Myron Carpenter December 3, 2004 Interviewed by Dave Miles at the Anoka County History Center

Transcription

1 Myron Carpenter December 3, 2004 Interviewed by Dave Miles at the Anoka County History Center Myron has consented to share some of his military and life experiences with us. D.M. We ll get started at the beginning. Where were you born and raised? M.C. On a small dairy farm west of Pine City, Minnesota. I was born in August of D.M. So your family lived on a farm, and your father was a farmer? M.C. Yeah. And he also had a canned milk route. D.M. In the Pine City area? M.C. Yeah. D.M. Did you have any brothers and sisters? M.C. I have a sister that s four years younger, and a brother that s four years older. I am 56. My dad never was in the Army, but to review a little history of myself, I went to a one-roomed grade school and my kids say it was a mile up there and a mile to home, but it wasn t. But anyway, we did walk to school a mile every day. I had the same teacher for 7 years, which goes back. My dad had that canned milk route that began, I think, the work ethics for our family and for all three of us kids because everyday for, at one time, 17 years straight, 365 days a year, his milk truck left our yard between 10 to seven and 20 to seven every day of the year. That s a work ethic that is unforgettable. D.M. And I imagine you all were working on all your own chores to do. M.C. Yeah, because we had a small farm. In fact, you know, we had a little of everything. We had pigs and chickens and sheep. Not what you d call a selfsustaining farm, because that was in 57 and that area was kind of D.M. So, the one roomed school about a mile from where you lived how many years did you go there? M.C. Seven years. My brother went there 8 years. And then we went to Pine City School the high school. They changed it to 6 years for my sister. She only went there 6 years until 7 th grade, and then she went to Pine City, because they realized that it was a hard time for kids to make a transitional change from a one-

2 roomed school with 12 to 20 kids to a high school where there was 300. So they started doing it earlier. In the late 50 s, they realized that that was more of a transitional restriction, so they started to do something, so that s why I went there 7 years. My brother went 8, I went 7, and my sister went 6. D.M. What did you like about the one-roomed school? M.C. Well, it s a real different motivation than today, and I don t agree with all of the educational things that we do in America, size-wise. I think a lot of our education was better that way than it is now because of the family participation in education and, if the school needed heat, the farmers whose kids went to the school donated the wood. If the school needed to be painted, the parents whose kids went to school there, painted the school. There was a whole family camaraderie thing in education; that s what education was. Today, education is I hate to say the word, but a babysitter issue instead of the family commitment issue that it was back in the 40s and 50s. D.M. Well, I think that the parents accepted responsibility then. They all lived through a depression and they were used to accepting that kind of responsibility. M.C. Yeah. A lot of them never went to school, probably or much. They might have gone to school, but maybe first and second grade. That s all my dad went. My dad probably went to school to second grade, I guess, and spent the rest of the time helping on the farm, so he wanted his kids to have the education which they didn t get, so that s a different era. D.M. So, did you have to ride a bus into Pine City to go to school? M.C. Yeah. About an hour and 15 minutes one way, because it went around other areas. It s only 6-1/2 miles to Pine City, but because of the bus s route, it took the time it did. D.M. It must have picked you up first! M.C. Yeah. We were near the beginning. D.M. How did you like school in Pine City? M.C. I enjoyed it there. I enjoyed it there. I was in FFA, and I wasn t involved in sports because I was so small. When I graduated from high school, I was 5 3-1/2 5 4 and 99 pounds. So I grew almost 4 or 5 inches after high school and gained pounds after high school. I was so small that I wouldn t be able to be involved in any sports plus we had those responsibilities on the farm, anyway, so that s the way it went. In those days, there were city kids/town kids and farm kids, and there was a big difference between the two of them. There s probably other changes now what do you call it in schools? different groups that have

