Chuck Prochazka Interview, UNST 390, Spring 2019. Conducted by Garrett Groulx on March 20, 2019. This interview was conducted over the phone. I was in a quiet study room in Wampler Hall, and the interviewee was at his home in Plymouth, Michigan. Chuck was unable to conduct the interview in person, but he agreed to do it over the phone. I used an app called MP3 Recorder to record the interview off of my iPhone, and called chuck off of my roommates iPhone. The following interview is unedited.
Chuck Prochazka is my moms older brother. He is the fourth of eight children on my moms side. He was born in November of 1952 in Detroit, Michigan. He was an all-state athlete in hockey and baseball with hopes to pitch in the MLB. Shortly after he graduated from high school while he was preparing for tryouts with the Detroit Tiger, he learned he was going to be drafted into the Vietnam War. He debated fleeing to Canada or Mexico to prevent himself from being shipped to Vietnam. He decided against that when the he received a letter saying he must report for duty or else he’d be arrested. After his basic training he served working on helicopters and fighter planes at Fort Org in California. After working there he was stationed in Texas where he passed along top secret messages between the US military. He served from 1972 to 1975. Though he did not ever have to go to Vietnam, he lost many dear friends who he trained with and went to school with. When he returned home, Chuck fell into drug addiction while trying to cope with the loss of many good friends. The details of this time in his life was left out of the interview by preference of the interviewee. Today, Chuck is a private contractor for construction companies in northern Michigan.
My uncle served in the final years of the Vietnam War. This war began in 1954 when North Vietnam defeated the French administration of Vietnam and attempted to unite North and South Vietnam under one communist rule, modeled after the Soviet Union. The US, being opposed to communism, allied with South Vietnam to prevent to spread of communism. Over a half million US troops were deployed to Vietnam. The war ended in 1975, ultimately being considered a defeat for the US.
Flaum, Thea K., and Karl Patterson Schmidt. “United States.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 24 Mar. 2019, www.britannica.com/place/United-States/The-Kennedy-and-Johnson-administrations#ref613252.
“Vietnam War.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 21 Aug. 2018, www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war.
The Selective Service Draft Lottery was created by the US government in 1940 during World War II. After 1942 it wasn’t used again until the final years of the Vietnam War in 1969. The draft was conducted by selecting dates in a calendar year at random. If a male was of age and born on that date, they were scheduled to be called to duty. There was a draft every year from 1969 to 1972. The draft process was abolished in 1973, which means if my uncle was born just one year later he would have never been drafted. He was drafted number 14 in the 1972 draft. It is estimated that nearly 70,000 men fled to Canada or Mexico to escape the draft. My uncle Chuck was one of 600,000 US men drafted into the Vietnam War.
“LOTTERY FACTS.” The Vietnam War Draft Lottery, www.vietnamwardraftlottery.com/lottery-facts/.
Transcription: Chuck Prochazka Interview (GG- Garrett Groulx; CP- Chuck Prochazka)
GG: Alright I am interviewing Chuck Prochazka, Chuck go ahead and introduce yourself.
CP: This is E-4 Specialist Charlie Prochazka of the Czechoslovakian Tribe.
GG: Ok, so Chuck, what war did you serve in?
CP: Vietnam.
GG: Do you remember what year you were drafted? Wait you weren’t drafted were you? You enlisted didn’t you?
CP: No sir, I wouldn’t think of it. I played sports. I was pretty academic up to fifth grade, catholic school. I transferred to Plymouth (High School) and gradually got more into sports. I was torn between academics and sports. I was drafted right out of high school at 19 years old in the second to the last lottery number 14 which was a sure thing to go into the service because they were taking numbers up to 60 at the time.
GG: Oh so you knew you were going to get picked.
CP: Yes, well I got in delayed entry where I got an extra three months, so I took off and traveled to pretty much every state but Ohio.
GG: What did you say you were doing before you got drafted? And what were your plans for after high school had you not been drafted?
CP: Well at the time I had graduated and knew the draft was coming up. I thought the war would have been over for ten years by then and I went up to college. I started right away at Delta Junior College up by Space City in Saginaw, Michigan. I ran good grades because I knew they could grab me and send me into the rice patty’s in Vietnam.
