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.
Veterans Archives is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information. www.veteransarchives.org
Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
Life Beyond the Uniform: Robert Dolenz's Story
Dive into an unforgettable journey with Robert Dolenz, a Vietnam veteran whose life reflects resilience, faith, and the complexities of navigating personal and collective trauma. Born just weeks after Pearl Harbor, Robert's early life was shaped by family struggles, including the illness and eventual loss of his father. As he shares his experiences, listeners will understand how his challenging upbringing forged a strong work ethic, setting the stage for his transformative journey into the Marine Corps.
Through compelling storytelling, Robert reveals the decisive moment that led him to the Marine Corps—a path that would immerse him in the realities of the Vietnam War. His experiences, filled with fear and bravery, showcase the tremendous growth that comes from navigating extraordinary challenges and the bonds formed among service members. His time in Vietnam was marked not just by the adrenaline of potential warfare but also by the poignant realities of responsibility and the weight of unspent ammunition.
The emotional landscape continues as Robert explores the juxtaposition of returning home to civilian life and the struggles intertwined with it, including the complexities of relationships post-service. Here, his reflections on a second chance at love and building a family highlight the significance of connection and shared journeys. Robert’s message transcends generational barriers, inviting reflections on loyalty, faith, and the importance of nurturing relationships.
Listeners will be left with a profound appreciation for the wisdom he carries and the inspiring way he ties together his past experiences. Join us as we celebrate a life dedicated to service, love, and the resilience of the human spirit. Let Robert's journey inspire you to embrace faith and connection in your own life.
Good morning. Today is Monday, march 3rd 2025. We're talking with Robert Dolenz, who served in the United States Marine Corps. Good morning, robert.
Speaker 2:Good morning.
Speaker 1:It's good to see you.
Speaker 2:It's good to see you too, sir.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, we're just going to start out with some easy questions, and maybe they'll get harder later on. We'll see what happens. Okay, when and where were you born?
Speaker 2:I was born in St Louis, missouri, and I was born 22 days after Pearl Harbor, december 29th 1941.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting time to be born. How was that for your family?
Speaker 2:My mother always said that she thought I was going to be born earlier than that, right after they announced war, and she said I'm surprised I didn't have you around the 9th or the 10th.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And I hung on until the 29th.
Speaker 1:You're going to do it on your terms or not at all, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly right.
Speaker 1:That's great. Well, talk to me a little bit about what it was like growing up. What was your childhood like? What are some of your memories from childhood?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you what. I had an older brother, 14 months older than me, and then a younger brother came along 18 months after me. Brother came along 18 months after me. We pretty much had a close family. We lived in a little four-bed, four-room house and so we were all pretty close at that point. My dad passed away when I was seven and he had been sick. He had cancer and they gave him six months to live, but he lived for almost two years. So my only reflections on my dad are is he was sick, and other than that I don't know much about it.
Speaker 2:We kind of grew up on our own. Each one of us kind of went our own way. I would say as three brothers that close in age we were very much apart. We didn't have any common ground. We all went our own way. My mom never remarried and she did a great job in supporting us. We all from an early age. In fact, 12 years old, my brother and I had a paper route and we start earning money and all three of us had ways that we could earn money to help my mom out. All the way through high school we worked. I worked in a drugstore for every day after school. So I cut out all my activities to play sports and stuff. But that was most important, and both my brothers all had part-time jobs as well. So growing up again, we pretty much went our own way. We didn't. We didn't do things the same, you know, it was just the way it was.
Speaker 1:Let's see. So there's a couple of things here. One is I find this interesting they gave your father six months to live, but he lived a lot longer than that, um and and you, you waited 20 extra days to be born. So I wonder if you have some of your you know father's uh dna somewhere in there that drives you in that direction well, I'll give you a comment on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, up until I was about in my on that. Yeah, up until I was about in my. Oh, till I reached 37, because that was the age my dad died. I had disbelief that I was going to die, uh, by the age of 37, and I carried that with me for a long, long time, all the way up until that point and, uh, I was amazed that I got past 37.
Speaker 1:It's interesting to me. You say that my wife lost her mother. I think her mom was in her 40s and I know that when my wife surpassed her mother's age it was kind of the same feeling, like she lived her whole life thinking, well, that's just when you die.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, that's exactly right. And because back then it was cancer, and so the feeling I had was that cancer, gee, that's in the family, that means one of us, we probably have it too, and you know, and I, I for some reason felt it was me, it was going to be me, but it didn't happen.
Speaker 1:Right, well, it sounds like from a young age you had a great work ethic. But I want to talk a little bit more about you know, that realization that you're going to live beyond that age. Did that up until you, up until you turned 37, did that shape how you lived your life?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. It was kind of like, you know, I was kind of like a loner and I tried to stay that way, Even after I had gotten married and had kids and everything. I felt like I'm going to leave them and so I don't want to get too connected with all these people. I want to kind of be my own person, because this is going to happen and I I really worried about that. So yeah. I uh, that was on my mind a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not that you were a terrible person, but you just didn't want other people to have to go through that whole loss thing that you went through.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can understand that. So let's back up a little bit, though. So you, uh, you went to school. You worked all through school to help support your mom. It sounds like the one thing you might have in common with your brothers is that you all worked in order to support your mom.
Speaker 2:Yes, we did. We all had, uh, part-time jobs and whatever we made, half of what we made we had to give to my mom. But back then, you know, like when I worked at the drugstore, I made 50 cents an hour, so I made $10. Because I worked 20 hours in a week, I made $10. I gave her five, but I had five bucks. Five bucks was a lot of money back then, you know, and so I was happy with that and it worked out fine.
Speaker 2:So my brother, joe, set pins at a bowling alley a couple of nights a week. My younger brother had worked on a paper truck where they delivered papers, and so we all had something that we did and contributed to my mom. I have to say that I don't ever remember going without a meal. We had plenty of food and everything else. We had our home. The good, fortunate thing about that was that my grandparents, my dad's parents, owned the house that we lived in, and so they never charged my mom rent, and from the day that my dad got sick and then after he passed, they never charged her, and so that helped a lot.