3 theories, but that s what it was back in the rural areas back then the farm kids and the city kids. D.M. It s good my wife s not here. She relates that I was a city kid,.i was going to treat her in a city of 8,000, she was a town kid. (??? Comment not understandable/legible???) M.C. There s a lot of cultural differences. D.M. Yeah, I know what you mean. Which subjects did you like in school? M.C. Math was my best. Algebra and Geometry. And then I liked History, too. D.M. So what did you do after you graduated? M.C. Well, when I was in high school, I started working part time at a car dealer in Pine City, and then I had to be home to do chores after school. I worked a couple hours at a car dealer, and then I went to vocational school for two years in Pine City after high school to be an auto mechanic, and I continued to work for him, part time, besides helping my parents on the farm because I lived at home. D.M. I see. When did you graduate? M.C. 66! Then when I got out of high school, my boss there at the dealership in Pine City helped me get a job at a Pontiac dealer the largest Pontiac dealer in the world, in downtown Minneapolis, and I only worked there about 8-9 months. I got drafted in the Army. D.M. Was getting drafted a surprise? M.C. No. We knew it. In that era, there was no lottery system or number system, or anything. They just drafted everybody. I mean, that s just.when you get to that age, you re drafted. D.M. So when were you drafted? M.C. February, 69. D.M. What did you think about that? Being drafted? M.C. Well, I think it was a big responsibility to protect our country and our world. Protect the world from - actually from Communism that s what we thought it was at that time, and I still think that was the right thing to do then. If I had to do the same thing over, I d do the same thing I did. I d rather get drafted than go in the National Guard. My brother went in the National Guard, which was fine, but I didn t want to do that.

4 D.M. What did you parents think about you being drafted? M.C. I can t really say. I can t really say we ever talked about that. I really don t know. D.M. So, you re drafted into the Army. Where do you go to boot camp? M.C. Fort Campbell, Kentucky. D.M. What did you think of boot camp? M.C. It s a very scary experience when you ve had an isolated exposure in a rural community and you go into a large military installation with a wide spectrum or diversity of people; you know, blacks, whites, all religious groups and everything. It s kind of a scary experience at first. Plus, the physical stress the basic training is very intense; much more intense than it is today, I m sure. Back in that era, they d get us up in the morning a lot of times 4:00 or 4:30 run 7 miles or 4 miles 3-1/2-4 miles off the rifle range. Run back, have a TT breakfast a biscuit and a glass of orange juice, and run back out. So before 10:00 in the morning, you already ran, probably, miles. My legs have never been the same since then. I mean, if somebody passed out or fell over, they just had a jeep or a truck following and picked them up. D.M. Do you remember how long boot camp was? M.C. Eight weeks. D.M. Eight weeks? Did you have any pleasant memories of boot camp? M.C. Oh, yeah. It s a real learning experience, and I think it prepares you for a lot of other things. In the military, that s what it s for. That s obviously why they have it. It was a very necessary thing. Military-wise, they had to have that. I think a lot of people should have that experience. I think it s a good experience, but it s not easy, and in some ways, it s not all a positive mental thing, because of the way the drill sergeants conducted it back in that era, which they no longer do now. Some would get to the point of being abusive, both verbally and emotionally, at that time, which they don t do anymore. I m sure they did it in World War II and the Korean War, too, but I heard that it s different now, both emotionally and physically: the basic training part of it. But you ve got to keep in mind they were training us to survive in a hand-to-hand combat situation, which is actually what they re probably doing in Iraq right now, but it s probably different in Iraq. D.M. What are some important things you learned in boot camp?

5 M.C. Well, you learned that you can tell your body to be stretched to physical limits, which some of it, you know, I was already aware of because of the dairy farm, where we bailed hay on the farm. So I did a lot better than some, or a lot of guys did, because my physical ability was in the middle or above, even though I was very small, so that surprised some of the people, but you learn that that s for those physical abilities. You learn your abilities and where they fall into, or where they could fall into, in a military situation. And then you learn the discipline and military what s the world I m looking for? military control issues, or respect issues, for the people above you and that kind of thing. D.M. So, what happened after boot camp? M.C. Before boot camp ended, I got orders for getting drafted into the Infantry to go to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, so I extended in the Army, at that time, to get out of the Infantry. I extended for another year, to go into aircraft armament. And I went to Fort Reed, Maryland AIT, which is called advanced training, and I trained with the military out there that know the electronics of machine guns on helicopters, rocket launchers, grenade launchers that were used in Vietnam helicopters. That was a four-month training course out there. D.M. We ll back up just a minute. I want to change tack. So, you were able to request and get into aircraft maintenance? M.C. Maintenance. No, armament. D.M. Armament. M.C. Aircraft armament, which, when I got to Vietnam, turned out to be a little bit different than I thought it would be, but that s another story. I ended up not serving that whole year, because I got an early out (out of the Army), so I served 9 months. D.M. Again, kind of go through what the training consisted of what you were trained on in the 4 months at Fort Reed? M.C. Oh, electrical schematics of wiring the helicopters, how the drums operated. They were run on 24 volts. All the repairs of those armaments, they call it, on the helicopter. Machine guns and rocket pods, grenade launchers; so it was probably half hands-on and half classroom for the electronics and mechanics. D.M. Did you like that training? M.C. Yeah, I enjoyed it, but thinking back on it, I didn t really know I was too naïve or whatever I never thought where I was going with that labor. I thought I was doing a non-front lines issue, and it turned out to be a little bit different than that because of the demand that people wanted to get over there.

