Interview with William "Bill" White, April 14, 2022

William, White, April 14, 2022

Interview with William "Bill" White

Interviewed by

Chelsey Moore

April 14, 2022

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

WCUPA Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project

Chelsey Moore: All right, Poppop.

William White: Yeah, we're recording, yeah. Absolutely.

Chelsey Moore: OK, I'm going to do a little spiel and then we'll get started on the questions OK. OK. All right. Hello, this interview is being conducted for the WCUPA History 600 course on oral histories and the Vietnam War. My name is Chelsey Moore and I'm interviewing William "Bill" White on Wednesday, April 14th, 2022 in Gap, Pennsylvania. This interview is being recorded and then will go on deposit at the Louis B. Nunn Center in for oral history at the University of Kentucky. They will then be made accessible to the public on the Nunn Center website, the website that WCU students will create in the fall of 2022 and planned exhibits and publications. I want to thank Mr. White for being my interviewee and for being willing to work with the university and help me and the students of the future to learn about the Vietnam War era and its soldiers at any point in this interview. If you would like to take a break, please let me know if you have any questions before we begin?

William White: Sounds like you are tearing paper.

Chelsey Moore: Oh, OK. All right, you ready?

William White: I guess.

Chelsey Moore: OK. Where did you grow up?

William White: I haven't grown up yet. Coatesville.

Chelsey Moore: OK. What did your parents do?

William White: Well, my dad had three jobs and my mom had two jobs.

Chelsey Moore: OK, and what were they?

William White: Dad owns his own business, and he was steelworker like me, and he worked for the news agency.

Chelsey Moore: Would your mom do?

William White: She, uh delivered newspapers and uh and had odds and ends jobs.

Chelsey Moore: What can you tell me about your schooling?

William White: I made it through.

Chelsey Moore: What what school district did you go to?

William White: Coatesville.

Chelsey Moore: OK. How is your relationship with your parents, with your parents 00:03:00and your siblings?

William White: Um, I got along with my parents, my dad and I were close. It wasn't that way with the siblings.

Chelsey Moore: How many siblings did you have?

William White: How many of my what?

Chelsey Moore: How many siblings?

William White: Oh, seven.

Chelsey Moore: OK. And what were your parents, your parents' thoughts on politics while you were growing up?

William White: Well, the only thing I can remember is Dad saying that he had to go and vote every time there was an election so he can cancel out my mother's vote. They were opposing politics.

Chelsey Moore: OK. How did your parents feel about the war in Vietnam?

William White: Uh, Pretty neutral by the time I got in the Marines, It wasn't really a very active war. They just had the Gulf of Tonkin incident and uh didn't look like it's anything major.

Chelsey Moore: Uh, what what were you doing when you decided to join the military?

William White: I was in school

Chelsey Moore: In high school?

William White: yeah.

Chelsey Moore: And what made you want to uh volunteer?

William White: I don't know. I was planning on joining up with a friend of mine. And after I signed papers, my parents signed the papers back out, so. But he got his do. He got drafted.

Chelsey Moore: What did you know about the war in Vietnam before you joined the military?

William White: Not much. It wasn't that uh. It wasn't an active war. It was in its beginning stages.

Chelsey Moore: Okay. What made you choose the Marines as your military?

William White: I didn't choose it. I went in the recruiting office expecting to join the Air Force, but the Air Force recruiter wasn't there. The only recruiter in the office was the Marines. They asked me what I wanted and I said they want to join the Air Force. He said. Why? I said, I want to fly. He says we have planes. And I said, You do. He said, Oh yeah.

I said, Oh, that sounds neat. So. I switched gears and went with the Marines.

Chelsey Moore: Was there anybody in your family that was in the military?

William White: Yeah, my two brothers.

Chelsey Moore: What were they in?

William White: The older one was Army, the younger one was Air Force. And the fourth one was going to go to Canada.

Chelsey Moore: What was in Canada?

William White: A way out of the military.

Chelsey Moore: Oh, OK. Where did you go to boot camp?

