INTERVIEWS

Gary Wetzel

Wetzel served in the 173d Assault Helicopter Companyas a door gunner. Seriously wounded during an insertion, Wetzel was cited for his gallantry in that action and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Where did you enlist?
    I enlisted in the service here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I took basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Then after you got done with basic training you go through what they call AIT, which stands for Advanced Individual Training. I had my orders to report to Fort Laudawood, Missouri in construction and heavy equipment. Prior to the service I worked a little bit of construction so I had some knowledge; I went down there and right away I was a constructor in heavy equipment. I taught a lot of different classes. I had a lot of guys who were coming back from Vietnam and they were telling me stories… “Sooner or later you’re going to go over, so...” The army has what they call  “10- 49s” to request your next duty station so I put in a request to go to Vietnam. I figured, I’m in the service for three years- go and get it over with so I can come on back. They turned down my first two 10-49’s because where I was at it was critical to be an instructor. Then we had a lot of overflow of people coming back at that time so… in September I got my orders and I believe 36 days later I was in country.

When you got off the plane, did it all kind of ‘hit you’? How different it was to actually be IN country?
    Yeah, it was different. I remember I spent, back in those days we flew in a triple pup going over— which was 26 hours of airtime sitting on a plane, facing backwards with a bunch of other guys and a couple bags. It wasn’t the world’s most pleasant flight, but we were on our way—anticipating the excitement to go over… Not necessarily to get in a war-type situation but, “I’m in the service, this is where I will serve, do my duty and then come back.” We landed in Saigon early in the morning (this is in October) I remember- of course the aircraft was air conditioned but when we opened the back of the plane up we felt that hot humid air.

How old were you at the time?
I just had turned 19 in September.

Did you have two tours or just the one?
I did two tours in Vietnam.

On your first tour, what types of things did you participate in?
    My first orders, I was attached to an ordinance outfit, which was okay but I’ve always loved flying. After you’re in the service for a year and one day you re-enlist and then I went flying. I was on the 173rd helicopter company, the Robinhoods. I was pretty good with the M-16 machine gun; I modified them and knew the weapons; when I got to the outfit I knew what I was doing. I didn’t really know what I was going to get involved in but I loved flying. I had aspirations, back in those days, to eventually become a helicopter pilot. At the time, in the early sixties, they needed a lot of pilots so a lot of gunners and crew chiefs were getting what they called “stick time”, a chance to sit in the seat and fly a helicopter. I had all of my paperwork then that went all the way up to battalion. After I got shot down the third time I extended my tour, came home. I was home for X amount of days, went back to Vietnam and then had my paperwork- Company, Battalion, Brigade- however they do it. I had aspirations of becoming a pilot… everything was approved up until that point and about ten days before I was coming home from my second tour was when I got shot down for the fifth time. I was severely wounded. Plus the lost of a left arm kind of curtailed that aspect of my life, being a pilot. In a helicopter you do need four limbs to fly the helicopter.

Could you continue with your memories of that last time you were shot down?
    What we were doing that particular day was what we called ‘eagle flights’, you get two sets of five helicopters with an average of seven to eight GIs inside. (These are what you called slicks-showing photo- I sat here- pilots here) So what eagle flights were... you just flew around like an eagle and if you’d see something that’s suspicious you fly on in, drop your troops off, check out the area. If there’s nothing happening you come back and pick them up and then go find another area. On this particular day they were aware of some unfriendlies in a certain area. We were brief on the LZ (landing zone). We had to prep it with 105’s, with jets and then- normally, when you come in on what they call a ‘hot LZ’ you had two sets of gun ships. The first set of guns comes in and what you do is try to blow up the LZ and keep the bad guys out- at least their head down. The second set of guns are about one hundred yards in front of you so when you’re coming in with your troops you try to eliminate the least amount of casualties as possible. On this particular day, of course we were briefed before the operation, I knew where we were going and I looked and the air strike was on the other side of the river—so right away you figure that there’s been a mistake. I had been on numerous, numerous operations. I knew there had been a mistake. When I looked back, the gun ships were about a quarter of a mile behind us- they’re supposed to be in front of us… At about treetop level- that’s when all hell broke loose. We went in with 14 helicopters, 10 Americans and four Australians. Mine was only one that got shot down on the LZ. We got hit in the left front of the helicopter with an RPG- what they call Rocket Propelled Grenade. It blew the front of the ship apart and it came skidding to a halt. We had two guys that didn’t even leave the cabin, they got cross-fired so bad that they were killed right there. It was like July 4th, but it was on the ground. My immediate concern is to try and get my buddy out. I ripped the door off and my crew chief came from the other side, he was on the inside of the radio pedestal, we were trying to lift Kenny up to push him out on the other side. From the waste up he was okay, but from the waste down he was nothing but chopped meat. I tried to pick him up and get him at least half way through the radio pedestal and that was when a homemade grenade went off behind me. When I say homemade grenade- anything you can put in an explosive device: nails, glass, and whatever—that’s what I got hit with. It landed about four feet behind me and caught me pretty good from my shoulders on down. It blew my whole upper arm out but from the elbow down there wasn’t a scratch… it was just hanging on by some skin and bone and later on I took what was left [of my arm] and tucked it inside my pants and just kept on fighting. When you get in situations, you’d be surprised what the human body can take or will stand. Of course we have choices but I figured at that time I was going to die and I figured I’d take a few more of the bad guys with me… Knock on wood though— I’m still here!

What was going through your head when you first took the shot to your arm? Did you think you were finished right there?
    Well, you had the initial pain and you yell… There were a lot of things happening and I still had some spunk left in me so I tried to do the best I could. Later on, we had one medic who was shot in the back—he couldn’t move, so what I tried to do was grab the wounded and slide them across the rice paddy. It was a lot of mud and slop, they used a lot of human waste… it didn’t smell nice. I was trying to drag the wounded to him so that he could try and patch the guys up. I passed out various times from loss of blood…

How much time had lapsed now, since you were shot down?
    I don’t know. We fought for 10 or 12 hours before we got any help. Later on, I found out through other sources, that we had been surrounded by an estimated 800 to 1,000 V.C. and we only went in with about 14 ships and probably in the first couple minutes I think 52 to 56 of these guys got killed so there were just a handful of us that were capable of doing anything. There was such disarray… we were just trying to do the best that we could. I figured, “this is it!” What they eventually did was drop some troops about half a clik away and they eventually worked their way towards us on the one side and that’s how we later got the wounded out.

That was obviously your last mission, how long was it between being on the field and back in the states?
    I spent seven or nine days on what they called the Super Critical list… When I first got pieced back together they used a couple stand still stitches to cut down on infection. I want to say nine days in country at an evac hospital until they stabilized me, somewhat better so that they could transport me to a better facility. From there I went to Tokyo and they made a revision- they cut another inch and a half off my arm because of all the infection. I was there for I think about a week or ten days. From there I went to Travis and then from Travis to Ft. Simmons, outside Denver, Colorado. I believe I spent about five months in the hospital. I had various skin graphs and I had to learn how to walk again and get adjusted to using this thing [prosthetic arm] and civilian life.

What other injuries had you sustained that you had difficulties walking?
    When the frag landed behind me I had some spinal damage. I got hit with a machine gun, with 38’s and later on I got stabbed in the right thigh with a bayonet…I imagine that your rehabilitation was really difficult… You were in for the long haul…I accepted the loss of my arm because I knew it wasn’t going to grow back. What I could do is make a better tomorrow. Try to get on with life, get adjusted and do things. It probably took about three years to get used to the prosthesis where I did things naturally rather than thinking you had to do things with two hands… A lot of times I’d grab for things with two hands but, “Ok, Gare—let’s figure how we’re gonna do it different!” so environmentally- about three years of work. Now I tie my own shoes, tie my own tie~ I don’t wear snap- ons. I can flip bacon and I don’t burn my fingers. I ride my Harley and my bike isn’t any different than anybody else’s, I just taught myself how to do it.

Are there any other setbacks or things that are difficult for you?
    I’m not afraid to ask people for help. If you get frustrated and stuff it’s like, “Gary, you can’t do it!” There are things you cannot do, so why get an attitude? I just ask someone for help or do it a different way.

