Rosa Rojas: September 1st, 2010. My name is Rosa Rojas, and I will be interviewing Sergeant Richard Garcia of the U.S. Army. This interview is being conducted at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, Ohio as part of an oral history project by the Ohio Historical Society to preserve the stories and experiences of servicemen and their family members for future generations. For our project, can you please spell your full name?
Richard Garcia: Richard R-I-C-H-A-R-D, middle initial T, last name is Garcia G-A-R-C-I-A.
R: Can you just state for us once again your rank and—well you were in the army, but you said that you also were in the reserves—can you—?
G: Sure, yeah. I joined the U.S. Army in 1967 as a private, and I was discharged from the army 1970 as a sergeant. I was a sergeant for about two years. And then I came back home, went to school. I joined the marine reserve in my hometown San Jose, California with 4th Air Delivery Platoon, and I was a sergeant in the Marine Corp Reserve for a few years. So that’s my military background.
R: Can you tell us a little bit about your early history. So you were born in San Jose, California?
G: Actually, I was born in LA, but I was raised in San Jose, California, which is about four hundred miles apart.
R: And you parents?
G: My dad was born in Oxnard, California, and my mom was born in Douglas, Arizona, and they met in California working.
R: Did you have siblings?
G: I have three sisters and two brothers, all younger than I.
R: What is your extended heritage? So, your parents were both born in California.
G: Right.
R: And were their parents both born in California as well? Do you have a long line of people from California?
G: My maternal grandfather is Native American. He was born in Arizona. My maternal grandmother was born in Chihuahua; she’s Mexican. They got married in Arizona. My paternal side—they were both from Guanajuato, Mexico. They came with their parents—my great grandparents—to California in 1910. They started a chicken ranch in Piru, California. And it still exists.
R: Did any of your siblings go end up in the armed forces as well?
G: No, I was the only one of my siblings. I had four first cousins served in ‘Nam at the same time. Myself and four others.
R: Did you all join at the same time?
G: Some were drafted; some joined.
R: Before you joined the military, what was your impression of the military?
G: Well, my impression—the formulation of it—my feelings and my thoughts about the military?
R: Mhm.
G: My great uncle fought in the First World War. I had like five uncles and my dad and my father-in-law all fought in World War II, an uncle in Korea, myself and four cousins in ‘Nam, and two of my first cousins’ sons went to the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan and Somalia, so I felt compelled to serve in that way. Yeah.
R: So you come from a long family history of military service.
G: Yes.
R: How did the family feel about having so many members of the family in the military? Was there any fear?
G: Sure, there was fear because you could get hurt or killed. And many were hurt, but there was no fatalities. A lot of people got severely wounded and hurt in other ways. However, there seemed to be some pressure to be accepted by the U.S. as a Mexican. There was some pressure to stand up and fight for the country that you lived in. In the back of mind, there were these benefits for education—me personally. Education, and what else? A job. There was some stability involved. You got some experience working in the world. I wanted to go to college, and I didn’t want to work and go to college. That’s what I was trying to do when I first signed up.
R: Now why did you choose the branch of the military that you chose—the army?
G: Probably because all my uncles served in the army.
R: Then why did you switch to the marines?
G: Oh, the Marine Corp. I got out of the army, and I was going to school—just a regular student in the 70s… kind of partying and stuff. My roommate of the time was an ex-marine, and he joined the reserves because someone told him about it. So I joined, and it was extra income. I was buying a truck. It helped me pay bills. We had a lot of fun, made new friends, and as it turned out, my first sergeant was my wife,--to be, at the time—her uncle. This was all in my hometown.
R: Did you meet him first or her first?
G: Yes, my uncle worked for him in a Cabinetry shop.
R: Oh, okay.
G: It’s kind of a—how would I say—we were kind of isolated in our Mexican community there in San Jose. That’s how we networked, work, school, church—stuff like that.
R: Okay, great. So when you told your family, your mother, when you were joining the military, it was accepted because of your long family history?
G: I knew my dad felt that I would probably get drafted because every other kid in our neighborhood would get drafted and go to their funeral a month later, so it was happening a lot. So I joined, and although they didn’t really like it, it was accepted because it was pretty prevalent in our community.
R: Did you feel pressured?
G: Yes.
R: By the community?
G: By my community—the legacy of my uncles, yes. To be a full man in that community, you had to fight one way or the other—either to stay in the body or to get out. That’s just subconscious, yes.
R: And when you say to get out, because of struggles?
G: Economics, sure.
R: And was there any gang violence?
G: Yes, there was some. Not as much as now, but there was some, yeah.
R: Were you trying to escape that?
G: Yes, I wanted to advance myself somehow through college, through education mainly. I had some really rough friends. They were going to prison and stuff, and I didn’t want to go in that direction. It was a pretty rough neighborhood.
R: What was your military occupational specialty?
G: Light Weapons Infantry Squad Leader.
R: Can you talk about that a little bit?
G: I led a group of ten men, and mainly, we did patrolling. I was in the Air Cavalry—did a lot of flying, patrolling along the Cambodian border mainly between ’68 and ’70. I went from March of ’69 to ’70 and did my first tours in infantry men. Came back stateside, and I was so bored. I just had this feeling that I would be better off in ‘Nam than in Kansas—was really boring. I was drinking a lot. Very bored. I felt that I needed to go back to where I had been to finish off the end of my third year.
R: How long were you stateside?
