Chorney: No, just for one year, I believe, I was proctor. And during the it s like getting free room and board for your services.

Transcription

1 Brown Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project Narrator: Hal Chorney Interviewer: Elizabeth Taylor Date: April 1, 2011 Location: John Hay Library [Edited by Hal Chorney, July 2011] This is Friday April 1 st, This is Beth Taylor. I will be interviewing Hal Chorney, class of [1961] Here I am with Hal Chorney. It s Friday April 1 st, 2011 and we are going to begin with him explaining some of the things he talks about in his question page. First of all, about Brown and then after that we will talk about Vietnam. So first of all memories of Brown between 1957 and You talked about being proctor of Plantations House. What was that and you said commuters could spend the night in a tent [dormitory room] snap gath Saturday night. Tell us stories. Okay. Basically I was the proctor of Plantations House during the years I believe it was 60 and 61. They had a different proctor virtually every year and the proctor was overseen by what was called a resident fellow. During the years I was proctor, Norm Springthal [Sprinthal] was one of the resident fellows and the other one was Arthur Taylor, who I believe he became the CEO of CBS at one point in time. Anyways, Plantations House was the commuter house where on a snowy day or inclement weather, a commuter could stay over and rather than travel home during that period of time he would have a place to stay. And there were beds being assigned to each person that spent the night over there and part of my duties were to monitor that nobody was abusing the privilege of staying and setting up camp there permanently although there were some people that stayed over for several days and then signed out and then came back in a day or two, but that s the way it was. A lot of the people also worked at Faunce House in the Blue Room. They waited on tables and at the end of the day I remember and I waited on tables there also at the end of the day all the sandwiches that weren t sold, we brought them back to Plantations House and whoever was there we would give them the free sandwiches. So were you proctor for your whole ? No, just for one year, I believe, I was proctor. And during the it s like getting free room and board for your services. What is snap gath? Okay. We used to have parties on a Saturday night and my friend Larry Groff came up with s-n-a-p, snap gath was Saturday night at Plantations House gathering. We d make these signs and we d post them on campus and a lot of people would want to come to these parties and sometimes RISD people came to them as well as some of the nurses from the Providence schools and we always had an abundance of people and there was music and I remember we had one room in Plantations House which was named after Dean [Durgin] Gurgan which was the [Durgin] Gurgan Lounge. He had a fond interest, basically, in the commuter house. He used to come over once in awhile and play checkers or chess well checkers was his Chorney 1

2 main game. He played checkers with kind of like whoever was in trouble on campus. He would give them he said if you could beat him at checkers he d let the offence go. But very few people beat him. As far as I know nobody beat him. Is it snap gath or snap grath, gr? G-r or g-a? I think it is snap gath, gathering. Yeah. Okay, now a memory about Billy Packer and yourself on freshman week carrying a full-size telephone pole? Billy Packer and I went to Tolman High School together. It was Pawtucket East but it became Tolman High School. And Billy was captain of the football team at Brown at one point in time. [0:05:08] He and I used to ride, initially, to Brown on his motorcycle. He would pick me up at his house at my house and then we d go on to Brown. We weren t exactly the Ivy League type. We didn t have the button down shirts and the Harris Tweed jackets. Billy and I were more into the flannel shirt type person. We looked more like RISD kids back then than we looked like Brown kids. We both worked out in the gym and anyways, I believe it was freshman week, somehow or other we came across a telephone pole with these spikes sticking out of it. So Billy and I lifted the pole up and there was a whole bunch of guys on campus who had been drinking and going a little bizerk and I guess they were trying to do panty raid at Pembroke so Billy and I were carrying the pole and everybody who was sloshed out of their mind a little bit was cheering us on. You know, it s a very vivid memory. did you do? Did you put it against a dorm and did you climb up to do the panty raid? What You want to know something? I think we just exhausted ourselves carrying it over their but Billy has passed away in the interim, by the way, a few years ago. Billy passed away and I was very saddened to hear that. You know, Billy and I, we were friends. We took a trip to Old Orchard Beach together This is while you were at Brown? While we were at Brown, yeah. And on your motorcycle? No, it was in my 41 Ford, to the best of my recollection. And we went up there and it was kind of romantic. I don t remember exactly why we went up there but it was nice. All the trees were turning and a lot of the girls up there were speaking French and it seemed like Chorney 2