Speaker 1:That's an amazing blessing that you had. Yeah absolutely so. You go to school, you kind of work your way through. I'm assuming you graduated high school.
Speaker 2:I graduated high school. I had a tough time Personally. I didn graduated high school. I graduated high school. I had a tough time Personally. I didn't like school. I didn't do well in school. I had to go a couple of summers to make up grades so I could get to the next grade level and so it was tough. I had no intentions, even though the guy I worked for at the drugstore wanted me to go to college of pharmacy. He was going to make me a partner in the drugstore and everything else. We got very close but I told him I just there was no way I didn't want to go to school anymore, so I didn't. So I got a full time job after, after high school anymore, so I didn't.
Speaker 1:So I got a full-time job after after high school. Well, in the fact that he would want you to go to school and be a partner in his business says a lot for how, what kind of a person you must have been working there he treated me like I was his son, like I was I mean now, uh, I I really had a great relationship with him.
Speaker 2:It was just I enjoyed working there with him. I enjoyed I was what they called a soda jerk. You know, we had a soda fountain and that was pretty much. My responsibility is making malts and making sundaes and doing all that kind of stuff but then also delivering prescriptions that we had to take to the homes and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:He's the one that, when I turned 16, said, bob, I'm going to teach you how to drive. And I said, oh yeah, my mom says no, no, no, no, no, no. And he said I need you to drive because I want you to be able to take my car on deliveries and so on and so forth, so you don't have to walk and you're gone for a half hour 45 minutes or you don't have to take the bus up to the place if we need some more medication, stuff like that. So he did, he taught me how to drive and I got my driver's license and my mom finally came around and allowed me to use her car for dates and stuff like that later on. And but neither of my brothers at that time my older brother had no desire to drive, so it didn't bother him. My younger brother was not old enough yet, so I was the only one beside my mom.
Speaker 1:they could use her car well, that's that's pretty cool that is cool, as you were describing, like working at this drug store. It reminds me of mr gower from uh, it's a wonderful life, main characters working in the pharmacy and delivering stuff and doing all that that's exactly right. That's what I did that's really, that's really awesome. So you, you graduated high school and you got a full-time job. Was your full-time job at the pharmacy, or where did you work full-time?
Speaker 2:no, he, he wanted me to stay on and work, just work full-time there. I couldn't fill prescriptions or whatever. But his wife was very up on it and she said you know, if Bob spends time here and gives you more time off, he can't fill prescriptions, he can't do this and that If something happens to you, you know the drugstore is going to have to close or whatever, because he can't continue. She said I don't think it's a good idea, so I agreed with that. So I left there and I got a job at a bank which I only worked like there for a year and then I went on from there to a manufacturing plant, a flexible food packaging plant, where I started out in the quality control and then went into the printer's union. I was working on a printing press.
Speaker 1:That's quite a work history for such a young guy. At that point you really made your way around.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So at what point did you end up in the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2:So at what point did you end up in the Marine Corps? Well, after I met a girl at the bank and we started dating and after about two years, two and a half years, we got married. I was just short of 21 when I got married and the new job that I had in this printing business I worked seven days a week, probably more weeks than I had five days, and that was just the business, and so that didn't work out too well in our marriage. I never had time to do other things, I was tired, and I never had time to do other things. I was tired, we didn't get to do stuff. So after about two and a half years, she decided to get a divorce. We didn't have any children and I thought, well, years old, you know, president Kennedy signed a bill back in his time that no married men would be drafted. So at that point, you know, I was, I was married, so I didn't have to worry about being drafted. And all of a sudden I'm 24 years old, vietnam is clicking up and here I am now single.
Speaker 2:So before I could get re, before they could get me the selective service, I decided to venture into the Marine Corps because my older brother at that time was a in the Army Reserve. My younger brother was work, was in the Army Reserve. My younger brother was in the Navy full-time. He was a CB in the Navy and he was actually at that particular time on his way to Vietnam because they were over there building airstrips and stuff like that. So I thought I'm going in the Marine Corps. So I thought I'm going into Marine Corps. You know, if I'm going to do this thing, I'm going into Marine Corps.
Speaker 2:So I went and had an interview to get in and the guy says I need you to go downtown to see a lieutenant colonel. And I said well, why? I mean here I am, I'm volunteering. He says no, go down and see this guy, guy. So I had to go down and see him and I said why am I here? You know, I'm volunteering to go in. What's the deal? He said well, you know, we like to get 18, 19 year old kids. He said you're 24 years old. He said you know, we tell these kids in training, stand up, we're going to take that hill. You're going to say well, whoa, let's think about this a little bit. And he said so, you know, we don't know about that and I said well, wait a minute, man, come on.
Speaker 2:This is and then I told him my brother was in the Army, the other one in the Navy. I said if I'm going and I got a feeling the way Vietnam is building up, I'm going to end up over there. And if I'm going to end up over there, I want to know all there is to know on how to fight and fight right and be tough. And he said you just got yourself in, so that's how I got into the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1:That's a great. You know how many stories start out with I met a girl yeah, oh yeah and then it ends up with someone in the military that's exactly right well, it sounds like you did a great job when you passed that interview. Um, tell me a little bit about, uh, your arrival at boot camp and what was that like for you that first few minutes when you got there, and where did you go to boot?
Speaker 2:camp. Yeah, when I first I was san diego and, uh, when I, while leaving here in st louis, there were, uh, about 10 of us that were headed that way. Well, they gave me the packet with everybody's information because I was the oldest guy there and they thought more secure by giving it to me and they said you just hand this over to what you're called when you get there. So I did, and when I first got there I was kind of shocked I had. They were pretty tough on us, you know, but I have to tell you this, being the age I was, I could take things and laugh at it underneath my under and inside, where these other guys couldn't, and they took it all personal. I didn't take anything personal. Okay, I knew this was part of the training. I remember some of the stupid things that they had us do that I just kind of laughed at and I did them and I said, you know, this is ridiculous, I got to do that.
