Briggs, Terry

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Terry Briggs and the Vietnam
Conflict
By Terry Lee Briggs
October 23, 2004
Box 6 Folder 4
Oral Interview conducted by Candace Place
Transcript copied by Devon Robb February 2006
Brigham Young University – Idaho
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CP: Let’s start with you name.
TB: Terry Briggs.
CP: Do you have a middle name?
TB: Lee.
CP: Where were you born?
TB: Muskegon, Michigan.
CP: And when?
TB: 16 June 1946.
CP: Did you volunteer to serve?
TB: Um hum.
CP: What made you want to serve in the Army?
TB: Well, my family has always been military, okay, my granddad, my dad, my uncles,
my great- granddad, so it was sort of what I wanted I guess, you know, not necessarily to
spend a life time like I ended up doing, but, at least to serve. To me that is one of the
things, that everyone has the right to citizenship but they should be earned by service to
something. Whether it’s to a municipality, whether its’ to the military, the government,
you know, whatever it is. I don’t necessarily agree with everybody having the same
privileges without having to earn them, you know what I mean? And I have always been
that way. So it’s not just getting old and burly, you know.
CP: How old were you when you volunteered?
TB: Seventeen.
CP: Did you know Aunt Jan before or after?
TB: Nope. Matter of fact we met during my third tour.
CP: Your third tour?
TB: Yup.
CP: Can you explain your training you received and perhaps explain what a tour is as
well?
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TB: Well a tour was a stay in Vietnam, okay. Normally they were as much as one year.
Sometimes they went longer, sometimes they went shorter. A lot of depended on what
was going on, and that. If you got wounded and that, sometimes your tour got cut short.
So it depends on how bad it was. If it was just a minor wound you’d go to the hospital
and then back to your unit. If it was a major wound, like what I got in ’ 66, you went back
to the states and spen[ t] a few months in the hospital.
CP: So the training took place before you left?
TB: Yeah, I had some training before I even went into the military. I was already a scuba
diver, and shooter, shot on the national rifle and pistol team. I was already a certified
demolitions man. I could write and speak several languages besides English. I had the
basics already. I wasn’t a parachutist yet, but that would come later.
CP: So when you go into the Army, what training did they provide you with?
TB: Of course, when you go into the military they train you right from scratch and, of
course, I had a slight advantage because I had grown up in the military. But they teach
you about law of land warfare, rights and responsibility, first aid, you know, weapons, all
the different kinds of things that you are going to need to know to be able to survive as an
individual in the military, which ever branch of the service you’re in.
CP: What was your first tour like?
TB: First tour was pretty decent. My first two tours I worked with the Vietnamese people
and lived in their village. Of course I delivered my two first counter parts, first two kids,
but we were advisers, you know, it was pretty cool. I enjoyed the people, super people, it
was beautiful, and later on of course it changed, because I changed missions, stuff like
that of course.
CP: Did you see combat your first couple of tours?
TB: Well, my first tour we were not allowed to carry weapons, but that was what the rule
was, but needless to say we all did, and yeah, we did have some action but not a lot.
CP: What was it like?
TB: In Vietnam, there were very few major actions, okay, and most of those were in ’ 68,
but there were a few small battles that would occur like in ’ 66 of March. Our base camp
was attacked. There were many casualties that time. But for the most part it was just a
dozen of them and a dozen of us, four or five of us, or whatever of us that were there.
CP: Did you start out as a private?
TB: Yeah well, you start out as an E1. And work your way up of course I worked in
Special Operations. You immediately become a NCO.
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CP: What is an NCO?
TB: Non- Commissioned- Officer. Okay, the reason for that is because of the fact of what
we can do. Each one of the people in a Special Forces unit, for example, they can end up
being the leader. So that’s part of what that’s all about. That’s also a little bit the reward
for being young and stupid. We were all what you might call triple volunteers. You have
to volunteer for the military, you have to volunteer for air borne, and you have to
volunteer for Special Forces.
CP: What made you want to volunteer for Special Forces?
TB: There I was. Really that’s about it. I’d always been doing crazy things. It just seemed
like the natural thing to do, I guess.
CP: And did you stay in Special Forces throughout your military career?
TB: Yes and no. When you’re in Special Ops. you don’t really ever leave it even though
you will go on to other commands at times. Of course, when I became an officer later on
in my career, I know there were times when I was company commander of my unit of a
training unit or a battalion commander or what have you. You know that all changes but
you are still a Special Ops. person.
CP: What year did you begin your service?
TB: 1963.
CP: And you were wounded in ’ 66?
TB: I was wounded several years actually, ’ 64, ’ 65, ’ 67, ‘ 70’ s, ‘ 80’ s.
CP: And was that all from Vietnam?