3 an international crowd and we heard how Rose Kennedy was proposed to underneath the wharf by the senior Kennedy Joe. Yeah. And, so anyways, we had a lot of good memories, you know. When I felt like doing something different or crazy, usually Bill was one of the guys I was involved with, you know. expenses? Okay. And you talk about working at the Blue Room to supplement your living Yeah, yeah. That s correct. But it wasn t easy for me, you say, financially or academically. No it was not. Going to Brown was a struggle for me, okay. Nothing came easy. I felt like I worked harder than most people to get the gentleman s C even though I received a state scholarship I was in danger of losing it because of my academic grades. I had to buckle down. But basically I did work many hours a week while I did go to Brown. I worked in the Blue Room several days a week, you know, waiting on tables or clearing off tables. I worked for buildings and grounds at Brown University. I remember part of it was doing the lawns lawn work with the guys that just cut the lawn. You know, they give you a job to do. I emptied out wastepaper baskets and I think it was Metcalf labs or Wilson labs. Basically I was doing janitorial work on an hourly wage and it was a way of getting money to pay my tuition and expenses. there? And then you talk about Air Force ROTC, that Brown was a stepping-stone to get Yeah. Air Force ROTC was I had joined ROTC I thought it was a patriotic duty to be in the service and I really enjoyed some of the courses and the people that taught the course. I thought that they were very much down to earth versus the academic professors like we had Captain Card who had flown the line you know, he flew from place to place and he used to describe the places that he went to and some of his experiences, humorous and otherwise, and he was very colorful and we enjoyed his stories but we learned an awful lot that there was more to what was going on in the world than just the what just the academic portion of things. What was your major? [0:10:32] I started off as a chemistry major and that was a major that was very heavy into courses that were math and physics oriented, and chemistry lab work that took up enormous amounts of time and then if you weren t attentive enough you could lose several days worth of Chorney 3

4 your experiment because [ ][an experiment could just get ruined in minutes if not attentive to it]. Eventually I had taken Russian as a secondary language because when you majored in the sciences you needed two languages and one had to be German the other or Russian at the time. So I took Russian and my folks were both from Russia, or close by to it. The Ukraine and Basarabia [Bessarabia] so some of it came to me a little bit easier than what I had thought, so I eventually ended up majoring in Russian studies. I forgot what year I had switched to Russian studies but it was ironic that when it came to translating certain things I would read the word [ ] [chainik] and I was supposed to be translating from Russian to English and I said, Pass the [ ] [chainik] and the professor said, Well, what does [ ][chainik] mean? I said [ ] [chainik, a tea kettle] because we always called it the [ ][chainik] at home. So see? I didn t know the difference. You talk about your time at Brown as a time of innocence. I think so. I think I didn t really understand the reality of politics and special interests. I feel like I was very naïve as far as morality and the intentions of people, or even countries, when they were involved in certain policies. It wasn t until I was actually involved in the war that I realized that things weren t all black and white. For instance, during the Arab- Israeli Conflict in 1957 I flew in a squadron, the 15 th Air Transport Squadron, and we wore blue dickies and blue baseball caps. And there was a sister squadron called the 20 th Air Transport Squadron, both at Dover Air Force Base and they wore orange dickies and orange baseball caps. While we were delivering arms and medical supplies to Amman, Jordan, my sister outfit was deliver arms and medical supplies to Tel Aviv. So basically, the conclusion was we were supporting both sides in a war and I said, something isn t quite right here. Was I naïve about the world and politics? Without a doubt. That is a very instructive story. Lets backtrack a little bit. As you get out of Brown you head for flight school. I got out of Brown. My flight school wasn t right away so I while I was waiting to go into flight school I worked for Benny s Auto. I loaded trailer trucks. I also worked scooping ice cream at [ ] [Seekonk, MA] for Howard Johnson s on Route 6 next to wear Eileen Darlings is. And I started picking through change looking for rare coins, which was a hobby that I had since I had a childhood hobby. And then I went to flight school. By the way I got married in my senior year at Brown, and that is important for me to tell you. Yes, and was it here? Yeah. I married Elaine Cranshaw from Taunton, Massachusetts and we were divorced in And there is a very high divorce rate for Vietnam vets. [0:15:29] The expression nervous in the service is an understatement. After flying different missions in and out of Vietnam, with two small children, she couldn t wait for me to get out because we were losing some of my neighbors were being shot down and we lived in row housing in Chorney 4