Speaker 2:But a lot of these younger guys. I can see where it bothered them. So it was tough. I was older than some of the drill instructors I had, and you know. But I got through and nobody harassed me or picked on me because of my age or anything like that. So I did get through there and that was boot camp.
Speaker 1:Oh, and how long was boot camp at that point? Was that like 12 weeks?
Speaker 2:It was 12 weeks, yeah, and then from there you went into ITR for another four weeks, so it was like 16 weeks before you were sent to a place where they needed you and I would yeah go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sorry. And then ITR, that's the Infantry Training Regiment. Is that what that is?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, that's where you go up and you learn to throw hand grenades and you've got all that other stuff, you know, and it's it's uh, you, it's a little bit more of uh training, okay, and what they were training us up there more realistic stuff, stuff. Boot camp is to get your minds into what you're doing. But up there, especially with the Vietnam thing, they were showing us at different huts that they had built a village and how to look at the inner walls that were hidden and they were fake, fake. And how do you watch for tripwires and all this stuff going through the jungles and through the bushes and, uh, how you can look at the floor. There's a, there's a tunnel underneath there, or you know, on their death, that this was the kind of training that we we basically went through, because they were programming you really to go to Vietnam and to fight in the jungles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was the training that's going to save your life, or save the lives of your team right, that's exactly right. Okay, when you finished up ITR, where'd you go from there?
Speaker 2:I got sent to the 1st MP Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, which had been broken up after the Korean War but they were now bringing it back because they needed it and so it was farming up. There were, I think, four companies in this battalion and I was in D Company and I was sent there along with a lot. I don't know any guys that I had trained with in ITR that went went to this. There may have been guys in there that I was not close to in ITR, so I didn't know, but anyway it was a lot of us right from bootcamp and ITR that were farming up this company and I had a lot of all the guys I was in my squad. They were all 18, 19 year old guys. Again, I say I was older than my platoon leader and so I got the nickname of Pappy and that's what they called me Prisoner of war, training how to handle prisoners of war, how to do guard duty, how to do traffic control. In fact I was, because I was 24 years old.
Speaker 2:I got to spend some time with the MPs at Camp Pelton as they went into town and went around to the different locations, because I was old enough to go in those locations and most of the other guys weren't, and so I got a lot of training in that as well, but that's what it was. The main thing again was we got a lot of training as far as going on patrols, sitting in ambushes, doing all that, along with the MP-type training which I had a I don't know, it was some class I got promoted in. Uh I I don't some kind of military justice type thing or whatever as part of my training, but anyway, that's what we did. We did that for three months as they were building these, this battalion, and then we then we all boarded a ship in san diego and we went to vietnam aboard a ship as a battalion.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things here. One I'm a retired MP myself from the Army. I want to share with you a little story. So I don't know how it was back then, but currently the Marine Corps does not have its own MP school, so they go to school with the Army.
Speaker 1:And I went to Officer Basic course down in Fort Leonardwood, missouri. Okay, and so I'd gone to OCS and I was going to officer basic as an MP and we were training with the Marine Corps and I was old, I had gone to OCS at like 38.
Speaker 1:So I get to my officer basic course at like 40 years old and everyone there is like young, very young. Well, we're doing ground fighting and they pair me up with this young Marine I can't remember his name, but he was like he had muscles on his muscles and he was, he could move and he was nimble. And they put us together for ground fighting and we're fighting and I'm getting the best of this guy. I don't know how, yeah, but I'm whooping him. I'm whooping him and I'm like I don't know how I'm doing this, but I'm doing it.
Speaker 1:This guy looks up at me and licks the side of my face and it threw me off so bad that he kicked my butt after that, like I just I was done. It was the trickiest thing I've ever seen and I thought, wow, that's not very nice. But anyway, that was my experience with uh, with the mps, um, in training, and he and I were good friends after that. I mean, it wasn't a big deal, but I just remember that little trick like you don't fight fair, like you do whatever, you do to throw your opponent off, and that's what I learned from that little incident there.
Speaker 2:But anyway, Well, we learned. We learned that kind of maneuvers and stuff like that and ITR and we had our hand to hand stuff like that, and it was not don't play fair. I mean you're not. If you're going to get into a fight, you're going to win. You want to win, you don't want to lose, so do whatever you got to do to do it. And I mean you know so much as to where they showed you how you could grab a guy and pull his eye out and tear his ear off or something like that. I mean that's what they taught you and they said if you're going to get into hand-to-hand, you need to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you're going to get into hand to hand. You need to be able to do that. So, oh yeah, hit them with a brick, throw sand in their eye, lick their face, whatever you got to do. But so you, I, I want to, I want to like. The sequencing of this is really interesting to me. So you, you go to basic training, go to itr, you go, they set up this uh mp battalion, and then you get on a boat and go right to Vietnam.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now you have. You have an advantage in that you've lived some life between graduation from high school. In this trip to Vietnam, you're with a bunch of kids who are literally a bunch of kids, yeah, yeah. So tell me about this. What was this like?
Speaker 2:Well, I could tell you about this because and I'll start out by telling you that three of my best friends didn't come home Two 18-year-olds well 19 at that point, and one 21. Very close friends of mine. But I didn't know until a couple of years after I got home that they didn't make it home and I thought to myself and I've been very feel bad about this. I was 26 when I came home. They didn't come home. I had been married, I had lived on my own, I had all this. They came right. Two of them came right out of high school. The other one had one year or two years where he lived on his own, and you know that bothered me.
Speaker 2:Now, what you're saying about on that ship. It took us 20 days to get over there by ship. Okay, a lot of different experiences on there. Of course, being a Marine, we had rifle inspections on the deck, we had other classes we had to go to. I mean, they didn't let you just sit around and do nothing like you were on a cruise. It was pretty tough. The night we sat out in the Da Nang Harbor before we were scheduled to go ashore. We all gathered up on the deck and you could see off into the distance all of the gunfire from the helicopters, you know, because every fourth round was a tracer round.
