Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
Resilience and Triumph The Life of Vietnam Veteran John Roberts
Discover the extraordinary life of John Roberts, a U.S. Army veteran whose journey spans from rural Indiana to the tumultuous jungles of Vietnam. Born in Franklin, Indiana, John grew up surrounded by the beauty of the outdoors and the warmth of family. Despite academic hurdles, his determination led him to graduate in 1970 and enlist in the Army. Listen as John recounts his transformative experiences at Fort Knox and Fort Sill, which prepared him for the unpredictable challenges of Vietnam.
Join us as John transports us to Marble Mountain, where he shares riveting stories of nighttime observation missions and the intense firefights faced. The camaraderie formed with his fellow soldiers and Special Forces sergeant becomes a testament to resilience in the face of danger. John's vivid accounts of using the starlight scope, navigating jungle warfare, and the unpredictability of guerrilla conflict offer a window into the complex realities soldiers endured during the Vietnam War.
As he transitions back to civilian life, John opens up about his post-war journey, from carpentry to running his own business. Despite health struggles linked to Agent Orange exposure, John finds solace in retirement, surrounded by his large family and engaging in beloved hobbies like fishing and traveling. Through his reflections, we gain insights into the profound importance of family, faith, and the enduring lessons learned from each other's stories, reminding us all of the resilience needed in life's ongoing battle.
Today is Monday, September 30th 2024, and we're speaking with John Roberts, who served in the United States Army. My name is Austin Crouch. I'm with Veterans Archives. I'm here today with John Roberts and, sir, will you tell me what service you went for today? I was in the Army Army. So how long were you in the military? For Two years, Two years. And where did you? When and where were you born?
Speaker 2:I was born in Franklin, indiana, in 1950. 1950.
Speaker 1:So Franklin Indiana, that's south of Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Right, just a little bit north of here. What was it like growing up? What was it like for John growing up?
Speaker 2:I grew up six miles from where I'm currently living and we played in the creeks and the woods and the roads and nobody had a care in the world. We grew what we needed to eat and cut wood for the winter and we just literally had a—I thought it was a great life.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like a very rural farm, very rural area. Yeah, that's a very cool childhood. So growing up rural, did you have any sisters or brothers? How big was your family growing up? There was six of us.
Speaker 2:I had one brother and four sisters.
Speaker 1:Nice outnumbered.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What was it like growing up with so many siblings out there like that? Did you all participate in?
Speaker 2:Everything, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's cool. It's interesting. You don't see very many families quite like that anymore these days.
Speaker 2:But we, everything you know, we literally if we went out to mow the yard, we was all out there, and if we was working in the garden or chopping wood, we was all part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you think of your family, how do you best describe them?
Speaker 2:Sheesh a mess.
Speaker 1:Why do you say that for?
Speaker 2:Well, there's been issues of late, but you know they're family. Yeah, you can't get rid of them, can? You Can't get rid of them.
Speaker 1:So growing up in Franklin, where did you go to school? Like starting out, like what was—.
Speaker 2:Oh, helmsburg. I grew up over just north of Helmsburg. I was born in Franklin, oh, but we lived over just north of Helmsburg. I was born in Franklin, oh, but we lived over just north of Helmsburg. Oh, that's even more rural.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so what was that like growing up?
Speaker 2:That was great. It literally was. We had a creek in the backyard and then a field. And well, even when I was a teenager, the neighbor built a big lake behind us and we traveled the trails through the woods and we fished and hunted. You know, we just had a. I thought it was pretty good. Childhood Sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:So what was it like growing up in a small school? I'm assuming you knew everybody there, everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool All the way through high school. Yeah, literally, we all grew up close together.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Do you still talk to any of your any of your friends?
Speaker 2:some of them yeah, some of them I'm still in contact with, not often, but often enough, yeah yeah, I hear brown county people stick together yeah, pretty much yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, so getting you graduate. What year did you graduate high school?
Speaker 2:I graduated in 70. 70. I took too many vacations in the eighth grade.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:I literally took every Friday off, went to work with my grandpa driving nails, and a lot of Thursdays. I didn't go All year long, nobody complained and my grade was acceptable. But my attendance wasn't and I had to take the eighth grade over.
Speaker 1:At least you're working, though, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my birthday was late in October, so I was a little older starting than a lot of them anyway. Because of it I had to wait until the following year to start, and then taking that year over it put me behind some, but you know, I still graduated in 70. Went ahead and done just what I always knew I would do I drove nails for a living.