6 D.M. So, after your 4 months were over, and the training, what happens then? M.C. Then I went home for a couple of weeks, and then I went to Dau Bai, Vietnam. D.M. How did you get to Vietnam? Ship? Plane? M.C. A seventeen-and-a-half hour plane ride out of California. You could hear a pin drop on that plane, too. D.M. Where did you fly into in Vietnam? M.C. Fly into Da Nang. D.M. Okay. M.C. We were there for 4-5 days maybe a week, I would guess. Four-five days I was in Da Nang, and then they fly you up on a C130 to where you were going to stay, which was Dau Bai, Vietnam, and that s 75 miles from the DMZ. D.M. What were your thoughts when you got on that plane? M.C. Well, obviously, you d heard the news. At that time, they had a lot of news everyday, as they do now about Iraq, too. But they called it body count in those days. Now, they usually have different terminology. They announced the body count of enemy and the armed forces, so you kind of wonder about that. You re so mentally and emotionally psyched up that you want to do it, and want to see it, that it kind of overrides. Some of the other feelings about this - that you won t come back - I can t say I really had that. I never let myself go that way. D.M. What did you think when you disembarked from the plane at Da Nang? M.C. That it s was a very crude situation. The temperature is the first thing that hits you. I went over in November, and so the temperature when we got off the plane was like 118. So that s the first thing that hits you. Then, the big mass of people that are there to get you; the fact that there s thousands and thousands.. D.M. So you had to go through all the process of going to Da Nang. M.C. Yeah. You get all the shots diphtheria, malaria shots. They were all done with air guns, so I had sores on my arm from them. I ve never liked shots ever since then, but then you never get shots normally with air guns. The impact of it. D.M. Okay. So when they send you up to your base can you spell that for me? M.C. D-a-u B-a-i.

7 D.M. And that s about 70 miles from the DMZ? M.C. Yeah. There s a 101 st Airborne Division. 101 st Aviation Company. Well, actually, it s more than that. 101 st Airborne Division, 101 st Aviation Battalion. D.M. When I talk to all you Army guys, you got your division, battalion M.C. Yeah, well, mine is unique. D.M. All right. Just a minute. Let me get that: Airborne Division, M.C. 101 st Aviation Battalion, 101 st Aviation Company. It s the only one in the Army that had that all three 101. Very unique. Very prestigious group with a nick name of Black Widows. It was an aviation assault company. D.M. And explain what an aviation assault company does. M.C. They had 26 Huey helicopters, 6 Cobras, and 2 of those little helicopters. By aviation assault, it means that on the Huey, you could go in and medivac people out, haul infantry men in, supplies in, and be supported by the Cobra gun ships. The biggest example I can think of is a recent movie that was on TV called, We Were Soldiers. That s very similar to what happens. If you saw the movie, that was a very good description of what our aviation assault attacks helicopter did. We had the Cobras that did exactly what they showed on the movie; we had the Hueys that did exactly that. D.M. Alright, so you arrived at your base, and what were your duties? M.C. Well, I m a PFC at the time, so I was put in a platoon (a platoon is a small group in the company; like guys) and with my armament experience, I was loading the machine guns, pre-flight loading rockets, Cobras, all that. I did all that for our platoon, which was guys. We had 6 pilots, plus enlisted men, crew chief, and door gunner. And then on the Cobras, a pilot and a co-pilot to the 2 seaters; no enlisted men. I was a support person when I first got over there for our platoon, loading pre- and post- flight ammo for the aircraft 24/7. Some nights you d go all night just loading one after the other. And I helped with the fueling crew. I worked with the fueling crew, too, because they were directly attached to us. It was a matter of coordinating fuel and ammunition, and that s what I did the first couple of months I was over there. Then I got promoted to E4, and we lost some people, so they wanted me to be a door gunner on a helicopter. That s a volunteer situation, and, at that time, they didn t force you into being a door gunner. And I don t know if all companies were that way, but our company was that way. Nobody was a door gunner unless you wanted to do that. D.M. And did you?