TB: Oh no. Al the early stuff was, but the later stuff was not.
CP: What was it like to be wounded? You mentioned your first time was in ’ 64.
TB: Well, sometimes it’s kind of screwy. I don’t know the best way to say this, but
sometimes you don’t know you’re hit. So, one time I got hit and I woke up about an hour
later, I guess. You know, one time, like when I came home last time, I didn’t even know
I’d been shot in the back, but I made it all the way back to the states without knowing.
But that was a different story.
CP: That’s interesting, you’d think that you’d bleed, I guess.
TB: Well yeah, but when you’re shot in the back do you think you’d notice it?
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CP: Guess not.
TB: If you don’t take your uniform off for a long period of time, you know, you won’t
see any holes or blood stains or anything, and that’s what the case was in this instance.
CP: Wow, so, when you were shot in the leg, what was that experience like?
TB: That was a bad day. A real bad day. I’d been shot through the knees in the morning’
and that was just before dawn. And about ten thirty, eleven o’clock, or something like
that, I got hit in the face, and then early in the afternoon I got hit in the stomach with the
tailfins of a V40 anti- tank rocket. Like I said it was not a good day.
CP: No, how bad were the wounds?
TB: They flew me back to the states, every body that survived they flew back to the
states. We were all wounded. I got out of the hospital in September, about six months.
CP: Was that when your base was attacked?
TB: Yeah, yeah.
CP: What was combat like?
TB: Now, combat, believe it or not, is mostly waiting. It’s shear boredom followed by
minutes or seconds of intense rowdiness, disorganization, panic, all of those words apply,
it’s absolutely incredible. Everybody sees all of these war movies where they fight and
they fight and they fight. That’s not what it’s really like, when you’re in a fire fight in
seems like it lasts forever, if you know what I mean, but in reality it’s usually not that
long. So, like the one in ’ 66 that one was, that was a long fight, that one lasted all
morning and into the afternoon. But even then there were times when the firing had died
down quite a bit, you know, so they could regroup and attack us.
CP: To go into politics, what was your understanding of America’s goals going into the
war?
TB: America’s goal in the war was to keep Southeast Asia from going communist. That
was the goal, the stated goal of the U. S. military, okay. The stated goal of the American
politicians was probably different, okay. Most politicians you have to remember are
representing somebody, and unfortunately it is usually not the people that voted them into
office. It’s usually big business, etc… So they were voting ways and things that would
cause their people to back them with money to get more money. Money, face it, as you
well know, money is the root of all evil and its’ the truth. If it wasn’t for money most of
the problems that we have we wouldn’t have. But people get a little bit of money and
they want a lot more. And that’s the truth of it. So, but, uh, it was kind of a screwy time,
because we had a president, Kennedy, that, he had a certain charm with the American
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people. It was his death that really made him into a legend, you know, he was just a
president that happened to get assassinated while he was in office, that’s all. And
unfortunately the way that his politics had led this nation during that particular point in
time, certain things had happened and we had gotten involved in things that maybe we
shouldn’t have. But we did, and his successor, Johnson, he kept on with the stuff, and of
course Johnson was big money himself, of course, Kennedy didn’t come from a poor
family either, but Johnson was really a big money name, he continued a lot of that stuff. I
really feel that if Johnson had had his [ inaudible] he would not have had us involved in
that war; it would have been too hard at that point to get us out of the war, if you know
what I protesting the war and that kind of good stuff. Which the sad thing about that was
that, you know, they were talking about a political thing but yet it was reflecting on those
of us that were involved in it, which was fare to us, but they didn’t care, you know.
CP: When you returned home, were you treated any differently by those in the
community?
TB: Oh yeah, I had one guy spit on me. One of my guys was run over by a taxi cab. The
guy had come up. He had returned to his home city, and was at the airport waiting for his
mom and sister to come and pick him up and the taxi cab ran him over intentionally and
killed him. Which is a shame because the guy had been through two tours of Vietnam,
two one year long tours, you know, and that wasn’t fair, but stuff liked that happen. In all
the other wars at the end of the war, regardless how the people felt about that war, the
soldiers, sailors, Marines, had always been welcomed back, you know, and thanked for
their service, but after Vietnam, that didn’t happen. That was a sore spot with us folks in
the military, needless to say, because we didn’t deserve to be condemned for fighting.
Everybody says we were baby killers, well, that was a lie. Yes, there may have been one
or two babies killed in the war, but I know for a fact that I delivered two babies during
that war and you know, I know for a fact that the communists killed them later on. The
way we were treated was not right. I don’t care what a person’s, quote, morality, end of
quote, was thought process is on this, those that were serving should not have been
treated like that, but we were.
CP: When you were serving in Vietnam did you feel the anti- war sentiment?