Speaker 1:It sounds like it didn't hold you back any. No, so graduated high school in the 70s, so at what point did you go to the military? At what?
Speaker 2:point. Did you go to the military? Let's see, I graduated in May and went to the end of May and went to service late September Of 1970. It's 1970.
Speaker 1:So just quick transition, yep, so what happened? So, when you go to basic, where and when did you go?
Speaker 2:I went to basic at Fort Knox, kentuckyucky, and uh, when I finished how many weeks basic training was, I can't even tell you anymore, but I finished the basic training, uh, came home for a week, I think, or something like that, and they sent me to fort sill, oklahoma for advanced training and put me in artillery what was uh?
Speaker 1:what was basic training like for you guys?
Speaker 2:uh, it was pretty nice. I mean I got three square meals a day and eat at regular times. I never eat regular times at home. I gained weight in basic training, right that works out.
Speaker 1:I don't know if everyone had that same experience. No, I don't think so, but you know it was.
Speaker 2:know it was strenuous at times but the work you know workouts and stuff, but I managed to get through it without any too many issues at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, weaned the green right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then sent me to Fort Sill for artillery and I didn't know nothing about artillery. Give me a rifle, I could hit something with it, you know.
Speaker 2:Right, I didn't know nothing about artillery. Give me a rifle, I could hit something with it. You know, they trained me on artillery and then they decided to send me to searchlight school and so I was still stationed at Fort Sill and when I got out of there I came home for a couple weeks and then I went to Vietnam and served the rest of my time in Nam, vietnam, and served the rest of my time in Nam and had me made me a buck sergeant and had me in charge of, at one time, seven men and three jeeps over there running around with lights in the back of them that's, that's.
Speaker 1:That's quite the experience, right yeah so. So let's unpack that. So first you, first you go to basic right, come back a week and then you ship back at the Fort Sill. I've heard Oklahoma and Fort Sill is terrible.
Speaker 2:It's awful in the wintertime. The wind never stops and the sand's always blowing. It's terrible in the winter.
Speaker 1:What pieces of artillery did you use over there?
Speaker 2:In NAMM. I didn't. Well, I'll take that back. I did one time fire a 106 recoil-less rifle. I'll take that back. I did one time fire a 106 recoil-less rifle, but I was trained on the 155 and 175 Howards in Fort Sill.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. So tell me again. So you train there and they ship you off to Searchlight? How does that? Those seem like two very different things. How does that happen?
Speaker 2:Very different things, but that's what they've done. You know, they chose this one, this one and this one, and you're going to here and that's the way we went, you know. And so the rest of the guys that I trained with in artillery, they wound up wherever I don't have any idea. And I wound up for more training and then went to Nam, went in the country at Long Bend, and then went to Vietnam, went in the country at Long Ben, From there.
Speaker 1:Within a week I was in Da Nang, just outside of Da Nang, so those are all big names. So you're in.
Speaker 2:Da.
Speaker 1:Nang. Right, you're in Vietnam and country and you're searchlighting. What are you searchlighting for? What's that the enemy?
Speaker 2:Literally. We had a 23-inch Xeon light in the back of a jeep and we had a. There was a shield you could put in front of it that it would produce an infrared light, and you had to have binoculars to see it, or you could just have a white light coming out here. It was a range of about four and a half miles, you know, and um, so and one point. I set one night and one entire night, with that light reflecting off of a cloud out into the jungle, and when they started at dark there was a jungle there, and the next morning at daylight there was a full compound set up with the landing zone.
Speaker 1:That's cool yeah, so I'm starting to understand a little bit more of what, of what that process is. So what? Where are you at Like? How was that Like? Do you? Are you on a like, a bigger like, compound yourself and you go out with like units?
Speaker 2:No, I was out on the top of a mountain side Well, big hillside for NOM and I was just out there pretty much by myself all night with the Jeep running.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, now that's an experience.
Speaker 2:Well, when I turned that Jeep in, it had a few bullet holes in it. That's wild, yeah, so let's go.
Speaker 1:So let's go.
Speaker 2:And so, like I said so, you shipped in to Vietnam, right?
Speaker 1:So let's go to the first place you went first and walk me through that experience. Walk me through what it was like to be John in your first time in Vietnam.
