“Dad. What’s Vietnam?”
I can’t say that I came to Vietnam, I guess I would have to say that the Vietnam War came to me. In 1965, I was a sophomore in high school; Villa Park high in Orange, here in California. And I had a great history teacher by the name of Gary Long, who would uh, circumvented the globe for us. And I remember one day he came into class and he said, ‘Tomorrow we’re going to have debate on the war in Vietnam. And Mark I want you to take the con side.’ I will never forget going home to my dad and saying, “Dad. What’s Vietnam?” And of course my dad, who had a background in aeronautical engineering, knew about the war. He was a very learned person, very well read. And he sat down and told me what he knew about the Vietnam War and helped me take the side against the war way back in 1965.
Military Service
As far as my military service, you’d have to….I couldn’t couple that with the Vietnam experience. I served in a unit after 911. And how I came into that service was kind of interesting. 911 happened, I was looking around for something to do that I could help my country because I hadn’t done it back when I should have back during the Vietnam War, in my opinion. And a friend of mine, who had been in Vietnam, Jim Carville, who had been in Vietnam with the Red Cross. Actually he had an army background, but he went to Vietnam as a civilian. He called me up one day and said, “Hey our unit needs public affairs officers;” being well aware of my background as a journalist. And I said Jim, “I’m 50 years old.” And he said, “It doesn’t matter in our unit.” So I put in eight years down in Orange Country at the Joint Forces training base in Los Alamitos as a public affairs officer. I was writing stories and taking pictures of troops that were mobilizing for and demobilizing from Iraq and Afghanistan and getting stories in army publications such as Soldiers, which is the US army magazine, The Grizzly, which is the magazine of the California National Guard and many others. So that’s basically a two-pronged question that’s how I would answer that.
Connections to Vietnam
As far as who has influenced me or shake my opinion about the war, it has to be people who were there. I could name so many people: Janet Woods, who retired a few years ago as a reservationist for Alaska Airlines in Arizona. She what was called the doughnut dollies and she worked for the Red Cross. And she would go into base camps bases and bring our GIs a little bit of home. And came back with the same PTSD that the guys that went over there came back with in many cases. I remember her telling me that she went to a Vietnam Veterans of America meeting, and said to the guys at the meeting, “I’ve got PTSD,” and they looked at her and said “you got PTSD. How did you get PTSD, well?” Then she sat down and told them her story. And she became one of the club.
So many of these people that have felt the confidence in me as a listener and as a writer to write their stories, have helped to shape whatever my opinion, as fluctuating as it has been since 1968. They have helped to shape my opinion. They’re the reason why I feel the way I do today.
Mark’s Parents
Regarding my family during the era, my family was against the war. I did mention how my dad guided me to an antiwar position. I remember one of things he said to me was that, “Eighty percent of Vietnam would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.”
I think my father’s position was kind of curious because he was a World War II Veteran. He was in the army. He was in the Army Air Corps; served in the South Pacific as a radioman. Came home went to the engineering school at USC on the GI Bill, class of 1950. And he had two careers, but his first one was as an aeronautical engineer and in that time he worked for example, Hughes Aircraft and other companies that he headed up. He and his many companies fulfilled many government contracts. Among them the Nike and Polaris missiles, parts for the gyroscopes on B52s that were bombing Indochina. And even parts for bombs that were dropped on Vietnam, so perhaps that weighed heavy on his mind. My Mom was a Holocaust survivor and I think if anyone who has lived through something like the Holocaust. They get very over protective of their children, but I think that was genesis for how they felt about the war. And I slid into that position.