Interview with D.R.D, History 150H Spring 2021, Conducted by Butsarakham (Oom) Dyer, March 14th, 2021.

Overview to Interview 

The Vietnam War started in 1954 and eventually ended in 1976. It was a dreadful war between the North Vietnamese Communists and the Southern Vietnamese. The war killed more than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans. The United States entered the war in 1965 in order to help support the Southern Vietnamese troops. At the age of 18, my father, D.R.D, enlisted in the United States Army. He was the first in his family to go into the military. After months of training in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program, in the late 1960s, he entered the battlefields of Vietnam as an officer. After many months in Vietnam, he returned home as he was wounded by an explosion which left a permanent scar on his left hand. In this interview, appropriate questions were asked based on the theme of social change, in this case it is the Vietnam War. As a father, and a war veteran who experienced social change during the Vietnam War, D.R.D tells his story and how social change affected his life in three main ways as he answers an abundance of interview questions. First, he explains how being a soldier in the Vietnam War affected his life, secondly he describes how the war led to a change in family circumstances, and lastly he illustrates how being a part of the war made him the person he is today. The experiences he had, some of which were traumatic, taught him lessons that made him the loving father and husband he is today.

Biography:

My father, D.R.D is the oldest of three brothers. He was born and raised in Michigan. He lived with his mother and step-father whom he inherited his last name from. My father’s biological dad was non-existent in his life. My father lived with his parents until he turned 18. His parents had a rule that at the age of 18, you moved out of the house.

In 1965, at 18 years old, my father enlisted in the Army. He had the opportunity to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps when he had enlisted which allowed him to pursue an education while still being in the military.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s my father was in the battle fields of Vietnam. In 1971 he was wounded on the left hand and was evacuated out of Vietnam. He remained working in the United States after getting wounded. My father then decided to work overseas and that is how he met my mother. My father was married twice before meeting my mother and eventually having me. My father’s decision to work overseas for private companies provided me an opportunity to live in five different countries with him and mother. This opportunity created an unbreakable bond between all three of us.

Currently, my father is in Osh, Kyrgyzstan while my mother and I are in Virginia. I am attending James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, while my mother is living in Ashburn, Virginia. This is our family’s first time all being a part from another. It is a challenge we are taking on and we know that it will make all of us mentally and emotionally stronger.

Transcript: 

SPEAKERS:

Oom Dyer, D.R.D

Oom Dyer: Hello, my name is Butsarakham Dyer but my nickname’s Oom. Today we will be interviewing my father, who will be going by D.R.D, about the Vietnam War. I’m currently back home in Ashburn, Virginia, and my father’s currently in Kyrgyzstan. So, let’s first start off with the first question, which is why did you join the army?

D.R.D: Um, I made a commitment to the army in 1965, a long, long time ago. And the options at that time, were pretty much, if you didn’t join the army, in some volunteer sense, you would be drafted. And a lot of people, I went to the university, I went to school, I won’t tell you the information, I guess you don’t ask for it. I had the opportunity to enroll in an ROTC: Reserve Officer Training Corps activity and that seemed like a pretty reasonable way to go into the army as an officer. My family had no military background. So, I was kind of going my way through this, some of my classmates had fathers who were career military and whatnot had a better sense of what military service looked like. I did not.

Oom Dyer: Ok… and the second question is, what were your perceptions of the war before, during and after you joined the army?

D.R.D: Wow, um, before I was curious in a good but horrifying sense. I was struck by a quote from Ernest Hemingway who said that no author, or would be author, which is something of what I saw myself… no author can afford to miss a war. And so, I was interested academically and intellectually about the war, I was horrified by what I saw going on. No clear foreign policy objectives, a lot of, battles were just people kind of wandering around in the mountains or in the jungles of Vietnam. And body count, was worth the metric. How many Americans were killed this week, how many South Vietnamese were killed this weekend? How many North Vietnamese were killed this week? At that time, I remember prior to 1975, there were two Vietnam’s: the south, which was a dictatorship, masquerading as a democracy and the north, which was communism. And it was a pretty repressive Soviet style common state. So I don’t know if that got it the question. But I didn’t have any clear sense of objective. I didn’t want to join the army and be a hero. I certainly didn’t want to get killed in Vietnam. I didn’t want to get wounded in Vietnam. I came away one for two, clearly, I’m here, Oom’s here.

Oom Dyer: Yeah…

D.R.D: I didn’t get killed, although I was wounded April of 1971.

