Interview with Joe Altimari, April 19, 2022

Interview with

Sergeant Joe Alimari, United States Army, Retired.

Interviewed by

Kieran Kelly

April 19, 2022

Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Library,

Vietnam War Oral History Project West Chester University

Vietnam Oral History Interview: Transcript

Interviewer: Kieran Kelly

Narrator: Joe AltimariConducted: April 19, 2022

KIERAN KELLY: Word. All right, there we go. So the camera can still see you, but at least you don't have to look at yourself while you're doing, that makes it a little bit easier. OK. All right. So if you're ready and you can get started. OK, so I just have an intro to do beforehand, just so it's all for the record. My name is Kieran Kelly. I'm conducting an interview with Joe tomorrow and today is April 19th, 2022, and this interview will contribute to the University of Kentucky's Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History Database. Thank you, Joe, for sitting down with me and sharing your story and life experiences, so I really appreciate it. So we kind of talked about how the best way to do it was kind of to move through your life chronologically. So you grew up in Northeast Philly, right?

JOE ALTIMARI:Correct.

KELLY: So what was what was that like?

ALTIMARI: It was a very close knit neighborhood. It was also a 1950s 1960s. So it was a different time, mostly a blue collar neighborhood. Most moms were Stay-At-Home Moms, as my mother was. She never drove. She was a homemaker. My father was, you know, drove a delivery truck. So, you know, we survived, but we didn't have a lot of money. You know, we pretty much lived week to week. We went to Catholic school because it was inexpensive. I went to Father Judge High School that was inexpensive. That was like fifty dollars a year.

KELLY: Oh wow.

ALTIMARI: The archdiocese paid the tuition there. My particular high school lost 27 men in the Vietnam War, and there's a monument outside. That honors them out of the 27, probably 19 I knew personally, some were actually close friends and 00:02:00the school still commemorates their memory, they just did something on Vietnam Veterans Day. They do something more today and they do something on Veterans Day. All the school uniforms, sports uniforms have the number 27 in the circle with the school colors. So it's nice that they do remember or honor them, and they made a documentary about the families. Not so much. The soldiers were sure of the soldiers, but what the families went through. Professor Kodosky here at West Chester University, led some students for some of the research and development work that went by, and it was funded by ourselves. People basically take the money and got developed. Now I understand there has been shown on local 00:03:00Fox TV here in Philadelphia. It's been on YouTube. It's still going to be on YouTube, actually trying to do something in conjunction with PBS. A group is getting involved with the funding for that, so we'll see what happens. Yeah.

KELLY: So I think I looked it up. The documentary is called Remembering the 27 Crusaders.

ALTIMARI: Crusaders was the the mascot of the school, Father Judge High School.

KELLY:Yeah. So father, judge, all boys Catholic High School in Northeast Philly.

ALTIMARI: Correct

KELLY: What was it like going to Father Judge in the 1960s?

ALTIMARI: It was, you know, I always called it the poor boy's prep because it wasn't like LaSalle or St. Joe's or anything like that. And you know, you get people don't want to in life became criminals, cops, priests and successful businessmen. So it's a pretty good cross-section of society. We were kind of 00:04:00rough around the edges. As I said, it was a blue collar neighborhood. I never thought about college til I got out of the army. To be honest, the first time I took my SATS, I was 21 years old. OK, so thats another funny story.

KELLY: Go. Go ahead. Go into it.

ALTIMARI: Well, I had to go to North Catholic High School, which was down on the Kensington section of Philadelphia. That's closed. And I been out of the Army about a year, I guess. And I had a full head of hair, big beard, and I had my whole, Charles Manson, look on. And I had this little three by five index card that they used to mail, you know, and two number two pencils and I went charging up the steps. It was a cold Saturday morning in January, and this priest stood there and blocked my entrance and said, there's a test going on here today. And 00:05:00I said, Yeah, I know I'm supposed to take the test (laughter). So I showed him the card and he looked and then let me go in and they're like, they had arranged alphabetically, you know, A to whatever. My last name begins with an A.. And when I sat down, about four or five guys got up and moved away from it. So I got a twelve hundred.

KELLY:, Well, that's better than I did.

ALTIMARI: So, yeah, so I went to Temple at night for for seven years and I had taken some courses when I came back from Vietnam. I had six months to do when I was at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which was great because I could come home on the weekends and pretty much sat around all day and did nothing. I worked at the local closed circuit TV station, which those days state of the art. They still had tube amplifiers. They had like 22 channels, and they would actually teach the the military there they could teach classes. with this closed circuit TV 00:06:00network. They would videotape instruction classes and then play them again over and over. But I was done work about 9:30 every day and somebody said to me, why don't you take those stocking courses? USAFI [United States Armed Forces Institute] I have no, it's an acronym, and I had no idea what it stands for. But for two weeks, they kind of drilled you in five different segments, much like a SAT test. And then you went and took the test. It was like one segment per day for five days. And it was basically multiple choice,or true false. So it wasn't too hard to score well on that. And when I took the score on the test, I got 60 college credits from the University of Maryland. That is who the Army did it with, the armed forces. So I had 60 credits under my belt when I went to Temple. 00:07:00The dean of the electrical engineering school, that was my discipline at the time. He actually not only did he accept my credits, but he didn't charge me because they were supposed in those days was thirty two dollars per credit hour. And to pay that money was probably eight hundred dollars or so. I just couldn't afford to do it. I was working full time carrying nine credits that night and they had a trimester in those days, so I was actually going for three semesters. I had a wife and a child and a mortgage, so there's no way I could afford to pay for those credits. And he was kind enough to where he said, Well, you're not there to be paid enough. So one of the few niceties that ever occurred then, for being a Vietnam veteran. As you're probably aware of us, wasn't it wasn't a great homecoming. Yeah, so.

KELLY: Thank you for going in that. I'm sure we'll get back to that as we kind 00:08:00of go through. So you mentioned that Father, Judge. There were 27, 27 graduates from Father Judge who KIA'd in Vietnam. How much did you know about Vietnam while you were in high school?

ALTIMARI: As much as you saw on the evening news, it wasn't really being talked too much in school. I guess academically. If you had to put Father Judge's curriculum into a context, it was, you know, blue collar or conservative, certainly wasn't left leaning or liberal. You know, so you really didn't see me, you saw whatever was on the news and, there was guys that I knew that had been there and come back and kind of told you some stuff, but again, nobody really talked about a lot of that stuff.

KELLY:Yeah, so what we do hear about from the guys who had been there and come back.

ALTIMARI: Don't go, (laughter).It was like the Seinfeld episode when he was going to Mumbai. Don't go. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there's nothing encouraging about going to Vietnam. You, it was. The way it worked out that, you know, when I was there, I think that the Army was at its peak or the military was at its peak. There was over five hundred thousand soldiers in Vietnam. I was there from from June of '69 to May of '70.

KELLY:Yeah. so you mentioned also that you knew 19 out of the 27.

ALTIMARI: Right.

KELLY: What was it like being in high school and hearing these stories about guys not coming back?

ALTIMARI: Again, was a whole different communication system.You didn't have Twitter or Facebook or emails or any, so it just to all those word of mouth and 00:10:00it wasn't really covered. I do remember seeing one of the earlier ones. He was from our church parish, Michael Giannini. I knew his younger brother, and it was parents, and that was the first military funeral I ever saw. His body be escorted out by, you know, military guards at our church, local church. So really, you don't really hear or see much. Mm-Hmm. You didn't get a whole lot of, you know, whatever you saw on Walter Cronkite. The news was only 30 minutes now. I didn't get 24-7 coverage like it is today. Yes. It was minimal in terms of the information that we had. And of course, being in the Army, they didn't tell you a whole lot in terms of, well, it's like they just came to the worst 00:11:00possible scenario.

KELLY: OK, so you entered the army in 1968,. October '68, what and you enlisted, correct?

ALTIMARI: Right. Because my draft number was very, very low. So at least I had the opportunity to pick something that wouldn't put me in the jungle, which I ended up in the jungle anyways, so that's another story,

KELLY: So what was the enlistment process like?

ALTIMARI: Oh, it's no big deal. You're go and you sign up and I guess you take, I'm really having a hard time remembering exactly, there was some sort of aptitude test that you had to take. You know, you could qualify for certain things. I qualified for avionics, which is in the electronics systems, on aircraft, meaning helicopters. So it was communications, navigation, transponders, stabilization systems, all different kinds of radios, multiple 00:12:00frequencies and multiple bandwidth. So I qualified and I went to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for six months and got trained in that and then got assigned to a helicopter unit in Vietnam.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. So just before we get to Vietnam, do you remember where you went for basic training?

ALTIMARI: Basic training was Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

KELLY: OK.

ALTIMARI: And I was there from October until just about Christmas.

KELLY: So about, I think it was, eight weeks?

ALTIMARI: Eight weeks. Eight weeks then, it was an eight weeks cycle.

KELLY: OK? And what was that like?