5 Dover, Deleware [Delaware] at one point in time, besides owning our own house in a difference section of Dover. It was called Capital Park. She wanted me out and I did get out eventually. I got out of the service in June of 1967 off of active duty that was, but I joined a reserve outfit out of L.G. Hanscom field. Actually they transferred my paperwork when I signed out of active duty to L.G. Hanscom because I figured I would just fly with the reserves to supplement my income until I found a fulltime job after I got out of the service. So I did get a fulltime job teaching school at Woonsocket Junior High School. I taught math there. I always joke with people, I tell them I have been in the 9 th grade for ten years. So when did you get that job? This is after you After I got out of the service in September of 67 I started teaching at Woonsocket Junior High School. I was one chapter ahead of the kids. I didn t realize that modern math had gone and math always came easy to me, English didn t come so easy to me. So I taught math. They even had me teach science one year, which was a disaster. And they used to give me the tough kids we called the knuckle draggers because I would tell them war stories and they enjoyed it but somehow or other they were just like Captain Cod [Card] had been for me. I liked listening to the stories and whatever it was a break in the action for the kids but they like that. You can t really work somebody straight for forty-five minutes and get the work out of them. If the kids liked you they would perform. And part of Let s go back to getting to Vietnam. Then we will come back right. We are trying to just stay chronologically, if we can. We will come back to teaching math. But flying to Vietnam you say was just a normal trip in some ways, when you are working with the military Airlift Transport Squadron. Can you talk about the kinds of cargo that you were Oh sure. We flew first of all, we are like the airlines of the military. It started off where I flew for MATS, Military Air Transport Squadron, and when I flew for MATS, basically you have cargo aircraft and the C designation before a number of an aircraft means cargo, like C124 was a four engine reciprocal aircraft, meaning it had propellers, and that was the first aircraft that I flew. It weighed a hundred and eighty five thousand pounds. The tail was like forty-seven feet off the ground. It was humongous looking. I gave you a picture of one where I am standing in front of it with my flight jacket on. And basically that hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds gross weight would be a combination of the weight of the aircraft, the cargo that you were carrying, be it troops or merchandise or materials, and fuel. So the more fuel the further you had to go the more fuel you had to put on, the less cargo you could carry. So that was a low and slow aircraft that usually flew in the worst weather, like between eight and ten thousand feet is where you are going to get the bumpiest weather and that is where we flew most of the time. a C124. So any interesting stories about different cargoes or places that you had to take? Well into Vietnam, for instance, we could carry eight helicopters into Vietnam in [0:20:26] Chorney 5

6 They would take the helicopter pods and line them up inside the aircraft and there was a crewmember called the loadmaster and it was his job to load the pods and then they would have the blades for the helicopters were boxed up and they were placed on the side of it. You could carry like one of these huge oil trucks inside of this aircraft and they had pulleys and ramps and you would pull the merchandise into the aircraft, besides driving it. Afterwards I flew C141s which was a four engine jet aircraft called the star lifter. It was really a workhorse. That was the predecessor to the C5A which, for instance, the entire Berlin Airlift, I think three or four loads in the C5A would be the entire Berlin Airlift. That was how huge this aircraft What was the Berlin Airlift? Berlin Airlift is during the Cold War when Berlin was cut off the U.S was supplying fuel and food to the people of Berlin and they had to fly a corridor into Berlin, into Tempelhof Air Force base over there and So this kind of cargo It was everything to keep the people in Berlin alive because they were being stopped they were being cutoff of everything. So this is like what year? Oh, I don t recall that. But in the 50s 40s? No, this was After the war? This was 60s. I think it s 60s. I think it s 60s. [Berlin Airlift was ] star Alright so this kind of cargo craft was the kind that could carry that much the The C5A, called the Galaxy I believe is like a flying football field. I know there is a squadron in Westover Air Force Base just outside of Chicopee, Mass that has C5s in it. Had I stayed in the service longer I would have transitioned from 141s into C5s, okay? So what about flying to Vietnam? Maybe tell us some stories now of what that was like first times Chorney 6

7 I had thirty-seven trips into Vietnam, okay? There were different ways of getting to Vietnam, which I feel it s important for people to realize. When I was flying C124 and reciprocating the aircraft, we flew from Dover Air Force Base on the east coast to Travis Air Force Base, which is in California, outside of Sacramento. Then we would go from Travis to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, to Wake Island, to Guam and to either the Philippines or into Thailand and then into Vietnam. That was called the mid-pack route. Then they had, when I was flying the jets, we flew more of a great circle route over the top. We would fly from Dover to someplace in the United States to pick up a load, be it to Texas or some other place if we were flying troops for instance and we would go to Elmendorf Air Force Base which is outside of Anchorage Alaska and we would go from there into Yakota Air Force Base into Japan, and from Japan into Thailand, Philippines or directly to Vietnam. And sometimes we went from Elmendorf directly into Vietnam also. So the places in Vietnam I flew into I flew into Bien Hoa in Tan Son Nhut in Saigon, which was called the pearl of the orient. And people used to like to go to Saigon. It was a fun place and whatever. I had the good fortune of going to Saigon on a mission prior to being involved in the war. And that s when I went there with my friend Dick Young. [0:25:40] So it might have been around what year? 62 or 63 I believe. And Dick Young was involved with training [ ] [Nguyen Cao Ky]with the Dirty Thirty that trained the Vietnamese Air Force and we were treated very nicely and welcomed when we went to Saigon. Of course a few years later there was a different story all the way because Ton Son Nhut had become, I believe, the busiest airport in the entire world. If you were on the ground there you would see aircraft lined up there waiting to take off. You would see aircraft circling to come in. It was a stream of traffic constantly, and they had bulldozers on the sides of the runway because if you couldn t take off in time or you were hit by a mortar or something the bulldozers would come by and they would push you right off the runway so that the next aircraft could take off. Because the worst thing that they wanted to happen was to get aircraft stacked up on the ground that was immobile and you are like sitting ducks. So were the bulldozers used very often? I never saw one used. It was just in case. It was just in case. It was a precautionary measure. And besides Bein Hoa and Ton Son Nhun I flew into Da Nang Air Force Base in the north. I flew into Nha Trang and one interesting story about flying into Nha Trang is when we landed on the ground it was like three o clock in the morning and we were hungry and the chow hall wasn t open and we told the people in base operations that we had this month s playboy issue with us and the Philadelphia Sunday newspaper and we would give it to them if they would needless to say they opened up Chorney 7

