Vietnam Vet, mortuary affairs tells his story

um and we're going to start with some of the easy questions first of all today is june 14th 2018 and we are at the iowa gold star military museum um and roger could you please tell me your first and last name roger davidson okay and where and when were you born i was born in creston iowa in 1946 1946 uh in creston is that uh an in town or were you a farm kid my dad was in the military when i was born it's a little small town it's big town now but it's small at the time okay what branch of service was your dad in he was uh in the army in the philippines okay but he was only 17. so when they went into battle they sent him home because uh he wasn't old enough to do it and his whole company got wiped out all of them really yeah and he had a hard time living with that but yeah they said that's how you know as i know my dad that's what happened and was your dad from iowa and that's why yeah he's born in he's born in des moines okay um so a lot of the veterans i interview from your generation were actually raised by world war ii veterans how do you think that's uh different what's it like being raised by a world war ii veteran who also survived the great depression well i don't know because my dad was a drunk oh i think he lived with that you know his whole life from surviving over there and you know where the rest of them didn't and i think he just he just couldn't deal with it isn't there a word for that shell chalk i think they used you know uh i've heard it um called like survivor's guilt okay survivor's guilt i guess that's yeah you just couldn't live with the fact i don't think so i mean knowing what i do now at the time i just thought he was an evil person but looking back and after listening to a story that my mom told me when he was gone then i come to understand that it's it was a different different attitude were you pretty close with your mom then uh yeah with my mom my dad i wasn't he was abusive and i just didn't have much to do with him and that's it's unfortunate that that's what it had what it had yeah that's what it came to yes we didn't have the kind of services that back then that we have right now right right um because back in the 50s we just didn't talk about it right right and that's why uh this project is so important because they've actually found that the more you talk about it the better yeah it doesn't build up like a pop bottle yeah you just don't unscrew it it runs away yeah yeah i know what you mean um so what kind of things did you enjoy doing as a kid growing up in iowa i worked i worked from the time i was nine years old until i went in the army really what kind of stuff would you carry newspapers i helped a kid carry newspapers i mean we didn't have nothing we there's five of us seven of us in the family two-bedroom house one bathroom one was an outhouse until they got the sewer put in uh we had a double bed bunk beds me and my brother slept in the beds and my two sisters slept next to us in the twin beds and i graduated out of that bedroom so my brother my sisters and out of all the times we were in there i never saw i mean we respected each other's privacy never saw him naked nothing we had four direct we had a dresser had four drawers each of a center drawer one closet one drawer for each one drawer for each we had a closet and each person had their own coat hangers i had three my brother had three it's wait you didn't charge nothing them days you know a credit card was nothing you just uh you had cash or you didn't have anything so i just carried newspapers right until the time i was drafted what high school did you go to des moines graduating 65. so um do you remember in the in the mid 60s especially being a newspaper carrier hearing about this place called vietnam i remember watching it in in 1965 uh sitting there my dad was across from us was watching the nightly news and they were talking about the soldiers writing home wanting bad button machetes to cut the jungle grass that was really the first time i started following it you know to me it was just something that was going on and i didn't pay much attention to it at that time did you did anybody say you're gonna be there someday nope nice to be a teenager and be invincible isn't it well yeah at the time i don't even i don't even know if they had the draft going on it you know when i that i recall in in high school i did when i got out so when you graduate from high school how did you what's the story of how you got drafted well i got out in 65 i was 18. and they got a draft notice in october they must wait to see if i was going to go to college i got the draft notice in october of 66 and i reported to uh camden or camden out there at the fort fort des moines in january and then they sent me in march that fortnight award now since you were drafted does that mean you did not get to choose your branch of service was it chosen for you right most most of them went the army few went to the marines but most of them was army um do you remember having any thoughts about being drafted or was that just something yeah i didn't want it i didn't want to go why is that i just didn't want to go met my wife i didn't want to go i mean you know i just didn't want to go i just know the way to put it so you already had a sweetheart at home no i met her in 65 you know summer 65 and i just you know you just that vietnam was just another place had you gotten married yet oh no no folks wouldn't let us or i would have okay so you were still just dating her but yeah especially um knowing that your dad was a veteran did that also make it kind of i don't want to go do that because that's going to make me no i didn't think about that um so you get drafted you're at fort des moines uh where did you do your basic fort leonard wood done for uh eight weeks came out sent me to uh fort riley kansas they they told us that formation they said anyone going to fort lewis washington or fort riley kansas you're going to vietnam they just told right up front well i was the only one went fort raleigh kansas but they were forming up the ninth infantry division because the first had just left so i went down there and they said i gave him my orders and there was nobody there and he says well uh your orders here so you're supposed to be grave registration excuse memorial activities yes it was a 57 57 f10 