Oom Dyer: So, the third question is, how did your perceptions of the war change after joining the army, which is very similar to what you said before.

D.R.D: Yeah… My perceptions didn’t change very much. A lot of my suspicions about the war were confirmed. There was not a clear policy objective. There, there wasn’t. If we, if you look at the Second World War, the Great Patriotic warrior here Kyrgyzstan. The war started, it carried out a little bit. The Russians fought the Germans. The allies, including the United States, invaded Europe in June 1944. And by May of 1945, the Allies and the Soviet Union, the Russians, had defeated Germany and we turned our attention to the Pacific where we were also in war with the Empire of Japan. There’s none of that kind of pattern associated with the Vietnam War. And there was a lot of discussion of two times why don’t we just: invade North Vietnam in March to Hanoi liberate the north and even framing it that way, betrays a real misunderstanding of what the war was about. The Vietnamese people were just tired of having foreigners around. They’d had the French for a couple 100 years, they’ve been fighting the Chinese for 1000 years. And they just saw the Americans is the latest incursion by a foreign power trying to tell them, tell the Vietnamese what to do, how to run their country. And by the way, more than the French now anybody kind of plundering their resources.

Oom Dyer: What was your exact role in the army?

D.R.D: My exact role in the army? An Army doesn’t have roles that you’re talking about. I was a company commander, when I was in Vietnam, I was a first lieutenant. Shortly after I was wounded, I was promoted to captain. At that time, officers enter the army as second lieutenants. After a year in a day, unless you did something really bad, you could get promoted to First Lieutenant because the junior officers with company grade officers, lieutenants and captains were rotating pretty quickly. So, I was a first lieutenant acting as a company commander. I served with the 82nd Airborne Division. And, I was in control of on paper 170  some people. In reality, I don’t think we ever had more than 100 people in the field at any given time, which was another problem is that there’s there are all these positions that are shadows service, the amount of, of warfare you can bring to bear was severely limited by the resources. And none of the things that are on the evening news now in where the United States is, in Iraq, or Syria in particular were available. We didn’t have night vision scope, [so we] had to learn to move at night, because you could learn to move at night. We, our radio communications were frequently bad. Despite what all the war films show you it was sometimes hard to get air support was usually where I was anyways. It was usually okay to call in artillery. But we were severely limited on what we could, we could actually do both because of lack of resources. The technologies that are assumed today did not exist. So send a runner was off the way he got a message, what are your company to another.

Oom Dyer: You also mentioned how you were wounded in the war, what medical conditions did you suffer from?

D.R.D: I was hit by the fragments from an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade. I was wounded a couple different places. A fairly significant fragment went through my left hand and wrist. It’s actually a wonder that didn’t take my hand off. It’s also a good thing. It didn’t hit me in the chest or the head or I’d be dead. And none of this was placed and Oom of you would be here. So that happened at four o’clock, about four o’clock in the afternoon at 4:30pm, on April 6 1971. The war was over an hour later. We got a medical helicopter in. And it took me to an aid station, from an aid station, I was flown out of the North of Tonkin into a naval ship. And, a couple months later, when they were sure was gonna die because I got some infections, I was sent back to the US.

Oom Dyer: And then when you were at war in Vietnam, do you know what your family situation was like back home?

D.R.D: Hmm, my family situation was that by now ex-wife was living with her parents. And it was it was odd to be married, we decided to get married for for a bunch of reasons, one of which was that it was a sense of stability. And a tie back to U.S. Remember, I’d been soldiering for like four years before, five years, I guess before I went to Vietnam. And having a an anchored purpose in the U.S, a family. I’m really glad I didn’t have kids. My two older kids were born after I returned from Vietnam. And right now working apart from my family, it’s a pretty hollow feeling. And, I’m glad that I did not have children when I was at war.

Oom Dyer: So when you were married, what was it like being married? Knowing that you’d come back after fighting in the war? Like, did you have any regrets about decisions that you made?