Speaker 2:So it looked like a red line. You could hear it going on, you could see it, and here you are, up there. I was scared. They were all scared. We didn't know what tomorrow was going to bring. Um, so that was a tough time and it was a. I had to talk to a couple of these buddies of mine and kind of say, okay, guys, that, yeah, it looks like that, you know, but we're ready for this, we can handle it, let's do it and everything. So the next day we get up and they, we put on our uniforms and got. We were issued m14s back in the state. So that was my weapon. I carried everywhere I went.
Speaker 2:So we're lining up to get off the ship and we're not at a dock, we're Marines. So we crawl down the side of the nets and we get on these little boats that are going to take you up and hit the beach. So they come around and they issue us 20 rounds, 20. We have four magazines for our M-14 which carry 20 rounds each. Well, they give us 20 rounds. We're all looking at each other saying what? You're only giving me 20 rounds, we're going to hit the beach. Well, 20 round, we're going to hit the beach. Uh well, we climb down, we get on the boats, we're headed in there and we hit the beach and, man, the door goes down. We're all running off and our platoon commander gets about 10 yards off and he turns around. He says hope, just stay there, right there, hold up, line up. We're thinking, are you kidding me? We're hitting the beach, all we have is jungle in front of us. We, we had no idea what was going on. And so he says all right, line up. We said, line up, come on, buddy. And but we did right. On the other side of all, this jungle was a road and they have all these what we call cattle cars, which were the buses, and we all rode on these buses. Well, none of us ever dreamt that that's what was going to happen.
Speaker 2:So then, what they were doing is taking us to this staging area so we could get climatized for the Vietnam, for being in Vietnam. So we spent three days there and I mean it was 125 degrees the day we landed in Vietnam and now 125 over there was not the same as 125 back here, but you know, it was hot and we had all this stuff and everything else. So we got to have three days of kind of getting used to the climate, also finding out exactly what we were going to be doing and where we were going, and so on and so forth. So that was a that was a situation in itself. And then one night I grew. Of course we were in a secure area, but we still had guard duty and we had guard patrol. So I got guard duty just one night and I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh man, I'm out here. You know, this is not, there's no fences, this is not confined.
Speaker 2:And I got to walk from this about 50-yard turnaround. Come back, 50 yards turn around, go back. And I'm walking back and forth, walking back and forth and I'm thinking holy cow somebody could jump out.
Speaker 2:What am I going to do? Well, the thing of it is, as you were told, halt who goes there, and before you start shooting. And well, the sergeant of the guard happened to come through and I hollered at him and he said it's the sergeant of the guard. And I said, okay. Anyway, I had to go to the bathroom. So bad, and I thought to myself, man, what am I going to do? So I mean, I just had to go so bad and I knew I was going to be walking here for at least two hours, so I jumped into the weeds, went to the bathroom, got up, came back I thought man I gotta do it.
Speaker 2:You know, uh, that was my one experience doing that and I'll tell you I was scared. I was scared even thinking doing that. So anyway, there's where we're at, up to that point yeah, so it's everything's happening pretty fast for you happening fast so what?
Speaker 2:what ends up like what's your mission then, when you get over there, like okay, our mission was we we got, we were on on the air base, the dang air base. Our, the whole mission of the battalion was to take over security from the Air Force of the Air Base, because the Marines, the 3rd Marine Division, had just basically started coming over there the months before we got there, and so this was going to be then where the Marine helicopters and planes and everything we were taken basically over the airstrip, and so they wanted Marines to guard the airstrip and the areas around the strip. So that was our main function. So we were set up on a four-day cycle and on this four-day cycle we had the bunkers. There were bunkers that the French who had been there had built, these cement bunkers around this airstrip or whatever. There was barbed wire, minefields and everything around the outside of this thing. There were no cyclone fences or anything like that separating us from the outside.
Speaker 2:So I was me and another guy were put into this bunker, way out here on the corner, and about 75 yards out in front of us there was, there were villagers and everything else. So we had, uh, on the first day it was, we were on that bunker for 24 hours. We took turns, uh, sitting up there. We had an m60 machine gun up there on with us and, uh, you know we had a watch from that area. And then there was an opening downstairs where you could go and rest and stuff like that and he'd go up and watch, and so on and so forth. We did that the first day. The second day we were back in the area and we were doing chores around our area that were keeping you busy. You had some free time, you got to write letters.
Speaker 2:you got to do this, we and things like that, and you got to sleep in your bunk, you got to eat at the mess hall instead of out there where you're eating sea rations all day long. So that was the second day, and then the third day you're put on to uh, back to the bunker 24 hours. Again. Same thing, same ritual. The fourth day you were on what they call the reactionary platoon and that was you went out, you were in a tent out there and you were either running patrols or you were there as as a backup. Uh, we also at that point we were in charge of the main gate. We had to go down to stand gate duty. We had traffic control out in front of the gate where it was a main drag for the people of vietnam to go up and down, and you had to get out there on your stand and halt them and tell them to stop and let the traffic and all that kind of stuff. So that was that and and that I did that cycle for like almost eight months. Uh, and that was that was my life for eight, for basically eight months. Now. In that eight months a lot of guys were transferred out of there to different companies, different areas, different stuff like that was a lot of. A lot of guys were transferred out of there to different companies, different areas, different stuff like that. It was a lot of movement. Totally, I was the only one in the battalion that went over and left Vietnam, as the only one still left in that battalion. Everybody else had been transferred out. Now why I stayed there, why I never got transferred, I don't know. I have no idea, but I left as a member of the 1st MP Battalion. When I came home as a member of the 1st MP Battalion. When I came home Now, in the last four months that I was there, I had been promoted to corporal and so the 1st Sergeant wanted somebody to head up rebuilding our area, because when we got there for all these months we had these canvas roof covers on our huts and they were not screened in.
Speaker 2:I mean, we didn't have a lot of goodies to work with. They were then getting stuff in that they wanted to get rid of the tarps and put metal roofs on screen in the huts and different things like that, and I guess from the work parties I had worked on before, he thought I could handle this pretty well. So that's what I did for the last four months I stayed in the area main function. We built a new company office, company barracks for him, for our company commander, built a barber shop and a laundry thing for the Vietnamese people that came in, built a club in there so the guys had a place to go and write letters and relax when they were back in the air different things like that. So I did that the last four months I was there Didn't have to run any more patrols or guard duty or anything like that. So it was what it was. And I'll tell you one last thing about this I was always ready but I never fired around.