ALTIMARI: Ehh, The usual, you know, people screaming at you, making you do something stuff running. You know, I got to be honest, I really didn't take it very seriously. There was one guy who was a good friend of mine, met him obviously in the army. You know, I became good friends because they stick it together alphabetically. So my name began with an "A", his last name began with 00:13:00a "C". So we were kind of together for the whole cycle of basic training, and we just used to have a good time just laughing at everything. I would not consider myself a gun ho soldier. Did what I had to do to get by. Yeah, and then maybe that's not a nice thing to say but you know.

KELLY: You passed.

ALTIMARI: (Laughter) Yeah I passed. I guess I did. You know, I did what I had to do. I never got in trouble. You know, I became a squad leader because someone recognized some leadership ability. I have no idea how that happened. You know, nothing, outrageous happened in basic training. We did have one guy drop a hand grenade. Well that was--

KELLY: Well, go ahead tell that story.

ALTIMARI: Well, he pulled the pin and they had us behind this I guess it's a concrete wall. You hold the pin and throw the hand grenade. Then they have an 00:14:00instructor there with you. It's a one on one. They just don't want to do this on their own. And, he pulled the pin and dropped a grenade (laugher). And the instructor who was here just got the grenade, flipped it over the wall and threw him down on the ground. So, you know, it was little a little unnerving at the time. But it happened and nobody got hurt. We went out on the thing, and I don't know why they ever did this. They had this thing called night range and they had all these targets set up in the dark and they had lights shining on them, and then they would turn the lights on and off. And by memory or persistence of vision, I don't know what you were supposed to try and shoot targets. And they said there was a red light in the green light at either end of the range and important starboard like boat. Yeah. And then they said, you know, "nobody in 00:15:00any situation will shoot out these lights." I think the first two shots took out the lights (laugher). We were we're 19 year old kids, you know, and we just the goofy stuff again. I wasn't, again, a model soldier, although I got promoted and did everything well, and stayed out of, stayed out of trouble. I never got, I never got an Article 15.

KELLY: What was an Article 15?

ALTIMARI: That's like a disciplinary record for disciplinary action that goes on the record. It could be a fine. It could be a loss of rank. It could be both. Or it could be just a slap on the wrist. You know, so I never got anything like that.

KELLY: Yeah, And what would be some of the things to like, What would be some some of the thing to get people in trouble?

ALTIMARI: Not following orders being insubordinate. It just depends on, you 00:16:00know, I again, I was not a gung ho rah rah soldier. I did what I had to get by.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. So what did just getting by look like?

ALTIMARI: Basically doing what you're supposed to do with showing up on time, staying out of trouble and just not doing stupid stuff? You know that as a 19 year old kid would do.

KELLY: Did you know guys who were doing that?

ALTIMARI: Oh yeah, there was knuckleheads everywhere. And it was guys that AWOL. You know, when I was in basic training I think we had one or two guys who went Awol, got drunk at Fort Gordon. There was a guy who got a tattoo on a weekend and he got a serious infection, he almost lost his arm. He actually got an Article 15 for that. You are government property. And if you do something like 00:17:00get a sunburn or get a tattoo or you get blood poisoning, which you did and almost lost his arm, he got fined for that. I don't know exactly what happened, but I remember he got in a lot of trouble for that.

KELLY: OK, so you mentioned as a soldier, you're technically government property.

ALTIMARI: Yeah.

KELLY: How did that feel?

ALTIMARI: I never really thought about it, you know, because I was kind of, again, I was kind of a free spirit. I mean, again, I wasn't just gung ho, you know. I just kinda shrugged my shoulders and do what I had to do to get by without causing any trouble for myself or anyone else. I think it was a lot of guys that did that. You know, we just got by.

KELLY: Yeah.

ALTIMARI: You know. So when you were in basic training were a lot of the guys that you were with, were they mostly enlisted guys or were they mostly drafted?

ALTIMARI: Probably an equal amount of both. There were also some reservists. 00:18:00There were guys who were in the reserves that were doing their basic and then going on for some additional training and then they only had to be active for six months. So there were some reservists as well. The reservists were a small amount. Yeah, but we all got along. I mean, we were black, white, Asian, Hispanic, rich, poor, didn't much matter. I think that might be part of the issues that we suffered today in society. I think everybody should have to go and do that kind of thing for six months. Forget weapons, don't teach them about weapons. Just you got to work as a team. One guy goofs up. It could end up being a problem for the whole team. So when you learn to accept people that are better than you, not as good as you, are smarter than you, not as smart as you, richer than you, not as rich as you, you know. So I think there's some there is a certain forced camaraderie that worked, and it doesn't do that today. And, you 00:19:00know, you figure it out, I'm not better than this guy and he's not better than me. If we don't put our shoulder together to the wheel and get it done, we're going to suffer as a group. So I think there's something to be said for that, although I wouldn't want to do it again (Laughter).

KELLY: So, you said there was a force for camaraderie where it didn't matter your race, your background, you everybody got along.

ALTIMARI: In fact, my absolute best friend in my training at Fort Gordon for six months and we were stationed together in the same company for a year in Vietnam was a black guy. We still communicate and keep in touch to this day. And we never had a harsh word between us. Never. Race never became an issue. We were just friends. We were friends trying to get home to our families. That's how we looked at it. We did what we had to do to get by.

KELLY: Mm hmm. Yeah. So did you see that as being the same in all the units and basic training?

ALTIMARI Well, you know, because we're kind of contained. I never heard issues. I mean, I've heard of issues where guys got drunk on a Saturday night at the local beer hall and that was fights. I don't know how you got drunk on three percent beer, but they did. But you know, you saw some stuff and we saw some stuff when I was in Vietnam. But for the most part, we were an aviation unit, so the majority of the people that were in my unit had a higher level of training and discipline and they were a higher caliber of people.

KELLY: Ok.

ALTIMARI: Not to demean what anybody else did over there, but we had people that were highly trained. And it was a couple of little incidents where there might have been a racial thing here or there. Being in an aviation unit, there were not a lot of blacks. I never, although the blacks that were there, performed the 00:21:00test as well as, if not better than anybody else, as far as crew chiefs, flight engineers on the helicopter's, uhm engine mechanics, people like that. Again they were highly trained and motivated. And again some knucklehead on either side in the fence would say something offensive, but I never saw anybody pull a gun on anybody, or get into a big out brawl, you know?

KELLY: Yeah, so you said when you enlisted, you were qualified as, I'm sorry would did you call it, avionics?

ALTIMARI: Right.

KELLY So you went through basic kind of knowing that's where you were heading?

ALTIMARI: RIght.

KELLY OK. So once you finished basic, they sent you down to Georgia at Fort -- what was it again?

ALTIMARI: Fort Gordon, and I did six months there.

KELLY: So what were you doing for those six months?

ALTIMARI: You went to class.They taught you on all the different radio systems, radar systems, wiring, et cetera. You know that you would encounter, and there 00:22:00was, you know, the army didn't have a lot they had Huey, the gunships were brand new. They had low helicopters and they had Chinooks. I happened to be in a Chinook. Chinook electronics are very complicated because it was a very large helicopter and had a lot of communication systems. I think it had three different voice radio systems. Maybe four. Had radar, stabilization systems, which never worked. Had transponders, which is the identify friend or foes, so air traffic controllers could determine who you were. You know, before they sent somebody up to shoot it out. Yeah, but the majority of the time I was very little of the electronics worked. They still, believe it or not, had tubes in the radios. So you put tubes in the radio with vibration from a helicopter. It didn't work very well. It did not work.

KELLY: So while you were at Fort Gordon, they were teaching you how--?

ALTIMARI: to repair all of this

KELLY And did you know at Fort Gordon that you would be working on a chinook?

ALTIMARI:I just knew we got orders to go to Vietnam. My orders were basically, I guess, general orders that we were going to go to the Americal devision, which was up in I Corp.. And Chu Lai, and my my buddy, my best friend, his last name began with an A and it just put us together. We're both going to the Americal. They even sent us to the wrong company. There was two chinook companies in my division, the 178, and the one 132nd. They sent us to the 178. We were there long enough to get our begging, get a buck, make our beds. And they came and said, Oh, you guys are in the wrong place, we've got to take your order for a second. So they even assigned us wrong together (Laughter)

KELLY: You guys were able to stay together?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, it was funny. We were there for two hours.

KELLY: So you said you were part of the Americal. Can you describe what the 00:24:00American camp was?