When you came back to the states you didn’t know you were going to be a medal recipient at first… How did you find out?
    I finally got a job at Ladditch, I was working in the office. I had a Colonel, Major, and a First Sergeant that came to the office where I was working at and they asked me to come down to the office… “Hi, how ya doing”—they didn’t look like military— which, at that young age you don’t know much about military law but I had done my time, I gave you my arm, ‘what the hell else do you want?!’ They were like, “You’re going on trip.” And I was like, “No, I’m not.” It took them about two weeks to convince me that I was going down to get the Medal of Honor because I had gotten the Distinguished Service Cross in country which is the second highest medal… Who figures you’re going to get the Medal of Honor. To go back, a little bit about the Medal of Honor—when I was in Tokyo and they took out over 400 stitches, tubes that I had had everywhere were all taken out… Some of the guys that I had pulled out were recovering from their wounds and found out that I was there… They would walk up to the bunk and here I am, a skinny little piece of meat and they’d say, “Are you Gary Wetzel?” and I’d say, “Yeah” and then they would pull out their wallet and show me pictures of their wife, kids, or girlfriends… “Hey man, because of you- THIS is what I got to go back to!” and THAT’s what the Medal means… those were the guys that put me in for it. I don’t know if I should thank them or whatever but there is a lot of responsibility that goes on with that blue ribbon and people think you’re Superman, but you’re not. – You’re just a guy doing his job.

Did you have the chance to keep in touch with the guys and their families when you got back then?
    When you first get out of the service you get a lot of the Christmas cards and stuff and then, throughout the years it tapers off… They have their lives and I have my own. I’m sure when our paths cross, we’ll know it.

When you returned to the states, there were a lot of anti-war demonstrations going on, being a Medal of Honor recipient, how did you feel?
    Yeah, we would have demonstrations going on down here in Milwaukee and I’d come down incognito and I believe in freedom of speech, say what you’ve got to say- fine. But don’t burn my flag. I’ve seen too many guys die for it; too many guys get hurt for it. I remember guys who were just a year younger than me that were waving this Vietcong flag and I’m like, “Don’t do it or I’m gonna have to take you down!” – which I did a couple of times! I didn’t care if I was outnumbered 200 to one, you’re not going to fly that flag and you’re not going to burn the American flag. I guess we and this civilized society take certain things for granted...You’re outside and it’s hotter than heck and then you come in here and we’ve got air conditioning, lights, hot and cold running water- we tend to forget that we should look back in the past once in awhile and just kind of reflect on the sacrifices men and women had given for the right for you and I to be here today. We have SUCH a freedom; we need to reflect on what it’s all about…And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, us being able to do this project here means SO much more than reading in a textbook. It’s like when I go around talking to young high school people, in the book it’s maybe a page to a page and a half—Kennedy and Johnson got us involved, Nixon got us out, there’s some stats, and that’s it! –It doesn’t say what happened. Normally, when I speak to young people I have two to four other vets and my story is different than his and his different than his. I try to bring along sea rations and give all a little P-38. Of course, nowadays you got to give each kid a plastic spoon with all the crap floating around…But the rations got all the good stuff—ham and lima beans… all the good stuff! I go, “ here… taste some” because it sounds good but then they spit it out and I go- “well, that’s the stuff we had to eat, you know—its protein!” Think of the sacrifices. People shouldn’t look at war as a John Wayne type of thing or a male testosterone thing because war is horrifying. It’s not manly and it’s sad when we get in situations where we have to use human beings and there’s a life lost or people getting wounded… you ask- why? I can look back and say, ‘I lost an arm for my country’- but why did I lose it? What did we get accomplished?

I have read that some soldiers made statements that they did not feel like they were fighting for their country, they were fighting for each other. Did you feel the same way?
    At first, being a young guy, I was so proud for being a young service man that here I am taking part for my country and helping another nation get a little kick in the butt to get started… Boy I was prouder than a peacock! Eventually, when I got to the Robinhoods, my big thing was I had a 45 Western Style, kind of like ad-lib like Jesses James and I was big bad-ass, which ya think you are, but you’re not! Here I am, a 19-year-old punk kid and a PapaSan would come down from the village. We would sit down and he’d get this razor and lather you up and it’s like any other cowboy, “Wow, shavin’ with a straight edge—that’s big time!” Of course, you got peach fuzz and…  Then we got hit one night. We had about 30 choppers on a flight line and there are sandbags between each chopper—It had to be two or three in the morning and the V.C. started coming across the airship so we couldn’t get the ships up. We pulled out the 60’s and just leveled what was coming. We eliminated a lot of the elements… when the sun comes up and everyone and all the dust starts settling down you go out and look for a body count… This guy that used to shave me [a PapaSan] was laying about 40 meters to my right with a satchel charge! So he was coming there that night to kill me! So here you thing you’re doing things for a country and you trust theses people and this guy’s is trying to blow me away. Then it was like, ‘brother for brother’… you know, we’ll do our job but I’ll watch your butt and you watch my butt. If you look at Korea or World War Two, the vets came home- Alright! Handshake!- When the Vietnam guys came home we were brothers! Black, brown, purple, pink, whatever, we’re brothers! No one can take that away from us.

Going back a little bit, what was it like the night you were in the White House, receiving your medal from the President? What were some of your emotions?
    We were all young and growing up- we look in this constitution and look at the President as a God-like type figure, I mean ‘THERE is the President!’ It was kind of neat in this society because when our forefathers sat down and put together this thing called the Constitution and that’s that, the majority of us—under this umbrella that we support that Constitution and what it stands for. You’ve got a leader that’s guiding you or showing you the way… You’ve got your House and Senate and a bunch of other people but meeting the President… It’s hard to describe. It’s a great honor. It’s a great respect. Fear. I mean, here he is. Before the ceremonies we were just in this room in the White House with some of the President’s staff informing how they answer things, “Yes, Mr. President. No, Mr. President” – there’s protocol. Then he came in the room and we were all shaking. He sat right down next to myself and put his hand on my leg and said, “How ya doin’, Son?” and I’m all, “Fine, Mr. President”… It was a trip! I liked him for who he was. The next day we went to Arlington and I met the Kennedy’s… I think it was the five-year anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy and I met Jackie, Teddy and Bobbie all down there. There were a bunch of Secret Service guys and I got the Medal of Honor.

Emotionally and mentally, what got you through all of your rehabilitation? Any person or thing in particular that kept you going?
    It was mostly me trying to make the better of who I was or being who I was. But looking back to something that was inspirational… When I was in Tokyo, recovering from my operation there were a bunch of football players that were on the U.S.O. Tour. Of course I’m a Packer Backer from way back… I think I was the only one in that ward from Wisconsin and they say, “Is anyone in here from Wisconsin?!” and I said “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” “Well we’ve got some football players and Bart Starr…” (That was the last year that they played in the Superbowl) I think I had a nine-foot arm on at the time! So they came over and covered me up with a nice clean sheet so I wasn’t bloody and didn’t look like crap and whatever… Then Bart came over and we chatted for a while… I had been really down and he really picked me up! Now when he came back from his tour there was an article I’ve got some place that was in an American Legion Magazine that they had asked him [Bart Starr] what was his memorable thoughts about his tour and he says, “I met a little ‘ole red-headed guy that lost his left arm from Wisconsin.” So, he made an impact on me and I must have made an impact on him! It was kind of neat!

Do you have any last thoughts or advice for young people today- maybe headed towards the service?
    Well we look at the service nowadays compared to the service in my time and they’re all special because you’re putting time in for what the flag stands for… but we’ll say- nowadays, in the computer era there are so many programs in the military that will transitionally with you into civilian life, plus you’re getting paid good! There are innumerable educational benefits and you’re in that 18-20 year stage where you’re full of all types of stuff and go out and party, get drunk and stupid- whatever, but what’s wrong with going out and serving your country for a couple of years because you’d have a good education. Give something back instead of ‘take, take, take!’ In this time, in society, we take everything but give something back! So you can say, “yea, I cared”. With the service’s whole touring process you get to travel a little bit, you grow up, you get educated… There are different types of the service, however- if you want the bang bang, shoot ‘em up or be in infantry you can—but it’s not meant for everybody. In this day and age, now that we have the all-volunteer service, the people that are going in are good, quality people and they’re going in because they want to go in. They want to serve their country and be part of it. Years down the road they can look back and tell their grandkids, “Yeah, I took part. I was a little pea in the pod, but I did take part!”