8 the [ ] [chow hall] for us. Then we stayed there and I remember one trip I went to a French palatial mansion out there and they had some very beautiful girls that were half French and half [ ] [Vietnamese] and basically one of the girls says, You see the person in the water over there? She says, He is a colonel with the Viet Cong. She says, But don t worry about it. Everybody just comes here to have a good time. A neutral zone. Kind of like, yeah. That s what Nha Trang was. I also flew into Play Cu[Pleiku]. I was a flight examiner because I had 5500 hours not at that time but I was a flight examiner at some point in my career besides being an instructor. So you are examining? I am giving check rides to people in their crew position. So I would give a navigator a check ride Meaning you were a evaluating? [0:29:11] I am evaluating him because he has a minimum proficiency requirement in order to keep his license in that position. And so I was I started off as an instructor and then I became a flight examiner. When I went from active duty to the reserves I went back to 124s which I had like 3500 hours in when I was on active duty. So when I went into the reserves they were just getting that aircraft. They had a couple hundred hours in it and I was eons ahead of everybody so my first ride and somebody that was evaluating me, they just kind of promoted me right away. So I became a flight examiner and when I went into Play Coo [Pleiku] I was giving somebody a flight examination in his crew position and that was a dangerous time because we had helicopters with flamethrowers flying in in front of us to clear the way. A lot of times we flew into places and there was no fire, no nothing, but this one was we were under fire and when we landed we had a very short amount of time to get in and get out of there and basically what we were picking up was body bags. And the body bags were it was unfortunate but I believe it was people that got hit by our own napalm. Around what year was this? Oh I don t know. I am going to guess 66 or beginning of 67. And how did you know that it might have been our own napalm? Oh I think the guys were talking about it. They were throwing it was very disgusting they were throwing the body bags on the aircraft like they were sacks of potatoes. And it s like recurring memories of stuff you don t want to see but that s what posttraumatic stress disorder is, it s intrusive thoughts of horrific things Chorney 8

9 This is part of the story. Are there any other moments like that that still haunt you that you can describe? Oh sure. I can talk about some of it. Yeah. Some of it I think I have never revealed to anybody but rainy days do me in because I remember we had a bunch of multiple amputees that were taken out of Cam Ranh Bay, which was most of the hospital runs were into Cam Ranh back or Air Evac missions is what they were called. And they would line up the passengers, many in wheelchairs, to board them onto the aircraft. And it was raining out and I remember this one guy that was in a wheelchair and I there was intermingling of tears and rain and make a real long story short, when you climbed up to altitude the people with head injuries, once in awhile, died from the pressure changes and the nurses would just tell the rest of the people that they had just were over sedated or went to sleep or whatever, but we knew they were dead from and it was a feeling of guilt, from being involved with it and getting back to when I was teaching school. One of the reasons I left teaching, and I never realized why I left it through the years, was that somehow or other I felt I had been supplying young kids for the war effort and bringing them back as multiple amputees or in body bags. So working with young kids sort of made you subliminally make a connection with the young kids you had to Yeah, I thought I was naïve. These kids were very, very naïve. I got a young kid, he would come upstairs into the cockpit. When I say upstairs, you would have to climb up a flight of stairs to get from the ground level of the aircraft into where the cockpit was in the 124. And he would be eighteen, or Yeah. He would be an eighteen, nineteen-year-old kid. You say, Where are you going to be stationed? He says, Hanoi. And like he didn t know the difference. He was serious, okay. And that was the height of my [ ] as far as I was concerned. I felt very, very bad for these kids. Were there any other moments that sort of brought that alive most poignantly? That brought what alive? The feeling of the cost of what this was. Well we used to fly into in 141s, for instance, on the Air Evac missions where we would go from Yakota back to Elmendorf to maybe Friendship where they had all the hospital stuff. The realization was that the reason for the multiple amputees was, in this war, they didn t just want to kill people they wanted to maim them so that it would have a bigger impact on the people back at home rather than sending home a body bag was a lot easier because there were people that I used to talk to some of the passengers on the way home because as a flight examiner I wasn t sitting down in the crew position. [0:35:54] Chorney 9