ALTIMARI: The Americal was an unique organization. It was one of the largest divisions in Vietnam. The twenty five thousand men. America is an acronym that stands for American forces in New Caledonia, it was implemented in World War Two in the South Pacific. Interestingly enough, my father was in the Americal Army Air Corps in World War Two. But they had marines. They had marine squadrons of the phantom jets. They had a navy, a-six jets that was part of the 1st Cav. There was gunships and two chinook companies. They had Mohawk Reconnaissance Airplanes, C-130, C-17s and the Navy had Seabees. It was also a deepwater port, so that was Navy, Air Force, Marine, Seabees and even some of the 1st Cav. And they had three infantry brigades the 11th, the 196 and the 198, and they were 00:25:00never in July they were sent out to LZs. So Chu Lai itself, the base defense was done by the individual companies. Everybody had a piece of real estate that they were manning at night on the bunkers and if something happened, every company they had what was known as reactionary force. The unit I was in, my platoon was the reactionary force. So the crap hit the fan, they had to react. Get up and man that piece of perimeter. Happened a couple times, not real bad. But we'd always get rocketed and mortared because there was a lot of aircraft there when they wanted to take that out. we were right on the South China Sea. And again, all the infantry was basically out in forward positions. They had a very large area of operation, I think, trying to remember from Chu Lai it went 40 miles 00:26:00north, 40 miles south and 40 miles inland. OK, so it was a big area that had to be managed and the Americals had some pretty famous Alumni. Colin Powell, when I was there, he was our division, too, I believe, as a full colonel. General Schwarzkopf was a lieutenant colonel, actually met him. He was a lieutenant colonel at the time. Tom Ridge was the governor of Pennsylvania and the first director of Homeland Security. He was in the Americal division the same time I was there and we were involved in the same battles. He lost his hearing and a place called Hep Duck in September of 69. We did a lot of helicopter support. It was like a two week long battle. What did you notice if you ever see Tom Ridge, 00:27:00he'd always have hearing aids. He lost his hearing there. There was another guy who was in the 196. Rocky Bleier, he was a Pittsburgh Steeler. Got drafted, went over, got his leg blown up, came back rehab and made the team and won three Super Bowls. Well, yeah. And fortunately or unfortunately, there was also Lt. Calley, who was responsible for the My Lai massacre, where they killed 109 civilians, mostly women and children. And it was the wrong thing to do, it was the wrong thing then and the wrong thing now. But from their standpoint, you can never justify this, all their lossses were coming from booby traps or from snipers, and it's very, very frustrating. You're out in the field and you see 00:28:00people dropping like flies and you see these villagers, they know what's going on, but they didn't tip you off. They didn't help you. I don't know that the villagers were actually combatants. No, that was the other thing. No one knew who was the combatant and who wasn't. These poor people have to keep their mouth shut just to stay alive, probably. And they killed 109, women, children and old men. Never acceptable behavior. Sorry. That's terrible.

KELLY: Yeah. So, did know any of these guys personally or did you just know--?

ALTIMARI: No, that I actually met them I met Schwarzkopf because we felt we were on a support mission with him for a week between Christmas and New Year's, they had to leave a four star general come over. And investigate the My Lai massacre, the week between Christmas and New Year's 1969. It's funny, no one ever really documented that. If you look at the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam and if you 00:29:00get his book and I have his book somewhere, he doesn't reference it in his documentary, but it is referenced in the book about this General coming over conducting the investigation.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, because I think I read that the army didn't want word of that really going out.

ALTIMARI: Well, you know, guys went home and there was a big thing in Congress--. It was the wrong thing to do and was the wrong thing to cover it up. But again, it wasn't 24-7 news back in those days. And I forget exactly how it got. The bulbs, I think some guys actually went to their congressman and there was a hearing. Again, I don't remember. Didn't really pay attention to it at that time, you know?

KELLY: Mm hmm. So, yeah, so you were in what you said, you were in Americal and 00:30:00you described what made it up. What was the Americal's job in Vietnam?

ALTIMARI: Really just to try and control enemy activity. They had these forward fire bases or defensive positions, which is exactly how the French lost the war. So you can't, you can't have defensive positions and win an asymmetric war. I think, but I'm not a military tactician, though, you know, just look at it. It didn't work. We never lost the battle, but we lost the war. Yeah. So you take it from that. Never really got the populists themselves to side with us. I happened to go back to Vietnam in 2004 for business. Believe it or not. And I took a couple of extra days when I was there for some business in Saigon or Ho Chi Minh 00:31:00City, and I went up to where I was stationed prior. I learned more about Vietnamese culture in three days than I learned in a year. And that was the fault of the military. They didn't indoctrinate us. They didn't tell us, you know, we were there, we were, we were going to, you know, relieve everybody from this communist burden. Maybe the people didn't want, they're not doing too bad. Yeah, they weren't going to be when I was there in 2004, and the country didn't stink. They actually discovered sanitation since I'd been there, so we didn't do a really good job of getting the people to come on board with us. You know, you look back historically, it was a corrupt government. Yeah, it was a corrupt government. All the way down the line from when they killed the Diem brothers back in the early 60s through the 70s. I mean, it was just, you know, one 00:32:00corrupt regime after another. And we never really got the people on board. The poor people were living hand to mouth, especially up in I Corp where I was at. The further north you went the worst living conditions got.

KELLY:Yeah. So can you describe what I Corps was?

ALTIMARI: Well, if you look on a map, you're broken down. I corp, two Corp, three corp, four corp, four corp was all the way down by the delta. I Corp was mountainous. Jungles, were went all the way up to the DMZ. The two large bases up there, three large bases, were Da Nang which had a lot of marines. The 101ST Airborne Camp Eagle, and Chu Lai which was the Americal, and that covered all of I Corp which was a big swath of Vietnam, South Vietnam. Like I say, it went from. The South China Sea, inland to Laos and Cambodia and from the DMZ south. 00:33:00Almost the middle of the country.

KELLY: Yeah. So you had you, you were right on the border of North Vietnam.

ALTIMARI: Well, I wasn't. But not too far north of us was. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember how many miles. I know Da Nang was 40 miles north of us. And then maybe the DMZ might have been another 40 north of there. Maybe I don't remember one of my biggest regrets, when I was there, I didn't keep a daily diary. I wish I kept a daily diary of things that we did, how we did them. And it's funny. I still meet a guy I flew with a lot. He was. Crew chief and when you're a crew chief, you basically own the helicopter. And he lives in Maryland, and we meet for lunch a couple of times a year down the halfway point between us."Do you 00:34:00remember anybody ever being in charge of us?" And we both looked at me, and just, no one was ever in charge. We were 19 and 20 years old and the pilots were 21, 22, 24. They got a list in the morning, you know, you got to go here, here, here, here. We did what we had to do, but I don't remember ever, anybody ever saying, "You're, you have to do this or you have to perform this task." I just never remember anybody ever being in charge. We used to say we were the Boy Scouts but the Boy Scouts had adult supervision. And it's true. I look back on it and I talk to other guys, friends of mine about this, and the opposite was true. They couldn't blow their nose without permission. We did whatever, we were cowboys. We did whatever we want.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. Was that part of because of where you were?

ALTIMARI: Possibly, possibly. And we were err 132nd ASHC Assault Support 00:35:00Helicopter Company. Someone figured out that you could fit more combat troops on a Chinook than you could on a hilly view. Heuy holds eight to 10 guys, Chinook could hold 48 guys. Now they hold like sixty four. Yeah, they got more lift capacity. So we could also carry a lot of stuff out that you couldn't put on a Huey, where you can get it a lot quicker and a lot safer than a truck because the terrain got pretty, pretty bad as you went in there. So the terrain didn't bother us because we flew.

KELLY: So you mentioned when you got to Vietnam, they put you in the wrong spot and made you leave. Do you remember how how traveling over--? Let me backtrack when you left. When did you leave Fort Gordon?

ALTIMARI: Well, Fort Gordon, then you go home and go leave. Then you had to report to Fort Dix on the 6th of June. And on the seventh, maybe it is the 5th 00:36:00of June. We left on the 7th of June. The reason I remember that specific date is my mother and father's wedding anniversary. So that we were in Fort Dix, McGuire Air Force Base was attached right next door. They loaded us up on busses and took us to airplanes. They were civilian airplanes that were chartered to take us to Vietnam. They went from Fort Dix to Alaska, we had to get off the plane while they refueled andI remember seeing Mt. McKinnely at the end of the runway. So I spent about 45 minutes in Alaska. Then we flew from there to Japan. Same thing went and got refueled and then we arrived in Cameron Bay [Cam Ranh Bay] which is the southern part of Vietnam, about 11 o'clock at night. You know, searing heat. The country smelled like crap to get off this plane, you have no 00:37:00idea what's going on. Its pitch dark. We actually got rocketed and mortared like harassment fire that night, twice.

KELLY: Right when you got off the plane?

ALTIMARI: (nods) They loaded us on so-called buses. And one of the things I saw right away, these are like school busses, but they were olive, drab green painted. And one of the things I noticed that, the windows, no air conditioning on the bus, the windows all had grills on the small heavy-duty screens. And I said, "the hell they doing with screens on a bus." And "he said that's so they can't throw hand grenades in the window as you're riding down the road." I guess all the busses were outfitted like that. We had to go into this holding area. We were probably there for about three or four days, it was hot as hell. They made us do stupid stuff. You know, details on all this and then They finally assigned 00:38:00you to where you would want to go when you got to the Americal, you went toward what they called the replacement unit and gave you some more training. You fired some weapons. You did some things. They actually tried to run ya through a gas chamber again, which I avoided.

