Understanding the war
Obviously, we were fighting Communism was the thing. You know I knew the French got run out, they lost their war. They had been colonizing forever and basically there was no north and south and it was sort of the U.S. that made a North and South [Vietnam] and put a puppet government in the south. But it was Communism. In the north, the USSR, their style Communism was being infiltrated into the South and we were trying to hold it off. Even though you say the South but it didn’t exist at that time that was in the fifties I think and then we started putting people in there and it just escalated. Most of that is not what I thought, at the time it was purely Communism, but as you read about it, get older and investigate what you’re doing then you learn what was going on. But yeah, it was purely Communism.
Portrayal of the war in media, now.
Well, Apocalypse Nowis my favorite movie. You’re right on the river, if you see those little Mike boats [shallow draft troop transports], look at the little house in the back there’s two gun mounts on each side, those are twin fifty calibers and so sometimes on a landing party I’d be on one of those twin fifties. You would run up be running up a river the beach or something, and you know, it’s just like Apocalypse Now, except those who are swift boats or river patrol boats. Before I went, there wasn’t a lot [of war portrayal in media]. There was only news, no movies. It’s the same as it is now. We’ve got everybody in there training the South Vietnamese Army, now we’re training Kurds and everybody else to fight Isis, so I mean it’s the same kind of thing.
Exposure to the war before enlisting
I remember mostly the body count, it was pure body count on TV. I mean every day it was how many got killed, how many we never knew, how many we killed but how many of us got killed and wounded in action. So yeah, but there was no influence [in the Hollywood or other media] all that time. I was working and my deferment went, trying to stay out of it and just enjoy life you know and probably the only thing was I didn’t want to get drafted. I didn’t want to go in the Army or Marines because all you saw was the Killed in Action. As soon as my draft notice came, so happens that my girlfriend at the times dad’s best friend was Admiral Byrd, in charge of the Long Beach Naval station, and he said I’ll call him. In three days he had my draft notice rescinded and had me in the Navy. I would have been in the Marines, and God knows what would the outcome would’ve been. I have all the respect in the world for the Marines, for what they do.