or something fox droppings so anyway they were they were coming in the supplying service company was coming in we were going to be a direct support unit to the ninth infantry division when they went over so that's when we started studying and some of us went to schooling and got ready for it but still nobody had any idea what it was yeah what kind of things do they even teach you you can't we had books you just so it wasn't even really like a medical course no there was two or three guys that were going to be morticians that were in here and i don't know whether they caught draft that i had said something one time about that or not is why they stuck me in there i mean i didn't have the grades to do this to be a mortation i mean when i was in high school we were in three classes you you had advanced general and basic and that's how they broke us up well if you were in the basic class in other words basically was just looking back now bait would just get you through life the advanced class they were getting ready to go to college because they knew the basics probably didn't have the money to go those are your mechanics and your yeah yeah that was your auto mechanics your wood working yada yada yada you know basic math two plus two equals four instead of three but then you had the algebra people you know your valedictorians that you know they went on but yeah we were separated and you took some testing when you got in right asvab i don't know if that's what you'd call them now or not i suppose it was some type of testing we took you know i must i've done fairly decent on it i think but maybe i wasn't i wasn't very good with a rifle i know that i wasn't at the time and i think that had a lot to do with not going to the infantry because they didn't take idiots to the infantry that's what always pissed me off too these guys that fought that infantry they had their together i mean i learned that from basic training eight these guys here and a lot of them were registered army in other words they enlisted and that was another thing we ran into in in vietnam was you're either u.s which drafty or ra regular and there was that little friction or ng you know well we didn't have no none not that i know of but there was always that there was all that little friction you know yeah ras were lifers and we'd call them a lifer you know and they'd say well you are ready it's good you grabbed i mean it was just oh yeah it was just you know some of it all in fun but some of it actually yeah someone took it seriously you know so you were chosen to go to this uh you call it graves registration yeah that's yeah it was would be your office to the school and the school was at fort riley kansas yeah we they put us in into a group there and some of them had been out to fort lee virginia where they went through school i didn't go to the school okay so did you learn anything from that group of guys we learned from them yeah yeah we sat around with books and talked and you know you we all had an idea but nobody's nobody see deaths i mean how are you going to get ready for it yeah and they told us we cannot make you do this job the lieutenant we had he told us right up front he said representative you can't do it we cannot make you do it really yeah only job in the army that you get the only job in the army you didn't have to so when we jump on the head when we got over there there was only three or four of us that actually worked on the bodies the other ones were they either drove them done the paperwork but no even the lieutenant couldn't do it so when you were done with your school at kansas did they send you straight over to vietnam yeah we just attached to it to a unit a service unit we had pol petroleum laundry and bath grade registration supplies we were supposed to be set up waiting on the night yeah it sounds like a combat service support yeah yeah it was a direct support unit for infantry company what was your did you have what was your unit name i think we were the 506 supply and service company direct support is what it was but they lost we were supposed to win over november 66 they lost the equipment go figure they lost the equipment so when we got back off a leave they said we're gonna have to try to track it down well they found it somewhere but it was too late for us to get over there we spoke that over in in the delta november 66 the ninth was coming over in december we'll be ready for well they lost equipment we're gonna go so we went over in mark they delayed us and we went over in march wow that's quite a delay it's quite a delay uh because they took another unit and sent them over okay so they took us over and then we were basically a replacement unit they use this as a replacement unit um so how did you actually get to vietnam went over by ship how do you like that i hated it i've never been so sick in my life i've heard i've heard that those troop transfers oh my god you were begging to get and i got i got a picture of it in there i mean the beds were just you know yeah yeah tell me about the sleeping arrangements and just life on a ship oh well we went out on we went by train to oakland then we got onto wiggle and it took us 18 days to get there and i mean just storm after storm after storm oh yeah yeah just throwing up and other and just i mean the beds are just enough to get into they were four high so you hope for the top bunks i got the top box get rained on i got the top bunk yes i did i somebody told me that i thought i'm gonna do that and i did i got it somebody grew up with brothers and sisters somebody had something i got on the top bunk uh do you remember leaving the united states and thinking anything specifically like i thought going when we got on the ship and pulled out i thought this is this is real reality hit you this is real so just when you thought the misery of being on a ship was it you get to vietnam do you have any first impressions of that area of the world well we pulled off we pulled off that night out of i think it was out of vong tao and uh you could hear the cannons and see the flares going off and you hear it and i'm thinking you know and this isn't a movie yeah i mean it's these people are real so you know that was yeah this isn't john wayne no no this this one i really really hit that you know these guys are serious we're going to show her tomorrow so yeah you're at