Speaker 2:I never had to use my weapon and I thank God that I never had to shoot anybody or shoot at anybody. That was amazing. Now, was I prepared? If I needed to? I was well prepared, but I never had to, and I can tell you some stories about the different things that we had to do.
Speaker 2:When I had to do it, like run patrols, we couldn't put any rounds in our chamber when we left the perimeter, we couldn't you, just they told you not to do that. When we set up in ambushes, we had to use that term a halt, who goes there? The element of surprise, forget it. You can't do that. Our hands were tied. Now I have to be honest with you.
Speaker 2:When I was a patrol leader and I hit that gate and we were going out as a patrol leader, we carried a shotgun. So I had a shotgun. Because of the low, close terrain and stuff, it was better than firing your M14. I would take that thing and go and I could hear my guys doing what they had to now. So we did what we had to do, had to now. So we did what we had to do. It was very, very hard because what we had been trained to do and how we had been trained to handle it. We are now saying you can't do that, you can't do that. So that was so, so hard at the time yeah, you know what?
Speaker 1:I think that that's something that transcends um generations is the rules of engagement and how sometimes they can really hamstring you in doing what you need to do right, right, oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So you were in Vietnam for just a year, then for a whole 12-month tour.
Speaker 2:Full tour 12 months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what?
Speaker 2:year was that we went over. I went in the Marine Corps in 1965. So I went into Vietnam in 67 and came home in 60. I went in Vietnam 66, came home in 67. Okay, was there anybody back home that you were writing to? Uh, the only person probably was my mom. I have a. Uh, I smoked cigars. I have smoked cigars all my life. I was one of those kids that never smoked cigarettes, but when I got a nickel I could go buy a cigar for a nickel. And I smoked cigars. When I was probably 13, 14 years old and I am so my mom had me a box of cigars shipped mailing to me about every week and of course she never got the mail on time. So it might be three weeks before I got three boxes, but, uh, she was my main contact. Uh, yeah, I wrote to my. Uh, I had a cousin, a girl, cause we only had one girl cousin. All of we had 12 boys and only one girl cousin.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of boys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was a nurse and so studying to be a nurse and she would write me and so I would write her back, but other than that, no, I wrote my ex-mother-in-law, I think, a couple of times just asking how my ex-wife was doing, and she might've answered me once or twice, but then it stopped, so I stopped that. But basically my mom was my only contact back there.
Speaker 1:So what was it like coming home? And then, how much longer did you serve in the Marine Corps? After your tour like coming home.
Speaker 2:And then, how much longer did you serve in the Marine Corps after your tour? Well, coming home was, uh, different. Uh, when I left Vietnam, we had to go to Okinawa for three days, uh, and that was to tell us and to let us know what's going back on, what's going on back home and what you might be faced with when you get there, because you served in Vietnam and you're in the military. So when I got back, we landed at Travis Air Force Base in California. I got my orders.
Speaker 2:I really thought maybe they were going to let me go because I had so much time left and I really was only signed up for two years of active duty, and then the reserves, and I thought, man, I only got like five months left. Maybe they'll let me go or maybe they won't. Well, they wouldn't. They gave me a 20-day leave to come home and then I had a report back to Camp Helton. I was going to be a troop handler in the ITR and so when I was on my way up to LA to catch a flight back to St Louis they recommended I take my uniform off and wear civilian clothes and just be prepared that there's going to be people up there that are.
Speaker 2:They're going to know you're a service man, you're carrying a big duffel bag, so you know. But whatever you do, they're going to spit on you, they're going to holler at you're going to try to get you to start a fight so that they can have you arrested and just walk on by and keep going. So I did. I walked on by, they were there, nobody spit on me, but you know, I walked on by and and went, wore my, I had my civilian clothes on and, uh, came back home, spent 20 days here and then I bought a new. I had my mom order me a new car, so it was here when I got home and I drove it back to California and then I was in ITR as a troop handler for the remainder of my time in there and then September came and they said you're welcome to go home. Report to the Marine Corps group in St Louis at the airport when you get home, because you're going to be part of the reserve unit. And I drove home, I went out there and talked with them and I had a choice. I could be either active reserve or I could be inactive reserve and I thought, well, you know I need a break, so I'm going to do inactive. So I did that.
Speaker 2:But I can tell you for the next year, year and a half it was rather difficult. I had never been a drinker before I went into the Marine Corps, but now I was and I got to do that a little bit too much. I got my job back that I left, because you know you left to go into service. I got my job back right away and I was back there. But I just could not handle the situation and I kept getting back in touch with a recruiter here that I got to know pretty well and said what if I want to come back? What if I want to go back on active duty? You know, what can I do? He said well, what do you want to do? I said, well, you know, I'd kind of like to be a drill instructor. I think I'd really like to do that. I like my time in itr, but that's not really a drill instructor.
Speaker 2:But I said, either that or, you know, uh, maybe, uh, as a marine corps guard or diplomat at one of these places or something you know. Well, let me see what I can do and and this and that. Well, I drug that out for about a year, just couldn't make the decision that I wanted to do that or not. So then the guy that I had gotten an apartment with that I worked with, out close to where we worked, introduced me to a girl and that was the beginning. This was a nice young lady. I at first said no, it was a blind day. I said no, no, I don't need no, no, no, no, no. But he talked me into it and we did it.