William White: The only place I could, Parris Island Anything on the east of the Mississippi, you went to Parris Island. The West, you went to San Diego.

Chelsey Moore: Now, how was your experience there at Parris Island?

William White: Well, usually it was just pure terror, usually. Had the DI on your back all time.

Chelsey Moore: What, what is the DI?

William White: Drill Instructor

Chelsey Moore: Oh OK. What were your, your thoughts on the war before it while you were in boot camp?

William White: Our thoughts were we were all going to go. Didn't have a choice.

Chelsey Moore: So you you. Did you have any warnings that you were going to be deployed to Vietnam?

William White: Yeah, we were in the Marines. That was the only warning we needed.

Chelsey Moore: Okay. OK, so we're going to transition into your first deployment to Vietnam. So you were deployed on your birthday, which is October 21st 19. What? 66?

William White: 1966.

Chelsey Moore: OK. How old were you when you got deployed?

William White: Twenty.

Chelsey Moore: OK. And how were you feeling while you were on the plane?

William White: Cramped. It's one hundred and fifty one of us on it. And it wasn't in a civilian airline, it was a military transport plane. We sat in strapped seats the whole time.

Chelsey Moore: Where did you fly out of?

William White: Cherry Point, North Carolina, 4am

Chelsey Moore: OK. Did you stop anywhere before you got to Vietnam?

William White: Oh, yeah. It wasn't a direct flight. We stopped over at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.

We got there at 6:00 a.m. local time. We had breakfast and refueling. We took off and landed in Yokohama, Japan, at noon for breakfast or for lunch and 00:09:00refueling. We took off and arrived in Danang in Vietnam at 8 pm. We didn't get supper, though. It was all on the same day. Different date as you cross the timeline, but the same physical date.

Chelsey Moore: What can you tell me about the Batman Squadron that you were in?

William White: We named it that because the planes could fly in all kinds of weather and at night. So we took the idea of a bat and used that for the squadron name.

Chelsey Moore: Did you did you, nickname, your squadron while you were over in 00:10:00Vietnam or after you came home?

William White: No, we named it while we were in training. Basically, we were the only Marine 86 squadron there was and I wasn't there originally when they became a squadron and they learned at their training facility which was up in Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, and that's where we picked up the airplanes and learned how to uh, well learn the different chops, learned how to take care of the planes, refuel them and their refuellers and the ordnance, learned how to attach the ordnance electronics, learn how to work and fix on the electronics. So that was all was all done at Oceana. Then we transferred as a marine unit to a marine air base in Cherry Point. And we started training there. They took a 00:11:00little over a year of training and then we were shipped overseas.

Chelsey Moore: OK. So while you were over in Vietnam with the Batman Squadron, what was your like day to day life while over there?

William White: It was like 12 hours of work and then we had patrols, we have different things that we had to do to secure the base in our area around the base and everything so we worked in the flight line on the planes and everything for.

Twelve hours. Then we had duty sections, which certain sections or groups had 00:12:00patrols at different times, and different days. There are usually four duty sections and in a squadron, and each one took their turn on patrols and uh security. So. Uh Yeah, you were kept busy. A lot of times, but you had free time to.

Chelsey Moore: What did you do with your free time?

William White: Umm, We had our own little we've called them huts. Some called them hooches. Uh, We had. Uh, Let's see, trying to count one, two three. We got about 10 men per hut and they were like just wooden shacks that we built on stilts and uh. You had such an area in the shack that was about five feet wide and six seven feet long, and you put all your stuff in there that your personal 00:13:00stuff in there you had a folding bed. And anything you want to put in their pictures or one guy bought a mini refrigerator stuck in his. Keep his drinks cold. We did have electricity in there and we had lights. Now that was all right as long as we were in the hut, but we were out on patrol and everything. It was pretty. How would I put it? Well, scarce on any kind of luxuries, you had your equipment, you had your rifle or whatever, you carry. Ammo, your packs usually 00:14:00weighed anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds that you carried around and you would go out on patrols for a while, sometimes a couple of days, sometimes a couple hours depends. So you kept busy most of the time, you had time for relaxation. They had enough time to get some sleep. Usually if there wasn't rockets and mortars coming in on you. But you have a copy of that tape that we made of one rocket attack on the base.