BACK

Melvin Laird

He became Secretary of Defense during the Nixon Administration from 1969-1973. Laird was quoted as the “architect of Vietnamization”, a plan to bring our soldiers home.

INTERVIEW:
    I would like to say that I am delighted to have the opportunity to be with you today. I will be glad to answer any of your questions. As you know, I had an interest in Vietnam operations a long time before I was Secretary of Defense. I was very critical of the Johnson administration, as you probably know, and  I felt they had not prepared themselves for the long haul in Vietnam. They kept committing more and more and more. During the Eisenhower administration there were 371 troops, American troops. Kennedy increased that to 18,000. When I became Secretary of Defense at the end of the Johnson administration, there were 540,000 on the ground and 1,200,000 in the area in the Navy and Air Force in Thailand, in the area. So there were around 2,000,000 men and women committed to that war when I took over as Secretary of Defense. They had “Americanized” the war. They had taken it over and said: “No, you Vietnamese stay away, this is going to be our operation”. I was very critical of that and critical of Secretary McNamara, and as the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Committee because I did not think that war should have been “Americanized”. So I started a new program of “Vietnamization”, every month turning over more of the responsibility to the Vietnamese with the idea in mind that when I finished my term, there would not be a single American combat troop in Vietnam and we prepared the Vietnamese to take over and handle it. At that particular time we were in the midst of the cold war. The Russians were supplying about two and half billion dollars of arms and ammunition either by railroad or by ship into the north of Vietnam and they were the main suppliers. That is why Johnson got in because he felt he had to fight the Russians but he did it the wrong way by “Americanizing” the operation completely and not depending on the Vietnamese to carry out their responsibilities. We prepared the Vietnamese to do that and in the Paris Peace Accord of January 1973, you will recall, that there was an agreement made that we would not supply anything but replacement arms and ammunition, replacement helicopters, replacement spare parts and the Russians agreed to the same thing. The only problem was the Russians kept up their flow of arms and ammunition. The Congress in 1975, however, turned down a request for $350 million dollars for spare parts and ammunition for the South Vietnamese forces. That broke the back of the South Vietnamese because there was nobody else who could supply arms and ammunition. We did not have Americans on the ground fighting but they needed the pledge that Kissinger made in January 1973 that they would get the replacement arms and ammunition broke the back of the South Vietnamese and there was no will to fight when they found out the Russians were continuing at the rate of about two billion dollars a year and the United States was not willing to put out anything. The Vietnamization program failed the day that vote was held in the Congress of the United States. I have been critical of Secretary Kissinger and I have been critical of Gerry Ford from time to time for not doing more to get a majority vote in the Congress of the United States at that time because we had made that commitment in Paris and we let it go down the drain. Now I will be glad to answer any of your questions but I wanted to give you a little background. When I became Secretary of Defense, there were three things I wanted to do. I wanted to get Americans out of Vietnam, I wanted to turn over the responsibility to South Vietnam, and I wanted to end the draft and establish an all volunteer force because the draft had been used by the United States military since 1939. Any time they needed additional people they could just put a draft call and that would put pressure for people to join the Marines, Navy, and the Air Force and the rest they took into the Army. The draft was very unfair and Johnson used it instead of the Guard and Reserve because he thought it would create too much of a political disturbance if we called up these various units from around the United States. It was really not fair to the people that served because people could get college deferments and everything else and these people that were called in to serve; I have the greatest respect and admiration for them. I cannot tell you of my love and affection goes for those people that served in Vietnam during that very difficult period. It was not an easy war and there were a lot of people deferred. I stopped college deferments when I became Secretary of Defense. I set up a lottery system so it would be fair and you would take a lottery number and then I did away with all of the draft and set up the volunteer service which is serving this country well and I think you will find that every secretary of defense since then has supported my position.

What were you critical of in prior administrations?
    First, I felt that they were misleading the people on what the war cost. One of the speeches I made in the Congress when I was in the Congress and on the Defense Appropriations Committee. (By the way, Hillary Clinton helped me write that speech, she was interning in my Congressional office and this was before she met Bill Clinton.) It was a speech on how we were robbing from NATO and taking things from all over the world, from our military forces and diverting it to Vietnam and NATO was going down the drain and was not being properly funded. We had taken ten billion dollars worth of stuff to hide ten billion dollars worth of cost as far as the war was concerned and I thought the American people should be advised and told what the war was costing. Not only in human lives, that was the big loss, casualties, but there was also a hidden cost that they didn’t come to the Congress and tell them the cost. Hillary helped on that speech and she is very proud of it.

Did you agree with General Westmoreland’s strategy?
    Well, I had some problems with General Westmoreland. General Westmoreland was not a great believer in Vietnamization. I called it “Vietnamization”, he was for giving more and more responsibility to the American forces during that period. As a matter of fact, when President Johnson left office, there was still a request for 200,000 more ground combat forces on the desk of the President and on Secretary Clark Clifford’s desk. That wasn’t the way to go. The American people were fed up with that war and you have to have public support if you are going to pursue any kind of a war successfully. Public support had gone down the drain at that particular time. President Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey in the election of 1968 based on the fact that he would do something about Vietnam. If Hubert Humphrey had broken with Lyndon Johnson and even given some indication of turning over more responsibility to the South Vietnamese, he would have been elected President of the United States cause that was a very close election and Nixon would never have been elected President if Humphrey would have shown some inclination to change the direction of that particular war. It was like the campaign when Ike first ran against Stevenson, you probably don’t remember this but you read about, I’m sure, and he said “I will go to Korea” and we are going to end that war in Korea and that elected Ike by a tremendous majority and Nixon said he had a plan. The Republican platform, which I wrote, said we will de-Americanize that war.

What was it like working for President Nixon?
    I had known him for a long time. I was in Congress with him, as you know, and I traveled with him in his campaigns as I traveled with Eisenhower in the 1956 campaign and Nixon was running for vice-president at that time, and I traveled with President Eisenhower pointing out various members of Congress and Senators. My district chair was pretty good to me and they let me take some time off during those campaigns to work with the presidential campaign and I traveled with Nixon during the 1968 campaign on a part time basis, I would be on one week and another person on the next week. Nixon was a very bright and intelligent person. He would have been a great president if he wouldn’t have lied about the cover-up on the Watergate. He didn’t know about the break-in but he lied about the cover-up and when I found that out it was a great disappointment because he lied to me. I put that question to him before I went back over to the White House as his domestic counselor after I left him then. The Presidency of the United States is too important to lieto protect some friend. You shouldn’t lie anyway but if you lie you get deeper and deeper in it and he lied about the cover-up because he knew about the cover-up and the tapes finally proved it. I remember when I first learned about that it was from Fred Buzzard, who was general counsel, I brought him over to the White House. He was my general counsel at Defense and I brought him over to the White House with me and he came to me at the end of May of June and he told me that Nixon had lied. The tapes show that he was involved in the cover-up. That was a great mistake and one of my great disappointments in politics. I could not forgive him for that.

Regarding Vietnam, did you and Nixon agree or disagree on American policy?
    We had disagreements. We had disagreements regarding a faster withdrawal at times, I was for the Cambodian bombing but I didn’t want it secret. He and the Secretary of State, Kissinger, insisted on keeping it secret and I thought it would be a terrible thing to do because full disclosure is always the best policy. I had twelve thousand men who knew about the bombing of Cambodia and I was all for taking out those sanctuaries because they were coming over and hitting our people and those sanctuaries in Cambodia were occupied territory of the North Vietnamese. I had no problem hitting them, not a bit, but I had a problem about keeping it secret and when that blew in the New York Times, I think I was right on that. It was a catastrophe as far as public opinion was concerned. Yes, I did have disagreements but you know, I had my chance to make my case and I told them in the White House the day it was authorized that I had twelve thousand people that knew about it, would know about it, and the operation from Guam and Thailand. With twelve thousand people knowing about something, you can’t keep it a secret.