TB: Oh no, not really. Of course, where we were we didn’t get newspaper from back in
the states except for whatever, you know, family and friends would send to us. So there
was a lot of stuff going on in the states that some of us didn’t know about, or didn’t know
much about. When I went back, after Aunt Jan and I got married, yeah I knew that there
was some dissension at that point but it wasn’t anything like what it would grow to be
later on. Now remember, I was in sort of at the start of this whole mess. When I came
home for the last time in ’ 68, that’s when things really started to get bad with protestors
and things.
CP: Did you see a lot of drug usage among the soldiers?
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TB: I can’t say that I ever saw it going on with soldiers. Now let me explain what I’m
saying here. Those of us that were in combat, now you have to keep in mind that there
were a lot of people in Vietnam most of them were not people that were fighting, most of
them were people that were what we called rear echelon people, they were support
people. It takes a lot of people to keep one soldier in the field, okay. Basically the way
that it was figured was it took about a hundred people to keep one soldier in the field,
okay. But out of those soldiers not all that many soldiers saw combat either. So, and by
soldiers I’m saying, Army, and Marines, and Navy Seals and such. I’m talking the people
that were actually doing the fighting, okay. The actual numbers of people doing the
fighting weren’t that huge. Everybody thinks that ‘ well, he was in Vietnam so he was
fighting. Well, we were fighting in our own way, each one of us, but not that many were
in combat, okay. And most of the combat people there were no drugs around. Our lives
depended on us being one hundred percent cognoscente of what was going on around us,
and if you were doing a lot of drinking and a lot of drugs that wasn’t going to happen.
CP: Do you think that the idea of soldiers using drugs grew after your time, near the end
of the war?
TB: Oh no, I think that some of it was going on, but I think that it was going on with
those rear echelon people, you know everybody says, “ Well, that person is a Marine,
well, that is a blanket indictment, is what that is, okay.” And that’s a false thing to do.
Even the people in the rear echelon I’m willing to bet that majority never did that stuff,
okay. But, one or two people in a group that do that give a bad name to the entire group,
you’ve heard the old adage that one bad apple spoils that whole barrel. And that’s the
truth. You know, they give a bad connotation. And personally I didn’t know anybody that
was using drugs, okay. And yes I had morphine administered to me, and I administered
morphine to people, but you do that when you’re hurt, it’s not the same thing.
CP: Good, because I think that some people think of the Vietnam that the soldiers do
drugs, it’s good to know that it’s not true.
TB: Yeah, and it wasn’t true, and hasn’t been true, and yes there are people in the
military that use drugs, I’m one hundred percent positive of that. As a senior officer in the
Army, I was forced to hand out justice, what we call military justice, and in this particular
case, drugs were involved and the individual went to court over it and went to jail. So,
when we find it we don’t tolerate it. Zero tolerance.
CP: What kind of food did you have when you were there?
TB: Well, the first couple of tours, of course, I ate what everybody else in the village ate.
Later on, I would eat sea rations. A sea ration is what was called the combat ration. It had
originated earlier, most of the ration we had been eating had been made early during
WWII. If fact, they had cigarettes in the condiments pack. And some of these packets of
cigarettes would be moldy. They were pretty bad. The food, everybody complained about
it, but that’s the job of a soldier. All soldiers are required to complain about their food.
But the food really wasn’t all that bad. In fact, when you compare it with the food we got
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now, I would rather have the sea rations than the MRE’s we have now. MRE’s, that’s the
meals ready to eat. With these things you got to have a lot of extra water. And water is
the second heaviest thing we carry in our ruck sacks, you know. And you just can’t carry
a heck of a lot of water, it’s physically impossible with everything else you’ve got to
have. The sea rations were heavier than the MRE’s, which made it less convenient
carrying them, you know, and they were bulkier because they were in cans. Still they
eliminated that need for thee excess water that we had to have. But, in our case we would
go out on missions, sometimes we’d be gone for a few days, and sometimes we’d be gone
for three or fours months. And we would go out carrying a small amount of rations, and
from then on we would live on what we found. The jungle is a great place for finding
food, banana’s, coconuts, watermelons, all kinds of animal life, creepy crawly critters
that are good to eat, as well. So, food was not really a problem for the normal soldier.
CP: What were in the sea rations?
TB: Well, let’s see. You would have a main course. Ham and lima beans, chopped eggs
and ham. We had spaghetti, we had turkey loaf, which was one of my favorites, we had
boneless chicken, which was another of my favorites. Pork slices, beef slices, I’m trying
to remember all that we had. Did I mention ham and lima beans? Oh god, that one was
gross; I never really did like that one. Some of the packages would have a little can of
crackers with peanut butter, or crackers with jam, or crackers with cheese. Some of them
would have white bread, it was called. We use to save us the white bread; that was good
for throwing at people. And there would be a little condiment pack with salt and pepper.