G: Three months, maybe.
R: Can you tell our viewers? Stateside means…
G: The U.S.—stationed in an army post in the United States.
R: Let’s talk about your training in the military. What was your impression of that? What do you remember about it when you first went into training? You had already an idea because of your family.
G: The training was pretty stressful, very physical. I was skinny at the time, and I got even skinnier even though I ate a lot. I had training in El Paso, and it was extremely hot. But I got used to the heat, got in real good shape, and just made a lot of new friends, and I was essentially happy being on my own, independent—private soldier in the army making less than two hundred bucks a month, but it was my own. I felt good.
R: When you think about the challenges of being in the military, what would you say was your biggest challenge to overcome, or did you not feel it was challenging?
G: It was very challenging. I think the biggest challenge was lack of sleep. I hardly slept at all for two years.
R: Because of the training?
G: No, because of the constant—how would I say? Where I was, was kind of isolated—had a lot of rocket and mortar attacks—almost daily. It was like rain almost. It would come. We patrolled the Cambodian border. A lot of very big contacts with the enemy. I mean, hundreds of people would die. Sometimes maybe one, maybe you’d have a boring stretch of time where nothing would happen. You’d just patrol, and it’d be extremely hot, and you’d get homesick, and you’d eat this crumby food and dirty water. It’s raining. Just like the movies, it’s kind of like that. Not as dramatic, but a lot of boredom, a lot of heat. And of course, there’s always the threat of contact with the enemy and combat from a very low level to extremely high.
R: Then when you got back home, after your service was complete with the army, was it a challenge to overcome that? Did you have any kind of residual effects?
G: Oh, yes. Again, there was trouble sleeping. I could stay awake for two or three days. With very little sleep, and then I found myself working and going to school. I’d work full time, go to school full time and get a couple hours of sleep at night; sometimes I’d stay up for a couple of days. It was kind of a problem for me for a number of years, but I was so happy being home. I was just excited to be home; it was so good to be home.
R: Did you have any challenges as a person of color?
G: In the military?
R: Mhm.
G: Yes.
R: Can you talk about those?
G: Well, let’s see. I got drafted, went to Fort Bliss, Texas right outside of El Paso. I’d say maybe twenty-five percent of the guys were Mexican’s, which I thought, “This is like home.” You know other guys from California, Texas, Arizona, some Native Americans from Arizona, and a poor few whites, a number of poor blacks; very few people had any college or had little college, so we had a lot in common. Most of us had a high school diploma; we were just trying to get some training or something or get out there in the world on our own, but I remember there were a few guys that spoke very little English; they were actually residents of the city across the river from El Paso is Juarez. They were residents of Juarez, but they were Mexican citizens, but they got drafted somehow because they had a social security card, and I didn’t realize it till I asked them, “Where are you from?” “From Juarez—I’m not American. I don’t have papers,” but I think soon thereafter they got citizenship even back in those days. So I wouldn’t say we were like segregated because there were so many of us, but I remember the executive officer was a first lieutenant was inspecting us, and he got in my face, and he asked me a few questions. He asked me, “What does NATO mean?” I said, “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” Then he got even more in my face; he was bellowing out some words—I can’t remember exactly now—but he asked me a question, I said, “I really don’t know,” and he said, “Because I like Mexicans.” So I thought, well why would he have to say that? I had no reason to believe he didn’t. It kind of clicked; we’re in Texas; there’s a lot of discrimination here. That was my first sign that you didn’t really get out of the barrio. You’re still kind of in it. That was my first little glimpse of it. Then going downtown to El Paso, you could feel more at home as opposed to some of my white friends felt like they were in a foreign country or something. I had to interpret for them. Order this. Let’s get this kind of beer. Don’t go over there because it’s trouble and stuff like that. And overseas, there was quite a bit. Quite a bit. Let’s see. Check this out. When I got there, this was March of ’68. We got to our company. They put us all in a formation. This big huge first sergeant—First Sergeant Gills—very big Italian guy I think. Huge. He walks down; he inspects us, and he looks over to me and a few other guys, and he asks us where we were from, “Are you Mexican?” “Yes.” “Oh. Good ‘cause Mexicans are good fighters.” So he looked over to the two platoon sergeants—both Mexican, both from Texas, both were on their third tour there. They looked like pirates. They had scars all over—they were rough! We were assigned to them. We did a lot of things as a group that other people didn’t do. And I remember one of them. First Sergeant Kantou told me, “I’m going to put this Raymond G Boyd—a good old boy from the South somewhere—I'm going to make him walk point.” Because he had the power to make decisions like that. “I’m going to put this white guy on point.” He’s probably the first guy to get shot. There was pressure both ways as far as race. It was kind of hard to ignore. You would hear it: “I don’t like Mexicans. Mexicans are this. Mexicans are that.” Usually from the white guys. Until, of course, you got into something and they saw that you were just as good a soldier as anyone else or better ‘cause you really had something to prove. So that was it as far as race. It was there. You couldn’t deny it.
R: Did it ever get to a point where you felt that—with those same guys that started out with these racial issues—did it ever feel like a bond occurred after being—?
G: I would say the breakthrough would come after a contact with the enemy—after you were fighting together, and nobody had a choice but to stay right there. And then the unity. You saw the unity and the work together. I still see them now. I see some of those guys now in Louisville; we have reunions and stuff. Most of them are good old boys—Tennessee, Kentucky, and they're just great people.