Would you have done things differently?
    Well, I felt that full disclosure was the best way to go. The Pentagon papers caused Kissinger to go up the wall and Rogers and President Nixon about those being released. I did not release them, they accused me of releasing them but I didn’t, but that had to do with four previous years and I wanted that information out about what had been happening during the four previous years. I was on a whole different plane because over at the Defense Department, when you are running that department over there and you have three million men in the military, men and women in the military and two million civilians employees, you have a big job, and I had to get the funds from the Congress and everything else for everything we wanted to do and it wasn’t just Vietnam. Vietnam wasn’t the most important but there were other areas of the world that were important, we had just gone through the 1967 war in the Middle East, we had men in Egypt, we had our NATO commitment at the time, we had 200,000 men in NATO at the time, we had 60,000 in Japan, we had 52,000 in Korea, there were other places where the Secretary of Defense also had to pay attention too.

Do you think Vietnam was a winnable war?
    I think that it would have been a winnable war if you would have approached it properly back in 1962-63 but it was not a winnable war unless you gave the kind of support to the South Vietnamese so they could win the war. You can’t expect Americans to support that sort of an operation for that many years and they had not prepared the Vietnamese at all, we had started preparing the Vietnamese and then when the Congress pulled the plug on them, we didn’t have any more American combat forces when they pulled the plug.

In 1969 you went to Vietnam. Can you describe the event?
    I think that February or March is when I drew up the Vietnamization program with General Abrams, Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. I went to all four corps areas to visit the troops and I went from the north down to the Riverine forces. The Riverine forces at that time were commanded by Admiral Zumwald down in IV corps and then I was with each corps commander and I spent a day or two with them.

How was morale at that time?
    The morale always was much better than you would expect. You cannot fault that and that is why I disagree so much with McNamara’s book (In Retrospect). He wrote that book and he hasn’t got one good thing to say about a single soldier fighting in Vietnam. There are people who performed a dedicated service and they kept their morale up better than you can imagine. It was not a pleasant place to be. I agreed with Eisenhower and Eisenhower disciplined Nixon. Nixon came out as vice-president and said we should be sending troops in there and Ike said never, never get involved in a land war in Southeast Asia. Ike was so right, he was so right and Nixon had the rug cut out from under him because Nixon thought we should come in and support the French. Ike said that it was not the place to be.

Can you explain more about your trip?
    I spent time and tried to seek out different young men and nurses and women in Saigon and tried to spend time individually with them by myself and tried to get a better understanding of the drug problem and the morale problem and I was interested in people. One of the speeches I gave was about people, not hardware, being the most important thing in the Department of Defense. You can have all the airplanes, all the tanks, all the weapons of war you want but the people are what are important. People behind the guns and running the tanks and the people in front of the aircraft, morale is so important.

Was there any certain person that you had a chance to meet that sticks out?
    I met over five hundred of them. I could tell you all sorts of stories. The pictures that are on the wall have one that is hand painted. He painted this picture knowing that I was coming. Up in I corps they presented me with a Russian sub-machine gun and a Russian rifle and they were so proud. You can’t imagine how touching that is. It is tough when you are Secretary of Defense and you see those casualties coming in every day and I wanted to cut it back as fast as I could.

Your trip to Vietnam was to set up a program?
    I also went to lay out a program that we would follow for the next four years. Abrams was my commander, as you know, and Creighton Abrams was one of the great commanders of our army. He was with Patton during World War II. Do you know Abrams’s history? He was a tank commander with Patton during World War II and he always found a way to do something. Westmoreland was in Washington at that time as Chief of Staff of the Army and he was always saying, you can’t do it. Abrams was always saying you can do it. That was the difference, he was a “can do” general.

He died three years after the war?
    He died of cancer. There were a lot of great people over there. I remember a year and half later after the trip I went on and I was sitting there having dinner with Abrams and the commanders of each of the four corps areas and I was getting fed up with what was happening in Laos because the State Department was running that operation along with the CIA and we were putting in a lot of arms and ammunition to those forces up there but there was no accountability for what was going on. I looked down at the end of the table and there was Jack Vessy at that time he was a major general and I said we have to have a military man up there in Laos because this thing is getting out of hand. I asked Vessy if we could spare him to send him to Laos. That night we sent Vessy to Laos and he was there for two and a half years. He came back and later became chairman of the joint chiefs. Vessy and I traveled all over Russia when I went over to Italy for a national intelligence thing and Russia was where we were having trouble with an embassy and Reagan asked me to go and clear it up. I had asked Vessy to go with me and we traveled all over after that.

How did Johnson’s administration deal with the Tet offensive?
    The situation regarding Tet was badly handled by Westmoreland and the military command. That was not a great defeat for the American forces, they performed very well over there. I just feel badly that the American troops did not get credit they should have gotten. The only thing I fault was that the Vietnamese depended almost exclusively on the US forces and that was my criticism all the time, you weren’t using the South Vietnamese forces. There weren’t many North Vietnamese in country. I think that public affairs in Tet was handled badly. That was all the more reason why we needed to have a new program and get the South Vietnamese up to speed.

What are your thoughts about the Hmong and the Secret War?
    That is one reason why I sent Jack Vessy to handle that in Laos. The Hmong forces were very good fighters and they performed very well when they were given the proper arms and ammunition but you can’t expect the Hmong forces to be responsible for closing off the Ho Chi Minh trail. They weren’t in that league but they performed well and I have nothing but the greatest respect for the Hmong forces. I meet with them from time to time with their leaders. The Lao situation wasn’t handled very well if you want my honest opinion. They left Vessy’s predesessor up there for many years and it finally got turned around when Vessy arrived in 1970.

Can you explain why Cambodia and Laos were off limits?
    The reason was that the State Department felt they were independent countries and that you could not invade them or cross their borders because of their independence and that they had not declared any position. They were supposed to be neutral. I did not think it was not right to hit the sanctuaries which were controlled by the North Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong. I had a disagreement with the State Department over that because they were killing Americans by in and out raids. In March when I was there, I authorized Abrams to carry on and pursue the enemy. I called it “protective reaction” and it drove the State Department up the wall but I did not think it was right for our forces to chase the enemy and then stop after the enemy crossed the border. Those sanctuaries were responsible for a lot of American casualties. I did not support the secret bombing but I supported the bombing and the incursions into Laos. I hope you get the difference.

How long did your meeting with Abrams take to establish “Vietnamization”?
    I convinced Abrams what we had to do with public opinion being what it was in the United States and we had to show progress in turning the responsibility to the South Vietnamese and the Americans couldn’t be there forever. You had to make arrangements to get this program going. Abrams, at first, wasn’t gung ho with doing this. I started out the conversation and told him what was going to be. He listened and from then on he was completely cooperative all the way. I didn’t have some team players in the Pentagon but I had a team player in Abrams. They would send back channels to him and Abrams always shared those back channels with me and I had them through a different source. As Secretary of Defense I had the National Security Agency and they reported to me and I put my man in there immediately. I put Admiral Geiler there and never before had anybody been promoted to four stars that had that job and I told him if he did a good job he would be leaving this place wearing four stars. If you do a bad job you will be out of there pretty darn fast. You have to deal that way and he did a great job and I was kept well informed on all channels. I never had a problem with any military or civilian person not keeping me informed with what they were doing. They might disagree with you, like General Westmoreland disagreed with me on the all-volunteer force, Tom Mohr, my chairman didn’t like it but he went along and publically came along and supported it. I never got Westmoreland to support it 100% but I got General Chapland and five other chiefs on the joint staff to agree with me but it took a while to convince them that this was the way to go. The military thinks it is a lot cheaper to use the draft but the young men and women should be paid on a comparable basis with anybody else in our society. They were not right now and now they are trying to get up to a level of fireman or policeman and my friend Les Aspin, as Secretary of Defense for nine months, one of the first things he did was try to do away with the retirement program for the military. After twenty years you couldn’t retire but they would be able to, they don’t have to, but he broke the contract and I told him that and I went to the Congress and fought that thing through and they changed it. As long as firemen and policemen have that the military has a far more dangerous job day in and day out. You can’t spend much time with your family. I met with pilots from Northwest and they all came from the military and they were all leaving the military. I asked them why, was it a question of pay? They said it wasn’t just pay but they had been deployed on carriers and in Europe and they didn’t see their families for ten months at a time. At Northwest they are home twenty two nights a month and they are getting paid more but they are home! The wives have an influence on this and you have to take that into consideration. If you use the draft to solve all your military manpower requirements it is not fair and its like a reverse taxation.