the big show yeah um how about smells everybody always remembers the smell and the heat i guess in march it wouldn't been too bad well we it was a monsoon season when we got over there you know i got pictures in there when we landed it went into foul you know when i i didn't have any smells outside the bodies you know that i really you know bothered me the cooking or anything oh no no no no we had good cooks no i'm not worried about that um so you get into country and where do you end up having your uh station permanent station i didn't to my last six months okay so you were a mobile we're in the we're in the fuloi i was in fuloy for two weeks now i'm gonna get started went into food life two weeks the long bend was a it was a century located spot had the 93rd i think was 93 hospital right across the street from the mortuary and like i said when i say mortuary it held like 12 bodies at a time so they sent all of us up there because they wouldn't see how it's going to react there's 12 of us so we're in there we're talking to the guys and they said yeah what couple of guys went across the street to bring back a kia so they brought him back take your time we need to take a break we can so they brought him back and he's wrapped in a sheet on a stretcher they took him off and set it on the ground and i walked up and looked the toe tag the guy said don't do that dave he said you're going to get attached well if he wouldn't have said that i'd have been all right so i'd you know i'd looked at it said alvin c mcmahon jr eating rapids michigan so then down the sheet to let us see the body and he had been shot in abdomen he had stitches you know so i could i knew he lived for a while and i thought my god you know just just young my age so they wrapped him back up in the sheet and put him in the reefer and brought out two other guys they were getting ready to go down and take him down long down constantu and that that's haunted me for all my life i'd go down the library in the 80s and they always kept the phone books so i'd get out the phone book from michigan look at these folks name then i go out and i wanted to call but i didn't so anyway here comes the foot lockers all the personal effects we had to go through that he was he was killed on his first wedding anniversary his wife was pregnant winning pictures i mean just i don't know what do you say so then like i said that's that's haunted me for a long time so i went down i helped load them up of course a couple of three or four of the guys they said i can't do this so that's what the lieutenant said well don't run away from us because we'll use it somewhere so i rode with him down to the main mortuary oh my god you know like 200 and almost two 250 bodies in the reefer because that at the time i get ahead of myself was the main mortuary everybody went through there that was killed in vietnam and this one was it was this one at tanzania continues it's right next well constantly was their base but it was just a little makeshift building off the side looked like it might have been the size of an airplane hangar so i walked inside and chase they were working on some of the guys and i thought oh gee you got to be me so anyway we dropped them off you know and you just so we get back there and they put us back to base camp lieutenant came up and he said dave said you and pops i'm gonna send you the main mortuary thompson dude air base for training he said you two i think can handle worst of the worst he said some of these guys i don't know so that's all right some went down on april 15th oh can you pull the door closed for me yeah so go down there on april 15th and i don't know there's 10 or 11 come in through there that day we're staying in a little well i say a motel but it was a old french headquarter so we were standing there three of us to a room so i get back over there and there's a couple other guys that had already been assigned there we got to talking and you know then i don't know i think was like 15th or 6th 17th or 18th they we got a phone call in the office was in there and he said get ready mass casualties isn't this enough yeah and you know i'm in 10 11 my god what's my ass yeah the guy said man be ready sid and when they say mass they're talking major casualties well at the time i didn't know what was going on but they brought in i don't know probably 45 50 of them came in on a big transport c-131 and the guys that brought him down i said to him i said i said what in the hell happened he said well they're in a battle up north and their rifles are jamming they pay no attention to rifles again well come to find out now they had problems with the firing pit in that m16 but anyway when i can't wait my nose oh sure do you want me to go grab you no i'm fine well i i was cutting some onions earlier so oh no it's but anyway when i'm cutting onions but anyway they brought them in and of course you didn't know what was in the bag the body bags and we had i think there was four or five tables that we put them on open up the bag cut the clothes off let me take a skeletal chart and fill it out you know where they were hit where it's missing uh then there was i'm gonna say five morticians that were from the states that were there they were licensed from the states they bombed them right there were they officers no they were civilians signed 15 month contract most of them were out of school just graduated they want to start their own business they want to get some money get some experience they were they were younger guys they got it they got old boy so we would take them out of the bag and then you know i mean got just covered with mud and blood if the parts missing i don't want to grow shot at them but i mean you're military so anyway we'd we you know we'd shave them and give them a bath with a hose and that uh take them back into the mortations and then we would help them there when they would embalm they would embalm right there they don't know our reasons big roddy stuck up the woman down their back and i thought my god that's a lot of bombing fluid but that i figured you know what you're doing i don't then they put a little button cap in the hole to keep the fluid from and then we'd we'd put the eye caps in you know it keeps your eyes shut and then we'd wrap them in a sheet and put them on a stretcher and then we'd lay them off to the side then the