With a little role of toilet paper, a little packet of Chiclets chewing gum. Most of them
had cigarettes. Some of them had candy bars. And when I say candy bar I am not talking
about the kind you find in stores now a days, it was a little round candy bar that fit in a
can. Like I was saying they weren’t all that bad. Now, when you were at your base camp,
you would have a regular meal cooked in the kitchen. If you were in a large facility. Now
our base camp for Special Ops, we normally didn’t have kitchens, we normally just had
sea rations. Now like in Dom Cam, and Consolit Air Base, and place like that, you know
big facilities, they had mess halls. You’d have regular meals on tray s just like the guys at
bases back in the states.
CP: Who would you throw the white bread at?
TB: Anybody and everybody. That was one of our favorite things. Actually, what we
would do, no body like the white bread for some reason it wasn’t very good. A lot of us
would save up the extra from our sea ration and we would put it in a big box, and the next
time that we went to a village we would give it to them. But we flew over a village one
time was definitely a VC village, we had a big box of white bread, and that was the time I
referred to that we threw it at people. We knocked down a couple of hooches with it.
That’s what they get for shooting at us.
CP: How can you tell a VC village from an ally village?
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TB: Well, that was extremely difficult. And the reason I say that is because the guy you
are working next to in the rice paddy with you during the day might actually be a VC.
And at night he would put on his black pajamas and grab his AK47 and go out and run
around the territory terrorizing people. So, that was very difficult at times to determine
that, but for the most part you knew areas that are secure and areas that are not secure.
When we say VC village we know that it’s one that’s under VC control. One they use as
a base of operations. We knew where some of them were, and we would operate against
them. But because they had regular civilians there as well, we didn’t always. We did,
believe it or not, did try to avoid civilian casualties.
CP: What are your feelings about stories about massacres like My Lai?
TB: Well, to be real blunt, I’m still not convinced that that actually happened. I can
personally tell you that I saw dozens of villages that were totally whipped out, all of the
people executed. And in all of the cases, not one was done by the Americans. The village
I had been in for a long time, and had helped build a school house and built a little
medical treatment facility, we had taken care of all the people in the area, and all that, the
VC came in one time while we were gone and they mutilated everybody in the village.
That was a standard thing for the communists to do back then. Same kind of stuff that the
terrorists do now. There is no difference. Now the VC was nothing more than a type of
terrorists, as far as I was concerned. And that is one of the things, for the professional
soldier, anyhow, that cemented our feelings about Vietnam being the right place for us to
be because we could help people.
CP: Do you feel that the military was engaging in the best strategy to bring an end to the
war?
TB: Oh yeah, the best possible with the restrictions that was put on us by the civilians.
Keep in mind that the United States military is not eponymous. We can do nothing
without the civilian leadership allowing us to do it. If they don’t want us to win the war,
we cannot win the war. And in that particular war, my personal feelings are that the
congress of the United States was no different than the congress we have now. They are
out for themselves; they are not out for taking care of the people or anything else. They
are there to make money and have power. And that’s all that they’re there for. And when
I say that it sounds like I’m using it for a blanket statement, and yes, it is a blanket
statement but it is basically the truth. You find very very few common people in
congress. Most of them are lawyers. And your uncle Terry doesn’t have a whole lot of
good things to say about lawyers. Lawyers and politicians. They old saying goes, ‘ you
know how you can tell if a lawyer’s lying? He’s breathing.’ So, the same things go with
the politician. Could we have won the war? Yeah, we could have. The American people
weren’t backing the president, congress wasn’t allowing us certain things that we could
have done to end it. But that’s just the facts of life. There was nothing that we could have
done about that. Did we want to win the war? Yes, we did. There’s nothing worse than
going into a war or into a battle and seeing your friends killed and not be able to do
anything about it.
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CP: What were your feelings about the final peace settlement that came?
TB: It was a crock. You know exactly what I’m saying when I say that. Reason I say that
is because the peace settlement did not solve anything. It did not bring peace to Vietnam.
If it had of there would still be a North and South Vietnam. The things that happened
after the Americans pulled out of there would never have happened. So it was not a peace
settlement. But then the communists never planed it to be a peace settlement. They just
wanted to use that to get the United States out of Vietnam. That’s all that was for. By the
way, I think you know, a lot of people say we lost the war, but how can you loose a war
where you never loose a battle, number one, but number two, you leave of your own free
will. In my mind we did not loose the war. First off, it was not a war. War was never
declared. It wasn’t a police action like what President Truman called Korea. It was a
conflict, and that’s the reason why we read military documents it is the Vietnam conflict.
CP: You mentioned keeping food rations as a form of entertainment, what were some
other forms of entertainment that you had?