GG: You said you had three months before you had to report somewhere?
CP: Well I had gotten that three month delayed entry so I could check out Canada and Mexico because they didn’t believe in the war. Basically I was a conscientious objector because I didn’t want to go kill somebody that I didn’t know and didn’t know why. So I went to Canada and my parents said “Hey we’ll support you wherever you go.” But we had already put three kids through college and we were short on money so my dad said “maybe you should go into the service.” So I respected that, then I went to Mexico. I didn’t especially like the conditions there so I came back and went to Florida with a buddy of mine. I was laying on a beach when my brother Dave walked up with a letter from the government saying report in six days or the FBI will look for me and put me in Fort Leavenworth.
GG: Oh wow.
CP: Well, that’s what they do, just like college deferment, they said no more college deferment because they needed bodies in Vietnam.
GG: So you reported after that six days and where was the first place you went after that?
CP: I went to [unintelligible] in Detroit and they took you through all the rigmarole like touching your toes in the nude ya know, they physically check you out, your sight, and if you have disease or anything. You try to tell them how bad you are so you don’t go but they found me to be A1 and fit.
GG: Yea weren’t you a top athlete all through high school?
CP: Yea I was pretty good, not to be modest. I had the tigers looking at me twice for pitching but I had thrown a curve ball and hurt my arm and wasn’t able to whip it.
GG: Yea that’s what my mom was telling me.
CP: Well then I played hockey and I was a top goal getter. And I did end up getting drafted, just by the wrong people.
GG: So after training where was the first place they deployed you to?
CP: Well I was in Fort Knox. When I got there they had that new airgun machine for shots so they give you all your shots at once with a big air gun. They’d but it on your arm and if you moved you skin your skin ripped. Everyone was getting their skin ripped. The gun would shoot this air that ripped your skin but it also shot your shots into you. I remember being dizzy when they tried to take my blood, the doctor tried five times. Finally a girl came over and was able to take my blood. I walked out and I was about to faint. I looked and there was an ambulance outside with a stretcher and a bunch of guys were coming out. One guy had to get 900 stitches. I still remember.
GG: That’s crazy. Did you ever go over to Vietnam? Also my mom said you were an officer, is there any truth to that?
CP: No, not an officer. You gotta be graduated from college and come out as a second lieutenant, then a first lieutenant. Whatever time you trained to be an officer you owe the military that amount of time back. I know somebody right now down the street from me that did four years at Notre Dame and now owes six years of service and he’s over in Afghanistan right now.
GG: So did you ever go over to Vietnam?
CP: Well I came out and got orders to Vietnam right away out of basic training. They rushed us through, instead of eight weeks we only did five. So I said “No I don’t want to go I have to figure out something here.” They said to “take some tests and we’ll give you another year.” That was the day before I deployed for Vietnam. I made a deal to go to Fort Org, California.
GG: Oh ok, what did you do out there?
CP: You try different things and you take some more tests and they put me in a technical library working on stealth bombers and apache helicopters. It was only military in the technical library where they did all experiments for every branch of the service. My time was up on my contract and I had order to Vietnam to leave in two days again. A psychoanalyst said “If you give us another year of your life we’ll train you to go to the message center in Fort Sam Houston, so thats where I ended up for the next deployment, and the Vietnam war was still going on.
GG: Ok do you remember what year this was?
CP: I went in May 9 of ’72 and I came out in August of ’75.
GG: And where did you say you went in Texas?
CP: Fort Sam Houston is the name of the fort, in San Antonio Texas. I lived off base, I made a deal with them to get BAQ and separate rations which is about eighty bucks to live off base and another seventy bucks for food in a month. So I got one-fifty plus my base pay for the month was like three-forty, and that’s what we got by on per month. I’d always spend all my money within the first two weeks and have to get a bag of rice and [unintelligible] to eat for the next two weeks.
GG: So what were you working on in Texas? Were you working on the same type of stuff?
CP: It was after Fort Org and they did all the experiments in California which was very interesting, the apache helicopter and the stealth bomber. But when I deployed over to San Antonio it was a message center that was like a post office, which was where all the branches of the Academy of Health Science and Brook Medical Center are, which is the burn center of the world. All the worst burn victims would come and they would put them in a bed of jell-o or something. I didn’t like that so much so I went over to the academy of health science which was a message center and that was like a post office doing messages and transferring all of the top-secret messages and stuff from one point to another. Now theres no reason I was top secret at either base, there was no reason for them to pick me of all people.