next morning we come in we had all of them waiting on us that we'd worked on all day well when we come through the we had a big they had a big plastic thing looked like an airplane hanger and we'd go through there that it had big bottles of vicks we just dip it and because the embalming fluid was just so strong burn your eyes burn your eyes and your nose so we come in then we'd set up an assembly line and we'd take we'd take them and check the toe tags again and we'd wrap in a brand new clean sheet put them in a big plastic bag tied the shut pull the air out tight and shut so if the bombing fluid leaked it wouldn't leak through the transfer case and then we'd put them in a transfer case the aluminum ones you see on tv and then we put nine of them to a pallet then we just flag drape the top three because nobody knew what was going on you know and then we'd uh take a forklift and put them up on the flatbed and take them right through the gates at the airport put them on a transfer c-131 flying back to the states now is there a specific um ceremony a military ceremony that's done with the flag draping or anything not at the time okay i mean it would i mean you didn't have time i mean we're talking at that time that was a lot 60 to 70 to come through there but for the two weeks i was there for training we'd done 440 two weeks but each one is done with care oh yeah yeah our main the main the whole main thing of it was to be viewed that was the main thing was if possible make them to be viewed at home whether they were gone from here down they wouldn't imbued so of course you couldn't you know but that was our main goal then we'd send them back if you lived on the east side of mississippi you went to dover you've lived on the west side you went to travis that's how we load them on the planes plane went directly then they'd be dressed depending on you know the army handled everything but they'd be dressed in their uniform if they were whether a viewable and then they'd be escorted back to the hometown like you were talking about someone to be assigned to them what uniform the same uniform they came in or was there supplied uniforms uh they'd done it all in oakland or any dover okay they just went wrapped in the sheet in the bag went to their then they would have they had they had volunteers that would come in and dress them okay so just a generic yeah yeah it would be you know if it was a marine it had the jacket army they'd have the jacket what blow i don't know i'm sure um so when you were done with your two weeks at tons of newt uh where'd you go i went back to long ben to help them there because i mean the war was starting to pick up then so i went back there but every day i went down to took the help take the remains down tons of newt i had to help out so i'd done that for oh i don't know two or three two or three months but it got to a point i i just i just got burned out and i said i don't want to do this no more i said i'm done i said what's there to look forward to i said you go down you were 15 16 hours a day you come back you get something to eat you go to bed you wake and think how many more i mean it just was like a simply line so he said lieutenant said frankie said i think you're you're getting burned out i said no sir i've been burned out he said i'm gonna promote you d5 and send you up to black horse base camp which i talked to that guy out there he was the same place he said i'm saying if the black horse they need a sergeant on rotation i'm gonna let you run that search recovery team i think well uh well i don't know but i didn't argue i said okay i got six months ago i'll do it so i get up there and we'd get a call that there was a battle out at such and such missing they say eight nine guys so i had to there was only four of us so i had to take two or three of the guys with me we'd have to go ahead and bring them back they'd find him we'd have to go in and drag him back out and i thought what's worse i mean you know finding them laying around and just oh it's just an awful awful job that's like it's that's what yeah thanks lt oh yeah i'm gonna give you a break yeah but it's that's what happens when you leave decisions up to lieutenants yeah well i know that i mean he had the job to do too but god it just but then up there you know we'd we'd get foot lockers in and i had a hard time with the phone lockers and we'd go through everything and read everything and the only thing we would send back would be letters if if it was appropriate but we'd send back no aftershaves none of this stuff i mean oh my god you didn't have time to pick everything out well why did they have you look through it to see well i mean there were so many but we'd we would go through it to see if there was inappropriate letters pictures uh so when mom gets it or the wife or the wife you know we so-and-so was having an affair i mean and they'd send pictures to one another yeah i mean that the old polaroid camera just came in to oh yeah oh yeah but i was thinking i'll upset you know you don't want to accidentally send something yeah right right and we we would you know and we'd inventory that you know money jewelry we all had a sign for it down the chain so nobody would take it but so it could get back to the family right right yeah they don't need the aftershave or the socks no no none of that no um so let's talk a little bit just about the logistics of life in vietnam besides your job um what was your housing like we were isolated okay we didn't we didn't socialize with anybody did you have a reason for that yeah they didn't want anybody to know what was going on we yeah oh it's like maybe sites maybe half the size of this wow about this ice in little sleeping quarters and uh we had a fence went around the back where we back up and shut the gate so it'll be no but we and we were always crossing the hospital of course but they didn't want anybody to know what was going on so you slept in the same place that you worked slept yep we slept we had the reef we had the reefer unit yeah we slept we slept with them because we didn't i mean somebody had to be on call 24 hours a day i mean middle of the night two o'clock in the morning that phone rings we got one at the hospital just passed away can you guys come over and we'd get out of bed and a couple guys go over guy told me one time i was telling him about it in a