Chelsey Moore: Mm hmm.

William White: But we get a rocket attack about every couple of weeks. And uh just depends on where you work.

Chelsey Moore: Well, how are you feeling when one of them, one of the rocket 00:15:00attacks hit your base?

William White: Well. They didn't shoot too many of them off. The one that you got a copy of was probably the longest attack we had. They would move these rockets down from North Vietnam on Ho Chi Minh Trail, and come in Laos and they dump them on their backs, 122 millimeter rockets were almost as long as they were, and they set it up a. In a position where we originally spoke out and they're aiming devices, nothing more in the couple sticks stuck together and a compass. That was about it, but they were pretty accurate of what they did. And. uh they were aiming for the air base or the runway, usually, though, they broke up the runway. The planes couldn't take off. They have to wait until they got 00:16:00fixed. So that was their main thing. The second one was to try to hit the aircraft. And we were on one side of the airfield and the Air Force was on the other side of the airfield and the other side of the runway. So we got our share of rockets and so did they. But it took them a while to resupply, so it would be a few weeks before they would hit us again. But our hangar got hit one time we had a direct hit on it. And. We. Most of us got out of there. And we got to the bunker. But that was about as close as we got what we had a couple of them that hit us when we were in our hut area.

That. Tape that I made for you, that was taken when we were in our hut area. And 00:17:00that lasted kind of a long time. They had a lot of rockets filled up on that one. And when I was on, I forget where I was, I was in the Philippines, I guess. For training and our base got hit by rockets again and one of our officers was, well, two of our officers was in the were in planes, taking off and the plane got hit by a rocket. Or it got hit by shrapnel from a rocket, but it took off, that didn't quite take off, but it slid sideways off the runway. Actually, it was a fuel depot area. It didn't blow the fuel up. They messed up the pilots knee where he wasn't able to fly anymore, though. But uh he was one of the one 00:18:00of the guys who was picked for astronaut program. So it cost him that. But um. It was basically uh routine.

Chelsey Moore: And the the people that were shooting at you, Who were they?

William White: Bad guys

Chelsey Moore: OK. Were they the Viet Cong?

William White: It depends on when it was. Usually during the normal time, it was Vietcong, but in Tet Offensive, which was in 68, the North Vietnamese infiltrated down as far as the I Corps area, and they were the ones that were doing a lot of the shooting. They had whole regiments that infiltrated into the South, and they were basically doing a lot of harassment.

Chelsey Moore: OK. Were you able to stay in contact with your family while you were over there?

William White: Well, kind of, Um, we communicated mainly by letters. I did call them up one time on the Mars program that shortwave radio.

We had a Mars station, maybe about a quarter mile from where our hut area was. And I used it once, I think. And I was interviewed one time by a correspondent, and I don't remember who he was, he said, now this, I'll get back to your parents on that radio station that they listened to as closest to him. And it was during a rocket attack that they were interviewing me, which was interesting, but they never heard it, they never notified notified them that it 00:20:00was on the radio, so they didn't hear it. But other than that, it's just letters.

Chelsey Moore: Do you have any of those letters?

William White: I had one from my grandmother. I just ran across it a couple of weeks ago.

Chelsey Moore: OK.

William White: You know, none from my parents or siblings, but I had one from my grandmother yet.

Chelsey Moore: Okay. How was your relationship with the other members of the Batman Squadron?

William White: Well, we're all kind of tight. We're all one unit, so we're all stuck together. So you had to get along.

Chelsey Moore: Hmm. Was there anybody on your squadron that was African-American or any other ethnicity or?

William White: Sure

Chelsey Moore: And how did that play out?