D.R.D: No, not really. I was hoping I’d come back. There’s, there’s nothing certain about coming home from the war, particularly in the combat army. Again, I wasn’t defending Chicago with an Air Defense Artillery unit. People did that. And, I have a good friend who was defending our, our northern border, manning a missile silo out in Montana someplace that was his military service. You don’t think about that very much, you don’t dwell on it. You got a lot of other things going on. But I’ve, I’ve said, this is one of my more common. What did you do in the ward daddy stories, is the only time I can really motivate people to want to go out and kill people to break things. Is if the helicopters that had mail on them couldn’t get to us. It was really important to get those letters. This was again, email was not anything that we had. Zoom calls, FaceTimes, none of this existed. You wrote a letter with pencil and paper, literally pencil and paper, you put it in an envelope, you send it home. And with a little bit of luck, your mother, your brother’s your wife, your daughters, your kids, if you have kids would send you a letter, they put pictures of them in there. And so it was all written communication, it was always delayed. When you’d get a letter, it’d take a week, 10 days, two weeks to get from the United States into the war zone. And then had to get on a helicopter, find whatever mountain you were on to drop it in. So it was a good. Family was a good anchor point. But it, it wasn’t as immediate as right now. I’m sitting in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, and I’m on a call that communicates instantaneously with the United States, which this would have been witchcraft and magic in the 20th century.

Oom Dyer: After the war, did you pursue any education or anything? Because I know you went to the University of Delaware and got a master’s in American University was that like, right after the war, or like a couple of years later?

D.R.D: Well, it was immediately, it was in fact, before I got off active duty when I came back to the U.S. I arrived, I think in August of 1971. And I was assigned to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, lots of stories about that. And I realized quickly, a typical look around me and a lot there are a lot of people that were there for a long time. The army told me they’re gonna have to rebuild my left hand. And it was tedious, slow work on the hand. And, I, what would happen is they would do an operation, they’d say, come back in 30 days. And a lot of people myself included would spend some time actually living in the hospital, and particularly guys who are severely wounded with amputations and whatever. But, everybody’s sitting around playing cards and drinking. And I took a look around. I said, I don’t want to do this. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it, but you consider it a good use of next year. So, I began to look at graduate programs, I considered going to law school. And then I decided I just couldn’t see myself doing the things that lawyers did. And while I was sorting all this out, I got a master’s degree. And Uncle Sam paid for that because I was still a soldier. [GI bill] And then when I got out, the Veterans Administration offered at that time, X years dollars of educational opportunity, and I want to PhD. Two years of coursework and agony writing a dissertation.

Oom Dyer: Interesting. So you wouldn’t change anything that happened in the past that led to now?

D.R.D: Um, I’ve got a great family. A wonderful daughter, as a result of a more recent experience, I’ve got two kids from the first marriage. So, I often think about that, you know what I have? I think a lot about what would I have done at the exact moments before I got wounded/ And, you know, by fairly small adjustments of what I did, I could probably have avoided being wounded, which would have avoided have avoided having me sent back to us, which would have meant maybe that I would have never been wounded. I would never have gone to graduate school. I wouldn’t have the kids I have today. So probably I’d have sucked up going on shot again. So no I would not change anything.

Oom Dyer: After, after the war, did you notice any changes in society or anyone that you knew? Did you change as a person? Because I remember, you told me that, people never come out of a war the same as the same person they were going in?

D.R.D: Yeah, I mean, you grew up in a hurry. And you see things you wish you’d never seen, and you go through situations that you wish you’d never been in. You’re scared a lot of the time, a lot of the time. So, I don’t know how to answer that exactly. I was changed, for sure. But everything around me was changing. When I, a small example, I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors. I’ve been fishing and camping and hiking and all that stuff. When I came back from Vietnam, I didn’t I swore I was going to never carry a backpack. And that last for a little bit. I thought I’ve learned to play golf, I hate golf. And, you know, you fall back into things that are actually you. But society was changing too, people who are being a lot more assertive, that we really don’t want our government, our country involved in a pointless war in Asia, and settlement like we don’t want our government involved in pointless an endless war fill in fill in the blank country right now. There were a lot of that going on. We’ve been endlessly at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, fill in the blank Somalia for 20 years. And you know, we’re not trying to draw the situation. Today, it’s fairly okay to protest. Back then protests were seen as anti-army, anti-soldiers and there was a big divide in the country. So, what I saw between 1965 to 1975 is the country changed and they said no more of this stuff. When I came back, when I went to graduate school, people stare it because it was pretty clear that I was in the army. I had short hair, everyone else had shoulder length, guys had shoulder length hair, and that made me stand out. I had damages all over. My, my left hand is all sutured up. It was clear something bad had happened to be in. People put two and two together: short head guy wandering around, all bandaged up, yeah, he’s just out of the military. And so, it led to a lot of discussions and the United States were changing, and I changed as a result.

Oom Dyer: And knowing all your experiences at war, Ken, your son, my brother, if he were a little boy, or if you were 18 years old, would you let him or encourage him to go through the same experiences that you did? And like if he wanted to go to war? How, like, what would you say like what would be your reaction everything?