Speaker 2:It was wild. I walked in over there and the first thing they wanted you to do was get a haircut and sent us down to the barber and we all got buzzed haircuts all over again and got our jungle fatigues and we was ready for whatever was next, we thought. But you know I'm sure we really weren't ready for what was next. But then they put us well, they put me along with others, put us on helicopter, on Chinooks, and flew us to Da Nang from Long Bend. And then I boarded a Jeep, or truck rather and went out to just south of Da Nang south and west anyway of Da Nang to compound, and that's where I was stationed at First month there.
Speaker 2:I had been there about a month and they sent me to Marble Mountain to run a night observation scope and I was to spot them and there was a special forces sergeant up there who was supposed to stop them and the South Vietnamese pulled guard duty for us and this rock was 600 feet up in the air and it was hand over hand Most of the way you could walk, but they was 90 feet. That was straight up, marble and slick as could be. The only way to get up there was hand over hand and we carried everything that we wanted up there and went in, and then they would resupply us once a week or whatever with from, because it was one one end of that, the mountain, that they could set a helicopter down and resupply us. So you're not even in the Jeep. No, not even at that point. I'm not in the Jeep.
Speaker 2:The Jeep's sitting back at headquarters you know, and they hit us one night up there three times. We took fire. There was a hillside south of us, just south of us, shorter than us, and they hit us one night three times. We took fire from that hillside. Bad, I mean we were sitting there on a Saturday night the Special Forces compound was a mile away Went to the special forces compound, walked out over there that morning, showered and raided their freezers and brought steaks back and picked up charcoal coming through the village and grilled those steaks up there on that hill and just about dark everything broke loose and we was taking fire bad, and we grabbed our rifles and the marble chips off them rocks was as bad as bullets flying so and we grabbed our rifles and began shooting back.
Speaker 2:I had a spec 4 that was up there with me and when we grabbed our rifles out of the hooch because we had little buildings up there, we slept in and we grabbed the rifles and I turned and I caught a muzzle flash out of the corner of my eye and I pushed him to the ground and felt the heat off that vapor bulge off that bullet go by my ear. It would have hit him in the face. How I reacted so fast. I'll never know, but at any rate I emptied a full clip back that way and we didn't get fire from that area no more that night.
Speaker 2:Next morning when the recon went out they couldn't find any trace of anybody being there. So you know they was real good at hiding this. So whether I'd done any damage or not I don't know, but I know it was close that night and it was three times that they hit us and we was running low on ammo. We melted a barrel down on a .50 caliber and the special forces sergeant got a hold of headquarters. He got the duty officer. He said we've been hit three times tonight. Running low on ammo, I want a gunship at the ready. And in just a little bit you heard that chopper fire up and it ran till daylight and they resupplied us.
Speaker 1:What was that experience? Like it?
Speaker 2:wasn't fun. It wasn't fun at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine right Like that's very similar to you see a lot of like pop culture films today, in this day and age, about. Afghanistan and such. You know you don't hear too many things about that. That's wicked man.
Speaker 2:We had a French fort that was northeast of us about 600, maybe 600 meters, 700 meters maybe, but I don't think it was that far, 650. And so we got some practice grenades for an M79 up there. He says we need to shoot down there by that fort, see how close we can get, because we might have to help defend them some night. I told him. I said I can put one in the machine gun pit on the corner, and he said no, he said it won't shoot that far. The special forces sergeant told me this. I said yeah, well, he said no, they don't have a range that far. I said yeah, and we're 600 feet above him. I said I can hit the machine gun pit on the corner. No, but see how close you can get down there. I put one in the machine gun pit. It hit, it popped yellow smoke and they come out there screaming and hollering and waving their fist.
Speaker 2:And he said we better shoot some other direction, so so I got two things for you.
Speaker 1:You say you're working with sf.
Speaker 2:What was that experience like working with, uh, working with the special forces? Oh, it was great he was, he was good guy. I mean, I liked him and we, we had a good time, so you guys were working in contact with that compound. That was about a mile away, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's awesome, so it was good.
Speaker 1:And another thing. So you know vastly different conflicts across the time. I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, but what's it like? You're saying 700 meters? You know 600 meters Like as the crow flies. You should be able to see that right, you can see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seeing, it's not an issue, it's wide open. Where we was at, you could see just fine.