R: So everything changes once you—
G: It’s back there, yeah.
R: Once you go to, once you fight—
G: Once you do your job, yes.
R: Tell me about the mentors in the military and then in your life.
G: My mentors in the military—well my first two were the two first sergeants. One was named Staff Sergeant Cantoon. I can’t remember the other ones name, but they were professional soldiers. They looked like they feared nothing. They feared no person, nothing. They would tell you that’s the way it’s got to be, and you’d see it. I mean, you’d be in a heavy contact. They'd be like almost running after the VC; they did not let up. And as it turns out, that’s kind of what you were supposed to do. Those were my two mentors. And my second tour was my platoon sergeant—Douglas P. Richie was a West Pointer—intelligent, strong, and he had quite a family history of military serving. They went back to the Civil War. Just a great leader, intelligent leader, and he’d get right up with you and say, “This is what you got to do. Don’t be afraid. Just one step at a time. If you see this, do that. If you need something, call me.” We would get drunk together, wrestle and stuff. Just the greatest guy.
R: Did you have any mentors outside of the military that helped you maybe when you were in the military?
G: In the military, mentors that weren’t soldiers?
R: That were outside the military.
G: My father. We wrote. He didn’t write extensive letters, but they were pretty profound. Yes. His best buddy, who’s my mom’s brother, was also extremely supportive. He was a Korean Vet. He was an amputee—lost his arm, lost his leg. The happiest guy you ever wanted to meet. Just a really neat guy. Those two guys were always extremely supportive. They’d do anything for you.
R: Okay, so now once you left or were discharged from the army, and you were back home, you went back to school or started your college education?
G: Yes.
R: Tell us about that. What did you go back to school for or start your education in?
G: Well, I went back to a local community college, San Jose City College and picked up where I left off. I had finished a couple classes the fall of ’66, early ’67. I had maybe about three, four, five units in math or some other bonehead class like that, and I picked it up from there. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to get at least a year of education of something in some general area to find a decent job and being independent financially and otherwise. So I went back to my old neighborhood. I lived with my parents for a couple of months and started hanging out with my friends that were students at the time and didn’t go to the military or whatever, and I started playing in a band I used to play with before I went over. Then I met people that were involved with the Chicano Movement at the time, mostly with united farm workers. And I started doing music for them at rallies and fundraisers mainly. I got an interest in I guess you can say social services/social science. That was my main interest.
R: When you were in school?
G: Yeah, right about the same time. So that’s where my focus was: social science. I thought I could help in some way or work at some governmental agency and help people, which as it turned out, I ended up doing.
R: Tell us about what you’re doing today.
G: I'm an investigator with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission since early 2006. And I investigate complaints of employment, discrimination—housing discrimination generally. It keeps you real busy—really, really busy.
R: So even today, there’s still a lot of discrimination.
G: Yes, we don’t have lynchings anymore per say. There are no lynchings because if they are, the whole world knows about it. But it’s nothing like the 1800s. There are no lynchings, but what is prevalent is what is called micro aggression. It’s still based upon race or gender or sexual orientation. It’s sort of like you go to the market, there’s a person in front of you checking out, and the clerk is just so nice, and “How are you doing today? How are your kids? How’s this? How’s that? Let me help you.” And then it’s your turn, and the person just looks down really doesn’t care, and he’s rude. I mean, is this guy just having a bad day or what? Then you realize, oh, the guy in front of me was white. Here, I’m buying more groceries than him, and he is treating me like he could care less if I was there or not. So you have that; the term is micro aggression. You have a lot of that. That’s a characteristic of the post-civil rights era that people believe we are in. However, there is a lot of discrimination in employment, and my experience, I was recruited as a bilingual Spanish speaking investigator because the state began to have—well, Latinos were filing claims, and they didn’t have anyone that could speak the language and take the claims. I imagine there were some complaints about that, so the state was recruiting at the time, so I retired at my old job, came out here to Ohio and took this one.
R: What was your old job?
G: I was a Deputy Labor Commissioner for the state of California for a number of years. Before that, I was an Administrative Hearing Officer. Before that, I was a policeman. Before that, I was a teacher.
R: Always in service.
G: Yeah, I changed jobs a lot. I don’t know if that’s characteristic of a Vietnam Vet—always changing stuff, but that’s me.
R: Do you feel that your military experience has helped form your choices in career?
G: Somewhat. For government jobs, you would get a ten point preference on a test. You could get an eighty on the test, and it’s actually a ninety because you’ve got Veteran’s preference. And you’d get an interview at least. Yeah, sure. At least in California, they were recruiting veterans at the time, so it did help me. Sure.
R: Tell me a little bit about—or I should say expand on what you said about playing an instrument and being involved with the Chicano Movement. When we spoke on the phone, you made mention of the very important fact.
G: Let me back up a little bit. I started playing music when I was eleven and all the way through high school and as I became an adult. Once I came back from the army, I started playing again. I played drums and percussion—mainly Latin percussion. My mom and dad were being mambo and cha-cha fans, as well as—they were mainly Latin jazz fans, but they did like American jazz, too. So I started playing in a big mambo band. In fact, that band still exists back home—you know, with the band stands and the big shirts and stuff. It helped me make a few bucks at the time as a young adult. And then my buddy who played bass in that band hooked me up with a small combo, an acoustic group. Was myself, him on bass, a few friends on guitar and vocals. They sang really well and played well. They were totally involved with the union UFW. They ran the Local Huelga Centre. This is the Rodriguez family of San Jose, California.