group meeting he said you know he said i'd always hear that truck run at night it was always quiet he said i wonder what the hell is going on well he didn't know but it was us running over to the then we come back and pull around back and back up and unload it you know the guys didn't know it on the base hell they'd drive right by they didn't know this building center you know storage but nobody nobody knew what we done why do you think that is that they tried to keep it from everybody i suppose you know knowing that it could happen to them or something i i don't know but it really isolated us there was only see we couldn't even pull kp yeah how many of their how many people did you have working with you up in uh up in uh the blackhorse base camp there's three plus myself but there was like 12 of us down when we went over and like i said we were just more of a outlet they can't say you know we're bringing in x amount of casualties you know so we'd be ready for them well we don't we tried to have them processed and ready to go so we took the paperwork with them to the main march they didn't have spent a lot of time doing it did you get close with those guys yeah i did a couple of them because they i'd always take the same two when we went out because i could trust them but the other guy didn't i didn't care for him very much so i just left his ass back um so [Music] could you tell when there was a major offensive going on big goal you were the first to know oh yeah yeah they we in november 60 i mean i remember these dates november 67. they called and they said uh sergeant be ready for mass casualties they're having a battle up in the play code a place called docto well now doctor was a long ways from where we were at but when you say mass casualties you don't just say be ready because i think what they meant was they had probably start bringing them into the hospital to help treat them and maybe somebody wouldn't pass we got a few but not as many as i thought we were going to get but we had to be on call are you able after you got home or just learned more about operations could you say yep i remember yep i remember that people talk about it now in the news or just talk about major offensive and you're like yeah oh yeah no i know what the battles you know well that's where i had my problems back into back in 2000 i'd seen a show i think it might have been three or four years before that was in the night in the 90s i said i was outside this this out thorough i was outside moana grass was on a sunday night my wife says mate roger you may want to come in and watch this it's like a 60 minute type show and said where were you in april 67 so they're talking these these marines and they were on the battle on the hill 881 which is i've learned now that it's it's called uh caisson okay so and they were talking about how they were giving them a big meal and yada yada yada when they gave a show and the guy said do it we knew something was up because they didn't do this well they showed foxtrot company no no i take it back hotel company there's a or 50 of men they showed their pictures i worked on every one of them i worked on every one of them kids i'm sitting there and i'm looking at picture and i thought april 67 hell 81 and they were talking about the jackpot they were best because the rivals were dead that's how i picked up on it i said jesus i worked on every one of them kids and then i just it all came back oh my god yes i mean seeing them dead and seeing them their faces and that i mean it just it's not just my story i mean i just it stays with a person oh deal i mean you know i thought god what's the odds of that ever you know where were you in april 67 and then saying that and i think oh wow but just going back a few minutes to be un to the main mortuary just the way these kids died i mean i could do everything but the maggots i couldn't do the maggots i i just couldn't do it i said they started understand somebody else come over to it but you know we cut the jawbones out a lot of them were just burnt just burnt from chopper crashes uh napalm just and we got a couple of men they've been caught they were they're tied up with barbed wire they thrown them in the water and bloated you know and uh and i remember before they sent me back i stand here as in late afternoon we just got done working on this young boy i don't know what young man and sergeant one of those guys came out of the office and he said don't put him away he said his dad's coming over to take him home and i'm standing there thinking what he said yeah his dad's a major in the air force i mean i'm getting bumps right now and i said you got to be me he said no i said hey i went out here i'm not going through this they said you know and they understood i mean it's everybody had their breaking point and i said i can't do this so i think me and one of the other guys we went somewhere but anyway the guy come over and took his son back a little mouth oh my god what a what a horrible thing to have to do oh jesus but that's it um do you ever think in hindsight about the good deeds you did for the families oh yeah the total real thing keeps me sane because i mean you know it's like telling you i mean we did our best to be viewed i mean they weren't sent home in a body bag that you know that that to me is so disrespectful i can see it in today's because i know they put them in bags they put ice on them and things like but not in that day they were sent home in a transfer case they were clean they were you know pristine yes they were ready to be dressed and be viewed there was no body bag at all they brought them in in body bags of course but you know but we never we never sent nobody home you know there was a couple autopsies i helped with and now i i say when i helped don't get me wrong i wasn't in there yeah you got to hold the flashlight yeah yeah yeah that and uh but we had then uh november 16 67 the reason i remember that date it's my wife's birthday i uh they had a chopper they found bent down for six months or no i take it back for two months they said we located and they said i want you to take a team and go out and bring back them bodies captain called me in he said i'm gonna tell you dave he said there's six of them on there he said i don't know the condition they're in but if you can't bring back six different body you can't just bring