In Vietnam, did you notice any problems with whites and Afro-Americans?
    From time to time there have been racial issues, there is no question about that. I did everything that I could to have a better understanding of those problems but I cannot say that I did not run into racial issues because I did from time to time. People living that close to each other can create friction but they got along much better than other sections of our society. I am proud of the way the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marines handled the situation. I always traveled with a great fighter pilot, Chappie James was his name and I had him as one of my public affairs people and he ran our base in Libya and when I became Secretary of Defense I only had sixty days to close that base because Johnson had agreed to it and he had no plan. I called up Chappie and I told him I wanted everything out of Libya. He told me he couldn’t do that because the agreement said everything had to stay. I told him to fly at night and get everything out of there. Chappie was a large black man and he was a colonel, I made him a general, and he was something. He was a fighter pilot from Tuskegee and when he got back I told him he was going to work for me in my office in public affairs. He complained to me that he was a fighter pilot and no public affairs officer. I told him he had been a fighter pilot. From then on we were alright. One time I was at the Council of Churches in Chicago and they had a bunch of murders and there was a demonstration and I was there. My father was a minister and I turned up the microphone because the crowd was chanting and I told them that we will now hear from General James, I had just promoted him, and he will lead us in hymns. Chappie came up there and he was a big guy and he could sing those Negro spirituals and he quieted down the crowd at the Stevens Hotel and I will never forget when Chappie quieted them down.

Tell us your thoughts about the anti-war movement.
    I had a son in the anti-war movement. He was a student at Eau Claire and he led the parade and we talked, almost every day. He was on the front page of the New York Times and I told him he had a perfect right to be against the war. I told him I understood completely but I had to do everything I can to terminate our involvement there. I told him I admired him for taking a position and the New York Times had a great editorial about how I handled my son and he later got married in the summer of 1969. He married a girl from Chetek, that’s where the wedding took place, and the whole family was there and they thought that there would be demonstrations but it was a very peaceful thing.

Did the anti-war demonstrations bother you?
    Oh sure they bothered me. Nixon didn’t understand the people and the feeling that these young people had. I remember my niece coming into my office, she is now married to Jim Doyle, the attorney general, and she and Jim came to my office and they were there to demonstrate but I heard that they were there and I got in touch with them and had they come to my office. That didn’t bother me but it was good to hear them. I sent my people to listen to the demonstrators. I sent the Secretary of the Navy and others because I think it was good to hear them and if you hear them and let them know that you are interested and that they have a viewpoint that is all you have to do. They are going to demonstrate anyway.

How did you get American troops out of Vietnam?
    First you had to set up a training program and you had the primary mission of the US forces to train the South Vietnamese. Train one platoon at a time and get that training program going. Then you had to equip them. That is what we did, train and draw down. Train and draw down. We probably could have drawn down a little faster but not much more. The first withdrawal I recommended was 50,000. That was at Midway and President Thieu was there and he was against any withdrawals. Kissinger was against any withdrawals and Rodgers was against any withdrawals and I was fighting for 50,000. They all said you can’t do that and I said you have to do it. You have to show movement. The President didn’t give me as much as I wanted, 25,000. That was the first withdrawal announced at Midway. The next withdrawal was announced at 90,000. We had to stage it as the South Vietnamese took over. They had not had any responsibility and they did not have the best leadership and you had to quietly get good people in responsible jobs in their military.

Do you think the South Vietnamese could have defeated the North?
    I don’t think they would have defeated them but they would not have had to capitulate. There would have been a negotiated settlement between the South and the North, I am sure of that. There was no chance of negotiations with the North when they knew there would be no more support for the South Vietnamese forces. So in 1975 I understand what happened. The South Vietnamese that had really been gung ho wanted to come to the United States as fast as they could. They wanted to get out of there.

Discuss the Christmas bombing in 1972.
    The reason for that was Henry Kissinger came back and briefed us that everything was at a standstill. There was no chance of negotiations and we had to do something rather dramatic. On that recommendation it was carried out and they came back to the peace table in early January. I have the pen on my desk that was used to sign the peace treaty.

Tell us about the peace treaty.
    One of the most important things for me was assurances on the POWs. I spent regular time with all the wives. They had free access to my office and they were there. I took all the wives and the kids for the Thanksgiving football game with the Dallas Cowboys. I had them brought in from all over the country. I wanted to get publicity for the POW thing because the Johnson administration wanted everything kept secret on the POWs and Harriman, who was negotiating in Paris, even came to see me in January when I announced I was going public on the POW thing and he said that was a mistake. He felt the enemy would want too much for the POWs for their return. That was not my concern. I didn’t think they were being treated properly and the conditions coming out of the Red Cross through the letters in the mail because we had certain ways of reading the letters from the Air Force. They were well trained. That is why we had the Son Tay raid which I authorized. The prisoners had been removed and the Son Tay raid was a beautiful operation. We didn’t lose a single person but the prisoners had been removed. The letters we were getting had a fixed nine month delay. The letters were from the International Red Cross. Photo recon wasn’t much help as they kept things covered up. The prisoners were only let out at night. I wanted the prisoners as a part of the peace accord. Then it was negotiated that the line would be held and the bombing would stop. The South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese would be responsible for the rest of the negotiations. The United States and the Russians would be removed and the Russians agreed that they would supply only replacement parts and ammunition. The US would do the same. All this was agreed to at Paris on January 31st. I was still Secretary of Defense at that time, I had not left because I didn’t want to stay but my deputy, Dave Packard, and they couldn’t get Elliot Richardson confirmed. It took a couple of months to get him confirmed. As soon as he was confirmed I left.

What was your reason for leaving?
    I don’t think people should serve more than four years at that job. I had been critical of McNamara, I remember telling him after he had been there six years with his comments and I sat on a committee hearing the real stories. I told him one day that he needed a good vacation or a rest because the stories are always the same when you return. I told him no secretary should serve more than four years. When I made that statement I felt I had better honor it.

Did you see any of the propaganda coming out of North Vietnam?
    We saw all the propaganda and we got everything.

What was on it?
    We listened to the broadcasts. We taped all the propaganda that involved our people that came out of Hanoi. They used their names on a regular basis. We had pretty good coverage.

What kind of things did it say? I read John McCain’s book.
    We got their [POW’s] letters which we decoded. We knew the P.O.W.S were being treated very harshly. John McCain, in his book, points out that as soon as I went public about their condition things got better. Things got better after the Hanoi raid. The Son Tay raid was a great morale booster for those POWs because they knew we cared about them. John McCain is an interesting person as you know. I served with John McCain’s grandfather in the Pacific and his grandfather was the first naval officer I ever saw in my life when he came to Marshfield. I appointed his father commander in chief of the Pacific and then John came to the House of Representatives. His father was a lobbyist for the Navy, he was the legislative representative for the Navy when he was a young commander and I was on the Defense Appropriations Committee and I had a schedule. I walked over to the committee with Rickover on Tuesdays and McCain walked with me on Wednesday. They would fill me up with questions. I was in the Longworth building and we would walk in the tunnel and they would bend my ear all the way. I knew his old man very well and I knew his mother and his aunt, they were twins you know. McCain’s mother and her sister were twins and they looked exactly alike. His father was home and I was staying with them and I asked how he could tell them apart. His comment was, “that’s their problem, not mine.” I told that to his son and he put it in his book.

How did McCain’s father handle his son’s imprisonment?
    Very well. He handled it very well and they were threatening to do things to his son and we were getting that intelligence. McCain in his book points out that he didn’t get any special treatment because of who his father was. You didn’t realize the Marshfield connection with the McCain family. I saw the old man on an island and we didn’t get anything to drink on the ship but when we hit the island, we were allowed four cans of beer. They handed out the beer and he would come and have one and I would tell him about the streets of Marshfield. He remembered Marshfield he made out like he remembered the young kid that followed him.

Can you comment on Agent Orange?
    I stopped Agent Orange. The thing that influenced me most was Admiral Zumwald who became chief of naval operations. I knew him before he reached that rank and I passed over a large number of other admirals to.

BACK

What was your te
June 12, 1969-June 11, 1970

How old were you?
I was 22 years old.

Being a woman over there, did you get drafted or was it something you wanted to do?
Neither, I was lied to.