GG: So you were sending secret messages back and fourth.
CP: Yea there were every kind of massage but a lot of them were top secret, yes.
GG: Oh wow that’s cool.
CP: It’s something that somebody more educated should have been doing.
GG: That’s pretty cool though.
CP: I read everything haha. That’s what I’m talking about, I read everything and it was very interesting. I was brought before a board twice in regards to missing documents. For instance back then there was a Chinese guy that was born and raised here and they swore he was selling documents, which they do. They steal documents and send them. I wasn’t doing that, I swear I wasn’t.
GG: That guy was doing that where you were?
CP: He was somewhere more like Arizona area. I was in California then Texas. But if they were missing a document you would go before a board and everything was dewy decimal system back then. They also did an experiment with computers, the first one I believe came out in the 50’s and in the 60’s they got more advanced. When I was there the best computer they had can do about one-third of what my phone can do right now.
GG: Alright so after Texas, do you remember what year that was?
CP: Texas was ’74-’75, ’72-’73 was California.
GG: And you got out in ’75 right?
CP: August of ’75
GG: Ok did you go somewhere after Texas?
CP: I didn’t pass go. I got in my Monte Carlo and I got a U-Haul trailer and I pulled it home. I did the same thing in California, I got a U-Haul to Texas. I think I had the Monte Carlo at that time. I had a big van before that and everyone used to pile in my van on the weekends.
GG: Obviously you had been living the military lifestyle, was it hard going back to civilian life and just going home after that?
CP: For many friends that did deployment it was tough. It was like they gave them a timeout. You’re just not right and they cut you loose. They didn’t really take care of PTSD until recently where a lot of people take advantage of it getting $700 to $1500 per month, a lot of people need it. You read about the people that needed it real bad and the rest of them were in the street. A few of them were themselves and did fine. A lot of people when they see that type of action, which I was told about it, I didn’t have to see it but I saw film and I knew people that saw it ya know. My cousin I just visited saw sixteen people get wasted. He was high security for Nuclear Ops out in Seattle, Washington for the Marines.
GG: Oh wow.
CP: He did his time. I went and visited him in Myrtle Beach and I tell ya he’s not right.
GG: Oh yea my mom told me about that.
CP: He’s not right I tell ya. So, I’m sorry for that but he’s doing ok. After that he got out and was a caboose guy in Flint out at the Conrail. Then he went to run the AmTrack from DC to South Carolina for thirty years. He just retired. He’s got an eighteen acre and a twenty-seven acre compound in Virginia and he’s living in a trailer park on the beach in Myrtle Beach by the boardwalk. […]
GG: […]
CP: Anyway I say he’s not right because he was high security in the Marines and they mess with your mind, ya know.
GG: So, one of my last questions is what did you do when you got back?
CP: I looked around me and saw all my friends kinda in the same place they were when I went in. Some got married and divorced already. Most of them were stagnant and not doing anything and it made me want to get to school and do something. I actually got into school right away. I got $15,000 help with schooling from the government, which runs out relatively quick as you know. And then you’re on your own and I didn’t have enough to pursue college so I went into excavating which is hard work and you earn money the old fashion way, I earn it I’m still doing it forty-three years later. I going to go get on a backhoe and go dig a ditch tomorrow.
GG: Sweet, My last question was how old were you when you got out?
CP: Nineteen when I went in.That was ’72 to ’75, you do the math. My birthday is November 30.
GG: Ok so twenty-two or twenty-three.
CP: You do the math.
GG: Alright well great, thats perfect right there.
I feel as though the interview went pretty smoothly. My uncle is a very laid back guy and he loves to tell his stories and he enjoys talking to people so this was easy for him to talk about. He probably could have talked for a few hours had I wanted to go into further detail. If I were to conduct it again I would rehearse and go over my questions more to get rid of some of the stuttering I did when asking questions. Not all of my questions were written down. Many of them I asked just base on the topic we were discussing in the moment. Overall, the interview went well and my uncle was happy to share his story with me.
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