Speaker 2:Well, six months later I married the girl and she had a five, six year old daughter which I grew very close to. So all of a sudden, now I'm a husband and a father and I put my Marine Corps future ahead of me aside and said sorry, and that was the end of that. So yeah, your second, second chapter of I met this girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry, and that was the end of that. So yeah, the your second, second chapter of I met this girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So tell me about that date. What do you remember about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I remember that I really, like I said, I really didn't want to do it. I was doing it as a favor to him and his girlfriend, and this was a friend of hers. They worked together and it was very uncomfortable. I was not comfortable and I just because I have to say in all honesty, I mean I loved my first wife it really bothered me that she wanted the divorce. I understood why bothered me that she wanted the divorce. I understood why, and it was basically my fault because I was a workaholic and everything else, and so I just didn't want to do this again and I thought, man, I have in my life been a kind of a loner. I like to do and even to this day, I like to do things by myself. I'll go out and play golf A lot of times. I like to just play myself by myself. And when I work around the house and do things out here, I like that alone time, and so that's been part of me all my life and so I was enjoying my alone time. And here I am letting somebody come back into my life and we just hit.
Speaker 2:I kind of felt sorry for her. She was divorced, working, had this six-year-old little girl and, as I got to know her a little bit, that she didn't have a lot, and so in a way I felt sorry for her and for the little kid. But I grew close to him and I said hey, I really believe that neither one of us loved each other when we got married, but there was a need. I had a need and she had a need, and I think that's what drew us together and I can tell you we've been married 56 years. We grew, grew and grew. We had difficulties, like everybody probably does, but we we made it. We've had two other girls. We've had two other girls the two of us. So we've three girls now and life was different.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around this, because I think everything kind of happens for a reason, even though you didn't want to go, it was where you needed to be and when you needed to be there, I'm assuming, after you know 56, 56 years, is that what you said? Yes, after 56 years, someone loves someone there, huh?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah absolutely we have a deep uh. I mean more than just the love. We are very good friends, okay, uh, we I always was a believer in God. I grew up in the Catholic Church, catholic grade school, catholic high school, you know, and it's, it's. But I've come to have a relationship with the Lord a lot more later on after that, and you know God has a purpose for us after that, and you know God has a purpose for us, things happen under his control, a lot of times outside of our control. There are choices we make and we just, we just go forward. But you know, right now, you know he is a major part of my life and my wife's life and my children's life.
Speaker 1:To be truthful, so you married this girl six months after you meet her, which is just a great story. I love it. You know it's kind of a ready-made family, but you're not a young guy, so you're probably ready for this. So let's talk a little, let's talk through that a little bit. So you, uh, you were back, so were you back working at the print shop? Then, yes, okay, so you get married. Um, you start this wonderful, uh, 56 year journey. Talk to me a little bit about how that went.
Speaker 2:Well, in the beginning it was a little different, because I knew what ruined the first one and so what I tried to do with my and the life back there. Working was still a seven day operation and I, I, I knew I couldn't do that again, and so I worked very hard and I had only a high school education. So I met with the people there and tried to get a job in the office to where I could do something different and not work out in the plant. Now I knew that would be. I would make as good a money as I made out there, because I was working seven days a week out there, a lot of overtime, a lot of time and a half stuff like that. But I thought this is what I need to do. I need to change my life, and so I did.
Speaker 2:I was given an opportunity to do a, be a production scheduler, and I loved every minute of that to begin with, and so, therefore, I had my off and we had our time together and we got to grow together and it wasn't until, I think about two years after we were married, she got pregnant with our first child, and that was joy for both of us and we were really happy by that time. We had grown to really, I think, love each other. Over the first two years we grew to know what each one of us wanted and where we were going and what all that kind of stuff, so, and we knew each other better and so we had our first child. That was a blessing. It was a tough time. Now, she did lose a couple of them, uh, pregnancies before that, uh, which was saddening. But when we got that one we thought, man, this is great and and uh, so we had our, our first little one, and by that time the other one was eight years old. So, uh, that was still great too.
Speaker 1:Was she pretty excited You're eight year old about having a baby sister.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely At that point. Well then, uh, four years at then. It was four years after that, for our other daughter came and uh, another blessing uh, which we were happy to have. Now my 12 year old was not too happy about that one, but anyway it it changed uh, because here's another little one, okay, and that's going to take away from her thing and her, just, I guess the way it is.
Speaker 2:But she, she ended up kind of sidetracking the first one and grew closer to the little one one. Oh, and that was a strange thing. But then I can tell you I understand why and I should have shared this to you earlier. But growing up as a middle child was an experience. You know. My mom would always say, well, he's older, he can do this. No, he's the baby, let him do this. You know, you're in the middle, you lose any which way you look at it.
Speaker 2:The other thing being born four days after Christmas didn't help either. Okay, you're getting your Christmas present. It's your Christmas and your birthday present. Now, why did my brothers get a birthday present on her birthday and a Christmas present on Christmas? All those things I grew up with, you know, and so I'm thinking about this for my middle daughter and her experience. So I probably grew closer to her than to the other two, to be honest with you and she right now, uh, if I I wouldn't say it too out loud, but I'll, they all know it that she's my favorite and and always has been so yeah, he knows it too they can use that against you.
Speaker 1:It's funny, I was a middle kid too, bob. So when you said you were the middle kid earlier, I'm like, oh, we lived almost the same life, just at different times.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me about your daughters kind of growing up and what they're doing today. We can start with your oldest and work our way down if you want to do that.
Speaker 2:My oldest didn't want to go to college. She got out of high school and wanted to go to work, so she got a job and within about a year she wanted to get her own apartment, and so she did, and it was probably a half a mile or a mile away from us, and you know, we probably saw more of her then than we did when she was still living at the house after she graduated. But she worked and she had a couple of boyfriends at the time, and one guy was a health freak more or less I hate to call him that, but that's what he was and he ended up getting her to where she was anorexic and bulimic. We fought that battle with her, almost lost her. But she is now 62 years old.
Speaker 2:She knows what she has to do, what she doesn't have to do. She never had any children because she messed herself up so bad that she couldn't. She married a guy, though, back then, and they've been married now. Oh, I guess 35 years or something like that, I don't know close to that. It's just a super guy and they have a great relationship.
