Why I Am Proud of My Service ?
Michael: The people we dealt with, as far as we knew, were on our side or we were on their side, however you want to look at it. There were always rumors that some of them probably worked both sides and there were a couple of instances I know of where we joked often about a middle aged Vietnamese male that we would see out on one of the taxi ways next to the runways every couple days or so. He was just out there sweeping and everybody kind of joked that well, he is probably not sweeping, he’s probably counting steps and turning the information over to the Viet Cong who are going to be shooting rockets at us tomorrow night or something. He basically is figuring out where they need to aim or something, and I’m sure that happens in some cases. I have got no evidence that’s what it was but that was kind of the joke that went on because we were always seeing the same guy who was kind of doing the same stuff in different places.
One of the things that struck me and I’ve talked about it with people, was that I was there in 1969, 1970 and the Vietnamese people, whether it was considered the north or the south, they have been living with conflict, most of them for their entire lives. That’s all they’ve known, some battle going on between two different factions as to who was going to control the country and everything. So I think the feeling that I had in a lot of respects was kind of sorry that they were enduring everything that they had, and in a way it didn’t seem as though things were ever going to change for them.
Well, with Vietnam, whether it’s right or whether it was successful or not, was the idea of trying to prevent communism from spreading. As the individual soldier, you know when you are there, the purpose is to stay alive and keep your buddies alive if you can. I don’t know that when you are in the field, you really pay attention or care about the politics that may have caused you to be where you’re at.
I feel proud of my service because I was doing the job that I supposed to be doing and I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t see anybody that did anything wrong. I know there were a lot of people that claim that our people were doing horrendous thing and there were some isolated incidents. Looking at from the standpoint of the people that protest the troops, I went and did the job that I was asked to do.
About the time I was coming home from Vietnam, when there were students and other people here in the States really starting to protest the war, a lot of those people were taking their frustration with the politics, I think, out on the soldiers. I didn’t experience it personally, but I know of some people. You probably hear from people that say you know I came back from Vietnam, I got off from the plane at the airport, and people were spitting at me, and they were calling me names and all of this other stuff or anything. I didn’t specifically experience that, but I did get to the point after coming back that with the exception of family and some very close friends, it was many, many years before anybody knew I served in Vietnam or even served in the military, because it was, it was not popular in those days.