Speaker 2:Really, and they were still able to get close to you oh yeah, because right on the opposite side of that Little hill that was just south of us where we took the fire from, was a village that we couldn't see at all because of the hillside, and they would slip in and out of there at night, you know, and so without our scope up there watching, and they would come in from the South China Sea carrying messages and they'd get into the village and we couldn't tell them apart.
Speaker 2:So then they would slip out during the day as people was out working and whatnot, and and they'd get up into the foothills carrying these messages. I counted 35 in a party coming into the village one night and I woke the special sergeant supposed to sergeant up and pointed him out to him and it was my second night up there, his first and he overestimated the range, set a beehive round and we killed three in rear party that I hadn't seen. But all those guys, all of them made it into the village and once they was in the village there was nothing we could do because we couldn't tell one from the other.
Speaker 1:Right once they got inside they was just there right and so so when you say you're spotting these guys. So for those who don't know, like that much military jargon can you? Explain to me like what exactly you're doing with your scope.
Speaker 2:I use a starlight scope that uses the light, magnifies the light from the stars. And it's just like looking out here of an early morning or late of an evening, when it's just getting dusk, you can see exceptionally well and because of that starlight scope, and so all I was supposed to do was spot them and he was to stop them.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're literally watching enemy combatants moving in the hillsides. Yep, that's wild. And how far away were they again?
Speaker 2:Well, he overestimated. He estimated at 1,400 meters and they was under that.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, estimated, he said he estimated at 1400 meters and they was under that. Okay so, okay so, and then just to be clear, uh, for like for those maybe who'd be new to the conflict, who, who, who is this group that you believe that you were fighting at the time?
Speaker 2:north vietnamese and china ultimately and that's the vietcong uh-huh viet Cong yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you what's your feeling towards their fighting style this many years?
Speaker 2:later, it's just jungle fighting. I mean, it was you know. Go back to the cowboys and Indians. They fought, you know. However, they could kill one another. They did Right. It's very similar, very similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like guerrilla warfare has been the tactic for years, for years, yeah. That's yeah. It's like guerrilla warfare has been the tactic for years. That's wild. So what happened next? What happened after that? Night Walks through, so the chopper comes right, the gunship's on steady night's quiet. What happened?
Speaker 2:next. They resupplied us the next day and life went back to usual. You know, until a month later they shipped me back out. The general over our area in Vietnam changed and the new one determined searchlights wasn't needed. Okay, and so he was standing the unit down and sending them home. But I hadn't been in country long enough and someplace along the line my battery had acquired an extra Jeep and light. It wasn't ours, but we had it. It had our numbers on it. And so the captain gave me the Jeep, the light and five rifles and a radio and said go to Charlie 1. They want you up there and they need these rifles and a radio. And said go to Charlie One. They want you up there and they need these rifles and the radio. He said as long as you're in country, it's your Jeep, it don't belong to anybody else. And so I drove it to Charlie One and spent a night in Quandary, drove on up to Charlie One the next day.
Speaker 2:The next day they wasn't going to let me go. There wasn't a convoy going north from Kwan Tree up toward Charlie One, and I said there's two tanker trucks sitting here. They're headed that direction. Why can't I run with them? He says, because they make real good targets and they like shooting them. I said, yeah, I'll keep up with them. Them it'll be all right. I got between them two trucks and I had my foot on the floor of that jeep the whole way from from quandary to charlie one. They didn't slow down for nothing and I didn't either because they'd run over me if I had what?
Speaker 1:so? How was it? What was it? What was the experience like driving? Because, like there's for one, those jeeps are different than they're built now, oh yeah, right. And you're driving very rural roads, correct, yeah?
Speaker 2:It was like a highway.
Speaker 1:Really yeah, it was yeah.
Speaker 2:It wasn't as bad as you would think at all. Now they did mine it, but then the mine sweep had went through and we were fortunate there wasn't anything. As soon as that sweep went through we took off. But it was an experience.
Speaker 1:Right, it was quite an experience. So you're driving up to Charlie 1, right. Is that a unit or is that a station?
Speaker 2:Charlie 1 was close enough to DMZ, you could look across it and see the North Vietnamese flag flying. Oh, okay, I mean.
Speaker 1:I was right up there, so okay. So what happened after that? Where did you go next after that? So you traversed down to this convoy. Where did you go from?