Speaker 2:She still works, they, you know they're happy and they live a little ways away from us but still in our local area, the middle one. After she got out of high school she went to college down in Chattanooga and she became a teacher and she came back here. She met a guy in college. They got married. Six months after they graduated both of them they lived here in St Louis. He got a job at a bank here and she worked and got a job teaching kindergarten and so they lived here. They had a daughter. They were born, I guess about two years or three years. She had trouble getting pregnant and they were going through a lot of that stuff that helps them and finally she had a little girl and they left here because he was from Atlanta and he ended up getting a job back there. So they moved back there.
Speaker 2:When my granddaughter was probably nine years old and that was pretty hard on us because she was our only grandchild, to be honest with you my younger daughter, who also graduated college, then went on to get her master's degree and everything. She was very good and very sharp and all that, and she met a guy through her business and they ended up getting married. They now have a little boy. Well, now he's 17 years old, but they had a little boy and so that was really great. We got to take that little boy and watch them a lot because you know they both worked and we lived pretty close to them. So we had watch them a lot because you know they both worked and we lived pretty close to them, so we had him here a lot. So, uh, it was that that happens.
Speaker 2:And so they're all. They're all three still married they're. They have great guys. We only have two grandkids, my granddaughter. Just to update you on her, she just ran in the Atlanta half marathon and took second place. She ran for the United States in a cross country over in Serbia a couple of months ago. She's a professional runner. She's 27 years old. She lives in Indianapolis. My grandson is a junior in high school. He's a fantastic soccer goalie and, uh, doing very well. He's now interviewing at different colleges for when he graduates or where he might want to go and if he's going to get a scholarship for his soccer and his academics. So that's what's going on with them right now.
Speaker 2:Just to backtrack you, I played soccer. Soccer was my sport. I played soccer up until I was in my mid-40s actively. I played on all of the top teams in St Louis at the time. Played on all of the top teams in St Louis at the time. I traveled, played in Chicago, played in Detroit and played a couple of all-star games. Soccer was my thing. So when I got this little boy, first thing I did is I built a soccer ball in my basement to teach him how to kick soccer balls. But little did I know that he'd end up being a goalie. I thought he was going to be a guy out on the field. So, anyway, that's kind of what happened with them. They are my youngest daughter, and my oldest daughter still live in the area, and the other ones live in Atlanta.
Speaker 1:So you? What an amazing family. Your kids are successful and happy. You have great grandkids. Yes, um, you can't really ask for much more than that in life, and I'm I'm gonna just make the assumption you're pretty proud of your kids and where they're at we are.
Speaker 2:we are absolutely and, uh, you know, the one thing that we we both feel is we never want to put a burden on our kids. Okay, we never had, and I probably should have shared this earlier. From the day we had these kids, they were everything to us. There wasn't anything that we didn't do that they weren't part of. We never took a vacation, or just the two of us, or got away. Everything we did involved our kids and it has always been that way and to this day, they are still the biggest part of our lives, outside of the two of us, that's that's incredible, that's I think that's the way it should be.
Speaker 1:I want to backtrack a little bit, though, and just a couple of things. One you did said that you'd started drinking a little bit when you got back, and I'm just guessing that was probably a result of your time in in on your deployment in country. You know, um, even though you never fired your weapon, uh, it's 24 7 365 over there that you're on alert, and when you come home it's hard, like I. I tell people, uh, the only thing more difficult than actually going into battle is coming home.
Speaker 2:It is. You're right, that's exactly right. I don't know, after I got home I really struggled, and of course it was. You know, when we were over there, for some reason we had a first sergeant that could get a lot of beer from wherever he got the beer, I don't know. We had a limit of two beers per person is what it was basically in our area. So when you're on a four-day cycle, you're only there one day. So you got eight beers when you're when you're there, you know, because the other guys are gone, so you're getting there anyway. I started drinking beer and uh, I really never liked it before that, but I did so. Then, when I came home, uh, I kind of transferred from beer to bourbon and uh, you know, my buddy and I that had that apartment, uh, we had uh we traveled in our car with a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of water and a bag of ice cubes, because we always said you know, this is a
Speaker 2:two drink drive or a three drink drive, and you know what back then, back then would I do that today? No, back then. Thank God we didn't get pulled over or we didn't have an accident or whatever. That's just what we did. I would go and meet with my guys that I played soccer with. After, after we practiced, we'd go to the tavern and you know I mean it. Just that's the way it was.
Speaker 2:Now that changed when I got married, I backed off. I slowed down. My wife and I might have an occasional drink, but you know it really backed down. Then I got to a point later on when I was uh, I don't know, I got a little higher up in business and got involved in different things and so forth. Uh, my next door neighbor who are very good friends of ours, uh, him and I would meet out under our carport at night and have a couple of beers and and talk and go late in the night and stuff like that. That started to get out of hand. Our wives kind of put an end to that pretty quick. So you know. But today, do I have a glass of wine occasionally? Yes, last night I had a beer because I like beer with my pizza, but I had one beer. You know, it's a whole different ballgame today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see that and I think, at least for me, two things One, a good woman, and the good Lord will help keep you on the right path, I think.
Speaker 2:Amen to that. I go to Bible study every Monday night. In fact, I got to go tonight with a group of guys that I've been going to for years. It helps. Let me just tell you it helps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can believe that Now. Did you stay at the um printing company then for your entire career, or did you go on from there?
Speaker 2:Stayed in in the business of packaging, but I left there. Uh, uh, I had an opportunity to go to a small packaging plant in the inner city which was owned by an individual. So I got out of that big corporation and got down to a lower level. This guy owned a small place. I had a lot of opportunities. I went from scheduling and that's what he hired me for was to schedule the operation, and I ended up being general manager of that packaging plant for many years. And he sold it to a British company which had a plant here, a plant in Florida, a plant in Boyertown, pennsylvania, and I didn't like the way they were running it. So I left there and went to another company and spent a few years with this other company and then, actually, the company I originally worked for called and wanted me to come back as purchasing manager. So I did, I went back there and spent another 12. They gave me all my time from the previous years I was there plus this time. So, automatically, you know I was starting at 13, 14 years. Uh, you know, I was starting at 13 14 years.
