Michael Parks |
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Burr Willey
I saw many men my age serving there. I saw officers on their second, third fourth tours. I saw officers doing really difficult jobs. There was one I became friends with, a Lieutenant Colonel named Burr Willey. With that name he had to be a southerner. I actually think he was from Kentucky, not that southern. And he was an advisor to a South Vietnamese regiment, an ARVN tank regiment and this regiment was going up the road to a town called An Loc. This is 1972 and every day it was the same deal. Come noontime, the communist side and the government side would both stop fighting in order to eat and then have a nap to, you know, digest the food. Very Asian, it was hot.
Well, Burr Willey knew that the communists would get up from the nap faster and earlier. So he’d go down the row of tanks and armored personnel carriers with his big shillelagh banging on the tanks to get them moving and wake them up. Where were the Vietnamese officers? Who knows. But Burr Willey was there and he was not going to have this regiment decimated because they were all sitting there on the road. You just had to line up your artillery and right down the center. Well, you know, I’d go up and see him about every other day. Many of us would. “How is the advance to An Loc going?”
“It’s not, you know, two kilometers today.”
Well, one day Burr Willey didn’t get them up in time and the artillery came right down, decimated the regiment and killed Burr Willey. You know, I admired him. I mean he was doing a really hard difficult job with a great deal of cost because it was his duty.
Object Description
| Profile of | Michael Parks |
| Title | A Life Apart from Vietnam |
| Profile bio | The Wrong War |
| Profiler bio | Michael Parks is a journalist originally from Detroit, Michigan, whose work as a foreign correspondent took him to Saigon, Moscow, Johannesburg, Beijing, and Hong Kong. He received a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 1987 for his coverage of South Africa. He worked as the editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years and helped launch the “Reading by 9” program to help children read at grade level. Parks has been a member of the USC community since 2000 and was director of the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism from 2002 until 2008. He was appointed interim director at Annenberg in June of 2013. |
| Subject | Kaitlyn Mullin is a junior and a double major in Biological Sciences and Print and Digital Journalism. Renzhi Yu is a senior and a double major in Business Administration and Accounting. Sofia Shoffner is a sophomore and a double major in International Relations and Spanish. Jalen Cope-Fitzpatrick is a sophomore and an International Relations major. |
| Interviewee |
Vietnam Vietnam war news communism viet cong draft |
| Profiled by | Mullin, Kaitlyn; Yu, Renzhi; Schoffner, Sofia; Fitzpatrick, Jalen Cope |
| Profile date | 2014-04-12 |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Detroit; Saigon; Ho Chi Minh City; Hanoi; Moscow; Johannesburg; Beijing; Hong Kong |
| Geographic subject (county) | Wayne |
| Geographic subject (state) | Michigan; Kentucky |
| Geographic subject (country) | USA; Vietnam; Russia; South Africa; China; Korea, Laos |
| Coverage date | 1972 |
| Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/michael-parks/ |
| Type |
images video |
| Format | 1 image; 8 video files; 8 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 | parksmichaels |
Description
| Profile of | Michael Parks |
| Title | Burr Willey |
| Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
| Filename | parksmichaels-vid4_tr4.pdf |
| Full text | Burr Willey I saw many men my age serving there. I saw officers on their second, third fourth tours. I saw officers doing really difficult jobs. There was one I became friends with, a Lieutenant Colonel named Burr Willey. With that name he had to be a southerner. I actually think he was from Kentucky, not that southern. And he was an advisor to a South Vietnamese regiment, an ARVN tank regiment and this regiment was going up the road to a town called An Loc. This is 1972 and every day it was the same deal. Come noontime, the communist side and the government side would both stop fighting in order to eat and then have a nap to, you know, digest the food. Very Asian, it was hot. Well, Burr Willey knew that the communists would get up from the nap faster and earlier. So he’d go down the row of tanks and armored personnel carriers with his big shillelagh banging on the tanks to get them moving and wake them up. Where were the Vietnamese officers? Who knows. But Burr Willey was there and he was not going to have this regiment decimated because they were all sitting there on the road. You just had to line up your artillery and right down the center. Well, you know, I’d go up and see him about every other day. Many of us would. “How is the advance to An Loc going?” “It’s not, you know, two kilometers today.” Well, one day Burr Willey didn’t get them up in time and the artillery came right down, decimated the regiment and killed Burr Willey. You know, I admired him. I mean he was doing a really hard difficult job with a great deal of cost because it was his duty. |
| Archival file | Volume6/parksmichaels-vid4_tr4.pdf |
