The Interview Part II

#QuestionOne: What inspired you to Join the Armed Forces?

#Answer: “It was just because of my father that I entered the Navy,” Richmond said.

#QuestionTwo: How did you wound up being involved in the Vietnam War?

#Answer: “Well, while I attended supplies training, which took place in Newport, Rhode Island. I was given the choice of going to Italy on a supply ship; but I decided that I would volunteer to go to Vietnam.”

#QuestionThree: So, what exactly did you do when you first arrive in Vietnam?

#Answer: “I went to Little Creek, Virginia, for four weeks of survival training which prepared us for Vietnam. We were taught hand-to-hand combat, underwent rigorous physical training, and were instructed in the use of guns. Specifically, the M-16 - the M-16 was the gun of choice back then.”

#QuestionFour: How intense was the training?

#Answer: “The training exercises that we went through in preparing for Vietnam were nothing if not thorough. We went on three, four day marches. We could only take so many rations with us. When we were on this one particular march ... our guide marched us straight into an ambush. We were captured by guys who were supposed to be the Vietnam army. The purpose of this training exercise was to simulate what might happen if we were ever captured by the enemy. First, we were stripped naked and given a shirt to wear. Then they tricked us into thinking that they had buried our fellow servicemen alive. There were about 50 men that I found myself in this position.”

“I felt that the survival training prepared him for Vietnam more than basic training did. Basic training was just to teach us the Navy regulations and basically train us and weed out any people that might not be able to deal with the military type of life. ... [Survival training] was more of what we were going to be faced with. But I don’t know whether anything you go through over here really prepares you for what you go through in Vietnam.”

#QuestionFive: What was the most memorable thing from the Vietnam War to you?

#Answer: “Well, I went home for a week before flying out to Vietnam. Foremost on my mind during that time was what I would experience while overseas. I was curious about this foreign country. It was the farthest I’d ever been away from home ... here I’m half a world away and in a completely different country, completely different people, and going to a place where people really didn’t like me.”

“I was mostly indifferent during the actual plane ride over to Vietnam. I wasn’t anything. I was going, and that was it. I didn’t dwell on it. I do recall that I had this reoccurring dream that I was running from something, but I didn’t know what I was running from. I wasn’t afraid when I was wake up, but I guessed that it had something to do with me going to Vietnam.”

“The reality of what I was going to do hit me when I landed in DaNang, Vietnam.”

“The plane went in really quickly, just went down, they didn’t circle or anything like that. We got off the plane and we were greeted by an Air Force sergeant. And we went into an area and he was briefing us as to where we were going to go. He kept referring to this thing - ‘The cattle car will be here to pick you up and will take you to where you’re going.’ As he was explaining this, the base went on red alert and he directed us to the bunkers. And I said, ‘Well, I haven’t been here five minutes and I’ve already seen my first bunker, which is a bunch of sandbags that they prepare for these air raids. They used their rockets and mortars, basically. Then, I saw what they were referring to as a ‘cattle car’ - it was a big huge truck with doors on the sides and it was designed to haul cattle but they redesigned it to haul - me.”

“I was taken to his base. Even though I was in the Navy, I was stationed on land. I didn’t spend time on a boat until two and a half years into his Navy career. The base that I was stationed at near DaNang was called Camp Tensha. Camp Tensha was made up of many Quonset huts that can house up to 50 people. The base was nothing more than gun towers, and a barbed wire fence, in addition to the Quonset huts. Each Quonset hut had its own bunker.”

(Source: http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/446544-Interview-with-a-Vietnam-veteran)