R: Tell our viewers what huelga is.
G: Huelga means strike in Spanish, and in California in the ‘60s, it meant the United Farm Workers Union led by Cesar Chavez, who was from California, and he started an organization called Community Services Organization that we used to go to as little kids—teenage dances. It was down the street from my mom’s house. So we did a lot of fundraisers for them: playing, rallies, and different things. We kept that up, and then we played with just everyone else that was involved in the Chicano Movement, Southwest mainly. When Cesar died, there was just an outpouring of the community, mainly whoever was in support of the Farm Workers Union—a lot of the Kennedy’s, a lot of people in Hollywood, Jesse Jackson, Willie Brown, just big names who had always supported him—came to the funeral. It was in a tent, like a revival tent. Anyway, I played with Danny Valdez, who is one of the founders of the Teatro Campesino. This is a connection between my friends and the movement. And I guess my dad’s family always worked in agriculture, whether it being chicken ranch or picking oranges, all different types. They were migrants. Although they were already California residents, still migrated following the crops. That’s my background—a farm worker. So we understood what it was to be unrepresented in an extremely hard job. I got to play at Cesar’s funeral with Danny and a couple other bands that did a lot of movement music. Recorded for the Smithsonian Institute has Folkways, did a couple recordings with them.
R: So you played for the band that’s done those recordings?
G: Yeah. Our band was called Flor del Pueblo. That was myself, my friend Ben, a young lady who is my wife now Debra, and my two brother-in-laws, and a cousin. And they're still doing it, still recording. Not as much. We don’t do it as much together, but people do take the name out and do stuff in the community, mainly in California.
R: Flor del Pueblo.
G: Flor del Pueblo.
R: Do you want to translate that?
G: Flor is flower, del pueblo means of the people.
R: So Folkways did this recording under that name? Flor del Pueblo?
G: We were part of a compilation of a number of groups that recorded. The recording is called Rollos [Rolas] de Aztlan. Rolas is sort of a—as they say pocho it’s not really English or Spanish. Rolas is sort of pachuco language for a song on the guitar usually.
R: Okay, did we mention the unit that you were in?
G: No, okay, in the army? My first tour in ‘Nam was March ’68 to March ’69, and I was with Alpha Company second battalion, second infantry of the first infantry division. From September ’69 through July ’70, I was with the 11th armored cavalry regiments aero rifle platoon. It was a reconnaissance platoon. Did a lot of flying, small group, did a lot of ambushing and reconnaissance. Going down after air craft that crashed, got shot down—stuff like that. After B52 raid, sweep the area, take prisoners, stuff like that, Cambodian invasion, just crazy stuff.
R: I know it’s physically taxing, but when I hear you talk about those situation, was it mentally taxing?
G: Yes, it was just hard to believe that that level of combat was going on. You see it in the movies and stuff, but it was so severe happening right in front of you, bodies flying and stuff. It was really actually happening right in front of you? The next day or so was just unbelievable. How could that happen? Then years later, it wears on you, depending on you as an individual, how you deal with that. Myself, I have had a really supportive, I was raised as a good Catholic boy, so I always had hope, but I know a lot of friends that just started hitting the bottle or doing heroin or something weird that just got them even sicker. They couldn’t deal with it. A lot of them are still like that to this day. I was fortunate I had a supportive family and a religious background. Still, it’s not easy. No.
R: So when you first arrived at your combat site, what was your first impression?
G: What did I do? [Laughs] Did I sign up for this? I guess I did. You land in this weird airport in the middle of nowhere, and you get off, and it is extremely hot. The first thing I noticed was my feet swelled up because you're on the runway, and you have these regular GI shoes on, and the heat just goes right through them, and your feet just swelled up. Your eyes, of course, are not adjusted—the sun is so bright, and it’s just very, very hot. You smell different things like charcoal because a lot of people use charcoal to cook stuff, the Vietnamese people. You’d see that in the small restaurants and the small poor houses along the side of the road, the villages—they used charcoal. The different sounds, the different smells. You caught yourself staring at people, like “I’ve got to get used to this.” You see different faces, the tone of voice, the language is different. You are foreign in a different place. It just takes a while to get used to it. You get off the plane; the guys that are going home are just giving you the hardest time. They're getting on the plane to go home. I thought, “Man, I just hope I’m on that plane next year,” you know? So that was the very first impression. It was so hot.
R: Thinking back now, what would you guess the temperature?
G: It was a hundred, easy. No wind, just hot and sticky. Sort of like the deep south of the United States. It was very hot and sticky like that.
R: Were there other units based there?
G: Where I was?
R: Yeah.
G: Oh yea. Sure, there were lots of them. Air force and army mainly—very little navy or marines where I was. I was at the northern tip of III Corp, which was the southern part. It was three areas: I Corp, II Corp, and III Corp. II was the central islands; III was the bottom part was the delta—the Mekong River, and I was right where II and III met along the border. It was called the fish hook right on the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. You were on the border.
R: Do you think your experience was different at all because of that?
G: Because of—
R: Being on the border—is there anything?
G: Yeah. As it turned out, that particular area was some type of headquarters for, it was called COSVN. It was a big headquarters for the North Vietnamese army. They had trucks, they didn’t just have little pee shooters. They had uniforms, hats, binoculars, radios—they had it all—hospitals buried into the ground, tanks buried. They had a complete army from the north. It was a network of roads that went along the border and then would empty out into the western border of Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia.