8 M.C. Yeah. I didn t use drugs, I didn t drink alcohol or anything, and I d seen what some of the guys go through, and saw how I thought they could do it better, and some of the people in the company recognized that, so that s what I did. And I really excelled at it. I thought I was doing the right thing, you know? I still wasn t ready for what I really went through and saw. I don t know if anybody mentally or emotionally could be unless you would redo it. D.M. Are there some things or experiences you d want to share about your time as a door gunner there? M.C. Well, a lot of em are very emotional, and I really don t talk about them a lot. I hate to fall back on something again, but I ll fall back on some of the movies that are out - that one that I mentioned We Were Soldiers, because that s basically the similar thing; that movie is what every door gunner did all the time. It s a very close-knit group and you re protecting your own Cobra, and obviously, taking it on yourself. And you re hauling people that are either dead or dying, so it s - I don t think anybody can prepare for it. They try to prepare people for that, depending on the person the individual it s hard to prepare people for that. So there s a lot of pride, emotionally, that I went through, but I don t think any of them were detrimental to the rest of my life. I think it was a positive thing that I looked at it that way, excelled very well in what I did. I was a Sergeant Spec 5 before I was in the Army a year, which in combat time isn t that good and this day.. You know what I mean? D.M. Yeah. M.C. Then I became an Acting Sergeant; they called them A.J.s. I wasn t in the Army long enough to be called a Sergeant, so I got promoted to Spec 5, and then I was Platoon Sergeant for a couple of weeks. D.M. Is that E5? Spec 5? M.C. Sergeant E5 yeah, the Spec 5 was Sergeant E5, but you don t have the three stripes, because I wasn t in the Army long enough. I was only in the Army 11 months and I got Spec 5, and they wanted me to be a Sergeant, but they wouldn t let me because I wasn t in the Army long enough so I was a Spec 5. And then I still they called me an A.J. They called me A.J. Carpenter, because I wore Sergeant stripes, but I wasn t a Sergeant; I was a Spec 5, and then I was a Platoon Sergeant for our platoon. D.M. When you re a Platoon Sergeant, are you still door gunner? M.C. Yes. D.M. And you said you were very good at it; you were a very good door gunner.

9 M.C. I consider I was, cuz I survived. D.M. What made a good door gunner? (laughter) M.C. You can coordinate and communicate with the other guys in your company to help them. You want them to believe you re helping them survive. And I thought I did a personally good job of that. I mean, you have to pick out little things in life that you can pick up on and feel good about yourself to keep going. I m sure nurses do the same thing. I m sure doctors do the same thing, and I really believe that military people did the same thing, too. You had to pick out your own things to make yourself feel good about it, to keep going emotionally and mentally and some guys had a hard time with that and turned to alcohol, drugs and other issues. D.M. But you seemed to be able to separate out, if I can use the word positive and the encouraging aspects of what you were doing. M.C. Yes. That s what I looked for, because why look at it the other way? I mean, I was gonna have to serve you know you aren t going to get sent home because you don't do a good job. So if you try to do a good job, I figured it d just make it easier for me, and it turned me into being a little bit more of a loner in our company in that aspect because of some of those issues. Because of some of the command roles I had - to the point that a couple of months later, when I got Spec 5, then I was only a door gunner a few more weeks. There were a couple of incidents that happened that turned it, so I decided not to do that anymore. And then I became the armament repairman, and I had my own little hooch right down on the flight line where all the guns were kept and I lived there on the flight line, by myself. In my own little hooch, protecting all the guns. I lived right with the guns and by myself all the time. I never lived in the barracks with the other guys, so it was a very isolated job that I had the last five months I was there. D.M. Do the crews all stay together on a helicopter like that? M.C. The officers stay in their own barracks, and the enlisted men stay in their own. D.M. Well, I meant on the aircraft, itself. As an aircraft crew, do you stay together? Or did you fly with various pilots? Various aircraft? This is Side Two, and Myron was just talking about how the crews are rotated on the aircraft. M.C. Yeah, the officers, with the pilot and co-pilot, coordinate together with a specific crew chief and door gunner, but depending on the hours that they fly, that might be variable. You might have 2 co-pilots and 2 crew chiefs that you re assigned to, not just the sole crew. But most of the time, we had four with our platoon: two pilots, two co-pilots that were with our platoon of 13-15, and gunners, and