Speaker 2:there no-transcript, and they sent me back to headquarters battery at Da Nang. And I was in headquarters battery for I don't remember how long, but a good little bit. And one night we got under a yellow flag because I suspected problems. And it was my night off and some of the guys who I'd been in searchlights with knew how to operate my light and stuff. So the company commander came to me and borrowed my jeep for the night for him somebody else to run it and supposedly he lost an oil plug and lost oil pressure and blew it up. I don't buy it because those jeeps had a safety on them. If the pressure got below 30 pounds it'd shut off. So I think somebody else wound up with my Jeep. But regardless I lost my Jeep there. But shortly thereafter I was on a chopper going to Cam Ranh Bay anyhow and I couldn't have taken it down there.
Speaker 1:Right. So where is Cam Ranh Bay? What's the importance of that?
Speaker 2:It's south of Da Nang, halfway to Saigon. Probably I can't tell you. I do have a map I could show you.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, Okay. So when you go down there are you just at another unit.
Speaker 2:Another unit was stuck there and they brought oil tankers in and out there. We had fuel depots and tanks set up and we would patrol the beach and different areas, and we did play rat patrol one night on the beach. Well, some of the guys did. One of them managed to roll his Jeep and break the windshield and the antenna. But coming back into town the next morning, just before daybreak, there was a colonel's Jeepep at a, at a house and and nobody around, and so the next when he came out, he had the broken windshield and an indent what, uh, what is the rap patrol?
Speaker 2:uh well, it's an old television show where they would run jeeps and jumping over sand dunes and stuff on the beach and wherever, and so we played rap patrol on the beach, you know what?
Speaker 1:what were the beaches like there, like you're stationed up there, like you're working up there. What was that experience?
Speaker 2:There were some of them that was pretty nice, but most of them weren't.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah. It's almost like a slap in the face, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:really, and some of the places I saw going to Charlie One, the snow was just I mean, the sand was just as white as this driven snow. In other places it was just all burnt out and desolate. You know, it was quite an experience.
Speaker 1:When you say burnt out, do you mean like?
Speaker 2:Bombed and burnt.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, sounds like a very heavily contested area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everywhere you go is just contested, isn't it, yep?
Speaker 1:Literally. So do you think that you're truly safe anywhere there, like?
Speaker 2:did you ever feel like you were secure in like your compounds and stuff like that? It never seemed to bother me, but I don't know that I ever was really confident that I was fully secure anywhere, but I was never bothered by it, you know.
Speaker 1:It's part of the job, right.
Speaker 2:It's part of it.
Speaker 1:you know you rely on your buddy, buddy, and he relies on you. Yeah, okay, so we're at the bay, right, what? What's next for john at that point?
Speaker 2:uh, we just pulled patrol duty every night until they finally decided to move us from the compound we was on over to the air base because some of the airmen had come home and they moved us onto that compound. And then the next step was we turned all of our equipment over to the South Vietnamese forces and then they sent us to Saigon and sent us home a couple weeks later.
Speaker 1:Well, so okay. So I feel like there's some importance there. I feel like some things happened in those in those weeks. Uh, what was it like working with the south south vietnamese we?
Speaker 2:I never worked with them. Fact is, uh, I sent the jeeps out that I was responsible for that night, sent all three of them out and to be turned over. And my guys come back, no problem. They got picked up and returned and so they turned them over to the South Vietnamese. My captain lieutenant came to me and said one of my friends, another sergeant, he'd taken one jeep out himself to turn over and they didn't show up to pick it up. He said need somebody to go spend the night with him? You need to send one of your guys down there.
Speaker 2:I said my guys is all partying, they're over with, they're drinking and having a good time. I said I'll go, but I said I'm not sending someone. And so I went down and they launched a rocket from across the bay inlet anyway and it landed. It didn't cause any major damage and it wasn't close to us, but we saw the direction it came from and reported that and that was it. The next day we was all done and partying and the heck with it. You know we was the. We was as far as we was concerned, the war was over, we was coming home soon and within a week and a half, two weeks. We was on our way home okay.
Speaker 1:So when you say you're so, to back it up a little bit and you say you're in command of others I think you mentioned earlier that you became a buck sergeant yeah, all right. So what happened there? When did that happen and how was that process?
Speaker 2:that happened before I left oklahoma. They made me buck sergeant, so you were in the game yeah, beginning okay.
Speaker 1:So what was that experience? Like right, like that's brand new right that was weird, it was weird yeah, so you had to grow and learn a lot of I had to learn everything, just like everything, just like everybody else.