10 I would check the person s work out every half hour or hour and I had plenty of time in between and I would talk to a lot of the passengers and you would have a young kid without any arms and he would talk about wanting to kill himself but he couldn t. And it was pretty gut wrenching. You mean like he physically could not because he had no arms. Right. He would have slit his own throat if he could have because he didn t want to go home and have his family see him the way he was. now. So these are some of the memories that haunt for years later. There is more but those are the ones that I think that I am talking about right That s fine. So for now, this kind of flying into Vietnam and being part of the airline of the military last for how many years? Well first of all I want you to know that I didn t just fly into Vietnam. I went to Athens. I went to Paris. I went to London. I went to Madrid. There were people who save up all their lives to go to some of these places and I went there routinely. And that was cargo trips? Cargo or passengers. Every now and then we would get on what was called an embassy run. If you were on an embassy run you would go maybe from Châteauroux Air Force Base in France to some place in Italy to maybe into Africa or Addis Ababa, into the Sudan or wherever we have an embassy and transport cargo and/or personnel from place to place. So there was plenty of good trips and then there was some trips that were not so good. When I was with the reserves I flew with a gentleman by the name of Dave Emerson. He is Ralph Waldo Emerson s grandson. And Dave was a colonel and he lost his son, who was a captain, I believe, in the Marines, in Vietnam and he found out about it while he was flying a line with us. And so he volunteered this is when I flew with the reserves out of Hanscom Field so they volunteered the crew to do another trip in and out of Vietnam and most of the time a crew only they figured they dodged a bullet by going in once during the month, into what s called the VADIZ. Once you penetrate the VATAZ, [VADIZ]which is Vietnam Air Defense Identification Zone, once you penetrated the VATAZ,[VADIZ] if you were in the Air Force or if you were in the Navy and you floated through it then you now were qualified for what is called combat pay for that month. And the ideal month that all the fat cats tried to who were in charge of scheduling would schedule themselves so they flew in at the end of the month and flew back out at the beginning of the month so they get two months pay for the one trip. That was part of the scheming involved with the higher echelons for flight pay. And I don t remember the amount of the pay but it was fairly significant. So Dave Emerson s request to go a second time Chorney 10

11 [0:40:06] We went a second time It s not that kind of a choice, it was more He was heartbroken and wanted to do that much more but when he volunteered us for the third one he almost had a mutiny. People weren t going along with this, especially the enlisted guys, and [ ]. Like a normal crew, for instance, consisted of two pilots, one navigator all of them being officers and two engineers and one loadmaster all three of those being enlisted people. That was called a normal crew. And then you had a global crew which, for instance, if you flew in an aircraft that could be refueled or if you flew in an aircraft that had a whole bunch of fuel and not too much cargo, like in a 124 you could stay up in the air for like 27 hours. That crew would have three pilots, two navigators, still two engineers, still one loadmaster but you go up till you ran out of fuel. You could be up in the air a long time. In order to keep everybody bright eyed and bushy tailed you need to switch off. So after you re done with the years where you are going to Vietnam you are in the reserves and at the same time you are the math teacher? I became a workaholic in order to escape the pain of my memories. I in 1968, in addition to teaching I started a coin store called Cumberland Coin, and I was flying with the reserves and I was teaching all at the same time. So basically my day went, I would get up in the morning, I would go to school, I would be out by 2:30, I opened up my coin store from 3:00-9:00. I was married, by the way, at the time. I became a workaholic. And I flew with the reserves on the weekends, besides as many months that I worked fifteen days in a row without a day off. When I flew on active duty I was somewhat of a workaholic also because I was gone from home twenty- two or twenty- three days out of every month. I was also, in addition to flying the line, I took on a job of training officer for the squadron. And, in retrospect, it was all about being occupied to escape what was inside of my head. And one day, I was walking down the street in Boston, after I opened up an office in Boston and I ended up crouched behind a parked car I lived in Back Bay Boston. I was walking in. And I didn t know what had happened. Analyzing it, a helicopter flew by and I didn t know exactly what, but I do know something triggered so I went to the VA and I explained my experience to them and when I went to the VA, during intake they asked you various questions. And they said, Have you ever been exposed to Agent Orange? And I said to the gal that was asking me the questions, I said, If I answer yes, will I have to take more blood tests? And she says probably. And I said, Put down no, okay? I have to tell you years later, whoever said yes got $6500 from American [ ][Cyanamid] because all of the toxins such as Agent Orange and the other defoliants did a number on a lot of people. You did not want to have a blood test again? Chorney 11

