got the VC would break off the air stems on a Deuce and a half that's a two and a half ton truck because their brass they'd break the air stem off that was solid brass just a little that looked like a little tiny pipe and where the air went into the into the tube they'd tapped the threads down so they didn't scrape their mouth and they'd get two hits opium er - it's a weed in there they had most of them would carry two little plastic bags tucked under there there stringer belt whatever they had and and they would have they'd have one of them little pipes with their dope and then they'd have another little bag with with dried fish heads and rice and that was their little lunch break even the Ervin's that kind of got me at first - they'd all they hold hands all the time and it was not that's just what they do over there but they'd be smoking her their weed and we couldn't smoke it unless we snuck it's all [Music] so did you guys get breaks out of there dude when you brakes like breaks in the action like where you were able to leave yeah you get you get after six months you'd get a week's you could go on R&R for a week he could go to Singapore Bangkok Australia Vaughn tell was an end country and our are in our place I never went I never got a chance to go down there but and then after your year is up they give you 30 days you can go back stateside recoup rest up and come back for another tour well what I remember of it it was fun self medicate a lot yeah I remember going to the member going back to the airport my second tour over there I bought a little snub-nosed 22 I had that in my dress screens and I had two pints of Canadian Club in my inside of my pocket one on each side plus I was drunk when I got on the plane and I mean a lot of people travel that way going back over there a lot of us didn't think we're coming back so you just really didn't care so when you were you went back for your second tour you knew exactly what you were in for oh yeah yep I don't have to take my bravery beyond I went by I was attached to the fourth infantry for over a year at pleiku and then I volunteered on Operation Oregon and they touted that as being as big of a day as d-day was in World War two is so we loaded up and went up to down to Chu Lai and replace the Marines there and I got an arc on their decoration there for over a year then the reason that the reason I had some oddball numbers at the end is a they were given if he extended six months and that included the period of your discharge then you could get an early out so I did but I only have I only had three months and 16 days left so I spent him over there beat the hell out of polishing boots a lot of guys come from Germany there that just got tired of those IG inspections and stuff like that if you if you couldn't get resupplied or anything like that there's always boots laying around that you could find a pair to slide into or whatever [Music] and then once you got once you got jungle rotten stuff that never goes away I was tested for Agent Orange I had symptoms of that back in 73 and then one of the other jobs might my squad had over there as we get would get a bunch of prisoners in and we had to hold him there that camp Smit until they could get transportation down to the prison and they weren't afraid of anything except a shotgun so I had a riot gun and had him filling sandbags and until they got ready to go in and load him up and haul him down to the prison they were treated pretty good even though he wanted to trip and squeeze one off once in a while he didn't know he didn't know what always I'd look at him and and wonder how many of us did he did he kill or you know it always it always went through my mind I'd sit there and try to analyze one of them prisoners to see what damage he did they just they'd sit there and grin at you with their black teeth and [Music] just an entirely different well there's a whole different world there yeah so when you came home and you had this kind of I don't know it seems like you guys went through oh and there was no welcome home no worse than that no no they said get into civilian clothes when you can so that because they knew what was happening there and we were getting egged and tomato and spit on and called names I was with some guys they threw some eggs at us up there in Seattle yeah I always heard baby killer thing baby killers and those people that protests that they didn't they didn't have the slightest idea what was going on it wasn't our fault we're just doing what we were told to do yeah it's not like you can pick and choose your assignments no I got sunburned real bad one time over there we had it it was on the fourth of July and they wanted to give me an article 15 I had I had blisters on the bottoms of my back of my legs that were just like a water balloon and they'd pop and and they had water would drain out of them and they were gonna give me an article 15 for the for nuttin being able to perform my natural duties and destroying government property imaginet yeah yeah that's how [ __ ] they were I feel like you guys came through hell what we did I think good meds today I'm happy I appreciate your service I appreciate thanks thank you and thank you for doing this sure

Channel: PBS North

Views: 89,936

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Id: sKJvKLehDrw

Length: 48min 20sec (2900 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 26 2018