How so?
I was in my last year of nursing school, and it was in the spring. We were ready to graduate and one of the girls (it was on a weekend and there were three or four of us in the lounge) came in. I forgot if she had just talked to a recruiter or if she started dating one, I can’t remember; but she came in all excited and she told us all about this wonderful opportunity in the army. We would go in as officers because we would be graduating, and we would have our choice of duty stations. Well, we decided to go down and talk to the recruiter, so we did. I had some friends that had just gotten back from Vietnam and they said, “You don’t want to be over there, it’s not what you think it is, so you don’t want to go there.” So, I asked him about my chances of going over and he said, “Absolutely none unless you volunteer; since you’re a female, they can not send you unless you volunteer.” So, we told him we would think about it. About a week later he called, and said that that weekend they were going on maneuvers to Florida and he asked if we wanted to go along. It was four girls and a hard decision. So, we flew down to Florida with them and they wined and dined us and we thought this would be great. He kept on telling us about Ft. Ord, wonderful Ft. Ord in California, right on the beach. He just made it sound so glamorous. So, again I asked about going to Vietnam and again he said, “Absolutely no way unless you volunteer.” The other three girls joined. I had reservations yet. I still wasn’t sure. I waited and talked to him some more, and he kept on insisting that there was no way unless I volunteered, and I knew that I wasn’t going to volunteer, so I finally joined. We went to Ft. Sam in San Antonio, TX for basic training, and then we went to Ft. Ord. The four of us went to Ft. Ord. They kept telling us about it. We thought, right on the beach and everything, it sounded really nice. We went and within a month I got orders for Vietnam. So, I went to my commanding officer and I explained the situation and said there had been a mistake. She just sat there grinning and said, “Do you have that in writing somewhere Lieutenant?” No, I didn’t. Within another month the other girls all had their orders, too. Then, the girl who talked all of us into joining went AWOL, got pregnant, and was out of the service. The other three of us were sent to sunny Vietnam, and she was out! I went because I was lied to, and I thought I was the only one until I went to the dedication of the Women’s Memorial in Washington D.C. in ‘93. I ran into several women, and they were from all over: from California, from Florida, they were from all over, and several of them had the same story. We decided that the recruiters all go to the same recruiter school, and they were told how to tell the same lies.

So when you finally made it over to Vietnam, where about were you stationed?
Cindy and I went over together, and Sharon came over later. We thought that at least we would be together, but when we got over there they separated us and sent us to two different places. I was sent to the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, the Central Highlands. The first thing I remember is, before even getting off the plane, when they opened the door there was this smell. It was just a horrible smell. Then we started going down the stairs and there was this POP, POP, POP and people started running all over, people were pushing us down, and hollering and screaming…telling us to run over to this one building. We were under small arms attack. It hit us this was for real. We had to stay over night at Nha Trang. We talked to the nurses there and they were telling us all this horrible stuff. The next day Cindy got sent to one place and I got sent to the other. The chopper in front of me got shot down (Cindy wasn’t in it). When I got to Pleiku it was too late to get my orders. I had to wait until the next morning. They took me to my hooch, which is a wooden structure. There were seven of us and then there was a little room that had a shower (cold water), a sink, and a toilet. Some of the girls were talking to me and said the 71st started out as tents and then went to a wooden structure. They realized that they would be there longer and they became more permanent with sidewalks and stuff. We were sitting out (there were some little steps) talking and the next thing that I knew, I heard this whistle and a thump. Everyone was gone. I was there by myself. Where did everybody go? Then one girl, Lynda Van Devanter (who wrote the book Home Before Morning) came out and she grabbed me and pushing me says, “Get under a bunk, any bunk, it doesn’t matter, we are under rocket attack.” The next morning I went to get my orders. My M.O.S., which is your military occupational specialty, was post-op nursing. I had a whole three months orientation to that. So I thought that was what I would be doing. They told me that I would have to go to surgery because they needed somebody there. Well, in order to be in surgery in Vietnam you were supposed to have had at least a one-year OR course in the military for combat nursing, or have worked in an OR for three years in a civilian hospital, and I didn’t have either. Besides that, I had had a very bad experience in nursing school in surgery. When they said I had to go to surgery that was traumatic right there. When I got there, I was told to put on a mask and gown and just watch this case. It was a real bad case. He had already lost a leg and an arm; he had over 100 pints of blood already. There was a surgeon working on his stomach and one was doing repair on the leg and one was working on his head. He was a really bad case. So I was just supposed to watch and see how they were doing things. I was there about five minutes and the surgeon looked up and he saw me just standing there (I was in a mask and gown, so he didn’t know who I was, and he didn’t know that was what I was supposed to be doing). He threw a scissors at me and just hollered, “Don’t just stand there, he is going to lose that arm anyway, so cut it off.” It was just hanging there by a tendon, so I had to cut it off. That was my first five minutes there. It was probably my first forty-eight hours that gave me post-traumatic stress. It was down hill after that.

What was your main job?
I was an operating room nurse. I started out doing circulating. As a circulator, you set up and tone down cases, got the case started, and ran for needed supplies, etc. We often had “pushes” where a chinook would land carrying 100 or more patients. When you heard one of those coming, you might have just put in a 12-hour-shift and  were on your way back to your hooch you turned right around and went right back. We didn’t have enough surgeons, so when that happened, during the “push” the nurses and even some of the techs had to do some of the minor surgeries by themselves.

What are techs?
Operating room technicians (corpsmen). We had to do some of the debriedments some of the minor cases by ourselves. That for me was very hard because I really didn’t know what to do. I knew my basic anatomy and physiology, but I often wondered if I did more harm than good…if someone’s walking around or not walking around because of something that I did.

Did you have to decide whether or not a patient was going to make it?
No, I never had to do that. That was done in the ER. Nurses and doctors there had to make those decisions. When we had a “push”, they had to divide patients into three categories: the most critical that they felt would make it, the less critical (who would make it), and then the ones who were so severe that they didn’t have a chance. They set them over in the corner. You only had so many staff available, and it was impossible to save everyone.

How many nurses or technicians did you have working in one unit?
During the day there would be maybe three or four nurses and a tech for each one. At night you were always by yourself as the charge nurse and you had a couple of techs. That was it.

Do you remember any certain patients?
We got the patients right from the field. They came from the field to us first. Then once they got stabilized they would go to a safer area. Then from there they usually went to Cam Ranh Bay. Then from there, if they were stable enough to travel, they would go to Japan, and then from Japan, once they were well enough to make the trip to the States, they went to the States. The hardest part was we never knew if they lived or died…if our hard work was a success or in vain. We got everything! There were a lot of burn patients, (a lot of choppers shot down) and they would be really bad. We had to make up names and make a joke out of it in order to deal with it. So like we would say, “Oh, a crispy critter’s coming in,” or a “horendoplasty.” It was just a way to stay sane. Then we got casualties that were montagnards (the montagnards are the mountain people of Vietnam). They were in the Central Highlands by us, so we often had to deal with a lot of the civilians around the area. We also had camp Enari by us (the 4th Division), we had an airforce base by us, and a MARS unit and we had to take care of those patients. Periodically we would get POW’s (prisoners of war) that we would have to do surgery on.

Was that hard for you?
It was hard because there were a couple times during a “push” they made us stop working on the GI’s, our guys, to get this guy in because they wanted to be able to interrogate him, so they wanted him done first. Then, when they got done interrogating him, they killed him anyway. In the mean time, we had guys who died because they couldn’t get in because we were operating on him. Some of the people refused  to stop working on the GI’s and they were threatened with court martials. It was hard. It was very hard.

What was it like being a woman in the war? Were you ever harassed or anything like that?
There were times when some of the nurses and the Red Cross girls would be. The General over in Camp Enari decided that it would be a nice thing to have a couple of nurses come each weekend. They would give us steak, and he thought it was a moral booster for his men. We had to dress up, wear a dress or a skirt and wear heels. Basically, we were to be their entertainment for the weekend. We thought that was horrible because we needed to be back doing what we were there for. It got to a point where people were refusing. Then, we were threatened to be court martialed if we didn’t go. We had that to contend with. The weekend that I went George Goople was there. He was an entertainer, and his son had been wounded and his son was receiving a Purple Heart. He had flown over to be there when his son got the Purple Heart. He was there with us, and he ate with us. The trailer that we stayed in was next to the trailer that he was in, and he came and talked to us. That was a plus for our weekend. There were guys who tried to make passes, but on the whole they were really pretty much gentlemen. They were just so happy to see what they called a “round eye”, an American.

