Profile Highlight: Part One
John: I was 17 and when the assassination of the president happened I believed that we’d be at war in no time at all so I went down and enlisted one week later.
Ty: As sergeant, were you involved in any planning?
John: More doing. Occasionally, well, I planned my portion of each operation, where’d we moved and stuff like that. As sergeant I was comm. Chief of an artillery battery so I had about a dozen radio operators and maybe 8 wiremen who ran the telephones. So you know, the constant, wherever you go to establish communication will hire headquarters or the units, stuff like that, most of the control of the artillery was done by radio because in the environment like that, wire was just not secure.
As long as we had ammo, we were OK. And we usually did. Now some of theammunition we had was left over from Korea, and, it wasn’t the greatest. Occasionally there were accidents like the shell that went off in the barrel of the howitzer. In the 50’s, after WWII, there was a big movement to try to abolish the Marine Corps. And, you know, it happens periodically. And the Marines decided to prove they could live on less money, a smaller part of the budget. So a lot of our equipment was left over from Korea. The Army would get the new stuff, we’d get the hand-me-downs. Some new equipment, in fact the new radios, the enemy had before we had because the Army gave them to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, who was subsequently captured by the Viet Cong. So they had newer equipment than we did occasionally. But we were always resourceful. And we learned to improvise. Now, that may be a lost art.
I did my best at everything, because people would be counting on me. You know, getting killed is not the worst thing that could happen to you. The worst thing that could happen is you fail to do your job and you get somebody else killed. So, in the Marine Corps you’re intensely devoted to your fellow Marines.
Leslie: Do you guys feel you did the right thing with the war? And how do you guys feel about the public’s opinion.
John: Our approach to the war was professional. You know, its nothing personal, it’s business. When your best friend gets whacked, then it’s personal. But the majority of the time it’s just business. We had, in some cases, our job was made more complicated by basic racism of some people, particularly from the south, you know, that just hated all Asians, and hated us too. Hated black people, hated everybody, just haters, you know.
Sometimes I still think of what I could have done differently and it would have made a difference. I remember one guy that I didn’t shoot that I could have. And now I’m glad I didn’t because, what difference does it make? Would it have made? You know, it might have made a difference the rest of that day.
Had I known that Nixon and Kissinger were going to surrender I would have skipped it. Would I do it again? If I were nineteen again, yes. There’s a reason why they don’t get old guys in the service. You know, certain things you can’t get an old man todo. You want me to what? But, you know, when you’re young and indestructible, anything is possible.