12 I don t like to get blood tests, okay. But to tell you the situation we flew Agent Orange to Vietnam, which they completely defoliated around Cam Ranh Bay for instance. We flew it over in its pure form before it was watered down millions of parts to one. There used to be a white residue inside the aircraft, after we landed, from it. So had I been exposed to it? Yes. I had been exposed to Agent Orange. I had been exposed to radiation. I flew plenty of nuclear flights which had they would give us dosimeters to wear and the dosimeters didn t even work. [0:45:56] So here it is. You have a chain like for your dog tags that has a dosimeter on it and it was a broken piece of merchandise to start off with. I flew in times when they issued us weapons. They d give us and some of it was a joke, but you had to take the weapon. They gave you a.38 gun but they would give you slugs for a.45 so you couldn t use it even if you wanted to. So the appearance of defense is as acceptable as the effect? I am trying to Well I think I want to express this the right way the illusion of reality is more important that they reality, is the best way that I can explain it. Have you ever read any of the stories by Tim O Brien? Because he talks about that the illusion of reality that s what Vietnam was. Okay. Yes. And I think Vietnam is the first war that I am aware of that people like myself questioned authority. I think, you know, normally when you are in the service and somebody says, Jump, you say, How high Sir? instead of, Why? I think you had more whys going on in Vietnam because of the mentality of the 60s, people just weren t going along with what was a bad moral judgment because somebody said, Go do it. Okay. I mean, this is before, really, the truth of the My Lai massacre came out and stuff like that but I think, in general, there were people that used some pretty good common sense. I see that as having happened over a ten- year period when I was in and out of there. Because when I first flew to Vietnam, there would be a whole bunch of Orientals on the aircraft loading and unloading it. Then you had two GIs telling them what to do. Then it transitioned to where it was mostly GIs with forklifts and sophisticated equipment to load the aircrafts and it got to the point where no Oriental was allowed on the aircraft because they would leave them little brown paper bags that would blow up the aircraft at some point in time or splitting the hydraulic systems. I flew on an aircraft where they had cut the hydraulic systems and basically, when you cut the hydraulic system you lose the ability to load [lower] the landing gear, you lose the ability to steer the aircraft. And basically what we did is we took all the water onboard the aircraft, all the urine on board the aircraft every liquid that we had and we poured it into the hydraulic system in order to lower the gear and get down on the ground. And I was in one flight, you know, where they had all the fire trucks and the foam down the runway, equipment all ready. We landed safely but then everything died after we were on the ground. But we were very lucky. And so there is an expression, I would Chorney 12

13 rather be up in the air I would rather be on the ground wishing I was in the air than in the air wishing I was on the ground or something like that. [0:50:10] Anyways, I kissed the ground a few times. I am very lucky. I have been in aircraft that was shot. I was in an aircraft Tell that story. 12:56-1:46 Well I was deadheading on an aircraft. That means I wasn t an active crewmember. I was a passenger and I was being taken from one place to another to pick up another aircraft. And while up in the air a bullet went through the bottom of the skin of the aircraft, through the top of the aircraft, just missing where I was sitting. Maybe a hundred of a second difference in the rate that we were travelling and at that time in a 124 we were probably going 260, 270 miles an hour. You know a hundredth of a second I could have had a bullet in the behind instead of here talking to you, you know. And that s its just small difference and time. And the flying expression they say when your time is up, it s up. It s kind of a deterministic type mentality. It s not fatalistic. It s not free choice. It s a deterministic type of fatality when deterministic type of mentality, not fatality. When your time is up, it s up, you know. So you just go do what you got to do and don t think too much about it. At least that s my take on it. So you came home and you changed your level of work in some ways to appease the marriage but then you started other jobs. What was the chronology of the changes that evolved once you were in the reserves? Well I went into reserves almost automatically after I got off of active duty. And I started a business within one year and teaching all at the same time. Eventually I left teaching. I left the reserves and I spent full time in my coin business. I brought the company public. I had 5000 square feet on the ground floor of the State Street Bank building in Boston at one time. I think I need some water. Sure, let s take a little break here. So we are back. Could you talk to me a little bit, Hal, about the reception back home when you returned from active duty? Yeah, we weren t really greeted with open arms by the world at large in the states. You know your friends and family certainly were happy to see you. Even some of your friends may have had a stance that was anti- war. It didn t happen to me but I had a friend that was called a baby- killer and stuff like that when he came back. But I used to play cards every Wednesday night with a group of seven or eight people and it was a card game that seven people would play. There was a dealer s choice game and the people who played were mostly guys that I had taught school with and other guys that owned barbershop businesses and whatever and a few of them were anti- war people. And because I was with the reserves there were many times that I had just flown over to Chorney 13

14 Vietnam and back again and maybe missed one week with them and then I was playing in a card game with them and they would be talking anti- war stuff and I just bit my cheek to be frank with you, because it was my opinion that they were entitled to their opinion. They were my friends regardless of what their political thoughts were and so I just didn t even tell them where I was or what I did, because some of the weeks that I missed the card game I was in Athens or Madrid instead of Vietnam. But I made no big deal over what anybody would say that was antiwar. [0:55:21] In terms of the legacy for you, it sounds like the divorce in your mind is in part because of those years? Basically, if you know the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, part of it is not being very warm to people. You are very on edge. I mean I still had dreams at night. I don t remember them all but whoever I happened to room with, be in the same bed with, tell me that I flail and rock in my sleep and sometimes punch or do other things and I guess it could be a little dangerous sleeping close to me on the wrong day. Rainy days bother me and you know it s just rain. I had last night was a tough night for me, for instance, not that I want it to be Because it was raining. Right. This is these are thoughts that pop into your head that they put you on medication to decrease the frequency that you have more good days than bad days. You can have something pop into your head just while you are walking from one room to another room. Or in the middle of doing a job or driving or something. You don t choose when this stuff happens to you. And the thing that pops into your head is sort of a horrific image? I think most of the horrific images I get are at nighttime. The other stuff, it s just you kind of get starry eyed. I have a strange combination. What I have, the people in the VA are telling me that I was the predecessor to the guy coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan because they have been exposed to the tandem afflictions of a head injury and posttraumatic stress disorder together. The VA is very good at treating posttraumatic stress disorder which goes back to the days when it was called shell- shock, for instance. Can you mention your own brain injury? Yeah. I had a brain injury in 1996, December 28 th I was hit in the head with a steel door and it knocked me unconscious. I had posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms mixed in with post concussion syndrome symptoms which included memory loss and wandering around, a combination of that and posttraumatic stress disorder which is currently what these poor kids who are currently in the VA from Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering from. A lot of times, if you treat one of the afflictions positively it effects the Chorney 14