Did you get treated any different than say a male nurse, or even the GI’s?
Well, not in some things, but it’s really interesting. They had bunkers for the male officers and the enlisted men when under rocket or mortar attacks. But, they didn’t have any for the women. All we could do was role under our bed. Besides that, they had our hoochs up on the top of the hill, and they had a big red cross painted on the top of our hooch. It was like, here we are! There were things like that. Plus we were not allowed to have a weapon. The male officers and the enlisted men had a weapon, but we were not allowed to. We were over-run one night. They ended up getting all the sappers, but when I opened my door the next day, right outside the door was a dead NVA. Had he gotten through the door, my room was the first one. I would have been the first one he would have gotten, and we had nothing to protect ourselves with. They wouldn’t allow women to handle weapons. We also did not get combat pay. Men did, but women didn’t because they said that we weren’t in combat. Pleiku City got renamed “Rocket City” because we got hit so often. It was close to once a day. The day that I left we got hit three times, and I was sure that that was it. You always hear that the last few days, that’s when a lot of people get killed, and we got hit three times, and I was sure that I was not going to get out of there alive. Actually, through the whole thing, I didn’t think that I was going to. I sent a will to my friend in Milwaukee and had her hold it just in case. I didn’t want my parents to be worried.

Do you have anything that you want to tell about?
Well, you do some stupid things. We had a Special Forces team that was in the area, and I started to “date” one of them. You don’t really date when you’re over there. We had a movie theater and you were usually under what they called “red alert” because we got hit so often. If you were on “red alert” anytime you went out you had to wear a flak jacket and helmet. I have some pictures of me with my dress and flap jacket and this helmet on going to the movie theater with this guy. They never played the movie straight through. They would have the second reel first, and then they would have the third, and then first. They never quite got it right, so you never saw the movie from beginning to end. I was dating this Special Forces guy and he had access to a jeep. One night he says, “Come on, let’s go for a ride.” I said, “Well, I will only go if my friend can go along.” My friend Sharon said she would go with me. I had on this bright orange dress, and it had rained and everything was muddy. When we hit some puddles the mud flew up so we were laughing. We had a great time, but the next day it hit you, here you were in the middle of the night, out in this jeep, Vietcong out there and land mines, and a bright orange dress on, and you’re laughing. I never did that again! We had some fun times like that. People’s birthdays were special. We tried to make a cake or something. We went to the mess hall and asked for a cake mix. Well, you know we were thinking “cake mix”, but their supplies are for hundreds of people, and so they gave us huge proportions of things. We got this huge container that we found. We cleaned it out and we started to try to mix it all up and get a little bit out of it to make a cake. So, we did things like that that were really silly.

Did you ever come in contact with any Vietnamese children or civilians?
Yes, we had a lot of the civilians. This woman came in, who was pregnant, and they were real busy in the ER, and we hadn’t gotten patients in surgery yet because they were in the ER waiting to come to surgery. They told to me sit there and watch her. So, I was staying with her. They’re very stoic over there. They don’t make a sound. I thought she was just in early stages of labor because she was just lying there very quiet. Then all of a sudden she made this tinniest little sound, kind of like “umph.” I thought I should check her, and there was the baby. They usually have the children out in the fields when they are working, and they will take a stone and hit the umbilical cord to break it. Then they just tie it and put the baby on their back and go right back working in the fields. That’s how life is over there. They have a lot of children because they usually don’t have very many that last after five years of age because of diseases, their way of life, and lack of food. When you have a patient in, the whole family comes into the hospital. The whole family camps down their hallway. So, it might be the mother, the father, or the child who needs head surgery or is in the medical ward, and the hall is filled with the whole family. They stay there until that person either dies or leaves. They have mats they lay down and sleep on. They bring a couple of pots to do their cooking in and that’s it.

When you saw a patient did you ever feel like you couldn’t do it anymore? Did you feel like you needed to stop?
Early on, probably the first week, probably after I cut off the arm. You learn very early to shut off your emotions. You did such a good job at it that most of us have not been able to bring that back. It’s really hard to try to reverse that once that has happened. So you had to totally shut down that part in order to do your job. You had these GI’s dying, and they are asking you if they’re going to die, and you say, “Oh, heck no, you’re going to be just fine,” and you know that they’re going to die. You have to be able to have a smile on your face. At Christmas, I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, and I took an R&R to the Phillippines which turned out to look just like Vietnam.

Was that hard to do at all?
It was real hard. It was real hard. Often you felt like you couldn’t go on, but there was nothing you could do about it.

Did the nurses get anything for it?
After this one big push we had our head nurse put several of us in for a Bronze Star. Then shortly after that she left, and they hadn’t come through yet. When the new head nurse came she was reviewing everyone’s records. She saw that we had been put in for the Bronze Star. She said that only the guys in the fields deserve metals, not someone that was just there doing surgery or just what they were supposed to be doing. So she took them away from us. Then during a rocket attack one night she cut her knee on a cocktail glass, and she accepted the Purple Heart for that, and yet she took all of our medals away.

Did you ever get any medals?
Just the usual ones. If you were there you recieved a Vietnam Campaign Ribbon.

What was it like when you came home?
I took a delay-in-route. I didn’t come home with the other people.  The people that I knew, all my friends, had been there a week or two earlier than me and they were given drops. So, they got an early out. They got out a month early because they had just made it, but I was on the other side of the time limit. So all my friends that I knew left, and that last month was really hard because I didn’t know anybody. All these new people came (FNG’s) and I lay in my hooch. I was very depressed. That last month was really hard. My parents had never had a vacation and it was their anniversary, so I had saved my money and I sent money to my friend in Milwaukee. She got airline tickets for them, and I met them in Hawaii. That’s another story. All year I saved my money for this trip, and I told my dad not to bring any money along because I wanted to show them the best time. He only brought a hundred dollars or so along. When you first get to Vietnam they take your American money and they change it into what they call MPC ( we called it funny money), then right before you go back they change it back into American money. American money over there was worth lots and lots and lots. I slept with it in my pocket and I went to work with it in my pocket. So, I didn’t leave it around because our mama-sans stole stuff. We had mama-sans working for us. I had one more day so I was just changing my uniform into a clean uniform, and I had just taken my pants off and laid them on the bed. The girl down the hall screamed. I ran down there to see what was going on and all of a sudden we saw mama-san just go tearing out. I went back to my room and she had all of my money. All of my money for the whole year, and all the money I was going to use on the trip. I was going to go island hopping, go to a luaho, and have a fancy hotel for my parents. So I slipped on another pair of pants and we going running after her and we were screaming at the MP at the gate to stop her, and he’s going, “What, what?” And she goes running right by. She got all my money. I got to Hawaii and my dad had a hundred dollars or so and that was it. My friend had given me a little bit of money, so I had maybe a couple hundred dollars, that was it. So we ended up in this raunchy hotel, and we couldn’t do half the stuff, but my parents didn’t care. They were just happy that I was coming home and that I was alive. They didn’t care, but all my money! It was probably a good thing that she got away because I really think that if I had caught her I would have strangled her to death. I really do, I really do think I would have killed her. I had a ring stolen and jewelry and different things were stolen. We paid these mama-sans to do some ironing, to wash our clothes. How they washed our clothes was they put them in this tub, put water in, and walked on them and that’s how they washed our clothes. If you had anything good you did it yourself by hand, but not your uniforms. Then we even bought her an ironing board, but they squat to do everything. They sit there and do that, and we had bought our mama-san an ironing board thinking we could make life easier for her. She never even used it. One night they caught all these mama-sans setting up rockets aimed at our hospital. They were all these mama-sans that we were paying, and we found out that they really weren’t South Vietnamese, they were NVA. You couldn’t tell. I was glad that I didn’t work in the emergency room because after so many things were disappearing, the commander said that the nurses in the ER had to do a vaginal test on them. That was how they were getting stuff out. You would not believe what you could get in a vagina!