R: So it started there?
G: That was one of the staging areas, yes, for major operations. Sure. It was pretty heavy duty.
R: So that would have been different or heavier than some of the action that other areas had?
G: Well, that’s where they would stage a lot of their North Vietnamese soldiers to infiltrate. Our main job was raiding base camps, going down roads and trails to see what we could find.
R: When you were overseas, you said the main form of contact with your family, was that through letters?
G: Yes. We wrote a lot. I did get to talk to them on a ham radio a couple times. That was interesting. But mainly was letters. It was constant. They would send me stuff from home—box of goodies: Ortega chile, presweetened Kool-Aid, Heinz 57 sauce, stuff that you could really use there and that wouldn’t go bad on you. Didn’t have a refrigerator or anything. Canned goods.
R: Tell me about the living conditions out there.
G: The living conditions—I would say three fourths of the time, I was in the field with my first unit, which was a straight infantry unit. You just lived in base camps. Fire support base camps are a perimeter—a circular shaped thing with sandbags and wire along the outside. And then in the center, you’d have maybe some artillery and communication. Then along the edges, you had emplacements with soldiers in them. You usually slept on the ground.
R: No tent? No cover?
G: Do you know what a poncho is? It has a hood—you’d snap a couple ponchos together and make a small tent. Or you might have a regular GI tent with sandbags around it if it was more of a permanent base. That was with the regular infantry unit. If you wanted to ambush or something, you didn’t really sleep. You just took turns staying on watch, and you sat on the ground. Sometimes if you had a bunker that you dug out—there was a lot of bunker living too; it was a hole in the ground with sandbags around it or on top of it. If you were moving and you had to dig in, build your own bunker, usually you didn’t sleep in them because that was a real easy target. But a couple of times I did as a new guy, and you’d wake up at night floating on your air mattress ‘cause it would fill up with water, so there was really no point in it. Mainly on the ground, sleeping on the ground with the straight leg infantry unit. With the air cavalry, the second tour, I slept in what they call the hooch. It was a tent, rectangular tent, and had sandbags around it and had cots inside. That was luxury living. We’d take off, and we might stay out for a few days, and when you stayed out, you had whatever you took with you. Whatever you could carry out there, and it usually was just a poncho.
R: For how long a period of time would you sleep on the ground like this? Weeks, months?
G: Weeks, months. Yeah. Depends on the operation.
R: It’s important to get all this on record, because I’ve never been. I don’t know. You see what’s in the movies.
G: It’s like camping permanently.
R: I’m curious as to anything you’ve done or are doing to preserve some of this history. Like coming here today has been wonderful, but have you kept a journal? Did you keep photos or anything?
G: Lots of photographs. I have a lot of them, and I've scanned them and saved them and exchanged with friends. I have two—you know the large cassettes? The guys made them—they transferred them from super-8’s to the cassette to a disc. I have two of those, and they’re excellent. And I go to reunions every now and then. One in Kentucky, which is a lot of fun. In fact, half the guys became inducted as Kentucky Colonels about three weeks ago. And the other, let’s see we met in Oregon, Ohio last year for a memorial service for a guy that… This was strange: I moved from California to Ohio, and I get a call like two years ago, “This is Assistant Attorney General so and so. Did you know Mr. Harris?” I said, “Yeah. I was with him when he got shot.” “Well, we’re going to have a memorial for him up here in Oregon, and we want you to come to meet the family of this guy you were with that was killed when you were with him.” It was hard to do, but as it turned out, my assignment was to answer any question they had about his death. That’s what I did. We became pretty close real quick. And three weeks ago, I went to Louisville for a reunion with the air cav guys. They're a lot of fun; they're crazy. We eat a lot, and a lot of guys drink a lot and stuff. As it turns out, some of them are starting to die off from the effects of Agent Orange. PTSD is prevalent. It’s real, and they will hurt people. All the stuff in the news about that it’s a waste of money, that President Obama is just burning money up. A lot of guys have died with that stuff, waiting in line for twenty-thirty years for VA benefits. It’s ridiculous. It’s about time they paid up what they should have gotten a long time ago. That’s my little soapbox trip right there. It’s real.
R: Did you have any social time with the locals? Was there any down town where you got to—?
G: Sure. Yeah, yeah. We got, well let’s see. Social life was kind of limited. Mostly with the locals, it would be—my experience was, kids would come around selling sodas and souvenirs and drink coke or beer. Prostitution was prevalent; I’m sure a lot of guys were involved in that. Some guys even got married there to Vietnamese women and had kids. But where I was at, there was like three or four kids that I knew. As soon as I saw them, we connected. One of them was named Duc. He was half black, half Vietnamese. He was bigger than all the other kids. He had this big smile, and you looked at him and go, “I guess he’s black and Vietnamese.” It was shocking, but we became real good buddies. We were assigned two scouts—one was a fifteen year old Cambodian mercenary, and another one was like a thirty year old gentleman who had been taken prisoner and became a scout for the U.S.. It was called the Chieu Hoi. Chieu Hoi means, “I surrender.” It was a Chieu Hoi program if you surrendered, come to the U.S. side—we’ll take care of you. He gave us a little history lesson about the Dien Bien Phu because he had been there. He’d draw the whole thing out. We were here. The French were here. On this day, we did such and such. We did make a few good friends with the locals, yes.