KELLY: How did you get out of that?

ALTIMARI: (scoughs) Well, we saw guys coming out of a gas chamber. Their eyes were already swollen and they were coughing and spitting. And myself and this friend of mine, who I said, "I'm not going in that thing again," because we had to do that in basic training. And we just went over, rubbed our eyes (Laughing and imitating rubbing his eyes), and pretended we were sick and pretend we were in the gas chamber, just kinda joined that crowd. Again, I was not a very good soldier, so I almost saw no sense in it, quite honestly. I don't know that it would save a life, (Laughter) but that's what we did. We, as I said, then we got assigned to the Americal, and uh wrong company. And got the right company we 00:39:00were there for, I was there just shy of a year because I had applied, what they let you do they-- I had some time to do like six or seven months to do. And of course, I want you to write up and extend your tour of Vietnam. I would not do that, and I wouldn't stay an extra day. And the-- I applied for school, at Fort Monmouth, because I knew it was near Philadelphia and it was another electronic school for audio engineering. And they let me do it. So I said, "This is great." So I went, I went home a couple weeks early and I went to' Fort Monmouth. And of course, then finally, even I got out of Fort Monmouth because quote unquote, I work for a company the guy wrote a letter and said it was seasonal hiring. So I got out in July instead of was September or October when I was supposed to get 00:40:00out. So I got out, and they were just looking to dump guys anyway. Yeah, and they I don't know why they just dump us to begin with, but because they're really we serve no useful purpose after that.

KELLY: Mh-Hmm. Yes. So those first couple of days in Vietnam, you're going from the south to a holding area, to I Corp, until I think he said Landing Zone west was your final--?.

ALTIMARI: No, no, no, no. I was actually in the base camp at Chu Lai.

KELLY: Oh, you were at the base camp at Chu Lai.

ALTIMARI: Landing Zone West was a forward position. I think it was the 196 that was out there. We used to play a lot of missions out all these LZs. We'd bring soldiers. We bring food. We bring them ammunition. You know, whatever they needed.

KELLY: Mm hmm. So those first couple days you're just moving all around the country.

ALTIMARI: You really didn't get a fly. I think they kind of wanted to see what you were made of before they let fly in the helicopters. I mean, you did fly, they put you on what was called milk runs or they knew there wasn't a potential 00:41:00of any combat situations. However, in my humble opinion, once you leave the safety of that base, everything's a combat situation but what do I know. But I think they wanted to see what you were made of before they let you take over a machine gun on the right or left side of the Chinook helicopter. Make sure you're going to do what you need to do if something happens. I guess I qualified.

KELLY: So what your first impression of Vietnam that they're moving you around?

ALTIMARI: It was hot, it smelled, and there was a lot of confusion, a whole lot of confusion. Nobody seemed to have an answer for it.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. So you mentioned like when you were on base, it was almost like being cowboys, like nobody was in charge?

ALTIMARI: I just, we used to have a formation like once a week, like some places had formations every day-- and they madej youd-- [Slips into Philadelphia dialect before finding the words]... there was a guy his whole job, his whole 00:42:00job was to stay up late and go get what was known as potable water or drinking water for us as a unit. We had about 200-250 [Computer beeps] guys in the unit. And we're still using water out of eeehh trailers. You know, these little tanks. His whole job was to stay up all night and go get water for us. And he'd sleep all day. That's all he did was get water. That was his job. This was his job. So I mean, the inefficiencies that you look back now when you look at the inefficiencies in there, and it's crazy. We had to cannibalize helicopters to get enough parts. We always wanted to keep six to eight helicopters out of 14 flying. You couldn't get the logistical support to do that. So they had to take one helicopter that was damaged or needed more maintenance than others, and they 00:43:00would start stripping parts off of it just to get helicopters flying again. I mean, it wasn't a great situation.

KELLY: Doesn't sound like it.

ALTIMARI: And yeah, we were one of the first Chinook outfits in Vietnam, the first combat Chinooks. In a tropical environment, they do not know how half this stuff was going to work.

KELLY: Yeah, so how did how did they end up working?

ALTIMARI: Well, they worked well enough, I guess. Boeing, who manufactured the Chinooks sent over two, whatd they call, tech reps to live with us. I think they lived in this for six months at the time, if I remember correctly. They were based out of Blessington Philadelphia. And just to record all the problems that they were, have the hydraulics, with the electronics, with the communications equipment, there was a lot of problems on an ongoing basis. Structurally, you know, they were basically a beer to a flying beer can very thin skin, you know? 00:44:00And we did the best we could to keep things going. Yeah. But we had guys that were machinists, hydraulics mechanics, engine mechanics, just general kind of put the blades on the plates had to be perfectly aligned. Yes. Three blades in the front. Three blades, Three blades in the back. And if there weren't aligned, you could basically shake that helicopter apart. So the wingspan tip-to-tip, A chinook is one hundred and twenty feet. The body itself is 80 feet. So it's a complex piece of equipment. It's still in use, some obviously have hopefully a lot better than what we have now. Hmm.

KELLY: So how many guys would be working on one Chinook?

ALTIMARI: Anywhere from two or three to a half a dozen guys, depending on.. they're very labor intensive, ya have different maintenance intervals. After 00:45:00twenty five hours of flight time, you had like the first level of maintenance. You go to 50 hours and that's more of a more intense labor. When you get up to about 100 hours, then they start stripping engines, out, blades and everything else. And of course, you get to normal wear and tear in between that. Yeah. Things like bullet holes or hydraulic leaks or whatever you have to attend to those. So, you know, guys would literally work around the clock to keep helicopters flying.

KELLY: So the crew for a helicopter would be who?

ALTIMARI: The pilot, copilot, a crew chief, flight engineer. And a right and left window gunner, depending on the mission, there was also a man on the red for a tail gunner. So if you were going to go out onto a a hot area and you were going to take combat troops want to cover fire for them. They would put a gun on 00:46:00the tail.

KELLY: So, look, I think you mentioned this during our pre-interview, you said the flight engineer, that was his helicopter.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, you know, that was this. He owned it. And you know, he took care of it, kept all the maintenance records and showed the maintenance got performed. He was probably more in charge and everybody else. The pilots just went from ship to ship.

KELLY: Were they assigned a certain ship, just like --whatever?

ATLIMARI: No, no, I've got to be honest, I don't know how that was done, but I know they kind of moved around it just they had the fly so many hours and they couldn't fly more than so many hours. Yeah, they get regulated. We're out of time. They can fly. We have worn officers and we had hard rank officers as well.

KELLY: Yes. So of those positions, what was your job on the helicopter?

ALTIMARI: Well, if I was, I was the right gunner right there and everybody said, Why do you always fly right gun? I say cause I'm right handed. Made no sense. So I felt comfortable on that side.

KELLY: Yeah. And then did you do any work on the helicopter?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, really. We did very honest. And they need your help. You know, we would help them do whatever you know, move things, lift paddles up, put panels on, try and help them track the way we would help in any capacity that we could. We knew the crews, we knew the flight engineers, you know, with these guys and we did. And they would ask us, Could you help us do this? Where we're like our own little group again, no one came. I never remember anybody coming poking their finger in my chest and saying, Go out there and hope those guys do X, Y and Z, just we just kind of did what we had to do to keep moving along.

KELLY:Yeah. So did you stay with the same crew?

ALTIMARI: No, you moved around wherever they needed because the ships, the same ship didn't fly every day. Yeah, because maintenance issues and it rotated them around.

KELLY: So you flew with a number of different groups?

ALTIMARI: Hmm. (nods)

KELLY: So how many people would you say you worked with?

ALTIMARI: Well, I don't. I don't remember. I mean, when you're on a ship, there's there's four other people or five other people. So you know, you move around like, probably say, probably a total of 50. But there was a lot of, you know, I like flying with certain guys because I knew I felt safe with them. They knew what they were doing. They kept care of their helicopters. I'm certain pilots were good wouldn't get us in trouble. If there was trouble, they could manage to get out of it. So, you know, I was I was lucky that way. I guess again, no one said to me, You're flying on this helicopter and you got to go. I don't. I don't remember anybody giving me orders, and I maybe they did. I just don't. And I asked my friend kinda for the shoulder and said, "I don't remember either. :Yeah, we lived in these little huts called hootches. And it was like eight to 10 guys in each one. And again, no one was really in charge. You know, 00:49:00no one had there was no lights out. There was none of this, you know, it's just. We just survived. Yeah, we just we were almost like a pinball machine, just bounced off of one bumper to the next, so I wouldn't say we were drastically supervised. And again, that's just my perception.

KELLY: Just based on my own experience?

ALTIMARI: Yea just based on my experience

KELLY: I think you told me a story about there was one flight engineer who would be in charge of fixing the helicopters and then would make whoever worked on that helicopter go up--

ALTIMARI: Oh, he was the he was the flight officer. He was the maintenance officer. He was an old guy (scoffs) younger to me now (mumbles to himself). But he was then from World War Two and he was a warrant officer four which was the highest level, I think, to have warrant officer five Now, I'm not sure, but he 00:50:00used to make, if you worked on electronics, if you worked on the hydraulics that you worked on the engines when he took it out for a test run after the maintenance. He made all those people that signed off on it. Be on that test route. So if you knew he was. His name is Leoneddy, and that was his last name. I'm sure he's passed by now. He can't still be alive.