William White: We didn't have any problem with it. I had one guy. Friend of mine was in my hut, but before he went overseas, his name was Suzuki. He didn't have the motorcycles. He was the poor side of the family. But we went up to visit Washington, D.C., while we where in Cherry Point, we went up for a day, maybe two days and we went sightseeing around. But he wound up in my hut while we were in Nam. He is a kind of a guy, I asked him, what are you going to do when you get out? Well, you lived in Hawaii, of course. He says, I'm going to build me a house on the North Shore and I'm going to relax and surf.

I don't know whether or not.

Chelsey Moore: OK. So when did you come back from Vietnam for your first rotation and how were you feeling when you were leaving Vietnam?

William White: I was released in September of 67. We have to go had to go to Okinawa, the transition from Vietnam and back to Vietnam. The first time we all went over as a squadron together, so we didn't have to go to Okinawa. But going 00:23:00back to the states, you had to go through Okinawa and you'd spend maybe two or three weeks there until you got authorized if you had a plane ticket and you can get back to the states. And I didn't have to go to Okinawa on my trip back to Vietnam, but. Going into Nam, you didn't have to go through all of that coming out, you had to go through Okinawa. Well, it was a relief. Went through what got home and we got our luggage and everything we had to store. When we got to Vietnam and I had, well, we even stored some gear in the states before I went over. So I had these suitcases like four suitcases with me, small cases, regular sized I'm carrying to the airport in I forget which one it was. I think it was San Francisco, and I could go from one side of the airport to the other. It was a big airport carrying these suitcases. That was a mess. So I got on the plane, got to Philadelphia and got to the uh. From the airport to the bus station with 00:24:00all these suitcases, got on the bus, I'm taking up all this room and everything with these cases and took the bus into uh Coatesville. Finally, got rid of them. Even our C-bag, they really didn't need over there, because that just had clothes that you would use normally in the states, you wouldn't wear those clothes just over there.

So everything you carried over there, you had carry back. Never used. But. On the transition over again, I went through training for almost a month TACP training. Then they shipped me back over again and I was in another outfit. 00:25:00Different type of job. Another outfit and got over there in October again. And it wasn't until, well, it was getting active in October. Tet Offensive was getting ready to ramp up, and that happened in January. But the North Vietnamese had infiltrated the I Corps area and they're causing a lot of trouble, so we were pretty active, even up before Tet Offensive. But when Khe Sanh got hit a couple of weeks before the Tet Offensive started. And we were pretty active after that.

Chelsey Moore: So why did you take up another MOS?

William White: I don't think I had a choice. They needed TACP operators, they 00:26:00needed helicopter people because they were losing so many helicopters that they needed people for helicopter duty. I wore glasses, so I couldn't fly. They wouldn't fly, so I didn't learn helicopters. But I-- I got stuck in Tactical Air Control Party. They said, here you're here. That was it. I didn't have a choice. So transitioned over to Nam as a TACP unit, and we had four men in a unit. Like a fire team is four men. But now it's for men or women. But. Yeah. Our job there was basically to guide in helicopters before the Tet. You would have helicopters 00:27:00were flying into areas that had very little clearance and you had to make sure that the helicopter side clearance to land. You had jungle over there and that was triple canopy. They had to short trees and shrubs and everything. And then they had the mid-level trees and not too many shrubs.

But maybe the average size tree that we have around here. And then you had the tall trees that were 80 90 feet higher and higher. And that was a triple canopy. And when they had to land for deployment, to deploy a, let's say, recon team or something. They had to make sure that they could fit in the area, the landing zone. So that was our job to make sure that the rotors didn't touch the tree limbs and everything, tear the rotors up. Then when they get down to the ground, our job was to unload the chopper and then we had to fuel or whatever, we load them back up again, If the door gunner had gotten wounded or killed during the 00:28:00transition from air to ground or the ground to air, it was our job to take this place. So that was basically all we did. But when it came to Khe Sanh, it was a little hairy up there. Everything was. 72 r.p.m.. instead of 33 and a third. You're moving fast. You only had seconds to load, land the chopper and unloaded and loaded up with casualties and take off before the rockets start landing. So. Yeah, we we did that pretty good, except for the one chopper that got hit up on the hill. The rest of them. They got in, got out without any damage, cause they got wounded people on there that got hit by any aircraft, fire and machine guns 00:29:00and everything. But occasionally they get wounded. But the choppers landed and took off as far as we were concerned, we did our job. So.