R: Did you get to experience the local culture, like the food?
G: Oh yeah. We would be able to go to a Chinese restaurant on one of the big bases, and we thought it was like Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood or something. It was very nice. I ate at the Saigon Zoo, this outdoor big patio. I have some pictures of it though. Great food. We walked around the zoo once, saw this huge Buddhist temple and people praying there and stuff—very peaceful place. I did take two R and R’s to Bangkok. That means you get to go have a week off. That was a lot of fun. Tailored clothes, you got to eat by the poolside, and just kick back for a week. It was great. And I did take an in country three-day vacation to a resort there called Vungtau. It was known as the Riviera of the orient. I guess it was built up by the French. It was very beautiful, very peaceful, it was a fishing village and of course a lot of military stuff there. So I had a nice restful time there. It was like three days. Beautiful place.
R: After sleeping on the ground.
G: Yeah, you had a hotel with a big—it was an old French colonial building. Big fan, big bed, cold beer. Sleeping was quite a luxury. Just sleeping, eating right.
R: What was the most amazing thing that you saw? Now that could be good or bad—something that just swept you away.
G: One of the most amazing, shocking things was a midair collision between one of our helicopter pilots and a fighter jet. Boom! Right in front of you—maybe six-seven hundred yards away. We were about five hundred feet in the air… We had gone in; our platoon went in, and three helicopters, we patrolled, made some contact, and then we had to get out. They started calling in jets and helicopters, and we were on our way out—the ground troops—and a Huey crashed into a fighter who was there to drop bombs on the spot. We saw the jet pilot punch out, eject. We see this orange and white parachute and this just big cloud of smoke and fire, and we knew who it was. Who the crew was. That was really weird.
R: So the pilot was saved?
G: The jet pilot ejected, and he was rescued, but our pilot in the crew was killed. We saw a lot of air craft accidents. We’d go down after them and secure the area and do some kind of investigation. My mom—I spent some time my twentieth birthday. We were securing a bridge where there was a convoy going over the river. The Songbe Bridge. So there was guys on both ends of the bridge, and during the day, we’d kick back and get under the bridge and get our laundry done and just relax for a while. There was a little girl there. She was about three years old. Her name was Mai. Cutest little thing. Little tiny black pajamas, straight coarse hair, so I sent my mom a picture of her ‘cause we were there a while. She sent me back a big box with a doll and a dress—a little girl’s dress. Pink, it was fluffy and all this stuff, and some food. That was my birthday present, so we ate all the food, and then the squad [unintelligible] says, “Hey, we got to leave tomorrow.” So we’re leaving, and I see her and her mom down at the end of the road, and I dug down in my junk, and I yelled at her, and I threw her the doll. The mom caught it and gave it to the little kid, and there was the biggest smile. That was amazing.
R: That sounds beautiful. And the dress?
G: She got the dress too. But the doll, she held it, and big gigantic smile. And the mom had the dress. I don’t know what—I’m sure they don’t get stuff like that out there. And the guys all saw that and thought, there’s some hope here. These people are regular people. One thing that was—let’s see if I could put it in a nice way—we came back to our post after this big operation. We were out there; we were dirty and crazy and burnt out. This is called a stand down. I'm telling you because this is not a good thing, but it’s something that I won’t forget. So we’re just kicking back, we’re drinking—you know, we got all washed up, cleaned up all our gear. We’re just relaxing. And about midnight, you’d always hear some drunk guy shooting off a few rounds, and say, “Oh man. These guys are getting out of hand.” There was always prostitution. You have a hundred guys, and there’s no women around. So they would bring in a woman, or two women, or three women, and they would make some money off of that. So I think I was pretty loaded just laying down in the bed—the room’s kind of spinning; I’m just relaxing. This young lady comes up to me. The lady prostitute says, “Tell this guy that you’re my boyfriend.” I was pretty messed up, drunk. I guess I must of mumbled something. And the guy comes up to me—he’s huge! “Is this your girlfriend?” “No..” So he throws her on the top rack and starts raping her. I’m on the bottom rack going, “God, what am I going to do here? This guy will shoot me or something.” And I didn’t do anything. I could do nothing. He kind of held us both at bay. That was pretty weird as opposed to violence and what happens in war. That was not amazing, but—profound.
R: That was part of the soldier life still, experience there.
G: Yeah, a lot of the deaths. And what else amazing? I met General Patton—George Patton the Third in the field, and that was on my first tour. Second tour, I went with the 11th Cav [sic] because I had met those guys that were his body guards. I came home to Kansas; I signed up for that specifically, that unit the aero rifle platoon and served with that unit. Last week, I went to the reunion in Louisville. We got an invitation to Patton’s wife’s organic farm for next year’s reunion in Massachusetts. I guess kind of full circle. I thought that was amazing [laughs] because as he got older and sick, he opened up an organic farm, and I guess that extended his life somewhat. His wife runs it still; it’s open now. You can buy food online or order it or go over there and buy stuff. Oh, one more thing! I get out of the army, and I’m a student, and I meet these guys. You know, all my friends are involved in politics and stuff and the student movement and the Chicano Movement. We’re rehearsing at a community center, and it’s run by Delia Alvarez, Everett Alvarez’s sister—the guy that was held the longest as POW. So I worked for her, and I didn’t realize who the heck she was. I thought oh, this chicana in the community, and then we saw her on Dick Cavett in an interview about POWs and the war and stuff like that. That was amazing.