KELLY: You said you as a World War Two?

ALTIMARI: Well, yeah, we had two guys in our unit that were from World War Two. He was one and my first first sergeant. He was a marine, went through the South Pacific after the war. He went over to the army because you made rank better in the army than you do in the Marines. He did a tour of Korea and he was on his third tour of Vietnam. He went in 41. He was going to go to 71 and get his 30 years in and retire. He was a good guy like, yeah, he was a good guy. \

KELLY: But yea he got his 30 years.

ALTIMARI :I don't know because I left in '70, I hope, and I know we gottem tell you why.

I know this is really crazy. I'm working for a company out in Cincinnati back in the 90s, I was the executive V.P. of that company. We had a customer and I didn't even know how the conversation got around to it. And guy was like, My God was my customer. I'm trying to sell some stuff. And he mentioned military service where he was loan sharks and. He was out of Oklahoma. I guess there was a base somewhere where they had Chinooks around Tulsa somewhere. I don't even know where it was. We're just talking. And he was in Vietnam about the same time I was. Much different location. It was further south but flew in Chinooks.. And the guy who was my first sergeant. Was like his maintenance sergeant at that 00:52:00company in Oklahoma, so I know the guy made it home and got his 30 years.

KELLY: Got his 30 years.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, well, here's a good guy. Yeah, he's got he's got us 30 years. He got us 30 years. His name is Bill Franz. F-R-A-N-Z. And say he'd catch guys smoking dope and make guys paint his barracks. He's just a good guy

KELLY: So I have one more question about the helicopters themselves. I found a website of the 132nd with pictures of the nose art right on the side of the helicopters. Can you describe some nose arts?

ALTIMARI: (Laughs) Well, they're not politically correct. I'm one can't do. They can't do those anymore on anything. Yeah, it was kind of a, I don't know, was just a morale thing. Yeah, that was the Virgin Hunter, Lady Godiva, Proud Mary, the Undertaker. I actually have a collage, a picture of 14 of the 16 helicopters 00:53:00that we flew on. Someone put it together. I know I gave one to the helicopter museum here in Brandywine airport. I gave one ta Kodosky, Professor Kodosoky and I put one in the break room at the veterans center here on campus. And there's also another one, which I donated to the Army Transportation Museum down Fort Eustis, Virginia. Mm-Hmm. I had it made into a poster size, and I hope they put it up. I signed enough papers to prove that I didn't steal it and got to remember there was no digital photography, and that was they these are guys with a little brownie Instamatic cameras and someone put it together.

KELLY: Wow. Did you have any hand--? Where was the nose are already painted?

ALTIMARI It was all pretty much over. The other one was Snoopy on the top of the 00:54:00doghouse with the machine gun. So it's it's interesting, uuuhhh did it change anything, no it was just fun.

KELLY:Yeah. You know, it was something to look at.

ALTIMARI: It was a diversion. Yeah, it was a diversion.

KELLY: Cool. All right. Thank you for that. So I wanted to transition a little bit to talk about what life on base and true life was like. So well, what was like a normal day or just a normal day?

ALTIMARI: Wake up, try and grab some breakfast and go to a flight. line and do what you got to do. You know, fix radios and work on helicopters or and or fly in helicopters. You didn't fly every day but ya knew flew enough.

KELLY: Yeah. So so did you know beforehand when you would when you be flying? Or--

ALTIMARI: I got to be honest, I can't remember. That's why I kicked myself for not having a diary or some sort of a journal or a couple things that. There were some flight records.

Every time you flew, your name got entered as a crew. And I know at a bare 00:55:00minimum. I've got 75 combat missions, OK, for another fact that the every 25 was an air medal, so I got three medals, but I think I flew much more than 75 missions. Not every mission was considered a combat mission. Again, that wasn't my terminology, that was the Army or the powers that be. I felt every time you left the ground, I went outside the base camp. You were a combat situation.

KELLY: So you said when you were living on base, you lived in what'd you call them hooches.

ATLIMARI They were basically storage sheds with screens for the side walls and a tin roof. I mean, there were they had a cot. Nothing, you know, you didn't even have a real bed.

KELLY: Yeah. And so you said eight to 10 guys.

ALTIMARI:Yeah, eight to 10 guys.

KELLY: Do you remember like what living in those was like?

ALTIMARI: It was bare subsistence, you know,

KELLY: A place to sleep,

ALTIMARI: Place to sleep. There was a couple of light bulbs. We had a generator. I mean, it was, you know, guys had some guys had turntables and guys have got reel-to-reel tape recorders and speakers. Some guys had those things. I didn't. I just had a little transistor radio that I could actually get West Coast radio stations at night. If I was out on bunker duty, I could hear West Coast radios. There's the thing with am radios. It's called the skip zone, and the radio signal bounces off the ionosphere back to the Earth, up to the ionosphere. It's like a big Wya. It keeps on bouncing. So we were picking up stuff from the West Coast certain times of the night. You're going on hear for about 10 minutes and then you would, you know, it would fade. You try and pick up another station.

KELLY Yeah. So was that just something that was cool or was at a boast of morale when you were there?

ALTIMARI: Ehh yaknow, Just something that happened We had one guy whose 00:57:00girlfriend worked at a radio station that she used to send him demo records. So we were getting records.

KELLY:Oh, wow.

ALTIMARI: That, you know, because remember, over there, the army controlled everything or AFRV, Armed Forces Radio Vietnam. And believe it or not, actually the TV station. Yeah, they were playing old reruns of something and and all the music was basically country-Western (laugh). It wasn't a good music, especially for the time, it didn't even play all the time? Mm hmm. I think it was only like sunup to sundown type of thing. Yeah, I think again, I don't remember the little details on that. But, you know, you didn't get real news, you got whatever the army wanted to figure, you got. There was no internet, no cell phones. So you got whatever they wanted to feed you as information and that was it. They never 00:58:00got an evening news broadcast from the United States. I'm sure things would have been a lot different. Had that been available.

KELLY:So how much did you, while you were in Vietnam, how much did you know about what was going on?

ALTIMARI: Not much. We actually had three guys. If you extended your tour and you went home, You got 30 days to go home and take back. All three guys went and they went to Woodstock. Woodstock was in August of 69 and these guys went home and it went to Woodstock and came back and told us we never heard about Woodstock. You'd have no way knowing about that. These guys say, Well, we left the place where it was hot, rainy and no food and people were shooting at us. We went to a place. It was the same, except nobody was shooting us. So but we actually had three guys in our unit that went to Woodstock and came back. And I got to be honest, I never could have gone home.

Slight cut from the recording: KELLY know, looks like we're OK. I'm sorry.

ALTIMARI: I could have no more home and come back. Mm-Hmm. A very difficult to.

KELLY: Yeah. You once you would have gotten home you would've stayed home?

ALTIMARI: I would've been in Canada making Maple syrup or something (laughter).

KELLY: So you mentioned you would sometimes have bunker duty. What was bunker duty?

ALTIMARI: Well, you go out on one of these bunkers every couple of hundred feet for three or four men in there, depending on the level of alertness that you were supposed to have. And you would just, you know, everybody to take a two hour shift. The other two guys would sleep and you'd be looking at the perimeter to make sure nobody tried to hit the perimeter. We did that. It rotated around. Everybody got some of that. It wasn't a big deal. You know, sometimes some things happen. Sometimes it didn't.

KELLYYeah. Did anything ever happened while you were on?

ALTIMARI: One time somebody set of teargassed by accident.

KELLY:By accident?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, they had teargas, canisters. Canisters. It wasn't our bunker. Someone right down the line and they had these little rockets set off tear gas and they accidentally set it off, and we all got gas. We have marines next to us. And they had quad 50 machine gun on the back of a truck and they would back it up against the position and like they just opened fire and strafed the village, so.

KELLY So how close-- So what was the village?

ALTIMARI: Just on the other side? I don't know what the village was named. I honestly don't know. These are all little villages. I don't even know the Chu Lai was a real Vietnamese name. I don't know that. I think the Americans need it that. The Marines came there in 67. Hmm. And then the Marines left and went up north and the army came. In fact we lived in old marine barracks or old marine 01:01:00hooches, we kind of repurposed them.

KELLY: Yeah ok. So did you ever have any type of interaction with that village?

ALTIMARI: Oh, one time we had to do a sweep in the morning. You know, ya never really went... You just you just didn't go out walk through the gate, walk around the village. You just didn't do that. It wasn't that kind of an area. You were down in Saigon. I think in Saigon, guys didn't even carry the weapons. Yeah, there is heaps of weapons inside here. Pretty much, you know, you would never leave them the camp without your weapon with you, ever. We flew in helicopters and everybody had a side arm.. So, you know, you always have with a completely different.

