Michael Rank |
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Post-War How did you feel about your position and doing those actions? Hated it, absolutely hated it. Made me sick to my stomach just seeing what it was that we were doing. This guy in my squad, we called him Doc. He was a conscientious objector but nevertheless he carried a .45. So he walks up to the guy’s body and this is kind of graphic but this tale needs to be told. He opens up his mouth and he sees that he has gold teeth. So he starts stomping on the guy’s body, his face, trying to dislodge the teeth. And after a while he would just reach in there and wiggle the teeth but couldn’t get it out. So he took his surgical scissors, and I’ll never forget this sound. It’s like the sound of scissors cutting through a carrot. And he literally cut the gold teeth out of the guy’s mouth and put them in his pocket. And I was in absolute disbelief. I mean this is defacing, defiling the body and I thought “Wow, the enemy does this, we don’t do this!” But here I am witnessing this first hand. And I’m looking around and of course one thing that you learn is you keep your mouth shut. What was your post war experience? At the end of 1970 I immediately, I didn’t waste any time, I was home for three days and I went straight back to my college and I said “Look I want to get back in,” and they embraced me with open arms. As a matter of fact it was probably the best experience that I had and I was really received very well by the department. I changed my major and went from accounting to sociology. So my time in Vietnam really changed me as far as that was concerned. I was struggling about what to study, but sociology just seemed so rich to me. I thought about that during the time. And I always knew that I was going to back and finish my degree. I just didn’t want to do it in accounting. But when I came back the United States was contentious but it seemed like the whole world had changed in the two years I was gone. I had a completely different perspective on man’s inhumanity to man and the terrorism of war. It’s unlike anything that anybody could, you could read great books about it and I know there are a couple really good books that’s about killing and combat and it really nails the existential experience being in war. And keep in mind that there’s a philosophical piece. There’s an existential piece, other’s a spiritual piece. Because when you start engaging in life or death, you start questioning your beliefs and you start questioning the way that people live life and how easy it is to take a life, which is just horrendous when you just think about how easy it is to take a life. But why is it that we need to take lives in order to propagate political ends. And I think that’s what I came out of it with. Was more of a distaste for politics and for the misuse of young individuals to fight wars for reasons that really weren’t clear about and still aren’t clear today.
Object Description
Profile of | Michael Rank |
Title | College Student at War |
Profile bio | Michael Rank is an associate professor at the USC School of Social Work. He was an infantryman in the Vietnam War, from 1969-1970. Dr. Rank was a senior studying accounting when he decided to drop out and volunteer in the Army to fight in the Vietnam War. His choice to go to Vietnam was out of curiosity and also to make a difference. He wanted a change in his life, because as he puts it accounting wasn’t for him. His father was a World War II veteran who became anti-war later in his life. As a young man Rank participated in both anti war protests as well as pro war protests. He knew about Vietnam as a country but despite research he couldn’t understand why Americans were fighting in that part of the world, so he wanted to see for himself. In Vietnam he was chosen by the Department of Defense to be an infantryman. He was stationed in Chu Lai. When he came back from the war, he attended Bloomsburg University majoring in Sociology. He then went on to get his Masters in social work at Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in the same subject from the University of South Carolina. |
Profiler bio | Rashid Binnur is a freshman majoring in Public Relations and planning to double minor in Information Technology and Business Entrepreneurship. Mia Poynor is a freshman majoring in Health and Human Sciences with a focus in International Health. Timothy Woodson is a senior majoring in Psychology and minoring in EALC studies with and emphasis in Chinese. |
Subject |
Vietnam Draft Vietnam war tet offensive volunteer antiwar antigun |
Profiled by | Binnur, Rashid; Poynor, Mia; Woodson, Timothy |
Profile date | 2016-03-01 |
Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Columbia; Da Nang |
Geographic subject (county) | Richland; Lexington |
Geographic subject (state) | South Carolina; Pennsylvania |
Geographic subject (country) | USA; Vietnam; Columbia; Laos |
Coverage date | 1970 |
Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/michael-rank/ |
Type |
images video |
Format | 1 image; 3 video files (00:15:59); 3 transcripts |
Language | English |
Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
Part of collection | An Other War Memorial -- Memories of the American War in Viet Nam |
Filename | rankmichael |
Description
Profile of | Michael Rank |
Title | Post War |
Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
Filename | rankmichael-vid3_tr3.pdf |
Full text | Post-War How did you feel about your position and doing those actions? Hated it, absolutely hated it. Made me sick to my stomach just seeing what it was that we were doing. This guy in my squad, we called him Doc. He was a conscientious objector but nevertheless he carried a .45. So he walks up to the guy’s body and this is kind of graphic but this tale needs to be told. He opens up his mouth and he sees that he has gold teeth. So he starts stomping on the guy’s body, his face, trying to dislodge the teeth. And after a while he would just reach in there and wiggle the teeth but couldn’t get it out. So he took his surgical scissors, and I’ll never forget this sound. It’s like the sound of scissors cutting through a carrot. And he literally cut the gold teeth out of the guy’s mouth and put them in his pocket. And I was in absolute disbelief. I mean this is defacing, defiling the body and I thought “Wow, the enemy does this, we don’t do this!” But here I am witnessing this first hand. And I’m looking around and of course one thing that you learn is you keep your mouth shut. What was your post war experience? At the end of 1970 I immediately, I didn’t waste any time, I was home for three days and I went straight back to my college and I said “Look I want to get back in,” and they embraced me with open arms. As a matter of fact it was probably the best experience that I had and I was really received very well by the department. I changed my major and went from accounting to sociology. So my time in Vietnam really changed me as far as that was concerned. I was struggling about what to study, but sociology just seemed so rich to me. I thought about that during the time. And I always knew that I was going to back and finish my degree. I just didn’t want to do it in accounting. But when I came back the United States was contentious but it seemed like the whole world had changed in the two years I was gone. I had a completely different perspective on man’s inhumanity to man and the terrorism of war. It’s unlike anything that anybody could, you could read great books about it and I know there are a couple really good books that’s about killing and combat and it really nails the existential experience being in war. And keep in mind that there’s a philosophical piece. There’s an existential piece, other’s a spiritual piece. Because when you start engaging in life or death, you start questioning your beliefs and you start questioning the way that people live life and how easy it is to take a life, which is just horrendous when you just think about how easy it is to take a life. But why is it that we need to take lives in order to propagate political ends. And I think that’s what I came out of it with. Was more of a distaste for politics and for the misuse of young individuals to fight wars for reasons that really weren’t clear about and still aren’t clear today. |
Archival file | Volume5/rankmichael-vid3_tr3.pdf |