TB: Well, we had the USO shows come to the bigger bases. And that was pretty cool. I
got to see several of them, in fact one year I got to see Bob Hope three times that year
which was pretty cool. I forgot what television show was on, but anyhow, they had some
of the tapes from that. Your Aunt Jan and I have had a lot of laughs over this because I
had been at my base camp and he had been there and done a show. I went out on strike
mission and got hit a couple of days later. Then while I was up at third field hospital he
was there. In fact, he gave me my Purple Heart that time, because he liked doing that kind
of stuff. Then from there I was sent to Guam. And while I was in Guam they came
around the ward and wanted to know if any of the guys wanted to see the Bob Hope
show. ‘ Well, sure.’ Well, I was one of the guys, I wasn’t ambulatory you know, able to
get up and walk around on my own. Some of us were in stretchers and some of us were in
wheelchairs, well, anyhow, we got to be right up front. Well, Bob Hope was standing up
there, just talking before the show actually started, he was looking at us, and talking to us
guys up front because it was obvious that the other guys were stationed at Guam but there
was a few of us that were casualty types. Well, anyhow, he looked at me and said, ‘ You
look familiar.’ And I said, ‘ Well, I saw you last month in Saigon, and I saw you a month
before at our base camp.’ ‘ Oh, so you went and got shot just so you could see my show
again!’ He made a big joke out of that. It was one of my more favorite Bob Hope stories.
The USO shows were absolutely phenomenal. They made us feel good. He brought some
good looking young ladies with him. Sometimes they were actresses. He had Play Boy
Bunnies with him; he had all kind of different people. Philace Billiard, of course, she was
never a good looking gal, but I’ll tell you what, she was dearly loved by everybody. And,
those kinds of thing make a heck of a difference. Martha Ray, of course, she was an
armored reserve officer, but she came to Vietnam several times. Just another one of those
people, she just made you feel good, you know. We would also get what was called R
and R. That was rest and relaxation. And sometime you could have R and R in country.
We had a place, Bong Tow, we could go to. You could go to Australia or Thailand. There
were a lot of different places, Hawaii; that you could apply for, and be selected to go. So,
sometimes the wives would fly to the R and R site if it wasn’t in Vietnam. They could
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spend the week you were there with you. There was stuff like that, some of the guys
would go fishing. There was water everywhere so finding a place to fish wasn’t hard to
do. A lot of us did a lot of reading. We use to have one of the guys in my team, his
mother was a librarian. She would ship a box to us every single month. We would all
read them and about two months later we would put them back in the box and ship them
back. It was outstanding. It was a good way to relax and all that. Some of the guys had
portable radios and would sit around and listen to the music. Writing letters, that sort of
stuff. Same kind of things you do. We didn’t go to local restaurants, because there
weren’t any, unless you were in a city. It wasn’t all terror and paranoia. There were
relaxing times as well.
CP: How did your life change as a result of the Vietnam War?
TB: Well, of course, I couldn’t do all of the things that I could do before. But in reality I
think that it was a very positive thing for me because of Vietnam the military sent me to
college and I became an officer. And really because of Vietnam I met your Aunt Jan. The
way we met, was I was in Vietnam and my aunt worked at a beauty shop down in Grand
Haven, Michigan, and the gal working at the chair next to her was Jan. And my Aunt
Peggy kept telling her that she had a nephew that she ought to write to. Eventually she
brow beat her enough that Jan wrote to me and we started writing. And I came home on
emergency leave and we met and had a date. And I went back to Vietnam and got hurt
real bad and one thing led to another and we got married when I got out of the hospital.
Well, I mean there’s more to the story. It’s just one of those screwy things in life. But I
think that the best thing for me about Vietnam was the fact that I met a lot of good
people. Unfortunately most of them were killed by the VC. And it made me definitely
believe that communism was not the thing that we wanted to have anywhere in the world.
It solidified my thoughts on that kind of stuff. It definitely made me hate politicians. Very
few things I can say good about politicians. That’s real unfortunate because some of them
actually do what they try to do something better. Most of them are in it for the power and
money. Do I have any bad feelings about Vietnam? Yeah, I do. That all revolves around
the friends I lost. And really that’s about it. Getting shot did not leave a permanent mark
on me as far as mentally wise. I mean, yeah I got scars all over my body, I can’t flex my
hand, either one of my hands like other people can, stuff like that. I guess it’s just a
sadness over all the people that were killed. But it’s been that way in every war I’ve
fought in, so, it’s not just about Vietnam, it’s all of it.
CP: What other wars did you fight in?
TB: Well, I can’t tell you names of all of them. Granada, of course, Panama, but I have
fought in Africa.
CP: How does Vietnam differ from all of those?