back say okay this is one body you had an anthropologist coming in he said you got to bring back six and he said if you don't bring back you're gonna have to go back so we got up with the cab and they drove us out and secured the area and we went in there and found what we could find do you remember about where the area was well we was up at fuloy i mean up at uh black horse it was probably it couldn't bend too far because we went out on a track usually if there's far out they take us in on a chopper to put us on a tank or a small atv or whatever you call them apc apc yeah we wrote we went out there with them on that and they secured the area and then we went in and started was it a huey or a black it was a regular chop like you got out here the uh ones or whatever you call it it was down and it was i mean there wasn't much left of it but we found them not i mean you didn't know they were who they were i found we found some driver's license ids uh but that doesn't mean nothing in the military they want the actual bodies but they were just fragments and bones and you'd think that'd almost be better yeah well i mean you got brought back what you could and we brought him back and the anthropologist i guess that's what you call him he was waiting there up there at the little building we had he said you got him sarge and i said well yeah what we find he said okay he said i'll be four or five hours and he started in and he called down and told the captain good job he said we got we got six so that made me feel good then the captain put me in for the army accommodation medal because of that which i never received it or anything but you know i saw the write-up on i thought hey that's a pretty good write-up but of course you know ted was getting ready to go and i'm sure everybody was just bombarded with stuff so were you in country during tech yes came back about uh see ted hit january 31st and i came back i think november or uh march 2nd about 30 35 days did your operational tempo increase significantly during that time yeah i called we'd get them in and well i mean most of the fight well they tried to overrun the whole country but a lot of it was up north now in june of 67 they were building a mortuary up in da nang which i didn't know at the time but when i got home i'd talking to different people and i'd see it on new but they built when they take the load off the ones down south which was great so that helped yeah yeah i called down and i said you know hey this sergeant davidson we've got x amount coming in and he says don't bring him in sergeant said we have nowhere to put him he said we're empty now freezers over the air force base right now trying to keep it because like i said the main goal was to try to get these kids viewable and i knew god that roofer holds 250 or something and that's full no room to put them and you have to preserve them you can't just oh yeah well that was the main reason to fly down to the the main mortuary was built in da nang was you know by c-131 or a chopper up in danang you were like 360 miles from constitute and in that heat i mean if you laid out there for a couple hours you were starting to you know turn but the main goal was to get them get them in so anyway um do you happen to know how many remains you processed during your time wow well i do have done 440 give or take at the at the main march within the two weeks i was there so that's justin that two weeks that was the first that was my training and that's not counting the ones back at uh about back at long band or ba i thousands well if i if we didn't work on them we handled their effects so yeah it would be yeah probably 900 i guess but i know down you know i think i read some words uh somebody sent me some information wanting me to come to a mortuary reunion or something the i'm talking about but i uh i've been the wall twice because three of the guys i grew up with were killed over there we live within a two block area and i i knew the dates that i went to the main mortuary so i went over to the panel and i i think there were five across i'm just guessing from the time i was there to the time i went back it was 440 just that two-week period because i looked at that mcmahon's name that's you're able to visit oh yeah yeah i knew that was his name yeah and then there was you know there was a lot of that you know i just i feel like i knew them you you see their letters and you know some of the guys scots i mean some of the guys were very good-looking young men i mean i think boy this guy's got some hotties running well i mean at the time you're thinking morbid you know i mean i'm not putting it i'm not putting it together you know you have to it just and another thing i always did first thing i looked at was their hands wedding ring that always i told when i went to the hospital system i told them i told them that the doctor says the wedding rings i said yeah you know i said it's it was just a way of if you were single and killed that was one way if you married i took it different because there you know he's got a family in those days you didn't know if the kid had one or not if it wasn't i mean because i worked i was in there with a lot of kids from the south that had nothing i thought i had a rough these kids i mean especially the blacks they just that was a home to them you know you got people calling them and spread of water hoses and i remember that watching that on tv then you come into the military then you know they're kind of gun shy of the white people but they learned after a while you know that hey we're all in this together you know it's so yeah we had a lot of blacks that were good friends so you're able to be kind to them and show them that oh yeah yeah we just never after that first get together we never it wasn't a black and white thing it was just uh you know we were just friends and you said around you that was it yeah the military can teach you a absolutely military teach a lot of course i had a lot of black friends in high school i was one of the few ran on the track to email the black kids like me and you know we got along and so i mean i really did have no hostility towards any of them so how about um coming home when you first came home well first of all when was it when you got to come home let's see i came home uh had me around the first second or third maybe of march 67 yeah no 