Speaker 2:They had a guy in my unit when I was at Cameron Bay. Actually, he had been trained on chemical warfare and they put him in searchlights when he got to NAMM. He knew nothing about searchlights. I had to train him on everything you know. And so I did, and I set him out to sign for midnight mass on the chapel and he was up on the hillside and he was shining his light for chapel for midnight mass and I insisted that I was going to go see this and and I was off that night and we were partying, we was partying pretty hard and uh. So, uh, some of the guys came in for the evening meal.
Speaker 2:Well, evening meal for us was midnight, you know, because we was out working but uh, some of them came in and they loaded me, me on a Jeep and took me over to see this and they had to hold me in the Jeep seat. One sat behind me, beside the light, holding me in, and got over there and they propped me up against the back of the Jeep and I watched him a little bit and said he's doing a damn good job, and down I went and they picked me up and put me back in the Jeep. I watched him a little bit and said he's doing a damn good job. Down I went, they picked me up and put me back in the Jeep. We made it back to the hooch, back to the compound. They couldn't find me. I was in the floorboard of that Jeep. How I don't know, they took me in and laid me on my rack. The next morning I woke up and felt fine. Everybody else woke up that was drinking with hangovers and stuff, and I felt fine.
Speaker 1:So shine a light on midnight mass. What is that?
Speaker 2:Well, they were having midnight mass at the church because it was Christmas, oh okay, and so that was. His job was to shine on the chapel midnight mass at Christmas, and so I wanted to see him do it. I was about determined to see him do it. I did, but I don't remember seeing him do it. That's wild.
Speaker 1:That's crazy to think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, holidays overseas right, that's a whole other animal We've been saving for months all of our rations and stuff to buy stuff so we could have a party and we did.
Speaker 1:What kind of rations were you using?
Speaker 2:Well, we used our liquor license. You could only get so much at the time and so we saved our rations up and then we went and bought what we wanted at the PX. But I was mixing glass and stuff and I had a big tumbler and I think they said seven different kinds of stuff in it and I don't remember what all was in there and I thought it was pretty good. But you know, everybody else won whiff and they wouldn't taste it. That was enough for them. But the first sip and you didn't taste anything after that it's like a grog and they said that I mixed up three of them.
Speaker 2:I drank one and a half and spilt the other half and mixed up another one and got part of it down. And uh, these pictures. I have pictures someplace of them holding me up outside, leaning against the side of the building trying to take a leak. And they had to hold me up.
Speaker 1:It was bad it's, it's. It's crazy to think about the, uh, the experience of that, while you're still in country, yeah, and you never really know what's going on no so while you're still in country, yeah, and you never really know what's going on, no, so, oh so. So we're buck sergeant, uh, being a stand-up guy. We're taking guard shifts around christmas. Yeah, that's awesome. So what happens next? So let's get back on track to where we were, where we're leaving to saigon from here yeah, from cameron bay I went to saigon saigon and this is a.
Speaker 1:This is a rather big city, right, everyone? Yeah, the fall of saigon yeah, how?
Speaker 2:farigon, saigon and this is a rather big city, right? Everyone gets to the fall of Saigon, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how far out is this from that?
Speaker 2:Well, this was a few years, a couple years before the fall.
Speaker 1:Okay, because.
Speaker 2:I came home in 72, and I don't think it fell until 75 or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, so we're a couple years before then. So we're leaving from Saigon. We come. Where do we go from there?
Speaker 2:we go. Uh well, when I went over, american Airlines flew us over there and we had the stewardess and all from American Airlines flew us. We went from California to Alaska, tokyo and then Nam coming back. We hit Tokyo and then Hawaii and then back to California, but we never got off the plane at any of those places. They just stopped long enough for us to fuel and we could look out here and see the vehicles and people and that was it.
Speaker 1:That's unfortunate yeah.
Speaker 2:The only time I was in Hawaii or Tokyo I didn't get to do nothing other than sit on an airplane.
Speaker 1:That's the worst. It's like Germany.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The stopovers.
Speaker 2:But what really hit home was when we landed at the Air Force Base outside of Oakland, travis, and we was being bused over to Oakland and here's all these Fords and Chevrolets and Dodges running down the interstate. Then you realize you were finally home. But no one knew we were home because we didn't tell anyone we were coming. We just came home. So we came home a couple months early and so surprised everyone. So that was like a group decision. Well, it was mine and a friend of mine who we went through BASIC and everything else together. We served all the way through together. He was from Terre Haute.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's close. Yeah, what was his name? Jim Drake.