10 crew chiefs. So the crew is four men on the helicopter gunner, crew chief, copilot and pilot. And obviously, the crew chief and door gunner don t have any control over the machine guns and armament on the helicopter. They just have control of their own machine guns on the side of the helicopter. And then they have observation roles while you re flying, obviously, and gunner support roles while you re flying cuz you re shooting at the enemy when you re landing and taking off to protect the aircraft and people you re picking up. That s the way it works. So you ve got grenades on you, you have your M16 machine gun and probably 3,000-5,000 rounds of ammo under your seat, and then your M16 machine gun. And a grenade launcher, which is like a little sawed off grenade launcher it s only about 18 inches long, and it would launch grenades. We called them chunkers. I had one of those and probably grenades with it. D.M. Approximately how long were you flying as a gunner? M.C. I had 420 combat hours. And I crashed twice. D.M. I was gonna ask you if you took any hits on the aircraft. M.C. Yeah. One time a back chain got blown off and the helicopter went around and around and down. And the second time, something went off and it was there at the oxygen, so the helicopter had no air to fly, so we went straight down. Twice. D.M. You speak very glibly about two crashes. I mean, were you injured? M.C. I lived, yeah. The second one, the co-pilot and the crew chief died landing on that side, and me and the pilot survived. And the first one also died. It landed in the mud. D.M. I assume you have at least one Purple Heart. M.C. Yeah. D.M. At that time, were people doing one-year tours in Vietnam? M.C. They were beginning - we had a lot of guys in our company that were there as long as four years. D.M. Is that right? M.C. They were starting to realize, at that time, that that can t continue, for a lot of reasons. And I was, like I told you earlier, I was just hearing on the radio on the way over here about how the ministry roles changed over the decade, and I think one of the reasons why it s changed is because of the Vietnam era, and what these troops went through and how it affected them afterwards; changes that we do now. This is why we have a completely different political outlook on veterans

11 today than we had in the 60s when we came home from Vietnam, because you were the bad guy if you went over there, society-wise, in American, when you came home. I think of that numerous times when hear about how we honor six people from Minnesota that are going to Iraq. They have a big ceremony at the airport to honor them. When we went, in the 60s, we were shunned. We had riots. They threw rotten apples at us and eggs, because we were going - at the Minneapolis airport - when you left. D.M. Is that right? In Minneapolis? M.C. Or when you came home you d see it both ways. It s a different outlook, society-wise, on Vietnam veterans in that era. When I got back from Vietnam, then I was stationed in Yuma, Arizona testing ammunition before it went to Vietnam. And then I got transferred the war was de-escalating, so I got transferred to Fort Ord, California. I bought a car, and the end of the Davis Riots were going on in that era, and you couldn t go anyplace without a lot of times you d be stopped on the highway by a riot; so it s a completely different environment. I want to believe that s one of the reasons because a lot of us are parents now, and have people that are going in the military I gotta believe that affected the way we treat these people. Plus, it s an all volunteer Army now. That s a different prestige level than the military had in other conflicts and roles. I don t want to use the word wars, because we call them conflicts because and that s another touchy part of the world America s.because we have these conflicts, but you don t declare war. It started in that era, and I don t necessarily always agree with that. We call them conflicts, and we lose 55,000 men in Vietnam, and I m not sure of the numbers in Korea, probably 25,000 in Korea or 35: I m not sure of the numbers. But that was a war. Vietnam wasn t; it was a conflict, but we still lost 55,000 men. Now we have another conflict that we re losing, what? 12 a week? Or 1200 so far. D.M. Ten thousand injured. M.C. Ten thousand injured; yes! With legs cut off and arms cut off and dismemberment issues, so I have some issues about some of those actions that D.M. Some things you ve mentioned, I d like to come back to. Let s go back to Vietnam back to when you were a gunner, you spent 5 months in your hooch, and then did you come home after about 5 months? Is that the deal? M.C. Yeah, I spent a year in Vietnam. I spent the first couple of months as a support person for the platoon, and then I was promoted Spec 4, and went to a door gunner, and then I was promoted to Spec 5 and continued as a Platoon Sergeant, which had a lot of other leadership roles when you go to that. When you go to a Spec 5 or a Sergeant, in Vietnam, back in my era, you would go into a whole different realm of responsibilities, protecting the perimeter of the bunker line of the whole compound and there s a lot of other roles that enter into it: leadership