68. so you were gone for i was done for a year one year okay get one over march 67 come back march um i know this is like the stupidest question ever but what was it like coming home besides good oh we landed in i said we went into oakland i believe it was i remember seeing some p some peop some people you know protesting they they didn't they didn't bother me i thought hell i don't care what you do you know brother matt didn't bother me and he didn't bother me so i didn't bother them um how about seeing your girlfriend again giddy up [Laughter] yeah yeah she still we just done 50 years yeah yeah she's still as beautiful as it is oh yeah yeah yeah yeah just ordering but yeah she's she's facial good a lot of melon i think the military families it was harder on them than it was on the soldier i mean because the family didn't know when that somebody knocked on the door we're over there and you knew you're all right the only bad thing was it took like five days for lettering to get there and five days to get back well a lot happens in that cycle i do remember uh we had a guy come in and was killed when i was a black horse and unless you know and i'm of course i'm always asking questions why what happened he said man he said they're trying to run his wife down there he was going to meet her in hawaii tomorrow on r and they were trying to run her down to san francisco and i thought oh you've got to be me why did i even ask that question but it's that kind of that and then we always had to have two people identify them if they were killed we'd have to call down to the company and say hey look we got so-and-so up here can you send us up two people to verify that that's who it is and they would send them up um so do you um do you ever i don't know how do you feel that this is the way that you were chosen to serve do you feel you did a service to your country i do know underappreciated i'd have to say it appreciated you know there's no law against being stupid so i mean if if people want to you know have the jaws over it's they're right it doesn't bother me i know what i did done the best i could do i mean i get tired of a lot of the misconception out there like i said with the body bag deal but other than that you know it doesn't bother me any yeah it doesn't bother me i just try to stay to myself um if you had a message that you wanted to put out about your time and service what what would you want to say to the general public about what your job was and why it was an important role in the military i think i think my job looking back was probably the most important job involved military in all of it i'd say that to anybody i mean how can you take a loved one that's been killed and work your ass off so it can be viewed at home i mean you know going out oh i killed so many i killed three hey i don't give a doesn't mean jack to me i got a lot of your buddies here that didn't make it but no that's that's all i cared about you know i just you know when i wanted to do this here i just thought well you know at least samia'll know that we treat them with respect you know and her main goal was to be viewed at home that's and i figured you know if i can do that and it works out even though the families don't know it that was our that was our goal it nothing else oh why do you think psychologically it's important for those families to see their soldier one last time well i think a lot of them that's the way they see them when they left they left in uniform and you view them in uniform it's that's you know that's just that's both of it we went over in uniform but we came back in uniform if you were in transfer case they they dressed you and i think right now you could probably go through most of the burials and i think you'd find them just the way they were when they died there was that much embalming flu put in them i mean they were just a lot of them bombing blood here they do enough to keep you for a week there they loaded you because i mean you could sit for three weeks they're still looking good oh yeah i'm turning right now i bet you're picking up i bet you you dig up most of them they'd be just like they were the day we put them in there that's how much embalming fluid they put in them i mean don't normally put the corroded arteries right there that they go down to run the blood out then the bombing fluid did just nothing not over there man they put a rod up through there down down roll we'd roll them on their back and they'd do it i'm thinking my god is this embalming yeah i mean and it just and it just flowed out of 55 gallon drums just that takes a special kind of person to be like for your job for your oh yeah these guys you know and i asked kaplan i said you going in this when you get back he said nope he said i'm licensed and i am not doing it he said i've seen all the death i can take i mean you know see somebody in a car wreck or something something but just i mean these guys are just i mean we had one young kid come in just gone just to re be able to tie off that artery and know what he's doing and then put them bombing for it and i'd say now that's one that he'll be viewed they'll put a jacket on him even though there's nothing here down but there was enough that that guy knew enough to do that and i thought wow that's a tap that's a talent it's an art yeah yeah yeah yeah it was it was quite a quite to do um so why do you think i mean obviously you volunteered to do this interview but when you when you had your time in the hospital did you learn that talking about it helps oh yes tell me a little bit about that and maybe to help encourage others who might um still be in that phase where they just don't talk about it why is it important how does it help well you know like like when i was in there i was in uh most of were in the infantry and they were in they were in the stuff you know you you know when a guy's lying because a liar can't tell the same story twice you know that's why they keep asking the same question in a trial but they just worded different and you know that and that's where one of one of the guys told me then he said he said you know he said we put our our dad on the plane he said i didn't know where they went he said i had no idea that that job took place then i told them you know a little bit about it then they understood that they had to go somewhere you know and that was but