Speaker 2:Jim Drake, so you and Jim all the way through BASIC Drake, so you and Jim all the way through basic, so basic sports, artillery, ait training and searchlights, and then NOM, and we was stationed all within close, pretty much the same companies all the way through and NOM.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, yeah, that's like another experience.
Speaker 2:A lot of people get no, it's.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of people don't get that at all, but it was, it was great, so, uh, so what happened when you so you and you and jim, right, we come home?
Speaker 2:uh, what happens?
Speaker 1:like what, how's it?
Speaker 2:we got to chicago had a long layover. Well, when we we left, when they discharged us, everybody was jumping in cabs and going to the airport. They was getting home and me and Jim decided we was going to ride the city bus and take it to the airport and see part of the city that we'll never see again. And it's true, we'll never see it again. But by the time we got to the airport there was a bomb threat at the Oakland airport. So then we had to take a cab across to San Diego and we took a cab over, and then we had a long wait to get a flight out of there midnight I think it was before we got to Chicago. And then we had an hour and a half layover in Chicago before we could get to Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:Well, jim had called his brother to come and pick him up in Indianapolis. I had $800 in my pocket in cash. I was just going to rent a car and drive home. Surprise everyone. But I did call my sister and tell her that I just made it to California, I was coming home, but I didn't know when. So we get to Indianapolis and I can't rent a car. I don't have a credit card and I'm not 25 years old so I can't rent a car. I got enough money in my pocket to walk out on the street and buy a car, but I can't rent one to drive home. Jim said, don't worry about it, we'll take you home. So him and his brother drove me home and then they went to Terre Haute. And of course we got home and I walked in and found car keys.
Speaker 2:I went over to my girlfriend's at the time and turned out to be my wife for 49 years, almost 50 years. But I started up the road, was going to go get gas in the car and go to her place and my grandma, who lived next door, was out in the yard and she seen me and she thought it was my brother, wasn't sure if she heard any more information about me and so she got a big surprise. And then I went over to wife's folks and so he come out of the garage and shook my hand and walked in the house with me and and so everybody was surprised and we got back to the house and I called my sister. I said where's everybody at? She says they're all right here.
Speaker 2:Her husband had went by where dad was working and told him that you know. So he was. He came in and the kids had all stayed home from school and took Mom down there, because I didn't have Mom and Dad's phone number. I had my sister's phone number and so I said, well, tell them to get in the car and head for home. I said, if they drive 35 miles an hour home, I'm going to beat them, because I'm sitting in the living room. And in a little while, here they all came, they poured in there and it was pretty nice, it was special I'm really happy for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a cool experience. Yeah, I'm glad it was a warm experience it was. That's awesome yeah, so the whole family comes back, everything's great. Uh, what was life? Well, tell me, tell me what the life was like. Right, coming back from uh vietnam, adjusting back to the normal civilian life, the rat race, right? How does that work?
Speaker 2:it's in ways it was difficult, you know, because memories and stuff that you went through, and in other ways it was just, you know, just like any other day. You just got up and put your shoes on and went about it and it was fine.
Speaker 1:What did you first do when you got out?
Speaker 2:I loafed for two weeks, got married and then went to work driving nails.
Speaker 1:Driving nails. When you say driving nails, I was a carpenter Carpenter.
Speaker 2:I've carpentered all my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was your place of business?
Speaker 2:I worked for Waltman Construction out of Nashville for many years and then, when they all retired, I worked for myself.
Speaker 1:Nashville, indiana, correct, yeah, nashville Indiana, waltman Construction.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, so that's a local company, it's local when Lee decided to retire and turned over to his son. His son ran it for a while and then he finally decided he wasn't having fun so he closed the business down. Now, since then, lee's nephew has taken and started it back up, but it's an LLC instead of Waltman Construction Incorporated, and now it's the Waltman Construction LLC.
Speaker 1:But they're still going on but I'm not working there, so I know Nashville is pretty historic right. Did you work on any places like that around there? Most of the places in Nashville. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had keys for most of the places in Nashville.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's really cool right? Like I said, I just think it's a very neat part of the town it is, and it's something that you can have pride in you know, oh yeah, so it's always cool to see what your hands have touched. So, reconstruction, I believe that you have all kinds of kids. How did that happen?
Speaker 2:We had three daughters, and of the three daughters we have 13 grandkids, two of which are married, and we now have two great-grandkids.