15 other one negatively. There is neuropsychological testing and a whole bunch of other things that is required that isn t required with straight posttraumatic stress disorder. So it becomes a very complex deal and I don t know how fair a shake that these guys are getting because it s costly to supply the right kind of treatment. You were able to go on and have a successful professional life, it sounds like. Well I had a successful professional life for years. I ended up in trouble and lost millions of dollars. During the last crash? No, I had a company and during the banking crises in 1990 one of the banks went under, which was Eastland Savings Bank, and when they went under they culled [called] all their notes and when banks go under they bring their clients under with them. [1:00:13] So I lost a lot of money. That s okay. Money really doesn t mean all that much to me to be frank with you. Why don t you keep going in that direction. What are some other things that you feel that your experiences in Vietnam, your professional life what do you now know, looking back? Well, in retrospect, okay, I am seventy- two years old now. I want to stay healthy, which is if you can t stay healthy and help yourself you can never help anybody else out. I really would like to be around people that make me happy. I am to the stage of life where I don t want to be around people who are always complaining inordinately. Everybody has some problem, but you don t everybody has their own problem. You don t want to hear the other guy s problem necessarily, you know. I want to be around people who are upbeat and age is not a factor there. I mean you can have an eighty- three year old gal who is very upbeat on things and you can have a twenty- six year old gal that something is always aching on her. I want to be around people who are quite positive in their thinking. As far as money is concerned doesn t mean very much to me. How many pairs of shoes can you wear at once, you know? For your information I got a pension from the VA, a monthly pension from them. I have 100% service connected disability. For the PSTD? Yeah. PTSD, sorry. PTSD. Here is my veteran s card and where it says service connected over here means they will give me free dental and they will give me free eyeglasses and free Chorney 15

16 virtually everything. And I am very fortunate because if it weren t for that I would not feel as financially secure as I do, because even though I just have a constant flow of money coming in. Basically I spend it every month and I don t have to worry about saving for anything because there is nothing I really think I should be saving for. Yeah. You know, I mean I want to enjoy now. And I enjoy my family very much. My friends I have grandchildren and children. My grandson just got accepted to Tulane University in New Orleans so I am going out to California where he lives and I am going to travel to Tulane with him just so that he will have some company. Nice. Why not? So, I mean So any other sort of retrospective thoughts about the Vietnam era and in general as well as your own experience? Well certainly history repeats itself. I think when we first got involved over there nobody ever expected us to be there all the years that we were there, okay. I think we ought to be very, very careful before we are involved in all of these police actions. I don t think we necessarily should be the policemen for the world. I mean, from a political perspective, I am going to be critical on the involvement in Libya for instance. We don t know who were are really supporting we don t like Gaddafi, wonderful, but who are we supporting to go in against him? We don t it s my understanding that 20% of the Al- Qaeda that was in Iraq and Afghanistan were from Libya. The same people are the people that we are supporting today in trying to overthrow Gaddafi. I am not so sure that we shouldn t do what Ben Franklin said and when the people who founded this country had nice names like mind your own business and stuff like that. I think there is nothing wrong in minding your own business. Any thoughts about Brown. You have been not too far away, so have you watched it change. Yeah, I think Brown is very international in its community of people. It wasn t that international when I went there in 61. I think you probably have the brightest from the world coming here. Who knows, maybe if I applied I wouldn t even be accepted here today, for instance. Many of us would probably say that. But I looked upon Air Force ROTC and joining the service as being a great opportunity for me. [1:05:50] Chorney 16