12 roles, role model roles, a lot of things enter in, which I took em on very proudly and I enjoyed doing them. I did isolate myself more in doing that, but I know that I saved lives, and I know I did the right thing in that, even though it probably isolated me more than it did some other people. But that was partly my choice because of some other issues involved with drugs and alcohol. At that time, the Army didn t supply water. They supplied plane loads of Budweiser. A C130 would land at Dau Bai. The first time it opened the door and I saw it was Budweiser front-to-back, I just couldn t believe it. We didn t have water that wasn t contaminated unless I boiled it myself. But the Army would haul in a whole plane load of Budweiser. Just to give you a cross-reference, when Iraq started D.M. You know, I hadn t heard that before. M.C. You haven t heard that before? D.M. No. M.C. Oh, yeah. The 101 st Airborne Division brought it. Because I was right on the flight line. The CFP flight line, a quarter of a mile wide and half a mile long, was able to land a C130. And we d loaded it on trucks. We d unload the whole C130 and loaded it on trucks. D.M. Okay. M.C. So that would give you an idea of the issues with.i thought at the time, Why couldn t we supply water, which they do now in Iraq. When the conflict started in Iraq, they pulled the alcohol. I have people that have friends or relatives in Iraq, and said that when the conflict started, they pulled the alcohol and they supplied bottled water. In Vietnam, they didn t supply bottled water, but they supplied Budweiser. So it s a different era, and the alcohol use was very heavily used in my company and other companies near us. Yeah. Marine companies. There was a Marine company right next to us. It was actually at Dau Bai, itself. There were only 3 companies on that whole compound: 101 st Aviation and 151 st, and Marines. That s all that was on that whole compound, so we had all the support of the bunker line all the way around 24/7. Bunkers every 100 feet with machine guns in them, all the way around the whole parameter, and there s only 200 and some guys in each company, so you ve got 700 and some men, and you got 56 - I think we had 56 or 57 bunkers around the compound manned 24/7 to protect the place. D.M. Did you take attacks on the compound? M.C. Yeah, mortar attacks and a couple of times we almost got overrun by the Vietnamese, themselves. Hand-to-hand. I shouldn t say hand-to-hand, but I mean they d come at you. Their infantry. They got the helicopters out of there.

13 One of them got damaged by mortar and I think the rest of them they got out of there before we got overrun. We didn t get overrun, because the Air Force came in and kind of did like the soldiers on TV, where they Napong and take them down, and then they flew in a bunch more infantry to help us protect it, so that s the way that went. D.M. Did you lose close friends? M.C. Oh, yeah. When I flew into that company, they were losing 15 a week when I started. It got down to where after a year we maybe didn t even lose 1 a week. It started to de-escalate by the end of my term there. But when I got there, I flew into Dau Bai, and there were 15 pine boxes sitting by the aircraft, so that s a big wake up call to see them lined up. Nobody in them. They were just sitting there for the next week. D.M. When you left Vietnam, did you fly out of Da Nang? M.C. Yeah. We d fly back down they d fly you back down in a C130, and then you d go D.M. What were your thoughts taking off? M.C. Well, I was glad that I was leaving, you know, and I was glad that I was able to serve over there and that my term was over with. I was looking forward to that. There s a whole camaraderie in Vietnam about that, and the term that they use is short, and by short, I mean that you don t have much time left over there and everything revolves around a pecking order of the troops in your company. By pecking order, I mean by the experiences you had and what you d done, which establishes your own reputation, and then you proceed up the pecking order. And then you become a short-termer, then short-timer, and you re attitude and your feelings change. That s why I took over the armament shop the last 4-5 months I was there rather than be a door gunner on a helicopter, because of the experience that I had. And I was the ammunition man. I hauled the ammunition in. I drove the truck up to Camp Evans, which was 101 st Division Headquarters 17 miles away. I d drive up there with a truck and haul the ammo back once a week. I had some real scary experiences during that which were very imbedded in my mind. I picked up a Pappa San one day. I saw him walking on the road numerous times before that, and I picked him up in my truck, and I got a couple miles down the road, and a helicopter landed on the road in front of me and a helicopter landed behind me, and they took him away. So then, when I got to the village, a couple of miles away, they were all yelling at me going through and I went up and loaded up. I had a ten ton truck. Loaded, probably, 10 pallets of 762 ammo and each pallet had to weigh a ton and a half, I suppose. Four-by-four pallets, and I had ten of them on there. Eight or ten of them on there. When I went back through the village, the village people filled the street and didn t want to let me through, cuz I figured they knew that I picked up Pappa San and they took him, you know. So I