TB: Most of those were small scale operations compared to Vietnam. Vietnam had a heck
of a lot of people involved, where as the others were a lot smaller, total numbers of
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people involved. They were short in duration, where as Vietnam went on for a long
period of time.
CP: Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share?
TB: Yeah, actually, the country was really a beautiful country. Okay, like down along the
gulf of Saigon there was this area, this one place where we conducted an operation. Just
imagine the beach being as white as the whitest paper you have ever seen, and I’m
serious when I say that. Absolutely, almost blindingly white, and out of this beach comes
this black, volcanic, jagged rock, that is covered by this lush green vegetation; all kinds
of colors of green. And you look out in the water and the water is so clear that you can
actually see down about 75 to 100 foot. And all kinds of colors of blue because of the
different weeds, the rocks, the sand etc… on the bottom. I mean it was absolutely
beautiful. Up in the central highlands, the same sorts of things in the opposite direction.
Jagged rocks, at times, some places that would have been outstanding for just going out
and going a little bit of repelling off the cliff. Some of the old ruins that were there were
absolutely phenomenal. And they were hundreds and hundreds of years old. The people
were proud people. Whether they were they [ inaudible] up there in the mountains or
whether they were the [ inaudible] or whatever, the people down in the delta. It didn’t
matter. All these different groups of people, they were all proud people they all had a
heritage. And they all had the same desire that you and I have. The same desire that
everybody in the world has. And that desire was for their children to have a better life
than what they had, and for our lives to be better than what our parents had. That’s really
the goal is of all people when the get down to the brass pack. And they had the same
things. But in their case, the biggest difference was that the majority of their lives did not
revolve around money, it revolved around their family. And that’s really a nice little
feeling. I’m probably not saying this very good. I like the idea a whole lot better.
Unfortunately, here in America the only place where you can find that to some degree is
on some of the reservations and most whites, I hate saying it this way, but it’s true, most
whites, and blacks, they are one hundred percent money oriented. They’re not oriented
based on the family or just enjoying life. Your Aunt Jan and I, we spend a lot of time just
driving around the country side looking at the flowers and trees, the things that God put
there to see. Yeah, you know I have a job; I make money at my job, but is that job the one
hundred percent focus of my life? No it is not. And these guys that we were dealing with
over there, the people that lived in villages that were there, they had simple requests out
of life. They had simple life style, a very easy going life style, and it was an enjoyable
lifestyle. And it went away. Just like the American Indian, for the most part, and their
way of life.
CP: Have you ever had the desire to return to Vietnam; to go see the land again?
TB: Yeah, I have had, in fact I may have an opportunity to go back because one point
there was a price on my head. And I had no idea if people were serious about that kind of
stuff anymore or not, you know, and it was a big chance. Yeah, there’s a lot of ways I’d
like to go back. I’d like to go back to the Gulf of Saigon area, just to see if it is just as it
was then. Some of the villages I use to go through back then, and I would like to be able
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to go spend some time exploring some of the old ruins we found, you know, stuff like
that. That’s always been my thing, stuff I like doing anyhow, stuff I do here in the states.
Do I hold any grudges? No, not really. I guess I do against the communists and
politicians, not against the people.
CP: Why did you have a price on your head?
TB: Your Uncle Terry wasn’t always a nice person, sometimes. People that did certain
kinds of jobs, the VC and Northern Vietnamese, they wanted us gone because we were
very dangerous to them. That’s what that was about.
CP: Did that have to do with the Special Operations you were involved with?
TB: Pretty much.
CP: So did they put a price on all of your heads, or just you?
TB: No, ones that they knew of that were especially dangerous.
CP: Are you allowed to talk about what made you especially dangerous?
TB: A lot of it course is still classified. I’m trying to see how to phrase this for you the
best way. I would go out with a very small team of four people. And I would have
designated targets, and I would eliminate those targets. Does that answer that?
CP: Yeah. So, do you think that because it is years later that they have forgotten that?
TB: Well, no, I don’t know if they have forgotten it, I think that it’s no longer any kind of
priority to them. I think getting the problem solved is more important to them than that
kind of stuff. But sometimes in your life you’ve got to quit focusing on the bad and start
focusing on the good. And I think it’s that way with everybody. I don’t think it’s
something that’s just American, in fact, probably it’s less American than anybody else, in
a lot of regards. But that’s the way I’ve always been.
CP: How do you feel about the media and how it portrays the Vietnam War?
TB: Well, I once made a comment, and got in trouble for making it. I wasn’t sure who I
wanted to shoot the bad guys or the media. I guess the way I’m going to answer that is
that I’m going to ask you a question. What is the purpose of the media?
CP: To entertain.
TB: And to entertain, means that they have to get people interested. And what do people
what to hear? Do they want to hear of all the good things that were going on? Or do they
want to hear about all the sensational stuff?