R: And then did you talk to her?
G: Oh, she was my boss. Yeah, I talked to her all the time. She was my wife’s friend and my in-laws’ friend for years. I’d see her around. I saw her a couple years ago when we went back to California in a restaurant, and she’s the greatest person—a very nice lady.
R: Okay, let’s see. Medals. Tell us about medals or awards.
G: Okay, I’ll start from the lowest. The Sharpshooter Badge you get in boot camp, and you qualify the Rifle and the National Defense ribbon. It’s a little red ribbon with yellow stripes in the middle. So for serving in Nam, I got two service medals. I forgot exactly what they're called, but you get that just for being there. A Combat Infantryman Badge—it looks like an old musket; it’s got a wreath around it; it’s blue. That’s if you’re an Infantryman in war, and you saw combat. I got that like the second month I was there or something. Then, in my first tour, a Bronze Star with the V—that’s for, you’re involved in some fighting. That was in my first tour. Second tour, two air medals because I spent so much time flying. Combat Assaults they're called. For every fifty Combat Assaults, you get one air medal, and I got two. And I was there, what, ten months? So it was quite a few. Sometimes we do a couple in a day, two or three in the day. Sometimes we’d stand down for weeks. So two Bronze Stars, two air medals, and in my first tour, I got a medal from the South Vietnamese Government—an individual award called the South Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm. That was for a pretty good little fight that we had with the VC, and we were under the South Vietnamese Army at the time. And the Parachutist Badge; I got that in the Marine Corp. I went to jump school as a marine when I was twenty-nine, and I got the Marine Corp wings soon thereafter, after ten jumps with the Marine Corp or something. So that’s it.
R: What kind of reception did you receive when you returned home?
G: My first tour, my mom and dad and a friend picked me up. It was a girl—a high school girlfriend. And of course, I just loved my parents. They were out of sight. My dad’s passed away, but my mom’s still alive. She’s like eighty-five. They were just terrific; whatever I wanted to do, wherever I wanted to go—“Use my car, you can stay here.” I was on leave for a month. It was great. My siblings were like, they told me, “We thought we were never going to see you again,” because they used to go to these funerals at our little church down the road. My dad would always go because it would be someone that they knew. So they were kind of scared. But what did we do? We ate enchiladas, everything homemade. That was it. I was calm and settled down. We had a lot of parties and barbeques, and my brothers were there—they were big jocks, and I would go to their games. They were really into baseball. And my sisters, I really didn’t know them until then. My sisters came at the end, and they're very younger than I. And then there was my two brothers. So I got to get to know my sisters around that time. It was great. The one friend, the young lady—I think it was common for soldiers to have a girlfriend back home, and then it kind of falls apart because the girl had some other thing going on, and the guy was stuck in the army. That was my story—that started to not work out, which was a good thing. It was positive overall—it was very good. When I got out of the army, and when I told my mom I’m going back, she flipped out. She said, “Don’t talk to me.” She did not talk to me until I left. She was so angry. But I told her, “I've got to go back. That’s what I do, and that’s where I need to be.” I guess she didn’t accept it, but ten months later I came home, and I lived with my parents. A lot of my friends were still anti-war, anti-this that and the other, a lot of drugs and stuff. And I was amazed at how people could have a lifestyle like that—not work and just party. I was the flipside. I got to get a job now, and I got to get my stuff together; I’m already twenty-one. So there was some rejection by my peers, so to speak, that had not gone to the service and rejected the service. There was a big, the social current was to the anti-war, anti-military, anti-government, anti-everything. I really didn’t fit that. I was taken out of the picture and was dropped into it.
R: So what happened then? How did you deal with that?
G: How did I deal with it? Most of my friends, that was their orientation, college students, etc or activists. What did I do? I went to school, played music, and I was really quiet—serious quiet; in fact, a little too quiet. I was deep into my own thoughts and just trying to get something going. That might have been a problem for me because I spent two years practically of not making any noise. Most of the time, if you made any noise, it would be dangerous. You were trying to hide from the enemy, not to be seen by the enemy, so I had that little habit in me about being very low level and quiet and observant, avoiding trouble.
R: So that training kind of carried out with you?
G: Yes. And I just went to school, worked like crazy, got married, and moved to Ohio. It’s very peaceful here, and we’ve prospered in Ohio. Although—the culture of the region is quite different than the culture that I came out of: the Southwestern culture was pretty isolated in the Mexican way of living—food, language—
R: You were separated from the Mexican lifestyle when you got here?
G: The American lifestyle. I don’t know if you’ve ever read anyone born in Chinatown. Is there a Chinatown in the major cities of the Midwest? Let me describe one thing. San Francisco has a big Chinatown. You can be born in Chinatown, be an American citizen of Chinese ancestry, and your main language can be Chinese and some English because you don’t need it that much. There’s no problem with English, but you're born in that ethnic surrounding or environment. That was kind of like me, maybe not quite as small, but almost everyone from where I’m from was Mexican or Central American. And here, it’s like the opposite, so you have some Southern influence, Midwestern Plains influence—there’s no mountains here, there’s no ocean here. It’s open space. Big difference—at least from where I was living in California.
R: What made you move out here?