14 had choices to make on how to survive that and they weren t probably I did survive and I got through, but there was probably a bunch of people killed at the time because of my choices, because I was by myself on a ten ton truck, so when the street filled up, I had no choice but to down shift, pull the air horn, and keep going. That s basically how I got through the village. Obviously, I never drove the ammo truck I never left the post with the ammo truck after that because the village people would be looking for me. I only had a few weeks left in Vietnam at the time, so they switched somebody else to the ammo truck and I never drove the ammo truck after that. That was kind of an emotional and changing issue. D.M. When you flew back to the States, did you come into San Francisco? M.C. I can t remember if it was San Francisco or L.A. I thought it was Los Angeles, but it could be San Francisco. I wasn t ready for that question. I can t remember where we landed. D.M. But then you went to Fort Ord? M.C. No, I went home for a couple of weeks and then I went to Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona; the biggest military acreage installation in the world. We tested ammunition plots before they went over to Vietnam. That s basically all we did. Then they transferred me to Fort Ord, California. I had 5 or 6 months left then, and it turns out that the reason I got transferred to Fort Ord, California, was the First Sergeant I had in Vietnam got stationed there at a training camp at Fort Ord, and because he... and they didn t need that many people in Yuma Proving Grounds, he had me transferred up there to be a Training Sergeant up there. So I was a Drill Sergeant AIP training in Fort Ord, California. I had guys for four weeks survival training. They lived right with me in the barracks, and I put em on a plane to Vietnam, because they were training to be survivors, and I didn t want them to have the emotional change from going home, so we put em me and this Sergeant - would take em right to the plane and put em on the plane and go with them. They never had the opportunity to go home like I did. You know. So I did that for 2 months 2 groups. One group for four weeks, and I had a week off, and then another group for four weeks. Then I went into the Project Transition, where I went to moderate psychology in the afternoon. And I was in the Army in the morning. The last three months I was in the Army, and then I got out.after that project with the consideration that I go to school. You had to meet certain criteria. You had to sign up for a school, and when you got out the Army, you continued your education. There was a whole education project transition and that was one of the first eras they started doing that because they started realizing that these guys you go from a combat situation into society they started realizing that wasn t going to continue to work, so they started this Project Transition, and I m not sure if I was the first group in that, but I was in one of the first groups in that, where they gradually encourage you to make the change from military back into society. You know what I mean?

15 D.M. Yeah. What were you taking at the college, then? M.C. I took business courses. And then I went to Minnesota School of Business in Minneapolis when I got out. D.M. Oh, yeah? So were you discharged then from Fort Ord? M.C. Yes. D.M. And you went back to Minneapolis? M.C. Well, I came back to my parent s farm, obviously, and then met a friend of mine that got out of the Army at the same time, and we rented an apartment. Me and my friend rented an apartment, and I went to the Minnesota School of Business. D.M. Were you also working at the same time that you were going to the school of business? M.C. Yeah. At the Crown Auto Store. When I got out of doing that, at the time, I met my wife and got married right after that; I got married in 73. I got out of the Army in 71 - the end of 71. I met her in 72, at the State Fair, with my friend, and then, in 73 we got married. I ve been married to her ever since. D.M. I was going to ask you how you met your wife. How did you meet her at the State Fair? M.C. Well, my best friend s sister and Penny, my wife, were going to nurse s school, and they invited my wife and my friend s (which is now my friend s wife), and they all went to the State Fair and invited me to go with them, and I met my wife. That s how I met her. I married Penny, my wife of 31+ years, and Rusty got married a few months before we did. He s my best friend. I still ice fish with him, but the lakes aren t froze over now. Yeah, I have three children: 28, 24, and 20. And I have a grandson, 2-1/2 years. D.M. Where do your children work? In Minneapolis? M.C. My daughter lives in Hugo. She s a grade school teacher. She s got a masters degree in Early Childhood Education. She s been married 5 years. My son goes to Hennepin Technical College, and works for the Green Mill restaurant. He lives at home. And my little girl goes to Fargo the University of Minnesota, and she s living out there. It s her second year. D.M. So, where did you work, then. You re married, so where did you work from then until now?