anyway talk about it yeah i went to the trauma center down in topeka kansas i was down there for three months and uh just listening to the other guys tell their story you're not locked into thinking you're the only one that was my problem i knew i knew i was different we were isolated over there we couldn't even poke ap uh if we ate we had to go into a separate door because they didn't want somebody saying oh there's some diggers i mean we were stereotyped they called you what'd they call you diggers yeah yeah it was called great it was grave registration but mortuary activities was the main wording on the on the the military used but yeah they just call you digger you know the guys didn't want to be you know oh there's some dick gravedigger you know you're thinking come on so you've it's too bad you had to suffer for so many years before you realized oh yeah talking about it yeah it helps yeah i recommend it to anybody that can get into a trauma or just a support group to find out that you know you're not alone there's you got problems but somebody just might say one little sentence you're gonna say i can relate to that do you have do you have an example of something that helps you yeah this here i mean i've told margo and i told chris my wife knows not many other people but it's that body bag that haunts me that haunts me terribly just being able to come in here and tell you makes me feel good i'm serious that's why i'm here it makes me feel better because i know one more person knows what took place that's why i wanted to kept picking up the phone you know i'd go down to go down to the library and i thought do i call him and what do you say if they answer you know how do you say i'm roger davis and i worked on your son who was killed in vietnam so anyway one time i got on a i got i went to the vietnam web this is back about time i was out of the trauma unit i got on the vietnam veterans night via vietnam memorial website so i started pulling up the names of those get that because they got them in order order of the way they were killed and i would send an email to the families i said you know you don't know who i am i said i i hope this doesn't bother you no disrespect when i went in and i said i helped work on your son brother or not or what whoever was and uh i said i just want you to know they were treated with respect i got a lot of stuff back you know i mean i don't think they were they didn't know what to say in after 40 years but you know well i thank you and you know yadda yadda and that meant a lot that meant a lot nobody ever came back you know what the you call me you know yeah i had a lot of brothers and sisters uh i don't think i ever heard from any parents which is understandable i don't probably don't use the internet so much yeah not you know and i i was kind of leery of even you know trying one of them but i figure well if i get to the brother of the sister they'll tell mom or dad i said but yeah i got a lot of good response from so does that make me feel better well i think just to know that their loved one was taken care of in a respectful manner yeah that that's that's the main that's that's a good way to put it that's that's what this whole thing is about is it sometimes i just feel like going to a top of a building said you listen there's more to it than just shooting somebody in a war you know it's there's so much more to it oh yeah a lot of people didn't know that like they didn't know that job existed what typically but i could i can show you this we can go through that we can finish up the oh yeah yeah yeah i'm sorry we'll just finish this up and then we'll look through that but um i think we have actually just about anything my my last question is always um if you had to relive your life again would you serve again yes and why is that i just think it was it was a good lesson uh i think you know i've done the best i could for what we had and helped the kids that were killed i say kids because we were kids at the time yeah i knowing what i do now you know i i go back and do it again i just tell them to duck you know but second guess is hindsight yeah i do it i do it i do it in a minute uh and you know something i always think about and this you could put this in your little thing to think about when things get tough is if you weren't chosen to do that somebody else may have been and they probably wouldn't have done as good of a job well you know i think everybody everybody done their own you know done their own thing but i just think you know i i just think of this so many of them just so you know every time i see a high schooler you know there's a kid come in last night out at the breast me and i work with margo on wednesday night comes in there and he's he's he's going to be a senior night i looked at him i thought put the gear on he met your vietnam veteran 17 18 years old i remember we did we got we i think we got no i can't we did get a seven i was thinking we got a couple 17 year olds but i don't think so i think they'd stop that before i went over because definitely 18. they were getting killed so the marines would hold them but i think that was 19. yeah it had to be right around there so some of them yeah 18 some of them were 20. oh yeah yeah i remember kids i remember the birthdates yeah there was a lot of them that was not even only five years yeah yeah that i told somebody that the other day there and they couldn't believe me i said they said you what i said hey we couldn't even vote we couldn't i don't think we i don't think they passed the 21 voting age to like 71 or 72 i mean you couldn't vote at 18. i'd have to look it up again but i know i know i couldn't vote i think the first time i voted was in the oh god i think i met well i miss i missed the 68 election i think it was i can't remember yeah the voting ages changed well now we're going to do pictures let me pause this just for one second and i'll

Channel: Veterans' Perspective

Views: 2,266

Rating: 4.8378377 out of 5

Keywords: veterans perspective, veterans, history, Vietnam, WWII, September 11th, stories, Sara Maniscalco Robinson, United States of America, soldiers, Pearl Harbor, Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force, National Guard, Patriots, Patriotism, mortuary affairs

Id: ERsJANJ2XWA

Length: 63min 25sec (3805 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021