KELLY: It's a different part of the country.

ALTIMARI: Yes. It's like, you know. I'd, its day and night, literally day and night. Yeah, I need a break for (Motions for two minutes),

KELLY: Of course, yeah.

INTERVIEW PAUSE FOR A SHORT BREAK

KELLY:OK, so where were we, we were talking about the village next door, Correct?

ALTIMARI: Yeah. As I said, we really didn't wonder out to the village

KELLY: Did you have any, what type of interaction did you have with the Vietnamese?

ALTIMARI: The crazy thing is they used to let some people in the base camp as day workers, OK, the woman would do our laundry or clean the hooches. They had some guys that I never got involved with, that they filt sandbags did some things that they were just day workers. They came in and then went home. Never stayed over.

KELLY: Yes. So OK. So besides that, that was kind of the interaction--

ALTIMARI: Ya. You just did not. You were in Saigon.

KELLY: Yeah, there probably had a lot, a lot more interaction.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, you could go out into the city and go to bars and restaurants, whatever.

KELLY: Mm hmm. So what did you know about the Vietnamese when you were while you were over there?

ATLIMARI: Really nothing I mean, I got to tell you the army or the Department of Defense or our government did a very poor job of indoctrinating us to anything with respect to the Vietnamese and their culture. We knew a few words. We know how to say, get the hell out of here or stop, you know, just terrible. That was that was it..

KELLY: Did you feel like if you had known more about the culture would have been different?

ALTIMARI: I don't know. I honestly don't know. I mean, that's that's the old 01:04:00what if I don't know? You know, you look again. We were trying to fight a war with defensive positions and asymmetrical warfare ya can't do that. It doesn't work, didn't work for the French. You know, they just, you know, Germany, there's a saying the Generals are always fighting the last war.

KELLY: Mm-Hmm. You know, they're trying to fight Vietnam the way they fought WW2:

ALTIMARI: Exactly. And McNamara, who was a. A statistician in World War Two, they had this formula. If you drop so many tons of bombs, you will win a war in so many days and they try to apply that same formula to Vietnam and it just doesn't work that way. Again, I'm not a military statistician or tactician or when they went into Cambodia we surprised um completely. They could have done an 01:05:00end around. If you go back historically and look at what MacArthur did in Korea. He jumped across the northern part of the country and cut it in half. He did a amphibious assault and cut the country in half, and made um withdrawal. We could have gone above the DMZ, probably halfway up where there was nothing there and probably could have launched a pretty good airborne and seaborne invasion and just cut the country in half. If you remember, at the end of the war, we started mining the harbors and warning any other ships that were there that were not the enemy ships that they were going to be in danger so they could have mined harbor. They could've to cut off the railroad bridges to China and cut the country and that war would've been over in about a month. The same thing in Europe and World War Two, we we fought all the way through Sicily and all the way up the boot of Italy. They could have invaded Italy above Rome cut the 01:06:00Germans off and starve them out. And we chose to invade France at the most fortified section of the coastline. They could have gone a little bit to the left to Schober, where was a deepwater port. They could have brought ships in, wasn't heavily fortified. They could have done an end around. You could come up to the Mediterranean as well.

KELLY: So you think that switch should have happened if they're going to try and win a war?

ALTIMARI: If you're I think if your gonna try and win a war yeah. They were just trying to figure out a way to hand this over to the Vietnamese. I mean, that was always the hearts and minds intent and the Vietnamization process that they were going to hand this over to Vietnamese and make it their own. And as a people, from what I can see or when you see now is a look back. Hindsight's always 20 20, but they really didn't have much of a stomach for fighting this. You got to be careful with regime change. You know, we threw Saddam Hussein out. Look what 01:07:00happened there? You know, he was a good guy. Of course not. Ya didn't have terrorism though coming from that,

KELLY: Coming from that area.

ALTIMARI: That area, you know, we got rid of Mubarak in Egypt, got rid of, who was the guy in Libya? Gadhafi. Yes. Look, what's happened to all those countries where they the best guys? But look what was behind them, chaos and anarchy and some pretty ruthless rulers. So we go into these situations not understanding the culture of the people. We just don't get it. Yeah, we made the same mistake in Iraq. You know that when we put people in power who shouldn't of been in power. So again, I'm not a brilliant military strategist, just having a little common sense. I've worked in business and I know what it takes to run a company. 01:08:00And if you've like a company, you do things a lot differently. Yeah. So,

KELLY: Yeah, thank you. So. Have you talked to guys who went to Iraq and Afghanistan? Have you found any similarities.

ALTIMARI: I've talked to some guys, they don't really get into it. I just I've always had this thing because we got treated so poorly coming home. If I see a guy, I'll talk to him ask him If he's got any issues, I don't want to ask him about the day to day stuff. They probably don't want to relive that if I was traveling for business, which to the lot I saw a soldier I always made sure he had a drink. You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Just to give him an atta boy type of thing we never got. It's interesting one of the guys who were in that class back in the fall. He was a vet and he said it was because Vietnam vets that he always receives a nice welcome when he came back from deployments because we said as a group, we're not going to let that happen again.

KELLY: Yeah umm, Andrew Wolf, he was yeah, he was a marine. Well, he is a marine.

ALTIMARI: He's yeah, we don't. We don't let that stuff happen again. Yeah. But like, you know, coming home was. Ya really didn't get much of a chance to decompress. I got home literally within four... I left on a Sunday and got home on a Tuesday. You don't really get a chance to decompress. When you get home, nobody wants to talk about it. I had a couple of the Vietnam veteran friends and among ourselves, we would talk about some stuff, not a lot. He used to have. When you went to get a job ahead, the standard four page employment forms, one of the questions was do you have any military service experience? And I would just put N/A on there because I didn't want to have to discuss it. Yeah, my daughters never knew that I was in Vietnam until they were in in their teens, 01:10:00early teens. I just, you know, there's just things hidden aspects of it you discussed. Now you talk about it and people actually thank you for that.

KELLY: Yeah so, I kind of wanted to go back just a little bit for what it was like in Vietnam. You, you said down in Saigon, guys could go out and go to bars. How did you guys pass the time?

ALTIMARI: There was actually a an NCO club. We had our own little NCO club. I was just a shack where they served beers. It was nothing. Beers were like twenty five cents or something. I think they might have actually had some alcohol. I do remember some alcohol, but it was cheap. Yeah, it was cheap, you know, and it just let off some steam that way. You know, we couldn't go out per say. Did go on R&R for a week. Went to Taipei, Taiwan. Guys did get a week to go somewhere. But that was about it. Yeah. You know, it just was a day to day existence. It 01:11:00was almost like Groundhog Day, a movie like that. You wake up and it's the same thing over and over, you know, running short of supplies. To do this kind of thing that, you know, whatever it was, it was uninteresting. And you really didn't feel motivated or appreciated, type of thing. So, yeah,

KELLY: I think what you said, well, we took that class back in the fall [combat] was 90 percent boredom, 10 percent percent insanity.

ALTIMARI: Yea I think that's pretty much anywhere I mean, even World War Two, nobody fought. Every day, a World War Two marching, of course.

KELLY: Yeah, there'd be days of downtime.

ALTIMARI: Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So again, we did. We had to do to get home.

KELLY: So can I ask you about what were those moments of 10 percent insanity like?

ALTIMARI: Well, mostly rocket and mortar attacks. Or flying on helicopters in combat situations where We had to return fire, but they were so short lived the rockets and mortars were you couldn't do anything about it. You were. You were just a victim holding down on a bunker, hoping you're not going to get hit.. I don't know how these people are surviving in the Ukraine its horrible. I'm just going to constantly shelled. Yeah. So it wasn't pinpoint accuracy. These things were just randomly fired. They wanted to hit our base as much as possible because there was jets that flew missions up north. I knew it. Yeah. So they wanted to take the helicopters now, which supported the infantry. So they wanted.But everybody doesn't understand. So what were 50,0000 guys in Vietnam 01:13:00like? You should be able to walk all the way up to Hanoi. It's a ten to one ratio. Yes. So four for every hundred soldiers that you've got. Only 10 of them are combat soldiers. The other 90 are cooks, truck drivers, supply sergeants, whatever. You know, it's a ten to one ratio. Out of that five hundred thousand five hundred fifty thousand, there may be 50,000-70,000 were actual combat troops.

KIERAN: Yes, there's only 50 to 70,000 guys actually fighting, right?

ALTIMARI: Right.

KELLY: So you mentioned you were in the reactionary force.

ALTIMARI: Right. That was our job. We had to man the bunker. And if there was action on the perimeter, we had to go that.

KELLY: And you could just be sent anywhere?

ALTIMARI: No, no. You got a particular area. Every company there had a piece of the order to protect. And that happened to me a couple of times.

KELLY: Mm hmm. You know, and you would just you would fly out, you'd be what would you do once you got out there? Were you trying?

ALTIMARI: We were just man positions there, that you know inside the wire. Make sure nobody got through the wire.

