John Weisenseel Interview, History 150 spring 2016, Conducted by Jonathan Cheslock, Military Interview on Vietnam War, March 21, 2016.
Biography:
John (Jack) Weisenseel was born in 1940 Lived and grew up in Queens. He won a partial scholarship to Fordham University when he started in 1958 and graduated in 1962. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English. Post-graduation he went directly into Marine Corps as an enlisted man in Paris Island, South Carolina and joined Marine Reserves. He was then put on active duty between 6-12 months during the 1962-68 Vietnam era. This occurred all around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was in the air wing of Marine Corps as an air traffic controller. He earned the rank of sergeant in 1967. After active duty he began work in November of 1963 at the Univac division of Sperry Rand computer business that was just starting to be used as an accounting machine business.
Interview Process:
This interview was conducted over the phone and recorded directly onto my laptop using the Audacity application and a microphone. Since it was recorded over the phone and not in person I had to edit my grandfather’s voice a lot to get rid of most of the static and background noise and increase his voices volume to make it comprehendible.
Dialogue:
Me: Are you willing to let me use this interview for my course studies and let me share it with my professor and my class?
JW: Yes
Me: And could you state todays date for record purposes?
JW: It is March twenty-one
Me: What is your name?
JW: It is John Weisenseel
Me: And date of birth?
July 4th 1940
Me: And where are you from?
JW: I was born in Queens county NYC
Me: And to start off why did you join the military and what was your family’s reaction?
JW: I joined the military because at the time most people felt it was an obligation to get military service in especially in my neighborhood and we had a lot of marines who come from my neighborhood who served in Korea and Vietnam and also WWII.
Me: What was your rank when you were in the marines?
JW: Well I started out as a private and I went to boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina and I finished up as a sergeant B5 and I had a military occupation specialty of air traffic controller.
Me: Going back to your experience at boot camp could you talk about that, how was it?
JW: Boot camp as advertised is tough both physically and mentally and the purpose of it is to give everybody a testing experience, to test their will to be marines and you will not get that uniform unless you really want it.
Me: Do you recall your first days actually in service?
JW: Yes, it was a long train ride down to a station called Yamasee station its outside of Beaufort in SC and as soon as we got off the train there were some drill instructors waiting for us at the train and they quickly introduced you to marine corps discipline hustling everyone off and into formation and into some resemblance of a line and leading us to a place where we will be staying for the first night.
Me: What changes have you noticed since the Vietnam War?
JW: I was in during Vietnam but didn’t serve in Vietnam. I guess watching Cuba was the function of my unit, to be available for any activities in the Atlantic.
Me: I guess it’s safe to say in terms of change you would say especially with our relations with Cuba now you would say tensions have eased.
JW: Tensions have eased a great deal. In 1962 there was what we call the Cuban missile crisis and that was the year I joined the Marine Corps in 1962 I joined in August 22nd 1962 and on October of 1962 we had the Cuban missile crisis which was the brink of nuclear war. The Cubans had undenounced to the United States. Brought missiles in and were setting them up. We had U2 spy planes flying over Cuba and one of these spy planes picked up these sites from aerial diagnosis, they were able to say they were Soviet missile sites and were intercontinental missiles and could hit NY and could hit about halfway across the country from Cuba because Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida.
Me: What was the morale of your fellow marines, even your family and/or the people at the time?
JW: I don’t think anybody fully understood how serious the situation was because the general public didn’t know what was going on because it was all inside the government, even our government didn’t know how serious it was until the actual date of the crisis when President Kennedy, who was president at the time, faced down Chairmen Khrushchev who was head of the soviet union and they had a war of the wills and the soviets backed down and the soviets took missiles out, the United States blockaded Cuba, the soviets removed the missiles, but it was a really intense situation but by the time it was made public it was over so the general public didn’t really know about it
Me: Was there ever a point in time where you thought Cuba was going to fire the missiles, were you ever in 100% belief or did you have a gut feeling they didn’t really have it in them?
JW: I don’t know why or how. I think some secret arrangement was made, part of the deal was we would take some missiles out of somewhere in the Middle East and in exchange for it. That information came out later on it was more serious than anyone knew. It was a button push away from a nuclear holocaust really. Everybody of course was relieved and what we didn’t know also was if the marine corps was to attack Cuba they had tactical missiles already set up to meet that attack so we would have taken some very heavy casualties had it happened at the very minimum.
Me: Did you have any other close family that was also enlisted?
JW: No
Me: How did you stay in touch with your family did you call or write?
JW: Yes, the Marine Corps is very big on having you write home often and keep your parents informed of how you’re doing.
Me: What was your post-war experience? What did you do professionally and just stuff like that?
JW: I came out of the service after completing active duty I joined the Univac division of Sperry Rand which was the number 2 computer company at that time.
Me: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?
JW: I would say that the Vietnam War….. as the Vietnam war progressed it became obvious there was a lot of misinformation about all kinds of things like the strength of the enemy, how they were supplied, we did not have very good intelligence about the Vietnamese and what was happening in that country, all we knew was the communists were attempting to take over Vietnam and we did not want that to happen because at the time the thinking was if the communists took over Vietnam all of Southeast Asia would fallen into communism hands and we had interest in several of the countries in Southeast Asia. Japan of course would have been threatened and well Japan was threatened by the Korean War also and we certainly didn’t want to lose Japan after spending all those casualties in WWII getting it. Japan turns out to be one of our best allies at this time and also Germany turns out to be very good ally of the United States since WWII. The world was a lot safer since we had those two conquered nations on our side.
Me: How did your service and experience affect your life?
JW: Well I’ll give you an example, when your grandmother, Frances, my wife Fran, got sick there was no question in my mind that I would stay with her and take care she has a very serious illness of multiple sclerosis which was ultimately going to kill her. 33 years before she was diagnosed, between the times she was diagnosed and the time she died in which her condition got progressively worse to the point where she was unable to feed herself. She went from a walker to a wheelchair to bed ridden. There was never a question in my mind what I had to do. A large part of that comes from the Marine Corps we never leave anybody on the battlefield. Even if they are dead we bring their bodies back. It helped me to know what I had to do with Grandma.
Me: Thank you for sharing all of that because that was very meaningful. That would conclude my short interview of you and that’s really all. If there is anything else you would like to share experience-wise or any additional info you can.
JW: I spent most of my working life in the computer business and it was a very actively growing and changing business it was like companies started and got bought out, got taken over, it was very volatile and the ability to adapt to change was also something I needed to be able to do as time went on. I worked for several companies but I always worked for the best companies in the business, including HP.
Me: That was great additional info does that complete what you would like to say?
JW: Yes it does.
Me: Thank you so much for sharing everything.