Speaker 1:So we got a whole clan going on, got a whole passable of them. Really yeah. So what was it like having a family? What was that experience, like it was?
Speaker 2:great, I loved it. There's things I wish I'd have done more with the family instead of going off and doing this or whatever, but it was great, I loved it yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a wholesome experience, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think, do you ever find yourself living your childhood and doing things with your family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's pretty interesting how that works out, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And then where are you at now? So where would the timeline go from? You know, have kids, have a whole clan of grandkids, right? What does John do nowadays?
Speaker 2:John is retired.
Speaker 1:John is retired.
Speaker 2:Drawing disability from the va for agent orange related diseases, okay and uh. So I'm retired and trying to keep up with grandkids and and do a million different things. I don't know how I ever had time to work, yeah I'm sure everyone needs time right, yeah, there's only so much you can give Yep.
Speaker 1:So what is the experience like, if you don't mind me asking, because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there suffering? I think we just had a conversation about Agent Orange and how it affects a large portion of the veteran community. Where do you find yourself with that, like, how is that? What is the experience?
Speaker 2:like.
Speaker 2:I had a heart attack and I suffered for three days, didn't know whether I was having a heart attack or just terrible indigestion.
Speaker 2:Two o'clock in the morning I woke my wife up and said we need to go to the hospital and figure out what's going on, because this has got to stop. And we got in the truck and started for VA Hospital in Indianapolis and we made it almost to Morgantown and I pulled over and stopped. I said if I am having a heart attack, you should be driving this, not me. We walked in up to VA Hospital and so, yeah, you're having a heart attack, and they put two stents in the next morning. And so then they determined later that I had diabetes and they thought both of them could be caused from Agent Orange. So I fought with them for years because the percentage rate that they had given me at the time was a lot lower and they finally determined that it should have been a lot higher and they sent me a big check and I went and bought a truck Big enough to pull my camper, because the old truck that I was driving when we bought that camper had 240-some thousand miles on it and was real old.
Speaker 1:Where do you think you came in contact with?
Speaker 2:that In Agent Orange contact with that an agent orange uh, I was around a lot of places in uh outside of denang and cameron bay where they were spraying fogging stuff at night, you know, and so I don't know whether that was agent orange there, but I was out in the jungle multiple times, you know, and so I could have come into contact with it any number of places. That's insane.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. Well hey, if it's anything, man, you seem like you're doing super great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've done excellent compared to a lot of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah 100% right. What are some hobbies that John likes to do in his retirement?
Speaker 2:He likes to fish and so far this year I don't think.
Speaker 1:I've wet a line, I've got a pond in the backyard. That's how it works. Life gets busy. Yeah, so you pull your big camper and uh where?
Speaker 2:did you take that when you were? When you're, we would go to star of holland. Mostly that's where we went. I have been up to uh bluffton, up to to wabash state park, but I haven't been anywhere else with it and but I'm fixing to take it to nebraska yeah because I sold it to a cousin in nebraska right, do you think, uh, do you think finding that time in nature helped you?
Speaker 1:uh, helped you like relax at all, or I?
Speaker 2:think so. Yeah, I really enjoy it. I get out there and I can just relax and take it easy and it's fine.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think it has a way um it it just calms and settles your nerves. A hundred percent. I think it's wild. We seem to always differentiate outside and inside, but we're the only people who do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:Well, so, in this long span of life and everything that you've experienced, I'm sure you've gained a lot of wisdom, right, yeah? What's a message that you want others to hear? The big thing here is, I believe, that everyone can learn from each other's lives. Everyone can learn something from everybody. Yeah, right, if you were to tell someone anything for their life to be great, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I think they should take time for one another, listen to one another and try to help and lift others up and remember God's got a big plan for you, so keep that in mind. Always keep the faith right, always, always keep the faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's definitely something that, like I mentioned, the rat race earlier right, it's just like it's so hard. It seems like you have to really try hard to cut family time yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:You really have to make time for family, but you need to make time for family, yeah yeah, that's what we're all missing.
Speaker 1:I feel like yeah, yeah cool. Well, john, it's a pleasure, right as always, and uh, I want to thank you for your service, sir yeah, well, thank you for yours.
Speaker 2:you too, and you didn't have to, but I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, absolutely. We're all brothers here, yeah, so all right, sir. Well, thank you so much, thank you.