G: My girls—my two daughters—they went through the universities in California, and they were discouraged, I guess. They're bible nerds; they’ve always been raised in church, and they found a bible college out here. A small, private, Bible College, and the older one enrolled. We brought her out here, and we looked around, and we saw the price of real estate out here, and thought, “Man. They are giving these places away.” We would never touch something like this in California—you would need a million dollars. So we went home, and my job was really stressful. They would leave the door open, and you could work Saturday and Sunday. I mean, it was not discouraged, and I was an hourly employee. There was so much work to do. So much work to do. It’s forty hours a week, that’s it. Although I loved the job, I did a lot of good things there, it was a heavy load. It was extremely stressful, and I was in my twenties, third year. If I waited another year and a half or so, I wasn’t going to get but a few bucks more in retirement, so my wife said—she went out to see my daughter, come back, and she said, “We’ve got to move out there. I think you’d like it there.” So I went out with my other daughter and wife to visit again, and that was it. We just said—“This is a great place. We’ll come here. It’s peaceful and a lot more peaceful than where we’re at.” So I retired from my state of California job; she retired from the law school she was working at. We got similar jobs out here—paid a little less, but the living is better. And the job that I do now is very similar to what I did back home, and it’s been rewarding.
R: So when you moved out here, you moved to Columbus area?
G: Yes, Reynoldsburg.
R: So you’ve been there the whole time. How long have you been there?
G: Four and a half years, and February will be five. It’s year to year, although we are having a good time out here.
R: And then your other daughter moved out as well?
G: Both of them went to the same college, and both of them are graduates now, and they are starting to work. One’s engaged, and the other is just working.
R: What college?
G: They went to World Harvest Bible College. It’s a small three year Bible College. In their specialties, they did extremely well. Now, they're at a point in their life, they know they need to move on into their profession. So we’re glad about that. They made it through the—well we raised two daughters in California; nobody got pregnant, nobody went to jail, nobody got shot. That was a huge accomplishment, let me tell you. We’re satisfied from living in Ohio, and we’re benefitting from it.
R: Since you were in the military, and what you know of the military now, what significant changes do you think have happened?
G: In the military…well. This is my own observation. The first American killed in Iraq was a marine, and he was undocumented. He came here from Central America, joined the Marine Corps, got killed—the very first guy to get killed—was awarded citizenship by President Bush posthumously. Now there’s program; I’m not sure how new it is or how recent it is. But it does address people either have a green card or potentially can get a green card who don’t have to wait as long—the number of years for citizenship to come up for them. I think it’s less than a year. I think that’s great.
R: If you’re in the military, it qualifies?
G: Yes. What else has happened? You have a black man as commander in chief. That’s significant to me, and that’s a change—a big change—for this country. More females in the military. That was unheard of; the only females I saw in the military were nurses. You have sort of a privatized army. The contractors that do military temp work; that’s more prevalent now. Before, you had to be like a spy or something to work like that. It was done, but not like now. That’s different.
R: So do you know a lot about that? Can you explain?
G: I have a close friend who does that type of work. He’s been doing it. My platoon leader in Nam, after he got out of the army, he did private work—military work. And I saw him recently. He’ll tell you some things, but not everything. But it was private military work in different parts of the world.
R: Okay, what do you think is the most important thing that you’ve done in your military service if you had to look back at your whole career?
G: Made lasting friendships, got to travel, I was able to go to college on the GI bill and get a VA loan on the house I have now—I ended up paying thirty dollars to get into this house, something like that, maybe a little less because they reimburse me a bunch of money. My kids in California—since I have a disabled rating; I do a good job of hiding it—they're tuition was waved in the California system, so it was good.
R: Is there anything that you’d like to share that I didn’t ask?
G: As far as the military?
R: Anything that you want to record.
G: I think the most important things to me, pressing things to me, right now as an individual, as a Latino, is related to immigration and the misunderstandings of U.S. immigration law. I hope we get to a point where we understand it and that the fourteenth amendment is not changed because it shouldn’t. And I think, most Latinos—I can only speak for myself and the friends I have back home—they wanted to fight for the U.S. to show that—well they wanted to stand up and be proud to fight for the U.S., not to stand up and serve the U.S. behind a desk or something like that, although there’s nothing wrong with it. Most of the guys I knew were fighters from day one. It was a rough neighborhood, and the statistics show that between ’61 and ’71, Mexican-Americans were twenty percent of the casualties, but only ten percent of the U.S. population. On a personal note, there are six Richard Garcia’s on the Vietnam Memorial wall. I think one is Ricardo from Puerto Rico or something. When I first found that out, I thought, “Gosh, what happened here?” We’re over represented as far as casualties in that war at least. The VA did a study—I believe it was in the ‘70s or ‘80s that most Latinos did not seek medical assistance from the VA, either because they thought they were not worthy, or they didn’t need it, or when they got there, they got treated like dirt anyways, so they just rejected it. But that is changing. What are the statistics? It’s kind of like my hobby. In the recent past, or currently, there’s one million twenty-seven thousand Latino veterans from the second World War on to currently, so that’s quite a few people. Significant amount of people still alive. I don’t know what else to add. That was a big chapter in my life. As we go, I reflect on it often. I try not to let it hold me back. There was a period in my life where I would not say Vietnam. I just couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it for maybe ten years ago. I just put it back there. But one of my buddies said, “You might want to forget about things that happened, but you cannot forget the guys. You can’t forget the people that you would have died for or that would have died for you.” You have to keep that in perspective. That’s about it. That’s about it—it was a great experience.
R: Thank you for sharing—