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CP: Most likely the sensational.
TB: Yeah. Therefore, what’s going to sell? Telling about the two kids that I delivered?
The hospitals, the little schools that we built, the people’s lives that we helped? Or the
bad things that happened? Okay, I have met a lot of journalists in my life, and 99.9
percent of them are in it for one reason and one reason only, the money and the fame.
And unfortunately they don’t know the difference between right and wrong. And I really
feel that.
CP: What do you feel about all of the different movies that portray the Vietnam War like
Apocalypse Now and Dumbo Drop?
TB: Well, Apocalypse Now had some parts to it that were real. I mean, very very real in
some ways, but a lot of it was grand standing. The John Wayne movie, Green Beret,
same thing. A lot of that was displayed there was absolutely true, like the little boy that
they show in there, what that kid when through, that kind of stuff happened. Loved ones
died over there. That kind of stuff is true. Dumbo Drop, of course you know, is based on
a true story, a lot of people don’t know that, but it was. I mean, some of the stuff, just
absolutely incredible the stuff that goes on in the war that people just don’t know about.
But, ah, We Were Soldier, the Mel Gibson film, I don’t know if you’ve seen that one or
not. I would really recommend that one to you before you turn in your paper, or whatever
it is you’ve got to do. It’s a movie that came out two years ago I think, and of course it is
based off a true story, in fact the hero of it, I’m going to call him hero, Hal More,
somebody that I do know, somebody that I knew back then even. And the most important
part of the movie isn’t the battle scenes, per se, it’s the scene of what happened back
there at Fort Benny with his wife and the other wives. So, that is real important that you
see that, that’s why I mentioned it before you turn your paper in. I would recommend
seeing this. And what happens to the photographer, the media guy that was there; watch
him and the changes that occur. Those kinds of things. A lot of people think that because
I’m a professional soldier I’m just a killer. That’s not who I am. As you well know.
Okay, yes, I’ve killed people, but that’s not what this is about, and same thing with that
movie. That movie is probably the best movie about the Vietnam War that I recall ever
seeing. There are a few others. A lot of them have an article of truth, but a lot of them are
enlarged to make them larger than life, I guess that’s media. It’s like this Fahrenheit 9/ 11
thing, you know. This producer Moore, you know, I don’t know where the hell he’s
coming from with this thing, pardon the language, but that’s really how I feel about it. If
you want to make a political statement, make a political statement; don’t try to make a
fortune off it. Buy anyhow, so far as movies and that go, like I said, some of them, in fact
most of them have at least a grain of truth in it. The We Were Soldiers movie, like I said
is probably about the best one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few of them. Another
good one, of course a lot of people think it’s just a stupid movie, is Good Morning
Vietnam. The Robin Williams, of course, that’s based on a true story too. And that’s
actually a good movie. But anyhow, what’s the purpose of a movie? To make money.
And if you view it in that way, like I said, it all works out. They all have a grain of truth
in them; some just have a bigger grain than others.
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CP: Do you have anything else you want to share?
TB: I think one thing that was unique about the Vietnam War, well it’s been in every war
actually, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, more positive developments for man kind
have come out of war than any other time in history, okay. More medical advancements
come out of war than all of the peace time put together. And by- the- way there is less war
than there is peace time, if you’re instructor doesn’t know this. The reason I say this is
because when I was an instructor there at Gettysburg College, I taught a class with a gal
that was one of the known Seven, that was a group of peace advocates during the war.
They were actually wanted by the FBI and everything else, but anyhow, this gal, she,
myself, and this one Lieutenant Colonel there in the ROTC department, the three of us
taught this joint class about Vietnam. And we actually, her and I, ended up doing two
more classes together. I was being brought in since I was the guy with all the combat
time; I was being brought in as The Hawk. She was being the peace person and Tom
Dombroski, the Colonel, would be the guy in the middle, okay. Anyhow, it was real
funny because it ended up that her view point and my view point more closely linked
than she would ever realize. We actually did a class on Asian poetry the next year,
believe it or not. Can you believe your Uncle Terry doing poetry?
CP: No, not really!
TB: But anyway, we had a real good time, and we became real good friends. It was just
one of those screwy deals. Tom Dombroski, he was going to be the guy in the middle, he
ended up being a little bit farther to the one side than I was; I was more in the middle of
the road that him. So, it was kind of interesting for the kids. But, ah, a lot of times people
find that that happens. ‘ Wow, you’re a soldier; we don’t have anything in common.’ But,
every soldier has likes and dislikes, a lot of us like music, a lot of us like history. You
know me I have a big library, I’ve got many guns, I’ve got a lot of paintings around the
house, I’ve got a bottle collection, I’ve got a shell collection, and all of these things.
