Jack Durham Interview, History 150 Spring 2019, Conducted by Taylor Durham, March 3, 2019.
a. This interview was conducted in person at my grandparents house. I didn’t edit the recording at all, although I did have to pause the recorder during the interview due to a phone ringing and Jack Durham needed a few moments since he started to become emotional. To set up the interview, I had sat down with my grandfather and went over what would be happening and then had started the interview while recording it on the voice memo app on my IPhone XR. A quiet space was prepared for the interview so there would be minimal distractions. I had a few obstacles pop up during the interview. My grandparents home phone had begun to ring and that is when I paused the recorder. Another obstacle during the interview was that my grandfather had gotten emotional towards the end of the interview so I decided to pause the recorder a few times to give him time to gather himself and recollect his thoughts. My grandmother also spoke during the interview at some point to help my grandfather say what he couldn’t.
b. Jack Durham was born on April 9, 1949 in Kingsport, Tennessee by his parents to the names of Grace and James Durham. My grandfather had 1 brother and 3 sisters that have all now passed away. He is currently 69 and is married to Kathy Durham. They both met in Tennessee and got married when he was 18 and my grandma was 17. They had three amazing kids together right away: my aunt Michelle, my mother Tonya, and my uncle Jack. They are all one year apart, and he has 6 grandchildren including myself. After he served in the war, he went to ETSU in Tennessee and majored in business administration and then started working for the company Aflac. They all then moved to Virginia because my grandpa got a promotion from his job at Aflac and have lived here ever since. My grandpa has been retired now for about 5 years now.
c. The Vietnam War started in November of 1955 and ended in April 1975. The southern part of Vietnam helped support and fight with the United States during the war and the northern part of Vietnam had the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies along their side. The reason this war began was because the United States was making an attempt to stop the spread of communism. Since the United States thought that they were about to lose the Cold War, they figured that they would stop the spread of communism from completely taking over. The United States eventually ended up backing out of the war because of the overwhelming casualties of Americans (over 58,000 Americans lost their lives also with over 300,000 of the Americans being wounded) along with the political pressure that was weighing down on them from the government to stop the fighting. The Vietnam War is the second longest war to have occurred involving the United States, with the war the US is in currently with Afghanistan being the longest. The interviewee’s experience was typical for a man his age as well as the time period it was in. Many men in the 60’s were beginning to get drafted into the military for the Vietnam War once they were old enough to fight because the Army simply did not have enough men to defend the United States since so many of their men were dying and getting severely wounded.
– “Vietnam War.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War.
– Editors, History.com. “Vietnam War.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history.
– “Vietnam War.” HistoryNet, www.historynet.com/vietnam-war.
d.
TD: Can you please state your name?
JD: Jack Durham
TD: Okay. How old were you when you first began to serve in the military?
JD: 20 years old.
TD: Were you drafted into the military or did you join on your own?
JD: I was drafted.
TD: Uh, can you describe what it was like being drafted into the military?
JD: It was not a fun time because I had just got married for less than a month when I got my draft notification and Kathy, my wife was already pregnant with our child and I certainly did not want to go off and serve in the Army at that particular point in time in my life.
TD: Okay, we’re there any particular reasons that made it more difficult or easier for you to leave home and go to war?
JD: Well it was difficult to leave because leaving Kathy was at home by herself with the child course, she was living with my parents, but that was the most difficult part was, was having to leave her.
TD: During the war what years did you serve?
JD: I was in, in 1969 and 1970.
TD: Can you describe what the average day was like when you were in Vietnam?
[The home phone rings and I pause the recorder until it ends]
JD: The average day was getting up very early probably uh, well really we were out all night setting up what is called the ambushes and then we came back into camp early in the morning right after sunrise and then we had to work digging trenches and setting out uh, what is called concertina wire and what is called explosive gas or drums during the daytime and then we got a little bit of a break in the afternoon and to where we could maybe ride home or if someone had a radio listen to a radio or something like that and uh then pretty much we had an early meal and then we went back out that next evening before or as it was getting to be dark to set up an ambush should be out again all night.
TD: Wow, what was the United States position in the war and what effects did it have on the US?
JD: Again, read that.
TD: What was the United States position in the war and what effects did it have on the US?
JD: Well, my own opinion is that the people in the United States, the congress congressman and stuff were trying to run the war rather than letting the military who they had sent there run the war, and it caused a lot of problems uh, it got a lot of people unnecessarily hurt because of not letting the military do the job that they were sent there to do.
TD: What kind of living conditions were you in while at War?
JD: Well, there was once every 28 days you got to go back to what they called your main base camp for five days, and there you actually had indoor where you could sleep, you had hot meals. But the other 20-23 to 25 days you were out where the living conditions were, you were sleeping on an air mattress, there was nowhere to sleep indoors or anything like that you, you can’t you slip out on the ground. And during the monsoon season which I was there when when I was there, you basically were out in the rain because it rained 24/7 you were you were sleeping outdoors on an air mattress during the day or during the night or whatever your position what happened to be but that was about 23 to 25 days and then you got five days as I say back at a base, a main base camp where you actually got to sleep indoors for a while. But while you were out there those 23 days you had no hot meals, you got a change of clothes once a week, no where bathe except in a river.
TD: Wow, was it hard adjusting when you came back to America?
JD: Um, somewhat, you know I … I guess sounds scared me when I first came back, I could hear a backfire and [long pause]
TD: Do you want to take a break Papa?
JD: Coming back and living, like I was living before I left, it took several months to get accustomed to it and people back here did not like you
KD: People would spit on him and called him um baby killers, the overall general public did not expect or appreciate anything they had done. Like I said they would call all them all sorts of bad names um, baby killers, spit on them. Uh, the demonstrations with the younger people were not very nice to the soldiers who had returned home.
TD: Do you wanna take a minute Papa?
JD: No, I’m okay.
TD: Okay. I just have one more question. Um, did you get injured at all during the war?
JD: Yeah, that’s why that I only served a year and a half is because of an injury that I received to have been shot with an AK-47 that put me in the hospital. They had to fly me to Japan. For 30 days and I was in the hospital there and then they put me back to the states to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. That was the home of the branch of service that I was in the hundred and first airborne. And I stayed in the hospital they’re from probably the end of March until they released me from the service in November. So I was in the hospital there for about another 6 months or so totally I was in the hospital for about seven.
TD: Okay. Thank you for your time Papa.
I feel as if the interview went really well. The only thing that I would have changed is the fact that I wish I asked more detailed questions instead of a yes or no so the interview could’ve been longer than 11 minutes. I feel as if it flowed pretty well up until the point where my grandfather had begun to get choked up and my grandmother had to speak for him.