16 M.C. Well, I worked for Crown Auto Stores for a couple of years and then I went to work for Dealy Olds up in Brooklyn Center and lived in Fridley. My wife and I had a house in Fridley, and my first daughter was born there in 77. And then in 1980, my dad was not feeling well, and since I always wanted to be my own boss, I bought a farm up in Pine City near my dad s place, and had a small dairy farm there. My son was born there, my youngest daughter was born there. In 87-88, we realized that there was no future, financially, in agriculture, and we sold our dairy cattle, and I moved to Alexandria to go to a school for automotive electronics to get updated on computerized cars and trained for the new emission laws that were started. And I came down here (I went there 2 years. I worked at night and went to school during the day), and got a job at Rosedale Chevrolet when the emission laws kicked in to say that cars had to pass emissions tests. I was trained to do that. That s why I went to school in Alexandria. And we built a new house in Blaine, right by Johnsville Grade School, fourteen years ago, and I ve been working at Rosedale Chev ever since; I still work there. D.M. You still live there? M.C. I live in East Bethel now. The kids graduated from school, so we bought 2 acres out in East Bethel, out in the country, a very quiet place in the woods, and we live out in the country now. Still in Anoka County. We didn t want to drive that far to move all of our stuff to the farm D.M. How do you think the time you spent in the military and the experiences that you had in that period changed your attitude or the way you act? M.C. Well, my dad said I was never the same. He said I even walk different. That s what he said. I don t know how I was before that, but I think I have some prejudice feeling that I shouldn t have for certain ethnic groups after spending a year over there. I don t always like em and I catch myself saying things to coworkers that are words that I probably shouldn t say. So that s the biggest thing I don t like about how it changed me. And I have to work at that in my future years to try to diminish that, I think. I hate to come up with a negative, but that s a negative that s the person I ve come to be. On the positive side, like I said earlier, I think it s motivated me in different ways in my life. My life hasn t been all even. Everybody s life is on an up and down scale. Some years of my life, financially, I ve been down here and some years, I ve been up here, so there s obviously waves of my life. My wife of 30-some years has been able to put up with that, and we succeeded successfully and we have a good pattern. The kids did real well in school, and they still are. I think the motivational side of it is positive, but some of that I already had before I went in there. I just continued it. Continued to stay because of my rural heritage and religious beliefs that my parents had and I was able to put it on a positive note instead of a negative note. That s what I like that s the best way to say it. And a lot of people didn t make that choice. People that were in the military with me didn t make the same

17 choices I did. And, obviously, a lot of them are not alive anymore. Either they got killed over there, or they re gone already for other reasons. D.M. You mentioned religious beliefs. Do you feel that was one of the things that really sustained you at the time that you were in Vietnam? M.C. Yeah. I think people become, in combat situations, I think no matter what religion they are, I think they become more they rely on that more or fall back on that, personally, more. They might not even tell anybody that they re doing it. You could see guys like you could see that in people over there. It didn t matter what group they were: Catholics, Protestant, or whatever it didn t matter. You could see that in the people. And I really believe that. I believe that it seasons that, or promotes that, in a combat situation. I think it did in any conflict. I don t think it s something that s just Vietnam. That s how combat situations are. D.M. Have you ever been to The Wall in Washington, D.C? M.C. Yup! Yeah, I have a sister-in-law that lives in Washington, D.C., so we went there. Yeah, we ve been to Washington, D.C. numerous times because my sisterin-law lives there so we went to that wall there a couple of years ago. No, it s been longer than that: probably 3 years. There are names that I know, and people from my hometown and high school, that are on there. 55,000 people on there. D.M. 58,026. M.C. Is it? A lot of people. D.M. I just happened to know that. Well, are there any other experiences, military or you mentioned..as a protest, or anything else in your life you d like to talk about? M.C. Well, I think I d like to say that I think the world, or countries, are affected a lot by military conflict. America wouldn t have proceeded as fast with the drug issues of the 60s and 70s had it not been for Vietnam. Had Vietnam not happened, the United States would have been a lot different in the 60s and 70s..(tape ended).

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