Chelsey Moore: Where you ever injured while you were over in Vietnam?

William White: Yeah, twice. One was my first tour, that rocket attack that hit our, uh,

Hit our hangar. We're all running away from it. And we were running towards the bunker and their rockets landed. About twenty five feet of me on my right side, picked me up and blew me into the only reventments that we had to protect the aircraft and hit that thing upside down, slid down the reventment and chewed up my back. So uh. They said told me to tell the doctors in the bunker when I 00:30:00finally got there and somebody said that my back was all chewed up and my shirt was torn and everything. We said, Well, we put some sab on it and said, see me in the morning, in sick bay. But I never got over there and it healed alright. Second one was I was. Going to Hill 881 in Khe Sanh, I was ordered over there with my orders papers and. There's some reason I didn't fly into it, but I jumped on board a convoy of army trucks that were heading out that way to Cam Lo, which was on the way to. Hill 881 south, and it got ambushed. On the route, which was a way cross country to Khe Sanh. And uh. We were driving on a road and 00:31:00there was a hill right next to the road going up, and on the other side was the hill going down and they cut the road right in the middle of the mountain. Anyhow they hit its front and back with machine guns. And up on top, they started coming down the hill onto us. Well, this had this one kid, which is the North Vietnamese troops use these kids in Vietnamese or Viet Cong. To run in front of them as kind of a buffer. They didn't give him any guns or grenades or anything.

Their job was just to act as a buffer. So this one kid jumped on our truck that all he had was a weapon as a weapon was a screwdriver and he swung around. That thing caught me right in the eye with that screwdriver and it hurt a lot anyhow. 00:32:00Some guy across from me took care of the kid. And we jumped out of the trucks and slid down the hill on the other side of the trucks and a Marine Recon team showed up. Two of them and took care of the two machine guns in front and back of the trucks and scared away the rest of the guys. So finally, I uh. I got some first aid done, wrapped my whole head and my eye up and everything, and I was in that for two or three weeks, until the eye healed. So it didn't do any damage. I was fortunate that along the side, the eye wall between the high ball and the socket so didn't do a lot of damage and he didn't have a whole lot of strength there, I guess, because we didn't get it pushed very far. Didn't get into the brain anyhow. So it was a fortunate injury. So they're the only two that I had. 00:33:00Uh on the hill, we were on the hill for seven weeks. I was on the over there for 76 days. And. Me and one other guy on the Hill now, there was three companies on the hill at the time and the company. We were kind of depleted companies because of our injuries and casualties, but there is a couple of hundred people on the hill anyhow. And uh. And one other guy, we're the only two that were not wounded on that hill during that time. Everybody else either got wounded or got wiped out, KIA.

So somehow we survived it without undue hardship. But there's a lot of low 00:34:00spots, but lots of guys on the hill where they were W.I.A or K.I.A. Before we got off of there.

Chelsey Moore: Um, When were you told that you were leaving Vietnam for the second time?

William White: Um, Well, after a Tet and after the Khe Sanh incident, where we closed out the base, We trashed the base, destroyed everything that was usable by the enemy and left it. We did Recon work. Up in I Corps, because a lot of the North Vietnamese army was still up there after Tet, they hadn't gotten through the DMZ to the North yet, so we did a lot of recon work and patrols and stuff like that for about a month, month and a half. Let's see, I got into Dien Anh, 00:35:00we did that again when I was first. And that's where I found out that I was scheduled to go home. I think it was June 20, first or second of eight or 68. And they said, yeah, we got a flight for you have gone to the state. But we weren't too sure we wanted to go to the states. We thought we're safer in Vietnam. This is right after in April, they shot Martin Luther King and then in June they shot Bobby Kennedy. We thought we might be safer staying here than going home.

Chelsey Moore: Hmm.