17 I m very thankful to have had that intro from Brown. I feel like my traveling of over two million miles worth while in the service was the best education I could have received. I didn t realize how actual hands on experience is far outpaces strictly reading about it. So I am very thankful for without that intro through Air Force ROTC I would not have experienced that, going in as an officer versus an enlisted person, because I feel that I would have probably eventually ended up in the service. Back then you had a pretty good shot if you were in physically good condition of serving for the military. Would you have afforded Brown if you had not been ROTC. Was ROTC one of the things that brought you to Brown? Made it possible? No, it s not. In fact I didn t even know when I first came here I didn t even know Brown had an ROTC. When I was here I went to Sayles Hall. I remember meeting with some people there and it sounded like a good thing for me and so I joined it. And I am so happy that I did, okay. Besides the courses that have added to your Brown experience what were some of the other obligations did you have summers training? Well I went to there was one summer training that I went to at Lockbourne Air Force Base outside of Columbus, Ohio and during that year I had sent you some pictures of one of the training classes over there and I also went through a survival school called Nelsonville that was outside of Lockbourne. And later on, before going to Vietnam, and I think this is semi- comical to some extent, is prior to going to Vietnam you have to go to survival school. And they sent me to survival school in Stead Air Force Base outside of Reno Nevada where they had thirteen foot of snow at Lake Tahoe. So there it is. I am going to be flying in war over the jungle and I am walking around with snowshoes on in the Sierra Nevadas at 6500 feet or whatever it was. I just laughed at myself and said, This is kind of typical over here. I said, you might think I would be in Panama or Florida or someplace like that getting ready but instead I went to the Sierra Nevadas. One of our other veterans had an interesting comment about the training where he said that they forced us to live through ridiculous unfair circumstances and I think that s good, because war can be ridiculous and unfair and there is nothing [ ]. Oh sure, oh sure. Absolutely. If you are very logical and you want to go with reasoning for everything nothing is going to make any sense to you. Right. So it breaks you down, builds you up. That s why they had the word snafu, situation normal, all I ll say fouled up, okay. But that s quite often, yes. [1:10:02] Chorney 17

18 There are some great military adages like that and acronyms. All to help with the sense of humor, I suppose. Sure. So any other stories or just things that you want to make sure that you put on the record here, or to help us understand, looking back as historians or writers? I personally think, okay this is an opinion, okay I don t think the people who were in ROTC were looked upon extremely favorable by the rest of the academic community, your classmates, you know. I thought there were certainly guys in Navy ROTC and Air Force ROTC that were in different fraternities or whatever. But I didn t really think that was highly looked upon. Now maybe that is just my own personal opinion, you know, but had. Do you remember people saying anything that judged you or I don t remember anything specifically. That is just a general feeling that I And it was after your time, I guess, that ROTC would then leave Brown. Now they are considering bringing it back. Yeah. And they are using somewhat of an excuse because of the stance in the military against the gays and whatever, but There is also the academic question, apparently. I will tell you what. I really liked the air science courses. I thought they really broadened my knowledge of the world. I thought they were much more realistic and the poli sci courses that I had seemed to be much more theoretical. Okay. So any final thoughts? If I had it to do over again, I would do it again. I have certainly no regrets about being at Brown, about being in ROTC, about being in active duty. I have some regrets that I had divorced. My ex- wife remarried. She is really a nice girl. You know when you don t get along it is not necessarily one person s fault or whatever but I think I really think the guys that come back after depending upon the range of their experiences are screwed up a little bit. That s an understatement. PTSD. You can t get warm to people. You are always if you are walking down the street and somebody approaches you from behind you are ready to hit them. You are belligerent. It s like basic survival instincts kicking in. But I just all in all to sum it up I am kind of like a happy camper for considering all in all. Good. Chorney 18

19 from Brown. Okay. Thank you Hal. Alright we are going to do a post script here about a friend My friend Felix Czech who was a French citizen who went to Brown I went to his naturalization ceremony in the United States when he became a U.S. citizen. And he and I were both pinned in January 1962 with our second lieutenant bars. My ex- wife pinned them on me and his girlfriend pinned them on him. Out of all of the people I had went to Brown with I had run into Felix in France when I was flying in and out of Châteauroux Air Force Base and Felix was stationed at Évreux and by the way, I ran into him and I was very glad to see him because my biggest memory of him was he had been drafted to go into the army, the French Army, to serve in Algeria when they were having trouble then and he had to become a naturalized citizen or else they were going to take him back to France to serve in the army. And instead he became a second lieutenant in the air force and a pilot. He is one of the few people that I ran into that I went to Brown with when I was in the service. And I will tell you I ran into one other person whose name was Peter Hurley in the class of And Peter Hurley was in Athens at Astir Beach on his honeymoon and I was just happened to have one flight into Athens at the same time and I was walking on Astir Beach and I was walking down the beach and Peter said, Hey Hal, how are you doing? He was on his honeymoon like I say and I was on a different kind of honeymoon. I was getting paid to be on vacation. So out of all of the people that I went to Brown with, those two I ran into while I was abroad. [1:16:15] And is Felix still alive do you know I really don t know. Yeah, okay. So he is class of 61 too? Yeah. And a lot of the people that I flew with on active duty are no longer alive. Okay. Very I know of very few who are alive. Whether or not they died from Agent Orange exposure or some other defoliant or whether or not they were hit crossing the street or whatever, the average age that a Vietnam Veteran dies at is 57 and there is an extremely high divorce rate in the high 90s. War takes its toll. And I think this specific war took a larger toll than most because of the acceptance by the populace of the people coming back. I think if you are warmly accepted and you get a heroes welcome it changes your mentality. I think the World War Two group of people that came back, even though they are the greatest in the silent generation they were welcomed back and it made one heck of a difference. Yeah. We will look up Felix s record. How do you spell his last name? Chorney 19