Speaker 2:After 12 years they decided to eliminate the position. They were going to corporate uh, purchasing, and so they didn't need me anymore. So I got downsized in the 90s. When everybody's downsizing for whatever reasons, it was the thing to do in the 90s, right, it was the thing to do. So here I am with basically 25 years, 26 years with them. I'm all of a sudden out.
Speaker 2:Well, it took me like six months. I had a job offer in Chicago with a guy that I had met years ago and wanted me to come up there and be a general manager of his plant and I said look, I had a six-month severance package from my company. I said give me six months to find something around here. I really don't want to move out of St Louis, but if I don't I'll come. Well, right across the river in Granite City, which isn't very far from St Louis, there was a little packaging plant. The guy hired me to come in there and be the plant manager. So I went over there. He was an individual owner again small place so I did well over there for a couple of years and he hired a guy as a general manager which him and I didn't get along very well. He had a whole different idea how to run his business which was totally different from the guy, the owner and me, and I thought man this is just not going to work and I thought man, this is just not going to work.
Speaker 2:So I looked around there's a friend of mine that I knew from years ago that had just built a packaging plant in St Louis, said Bob, come over and work for me, be my scheduler, come over here. And I said okay, I'm going. Well, the guy that owned the one that I left tried for months after that to get me to come back.
Speaker 1:He said I'll get rid of that guy.
Speaker 2:I'll get rid of that guy Come back and I said, no, I'm over here. So I spent the last eight or nine years working in this company scheduling, ended up being project managers directing different things. When I retired they called me back twice to retrain new guys to do what I had previously done. So I did that, but I ended up getting a job on a golf course. I work part-time still to this day, a couple of days a week at the golf course, and that's pretty much what I did. So I but I did stay in the packaging business for my whole working full-time career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sort of a danced with the one that brought you huh.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right and you know I I know back then it was loyalty to the company you worked for. You didn't move around. It bothered me when I did, but it was. You go to work for this company. You stay there the rest of your life. That's just the way it was back then. It didn't work out that way for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of us were raised that way. It's not that way anymore, that's for me. Yeah, I think a lot of us were raised that way. Um, you know it's not that way anymore, that's for sure. So you know, we've covered a lot in the time that we sat here and talked and you have led just an incredible life and it's very inspiring, I think, not only to me, but others who will hear this story. Um, you know the way everything has worked out for you. Clearly, you're a happy person, and when I do the, when I do the math right, the years that you've been on this earth mean that you're not a young man. But just talking to you and having this time together, you are very young at heart, if nothing else, and I think that's really helped keep you going. But I, you know I have one last question I want to ask you as we wrap this up so well, actually two questions. The first question is is there anything?
Speaker 1:that we haven't covered, that you want to cover.
Speaker 2:Well, I should talk about my wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do that. I should talk about my wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do that she has. You know, there was something that drew me to her way back when I really wasn't looking for that kind of a relationship.
Speaker 2:But it has to be only by the grace of God that we pursued it, because she really wasn't either at that time and to see where we're at today and the things that we went through together in these past 56 years and has kept us together. And you know, we talk a lot about, I guess, as we get this age. So we talk a lot about I guess as we get this age. You know, when you sit down and you do your wills and you do all that stuff which you got to do, and you talk about, ok, when, what? What about when I die, and you talk about all those things, you know it really hurts, because to think that you're going to be without her, that tomorrow I'm going to get up and she ain't going to be here, ok, I rely on her. Will I survive? Yeah, by the grace of God, I'll survive. Will she survive? Yeah, and we talk about this a lot about. She says, no, I got to go first because I'll never be able to do all this without you. And I say the same thing about her. And so I have to say that we built a relationship Good, there was a lot of good. There was some bad, there were things that just went on, but we made it through and today, like I said earlier, we're best friends. We know each other and that's important. That really is. She knows I was ready to have her call you and say forget this. And she says no, you got to do it. You got to do it. And she said it's just something. I know you and I know you need to talk about all this, because I never talk about it.
Speaker 2:My kids know a little bit about my time in service. They don't know a lot. My granddaughter had no idea that I had even been married before. She knew that my, her aunt, my our oldest daughter, was from Carolyn's first marriage, but she didn't know I was married until about a year ago really, and I don't know how it came out. Something came out and she said what you know.
Speaker 2:So God has been good to us. We've had a good life and I don't know what else to say. I owe a lot to the freedom we've had in this country to be able to do what we wanted to do. I really loved my time in the Marine Corps. I think it helped me to grow more as an adult, as a father, as a husband and a love for the country and I would like, really I know today it isn't like it was back then, where it didn't like it was back then where a lot of people went into the military and it was good for them and it changed their lives. Today I wish some of them would have to go into the military to see and experience that it's a camaraderie with the guys you're with and everything else and just the love of the country.
Speaker 1:So anyway, yeah, Well, you know. Thanks for sharing that with me. A couple of things come to mind. One is that God's timing is not our timing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You might not think you're ready for something, but it's all God's timing.
Speaker 2:Yep Amen.
Speaker 1:And you know. So the last question I have for you is this Someone will listen to this sometime, long after you and I are gone, and I just want to know what would you like people to take away from this conversation and really take away from your life? Like, what message would you like to leave for people?
Speaker 2:You know, I thought about that because I saw that as one of your questions and the first thing that jumped into my head is the Marine Corps model Always faithful. I think that's what you have to do. You have to be always faithful to your God, to your family, to your country and to everything that goes on. I mean, that's it Be open, be honest, be truthful, accept these things that come along. Take time. Don't jump at things. Take time, think about them. Think about what you're going to do and what you're going to say and the actions you're going to take, because actions have consequences and you really need to think through it.
Speaker 2:I've made a lot of those that I jumped and made decisions that if I'd have thought about them, I probably wouldn't have done them, and I think I've learned now to back off and say, whoa, before I open my mouth. Think about what you're going to say, and that's pretty much it. That Marine Corps model Semper Fi you know it just rings in my head all the time. Be faithful always. So if they take that away from all this, if that even comes out in all this, I hope so.
Speaker 1:All right, well, thank you for that, you know. Welcome home, semper Fi, and thank you for not canceling this conversation today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank my wife for that, I will.