D.R.D: I would do everything in my power to discourage him from doing that. And I… thank the gods that never had to have that discussion with him…because he managed to hit a sweet spot when he was 18 to 25 or whatever when we really weren’t doing any more but two quick stories: When I went to Vietnam, I actually extended for six months on my tour there. So, because that would have protected my younger brother. I have two brothers, my younger one would have come eligible for the draft. And then we kept him because basically, the army didn’t put two people in to be Vietnam at the same time, from the same family; long story. But what I was getting to is that I remember vividly, I asked my dad, who was wounded in the Second World War in the Pacific. And there was a time when it looked like this the Cuban Missile Crisis A long time ago, whenever, I was having a conversation again, I ever forget this. I said, what would happen if he called you up? And you had to go back, he was a naval corpsman work with the Marines. And he said I’d shoot myself in the foot. I’ll never forget that I was stunned. You know, he said I’m never going to do that again, ever. And that made a big impression on me, not enough impression to keep me out of the war or to cause me to run away to Canada to avoid serving or any of that. But that’s a pretty good story, you know you got to have your head focused if you’re going to take on voluntarily military service. So, God bless people who do it. I did it. I prepared myself as best I could. I took everything that the army offered me in terms of making myself a very well qualified soldier and still damn near lost my life.

Oom Dyer: Okay.

D.R.D: I don’t want.. I’m glad my son never went out. Well, I don’t want anybody I don’t want my grandson to go. I don’t want anybody to go.

Oom Dyer: Yeah, that’s very, very understandable. Yeah, well, thank you for doing everything for our country. And thank you for sharing your experiences for my college history class.

D.R.D: Alright, younger daughter. I love you.

Oom Dyer: I love you too.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai and reedited by Butsarakham (Oom) Dyer

Research: 

I decided to research about the Vietnam War as this was a major social change that occurred less than 50 years ago. I had little to no knowledge about this topic and believed that it would be beneficial to learn more about it. People talk about WWI and WWII, however not many talk about the Vietnam War. I chose to research three topics: the history of the Vietnam War, what life was like during the Vietnam War, and decided to research sites that provided images of soldiers serving the Vietnam War. The Oxford Companion to American Military History explains why the United States became involved in the Vietnam War and how the leaders of the United States had a large influence in the war. The second website called the Vietnam War (Special Section) and Vietnam War (Draft Resistance) explains what life was like during the Vietnam War. Lastly, a source called “15 Poignant Photos That Show What Life Was like during the Vietnam War” provides photos of some of the events that occurred during the Vietnam War. These photos include the lives of soldiers during different times of the war. All of these sources helped me contextualize my interview. Additionally, I believe that the Vietnam War veterans, such as my father should also be able to share their story. It is important for myself and others to be informed about a war that took the lives over a million innocent people (including both soldiers and civilians).

Bibliography: 

“.” The Oxford Companion to American Military History. . Encyclopedia.com. 18 Feb. 2021 .” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, 22 Feb. 2021, www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/southeast-asia-history/vietnam-war.

Engel, Pamela. “15 Poignant Photos That Show What Life Was like during the Vietnam War.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 13 Mar. 2019, www.businessinsider.com/15-poignant-photos-that-show-what-life-was-like-during-the-vietnam-war-2015-4#us-army-helicopters-fire-into-the-trees-to-cover-for-south-vietnamese-troops-on-the-ground-as-they-attack-a-viet-cong-camp-near-the-cambodian-border-14.

History.com Editors. “Vietnam War.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history#:~:text=More%20than%203%20million%20people,of%20U.S.%20forces%20in%201973.

UW, University of Washington. “Vietnam War (Special Section), Vietnam War (Draft Resistance) .” Antiwar and Radical History Project, University of Washington , depts.washington.edu/antiwar/.

Follow up: 

On March 24th, 2021, I called my father late at night eastern time in the United States and early morning his time in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. I called a couple weeks before but wanted to call him once more to make sure that he was comfortable with everything that is being stated in the transcript. He once again, gave me the approval to make this particular interview public. My father is honored to be apart of my honors history project, and would like to thank Dr. McCleary for letting him be a part of my research project. He is grateful that he is able to share his experiences with the world and enjoyed educating his youngest child about his past experiences.

How the interview was recorded:

The interview was recorded over a Zoom call. The transcription was made by Otter.ai and reedited by the interviewer: Butsarakham (Oom) Dyer.