Well, you know, that’s not what everybody visualizes a professional soldier having.
Everything’s about death, that’s the why a lot of people view us. And this gal found out
that’s not the case. And that was a real interesting thing for me to go through. The one
thing I would like to mention to you that did happened that later in my life, in fact, it
happened while I was in Gettysburg, of course, we had the Gulf War, and of course, your
Uncle Terry didn’t get to go because your Uncle Terry’s two boys were in the military
and they were both there. Well, Terry Lee, my oldest boy, when he was coming back, be
was aboard a navy ship, when he was coming back I was offered an opportunity to fly to
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and came back to Oakland, California, on board a ship. And when
we got close to the Golden Gate Bridge, here was this huge banner that was welcoming
us back to the states, you know, because these guys were returning from the Gulf War,
and there were fire boats that were spraying water in the air, there were hundred of
surfers, and pleasure boats, and all of this good stuff. And when we got to the pier there
was a band. For me, in a lot of ways, it was closure; it was the welcome home that I never
had. It was really good for me to see that my son got that. And of course, when Brand got
back, of course he was in the Army, when he came back to the states, there was a big
parade and all that kind of good stuff for them, which helped out on the other side. So,
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that helped me out tremendously. And the other thing about the Vietnam War, the hardest
thing for me I think was living in Gettysburg we were real close to Washington D. C. And
your Aunt Jan and I would go down there once in a while to see stuff and that, and one
time we decided that we were going to go down there once in while to see stuff and that,
and one time we decided that we were going to go down and see the Vietnam memorial. I
had not seen it; I had not wanted to go see it because so many of my friend’s names are
on that stupid thing. But we decided what we would do was to, we would just walk along
beside it and I wouldn’t be looking at it, and we would just stop some place and I would
turn and look at it. And I turned and put my hand out, and I swear to God, Candace, the
name that it came to rest on was one of my guys. Needless to say I broke down like a
baby. That helped me a bit to I think. Strange stuff. But anyhow, back to this other thing
about the advances and that. Artificial joints that came out of Vietnam, the knees that I’ve
got, I mean, the EMA didn’t approve those for civilians until the year I retired from the
Army in 1995. Yet, when I was retiring I was still running two miles in ten minutes; that
proves that the dag- gum knees were still good. The plastic surgery stuff, that all came
from military application. So, yes, war is a horrible thing. It is not something that we
want to have, yet there is always some good comes out of it. I guess that is what brought
Jan and I together. It gave some rotten kids for nieces and nephews.
CP: I hope I’m not one of them.
TB: Oh no, of course not! That’s probably about it. You know I did a course while I was
in the Army. It was historians course, I had to do a paper, and the paper I did, really I was
talking more about the Civil War, but one of the guys, one of the instructors, he and I got
to talking about it later. And he’s used his premise of one of his books, it’s about the
changes and the advancements and how not always does the change in our application
keep pace with the change in the technology. And I think that was one of the big things
that happened during the Vietnam War. We had some new things that were there that
could have saved more lives, if we had known how to use them at times. Like helicopters
during the Korean War, they became the big thing for life savors. Well, we changed a lot
of that, and that role grew more and more to the point that now we’ve got almost every
hospital in the nation had got a helicopter, you know. That Vietnam was real big for that.
The weaponry changes that we had was just absolutely phenomenal, but unfortunately
our application of them did not keep pace with the technology changes. Pin point
accuracy in bombing. Fly over and drop the bomb. Sometimes you’d hit buildings along
side what you wanted to hit, so innocent people would die. But during Vietnam they
came up with the smart bomb type of technology where we could actually put these dead
set on a target. And you saw what happened during the Gulf War, we were putting them
right inside a window. When you can do that kind of stuff, that’s when you eliminate a
lot of the bad casualties, and by bad casualties, I mean the civilians. All kinds of stuff, it
just depends on what you want to look for.
CP: I’m glad that you mentioned the good things that came from the war, because I think
that a lot of people think of the Vietnam War as all bad, but it wasn’t.
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TB: Oh no, and I mean, there was a lot of bad things, I’m not going to deny that, every
time a person dies, that’s a bad thing. Of course, one of my favorite quotes is that ‘ a
single death is a tragedy, but a thousand deaths is a statistic,’ in other words, a number.
When you look at numbers you take away the personal, is what they’re saying. Of course
a lot depends on if that person, that one person, is somebody in your life circle. If it is
then it becomes a tragedy, if not then it becomes just a number. That’s really what I think
that one person was saying. I do want you to see We Were Soldiers before you turn your
paper in, I think it will give you a lot of insight, especially the problem with casualty
notification that his wife went through. And by- the- way, that was 100 percent true, that is
what happened.
CP: Thank you so much for doing this interview with me.
TB: No problem.