What kinds of things were stolen?
Well, linen. They got, I don’t know how many sheets out of one woman. Multiple sheets plus she had jewelry, and she had someone’s gun. They have so many kids that they stretch. You would not believe what they found doing vaginal checks. They would steal our stuff and then they would put it on the black market down town. They would sell it. We went through a period of time where we started running out of bandages, so we started ripping up sheets to use for bandages. Our drugs disappeared. We had GI’s die because the drugs they needed were in Pleiku City on the black market. We didn’t have them, they never even made it to us. So we lost GI’s because the drugs were stolen that they needed if they had a cardiac arrest.

What exactly is a mama-san?
A mama-san is a Vietnamese woman paid to do tasks for the unit. We had one who worked in surgery. We really liked her, and she wasn’t one of them who got caught, so we’re hoping that she really was South Vietnamese. She was very good and she was very intelligent. She really learned to put the instrument sets together and autoclave them. She learned to do a lot of things for us. She worked hard.

Were they mostly women?
Yes, there were some men, but mostly women. We had to pay the ones we hired in our hooch out of our own money. Everyone in our hooch got together and we would pay a set amount for doing our uniforms, etc. You worked minimum 12-hour shifts, six days a week. That was your minimum. Like I said, if you see one of those Chinooks you just turned around. If there was a “push” you were there for days, so we didn’t have time to be doing washing and things like that.

Do you remember any unusual incidents on the job?
When you had to shave someone they didn’t have the disposable razors like they have now. They had the straight edge. We had this really bad case and they needed to work on this guy’s head. He had been out in the field for a long time, so he had a big scruffy beard. The anesthetist told me to shave his beard so that he would be able to tube him and have a place to put the tape. I had never used one of those before so the very first sweep I made a big gouge in his cheek. So he wrote down on the chart “first incision made by Lt. Calmes.” Then after the case they gave me a straight edge razor and said to go home and shave my legs. I came to work the next day with Band-Aids everywhere, but I knew how to use one after that.

Did you ever have any patients that just died on the bed?
A lot. I made a lot of trips to the morgue.

What did you have for a morgue?
It was a wooden building they go in to do identification, get cleaned up, and put in black body bags. Then a plane comes and takes them home.

Do they bring them home?
Yes. When we had pushes, we lost a lot of patients. A friend of mine in the hooch had been dating this chopper pilot, and they were engaged. One night he came over and they were going to go out. She wasn’t back from work yet, and I was the only one in the hooch. I had seen him a lot before. We began talking. He had a real sense of humor and he was always cracking jokes and stuff, so we were just yucking it up because he was so funny. The next day, when I got done with work, I noticed outside of the building there was this great big stack of body bags. I had seen them before, but I had never ever in my life gone over and looked at one, and I never did after. For some reason I was drawn over there, and besides the regular stacks there were little ones. They would be from a chopper crash - really burned or something that would be just ashes. There were these three small ones, and I looked down, and there was the chopper pilot’s name. It’s just like time stood still. It seemed like I was standing there for years. I was just in shock. Finally ,I was able to walk away, and I never ever went back again. Then, we had a nurse and she was having so much trouble. She was begging them to send her back to the States because she just couldn’t deal with it. She only had one more month to go, she had already been there eleven months. They should have sent her back, but they refused to send her. One of the corpsmen found her in her room. She had taken an overdose of Darvon, which is a painkiller. It didn’t kill her, she is still alive, but they never could bring her around, and now she’s is a vegetable. That’s how she went home to her parents, a vegetable.

Did that happen a lot, not just to nurses, but others too?
Not too often. On our compound people got into drugs because they were forced to. Corpsmen worked a minimum of 12 hours just like we did, and then they also had to pull guard duty. We had this commander who was an “old timer” and he had been in the “big one,” World War II, and that’s all he ever talked about. He was always making us do things like have our boots shined and wear our boonie hats, and everything had to be just perfect. This was a war zone, we’re doing all we can to keep people alive. Who’s got time to shine your boots and to worry about everything being perfect? The 4th Division had offered to send some of their guys over to pull guard duty so that the corpsmen could be doing their job. He refused, he said, “We can take care of our own!” These corpsmen either had to start doing their guard duty shift, which is a three-hour-shift, then try to get a little bit of sleep before they went back on duty, or they would have to quick get some sleep, go back to guard duty and then go back to work. They would be so exhausted, so if they had to go on guard duty right away, they would take an upper to stay awake. But if they had to go on second, they would take a downer to try to get some sleep. After a while they would need two, three and it started going up, and pretty soon they were shooting up. It was all because of this idiot who was too proud to accept help from the 4th Division. Our corpsmen got hooked on drugs because of him, because they had to survive. They wouldn’t have been able to do it without some kind of drug. It was not their fault.

Did you try any drugs to stay awake or go to sleep?
No. They would come into surgery sometimes and they would be so high on drugs, and they would think they were super techs then. “We can do anything,” and it was like, “No, you can’t, you’re screwing up here.”  It was really bad. They tried to get me to do marijuana. It’s really strong stuff. The Vietnamese start their babies on marijuana. When they have these newborns they give them a puff of marijuana and that keeps the baby quiet while they’re working in the fields. I have a picture of a little kid (a small boy) with a joint, and he is just a little kid. It is really powerful stuff over there, it’s very strong, but it doesn’t bother them, because from little on they’re raised on it. So to them it’s not strong or anything, but to our guys who aren’t used to it, it’s really powerful. It’s part of their culture. It takes care of pain and things. It keeps the kids quiet.

When you went out of the compound did you ever go to down town Pleiku?
Yes, our address was Pleiku, but the city was a little ways from us. I went down a couple of times. It was interesting. There were Coca-Cola signs and a Shell gas station amongst all the other stuff. But it was dangerous to go there and after awhile, it became off limits.

Was it weird to see what you believed to be a South Vietnamese person, but was actually North Vietnamese?
The mama-sans were, but you never knew. They all look the same. It was frightening. The whole thing was frightening. I really didn’t think I was going to come back alive. Like I said, we got rocketed and mortared so often. I really didn’t think I was going to come back. I didn’t.

Do you suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Yes I have that. I was the first woman to go through the PTSD program at Tomah, and they didn’t know what to do with me. When the fellows go they all stay in this one huge room because they figure that if they wake up with nightmares the other guys are there to talk to them. But they didn’t feel that they could put me in with them. They only had one unit that actually had women veterans, but because they only had one unit in the whole hospital and they got every type of patient, including psych patients, it was a locked ward. So, when I first got there ,they put me on that ward. When my family started walking away and they closed the door and the nurse locked it, and I couldn’t get out, that was horrifying. The room that I was in had two beds and during the night this woman came in that had overdosed and nobody came and checked her all night. So I’m sitting there all night with one eye open making sure that her chest was still going up and down. The guys raised such a stink because they said that I needed to be on the PTSD unit, that it was not a good thing for me to be in a locked ward. They raised such a stink that they moved me over there. Right outside their big room was a supply closet, so they cleaned that out and put a bed in there for me and that was where I slept. Then they didn’t know what to do about showering. The guys had a shower down the hall that was on the alcohol/drug ward. The guys offered to stand guard because they didn’t trust the alcohol/drug patients. They would stand guard while I took a shower. The staff finally decided that they could trust me, so the nurse gave me the key to go down to the nurse’s shower I could shower in there. Then, I found out later that when I applied to go to the program, the head of the hospital just went bananas because he didn’t know why I wanted to come there. Why did a female need to? He didn’t understand why a female would have post-traumatic stress. Why did I want to come, was I a women’s liberator and just trying to cause problems, or did I really need some help? Or what? They didn’t know. So, then they didn’t even know if they should accept me or not. Then they thought if they didn’t accept me I would go to the press. I stayed there, not as long as the guys because they have it down pat what to do with the guys, but they really didn’t know what to do with me. I had the same symptoms as the men, but women think and feel different and my experiences were different than the guys. They never quite knew what to do with me. I got what I could out of the program, and then we mutually agreed that it was time for me to leave.

When was it that you were in there?
December ’82- February ‘83. I have been seeing a counselor until recently. I have been to a program in Minneapolis for VN nurses. There is nothing in the state of Wisconsin for women. So, I had to go to Minnesota, but then that got shut down after three years. I had to stop going to that. There is not a lot out there for the women.

When you came home was it hard for you to get back to the normal routine?
Backing way up, I went to Hawaii, and Lynda Van Devanter did also. We both came back and that’s a big thing over there, coming back and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. That was the big thing. We had pictures of it up and you looked at it everyday, knowing