George’s attitude towards the War
I don’t believe in war but I believe in defending you country. From my point of view it was service and dedication to the oath that you had taken on entering the service. Not a popular war obviously, Vietnam, no war is good. It was our time to serve. The people that I served with, we did our best; we served honorably, we served with dedication, we fought the foe that was put in front of us. It was not ours to choose it was just our time. We did the best we could and I really want to stress that the guys that I was there with looked out for each other, kept each other alive, and made sure that we were honorable guys. Apocalypse Now, that was surreal. Platoon, some of the combat scenes were very realistic but some of the things that they showed I never saw; the hardcore pot-smoking and things like that. Maybe in later years. I was there in ’68 and early’ 69. I don’t know how things changed after I was there but that’s not what I saw.
George’s attitude towards American protesters of the War
I believe in protest. I believe that part of what I served for to defend was the right to protest. I just don’t think that part of protesting should be bringing criticism to those who are defending your freedom. That was the more difficult thing for me. Whether they realized it or not that’s what we were doing. Our time was the Vietnam time, but we were still serving to protect their freedoms and part of their freedom was the ability to protest. Anytime, if somebody truly feels there’s a need for protest they certainly have the right to, as long as they’re not forcing their opinion on someone else.
When I returned from Vietnam, our flight came into an air-force base out in Riverside. On the return flight we had personnel from the Marine Corp, the Army, the Navy, all services were on the flight coming back. Once I left the air port I caught a bus back to Long Beach and I got off the bus in downtown Long Beach where the station used to be. I had just taken my two C-bags out of the storage compartment on the bus and this girl had come up to me and she was looking at my chest and she says, “Are you just back from Vietnam?”. I said “Yeah” and I thought she was going to say welcome home but she started calling me names and I was kind of dumbfounded about that. I didn’t understand what that was all about because it wasn’t like that before I left. I think that year, ’68, might have been a turning point as far as the views as the American people. A lot of the young people started getting radical views.
We weren’t the bad guys, we just didn’t have a popular war. Most of us, all of us, really, served honorably. We didn’t do anything bad. We served our country just as our fathers did during WWII or WWI or any other conflict that we were ever involved in.