KELLY: OK. So I saw that you made E5 and became a platoon sergeant.

ALTIMARI:Right.

KELLY: At 19.

ALTIMARI: Right.

KELLY: Well first off how did you become an E5 at 19?

ALTIMARI: Well, I came over as an E4. And they made rank pretty quick and kept your nose clean and you get in trouble. They needed new platoon sergeants where I was because that company had come over as a unit together. They were going home. Some of them, they need a platoon sergeant. So they took everybody. There was a need for supposedly you took some, you pass some sort of a board test. I have no recollection of that. I'm sure I did. I made E5. And then as the platoon 01:15:00sergeant, they literally went alphabetically and said, OK, you're a platoon sergeant. So I was I qualified, of course not. I did I get any special training, of course not, but it was just a title. I guess, they had to fill a slot, you know, use this guy to the fill the slot type of thing. I mean, yeah, and it didn't matter to me.

KELLY: So I think you said you had 48 guys in your platoon.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, roughly 48 guys.

KELLY: Like, what was your job leading commanding them if they had any?

ALTIMARI: Nobody was in charge. These guys were so, one guy was in charge of supply. He ran the supply room. The other guys, some avionics, they did what they had to do. Another guy who was a machinist, he did what he had to do. Another guy-- we never really. Other than to make sure they got up in the morning and went to their thing to do their job, that was about it. And it was the seven a week thing, you know, no days off.

KELLY: No days off

ALTIMARI: Mmhmm (nods)

KELLY: So do you remember any of the guys who were in your platoon?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, I do remember some. In fact I talked to a couple. I was at a reunion in 2008 and connected with some. Its funny the guys that are active in the unit now, and the association are basically guys that were there after me.

KELLY: Really?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, majority were there after me. I don't know why that is. They have seemed to

have more of a camaraderie than the guys who were there when I was there or before a couple of guys showed up like the guy that I lived with literally for a year in the same hooch. He and I talked a couple of times. He became a dentist of all things, became an oral surgeon. He just, he was a kid from the Bronx, New York, just wanted to go home and become a New York cop. Thats all he wanted to do. Put his 25 years in and get his pension. I came across him years later, he 01:17:00actually contacted me. Here is an oral surgeon. I was trying to hook up with him in Florida. I was in Florida for three months and we just never got together. So I'm going to see if we can meet up again He's got to get by. He lives in Connecticut. Yeah. So maybe passing up this way, we'll get together. But he said he went to the one reunion and "I didn't know anybody." So it seems like we were there earlier than the guys that are more active in the Association part of it. And a lot of them are from the other half and they combined. The 178 and the 132nd. The 78th seems to have more people. So, you know. We, We don't really have anything. To celebrate, in my opinion, just mine, it's not like World War Two, when you came on to save you, save democracy for the world, type of thing. 01:18:00You liberated this, liberated that, we don't have that, we never did.

KELLY: Yeah.

ALTIMARI: You know, not just because the way we were looked upon when we came back, but the net result. We have nothing new we can point to. We can say never did that. You know, like my father can say, we liberated the Philippines, my father liberated the Philippines. We can't say that. We can't say that. So maybe that maybe that is what directs some of the attitudes and feelings among veterans.

KELLY Yeah. So within your platoon, was there like camaraderie or was it?

ALTIMARI: Yeah, we never really there was a couple of guys. It was always going to always get what you could get. Somebody who drank too much or whatever, but it never got out of hand. Nothing that wasn't manageable. You get 19, 18, 19, 20 year old guys together and assure hell. So the weekend was always going to be a knucklehead. You know, so it's no different. It's no different.

KELLY: Yeah. And I think that either you or Dr. Kodosky you mentioned that you would get a lot of the black guys in your platoon.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, because they wanted to be in my platoon because I was a guy from Philly and I didn't have a rebel flag tattooed on my arm. You know, some of the platoon sergeants for lifers and I worked with many black guys and I never heard of anything. They were good guys, yeah, they were like us. We just try to do the time we did. But there was some of these lifers that were going to be in or make a career of it. I don't know that I'd be real fond if I were black guy and saw a guy with a rebel tattoo on his bicep. Yeah, ya know that tell you where he's at, you know, that's not right. It wasn't right then, it's not right now. And nobody puts a swastika on her arm, you know, and tried to teach a Hebrew class you know come on. So I mean, I don't know it, just my personal opinion. But, you know, I 01:20:00accepted them as equals. And they were equals. They were over there doing their job. You know, and coming from a place that wasn't that nice to them, I don't know. I was a black guy back in the 60s, I'd be real happy about going to war for this country. You know, I'm kind of an anomaly. I have a lot of my friends that are Vietnam vets who absolutely hate Jane Fonda. I look at and she was one person, one voice. Our government misled us. You don't see the movie The Fog of War, which is a documentary about McNamara. He knew we were wrong. He knew what we were doing. And his answer is, well, it wasn't my job to tell the president what he didn't want to hear. Sure as hell was your job, you're supposed to. You cost 58,000 lives and 2000 guys lost and never found again. Yeah. So I have more 01:21:00of a bone to pick or an ax to grind with this country than I do with Jane Fonda.

KELLY: Yeah. So I have one more kind of question about your experience in Vietnam, and you start wrapping it up a little over 10 here for a while, so thank you once again. Thank you for your time. I saw that you have a bronze star from Vietnam. How did you it?

ALTIMARI: Ahh its yaknow, Medals are. I look at it this way. I did what I had to do to survive and I did what was expected of me by my fellow soldiers, and hopefully they will do the same for me, so I don't do anything spectacular. I did get one air medal with the V device. That was a particular mission, that was an emergency mission and. I didn't even think about it. They needed guys to fill 01:22:00a crew at like one o'clock in the afternoon, the place was getting overrun. We had to bring troops out there. That's documented on my orders, but that was no big deal to me. We did the same thing every day. This particular day. The CO of the company, the commanding officer, was on that mission as well, so they gave him a distinguished flying cross. I'm not saying he didn't earn it. But we did the same stuff every day and never even got recognized for it. So I guess logically and think of what we can't give them a distinguished flying cross and not give something to the crew members. So we got air models with the V decive, which is the highest award, highest aviation award that a non- officer, an enlisted man can get. Yeah. So he gave him a DFC. We had to get something. It's no different than any other day or 10 other missions. Yeah, it's just this one 01:23:00got it right. So I never looked it. I even got a good conduct medal that surprises a lot of people (laughs) including my wife and kids and my friends. So I was never a medal hunter. They had guys or medal hunters when I got crewmember wings because I earned them, you know, and I got air medals because I flew the required missions, you know, but I didn't. I didn't keep track it. So I didn't even know I had these things coming till I got to Fort Monmouth. They kind of followed me later. So.

KELLY: So you were in Vietnam for just under a year.

ALTIMARI: 11 months, two and a half weeks.

KELLY: Yeah. You came back 11 months, two and a half weeks. How did you get back home?

ALTIMARI: Went down to Cameron Bay [Cam Ranh Bay] got on a plane, the next day ended up in Fort Lewis Washington. I came home early, my parents didn't even 01:24:00know I was coming home. They gave us breakfast, gave us uniforms, gave us money and a plane ticket. I flew from. Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Philly, and took a cab home and knocked on my parent's door about one o'clock in the morning.

KELLY: So probably scared a little bit.

ALTIMARI: Oh, well, yeah, yeah, especially, you know, you don't want the Army knocking on your door. But anyway, yeah, it was. It was a blur. Didn't really have a chance to process or think about it, or even make a phone call and say, I'm on my way home. You know, that type of thing. I mean, I barely caught a connecting flight from Seattle to Chicago. I literally remember running down the concourse to catch the flight.

KELLY: So you said you were able to come home early, how did you get home early?

ALTIMARI: Well, because again, I had applied for this training, additional 01:25:00training in Fort Monmouth, and you had to have a certain amount of leave time. You were supposed to get a minimum of 30 days leave prior to your reporting to your next duty station. At the time, they were taking a lot of soldiers out of Vietnam. So its like pouring guys through a funnel. You can only get so much through the funnel so they said you gonna get out two weeks early. Get out in time, so you have 30 days at home before you go to your next duty station. So I was supposed to report to Fort Monmouth on July 2nd. And they said, Well, you better leave now. Well, I happened to be down there and there was a hole in the airplane, meaning a seat and they put me on it. So I got it out the next day and just by dumb luck. Then when I had to report to Fort Monmouth, I had to report for the school. I went up there or drove up. I had a car and reportedly said, "What are you doing here?" So I showed them my orders and said I got to go to 01:26:00school. Oh, OK. And they said, Well, we're going to make you the platoon sergeant because they're going of all the kids they were all PFC right out of basic training that we're going to the same school I was. Yeah. And he said the class doesn't start for two weeks. So, First Sergeant said me, I can give you a four day pass. You go to New York. And I said, well, listen, this, I live in Philadelphia, can I go to Philly? And he looked at me, said, yeah, he said, you got to give me a phone number in case I need you. I said, Yeah, don't start the war without me. So I actually went home for another two weeks. So I went home for almost another two weeks before I had to go back for a month. That was basically home every weekend. I just said these medals followed me, and they used to do a graduation ceremony the first Saturday of every month and they had the troops marching in the general reviewing where you take arms. And they told me well you can't go home this week. Said why not? They said, you're getting a 01:27:00medal. I said what for? The said I don't know, you were there we weren't. So I got for four months. I got medals that kinda followed me. Not not for me again. I was on the gung ho rah rah rah to make this my career. You know, but Fort Monmouth was great too. I ended up living with a couple of guys in the House of Monmouth Beach and I had a ball. Come home to Philly, go my friends hang out. It was a good time. But you know, I got out. Surprise, surprise.

KELLY: Yeah you were done in the army.

ALTIMARI: Yeah, yeah, I was done afterwards.

KELLY: So you talked a little bit about the reception. What type of reception did you get when you were coming home?

ALTIMARI: Well, mine was a blur. I just flew through Fort Lewis, Washington, Seattle, Chicago, and it was the typical thing. Everybody looked at you called 01:28:00you a baby killer. You are, you know, that designation was baby killer. You know, stuff like that. I just kind of shrugged it off, we never really talked about it. Yeah, I worked for a guy. I worked directly for the president of a company for years. And he and I were on the road one night together. We're having a drink. At a bar afterwards, and he said, well, he said that I just found out you were a Vietnam vet, so tell me how that was, I have a few minutes. This guy wants me to describe probably the worst year of my life in 10 minutes over a brandy man. So nobody really cared. Nobody gave you the accolades for that. Yeah, you weren't anybody special? And that's fine. I I just what always bothered me, was the portrayal. Vietnam veterans, everybody thought they were Rambos. I went to work every day with a briefcase. I didn't have a survival 01:29:00knife strapped to my ankle and didn't run around and you know, I didn't get in fights and I showed up for work every day. Did I do some things that were stupid? Yes. And actually do some things in excess at times? Yes. Did I have a bad tempered disposition at times. Yes. But I answered the bell every day. Never missed a day's work. Never missed a day's work and never let that be a reason for not doing something or for doing something. You know, your meanness, I just never figured anybody never owed my anything. Yeah, so just me personally. Look, I've got a lot of friends. I had friends came back and never, never made it. They ended up getting involved heavily in drugs and drinking and, you know, 01:30:00never made it passed 40. That's a shame.

KELLY: And you were just able--

ALTIMARI: I worked every day.

KELLY: You worked everyday.

ALTIMARI: I worked every day, and that's what I did. I just worked every day. What I kind of remember there was very few people in Vietnam that came from college backgrounds with families with money and always said, if I ever get married and have kids, I want to be in a financial position where my kids are going to school and never have to worry about the draft because being a student in college at the time is a deferment. Today, the draft would never work. That'd be the first class action suit, and the other class action suit would be a why can't women be drafted. So I'm not saying I oppose or endorse it. That would be the two class action suit you would see. I think.

KELLY: So you talked a little bit about or Andrew talked a little bit in our 01:31:00class how the Vietnam guys and the Vietnam vets have paved the way for veterans of the future wars to get the more warm reception. How did you feel about that?

ALTIMARI: Well, I think that's the right thing to do. I've been involved with some of the guys come home or I recognized some of them, you know, especially when I travel for business, I travel a lot. You can always find a guy, you know, as usual and make sure he got a drink. I mean thats the least you could do for. I couldn't get a drink the day I was in Seattle. I wasn't 21. He wouldn't serve me. I was in uniform. So, you know, I could have thrown something at home or just thrown something across the bar or I could come home and that's what I did. And you pick your battles. So that was one that I wasn't one I was going to pick. You know, I'm just going to go home. Yeah, and that's what I did. But I always felt that. Anybody who puts a uniform on, especially in an active combat situation. Deserves to be recognized, and I know there's a lot of vets who got 01:32:00out of the airport or be outside of someone's house. I've been involved in a couple of those things. And we all, like I say, we hold that ceremony over your Memorial Day in Ocean City. Regarding the 27 won't be lost because I'm down the shore for the summer.

KELLY: Yeah. So, yeah, so I just have a couple like wrapping up questions. So how did you make sense of your time in Vietnam? When you look back at it, what got you through that year?

ALTIMARI: I think it was just a day to day existence. I really do. I didn't say This is my this is my projected goal. You know, and if I do this, I know we're going to get to this. You just kind of existed day to day. I didn't have any plan because I don't know what you could have done to make a long range plan. I wasn't the military wasn't going to be my career. I knew that. So my my 01:33:00long-range plan was just to get home, just to put on my three hundred and sixty five days and go home. That was it for me. Yeah. And it work. I just showed up early, worked as hard and as smart as I could. I made a very good living. I ran companies, ran divisions of companies. I ran, you know, big sales groups. I did financially well enough that my kids went to school two daughters, so they won't get drafted. I have a house in Sea Isle and go to Florida for the winter. So. I am I. Wealthy, no, but I do, OK. You know, and I just worked hard, you know, no one handed me anything. I went to school on the GI Bill for seven years at night. My wife would pack me two lunches, one lunch to eat at work, and the 01:34:00other one was while I was driving, I worked in Blue Bell Pennsylvania, driving down to Temple might be eating the other sandwich on my drive down to Temple because I couldn't stop to eat because I wouldn't make class. So, you know, you figure out a way to survive and get ahead And that was my motivation.

KELLY Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. When you look back at your experience in Vietnam, what stands out the most?

ALTIMARI: I guess just the way we survived and got things done, like I said, we were cowboys. We survived to get things done, very little supervision and we managed. And we just kind of took care of each other. You know, we did what we had to do to get to the next thing. I couldn't think a week ahead or two days ahead. We were living literally day to day.

KELLY:And then my final question for you is, how do you make sense looking back, because we're coming up on 50 years now, the end of the war? How do you make sense of the war as a whole? When you look back, not just on your experience--

ALTIMARI: You can't make sense or you can't make sense of it. And I hope I don't offend as one by saying that war should've never happened. The last good war we fought was Desert Storm One because Schwarzkopf had an endgame. He was a victim of Vietnam. He knew. And they they were kind of prodding him. If you ever read his book, they were kind of prodding him from the Pentagon. This are we think we have another general, McClellan in our midst. McClellan was notorious in the Civil War of stock stockpiling equipment and materiel and men and never really 01:36:00going into battle on. And Schwarzkopf said I'm going to do this with the least amount of casualties to both sides and get in and out as fast as possible, and he did it in a 100 day with an endgame. And his book, I think it's it doesn't take a hero. It's a great book. At the end of the very end of the war, President Bush, the father, called him and said, You've got to stop because CNN in Europe is calling it the Highway of Death. They were slaughtering the Republican Guard. General McCaffrey had them surrounded. And said, go, let him go back to Baghdad. OK, so like he said, they're going back barefoot with no equipment. I mean, take the shoes off and left everything there and then walk back to Baghdad and they blow everything in place because he said they won't be able to use it against us again. And he had an end game and he had a plan and executed it. We don't do that now. We're in Afghanistan for 20 years and accomplished nothing. It's sad. 01:37:00It's sad for the people of Afghanistan. It's sad for the guys who went there. We have a very good friend. Couple good friends of ours. Their son came back from Afghanistan. That poor guy hasn't been right since hecame back. He was in special forces over there. And I guess he sold, so I've tried to talk to him as best as I can. I'm not a counselor, but I vent on me a little bit. Poor guy still has issues. He still has issues to this day, and that's the kind of casualties of war that you can't quantify. How many guys are like that? I saw guys that came back from the friends of mine, guys from the neighborhood that were good guys that weren't knuckleheads like I was. And their lives were completely messed up forever. Some took their own lives. Some drank and drugged their lives away, and some just never accomplished anything. So it's it's sad, 01:38:00it's sad, because with this 50 year anniversary, I don't consider that an accomplishment because it's actually kind of sad that we couldn't do better than we did. We were allowed to do better, you know? You know, you can't you can't tell guys, well, you can do this, but you can't do that or you can go there, but you can't go there. It makes no sense. If somebody was throwing rocks at you from their backyard and damaging your house, you sure as hell would jump that fence or take the rocks away from the guy. That's just common sense. We worry politically too much about what will the rest of the world or what will they think of us? Doesn't seem to matter at the end of the day, it does so. I'm sorry. I'll get off my soapbox.

KELLY: No, I just want to thank you for sharing everything. Before we finish, is there anything else you'd like to say?

ALTIMARI Yeah, I just, you know, welcome home. Obviously, all of the veterans and anybody that's ever served, everybody that's ever served. I commend them, 01:39:00especially in today's military. It's strictly volunteer. Yes, it takes a lot to do that. I appreciate. Really. No. So thank you.

KELLY:Thank you. So just give you one second. This concludes the interview with Joe Atlimari. This interview took place on April 19th, 2022, and once again, I just want to share with you my thanks for sharing your experiences.