William White: I did go home in June, middle of June. If we had less than three months on our schedule, as far as our enlistment, that we could get it in early 00:36:00out, which means. I had three months I had. They're all under three months, couple weeks, under three months to go. But I didn't get an early out. I had to stay until my full enlistment, so someone screwed up the paperwork or whatever, but they didn't let me out early, so I stayed my full enlistment.

Chelsey Moore: What did you do when you got home?

William White: Relaxed. Well, not too much I had 30 day leave. Then I had to get back to the base and spend the next three months on base and doing dumb stuff, those are our quip. We were told to do something was we going to send me to Vietnam? We didn't much care too much because we were a couple of us were 00:37:00together. We didn't get the early outs, so we weren't too interested in participating in their programs, but. Anyhow, On the weekends, I would what we call swoop. In other words, we just take off from base and go somewhere usually. Well, I basically went up to the beaches up in Dover, Delaware, and, well, North, yeah, North Carolina had a decent beach and then I'd go to Virginia Beach area up in the Delaware beaches. I had friends up in Delaware, they were going to school up there. My cousin was going to school up there and a bunch of guys he was hanging out with. So I go up there on the weekends and hang out with them at the beach and then, drive back down to the base Sunday night to get there by Monday morning. But yeah, I did that most of the time for like three months and 00:38:00and I did another dumb thing when I got out and I joined the reserves, like I didn't have enough military, so I was going to a base up here in Willow Grove, a naval base up for my reserves duty. But then I got a job and became a normal person after I got out.

Chelsey Moore: Yeah . When you got when you were on the plane home, did anybody tell you how the American people would treat you guys coming home?

William White: I don't remember the plane.

Of course, we took a military plane to Okinawa then, from Okinawa, I think it was a passenger plane, but I can't remember that trip. I do remember when I got back to L.A. Airport. I took a. TWA plane flight from L.A. to Philadelphia, and I slept most of that trip. I don't remember too much from that trip except for 00:39:00falling asleep, and I wake up and we're a few minutes out of Philadelphia. But yeah, I didn't. Nobody talked to me on the plane, so I didn't hear anything and nobody gave me any problems when I got back, that's all we can got off the plane. So a lot of problems in other places, I know.

Chelsey Moore: Did you have any fellow Marines that in your squadron that were coming home that had problems with the public?

William White: Um, We came home at different times, my first outfit. My first 00:40:00outfit, that I was with, we came home with different times, they started coming home in what was it?, June of 67, which means they weren't over there, but maybe eight or nine months, and they were still coming home in November and December that year. So they were spread out. It was, they each had, they all had different jobs. We all had different jobs. And whenever they could get replacements for us in those jobs, they would let us go. So some guys leave early and other guys wouldn't leave until later. So. I didn't come home with anybody.

Chelsey Moore: Okay, so how was that transition from active duty military to being a civilian for you? Was there any problems that you encountered?

William White: Well, I was still in the military. I joined the reserves, so I was still in the military. I didn't have any trouble. I did have trouble getting my first job.

I applied for a job, my first job after I got out of active duty when I was released from active duty. I joined the reserves and I got a job at Pepperidge Farm and they wouldn't hire me. I said, We can't hire you, because you are in the reserves and we'd need you to work on the weekends. And when they told me that it made the mistake of telling me, I said, You can't not hire me because of my reserve duty. Despite what you have, you have to. You exclude that for hiring um, restriction. So she checked it out, yeah, we got to hire you. That's how it got the job at Pepperidge.

Chelsey Moore: When did you get out of the reserves?

William White: Well, it quite last a year. See, I was active duty for four years, so almost five so uh, they told us going to reserves, we were at the orientation to get out with active duty. They said you can join the reserves, but you can quit anytime you want. In other words, you don't have to spend a certain amount of time in the reserves because you've already given a tour of four years. I said, Oh, good. So I got in the reserves and some months later, I had a car accident. I was leaving Pepperidge from work. It was like 5 in the morning. I was getting ready to go on reserves. I was gone home first to get changed, and I hit a phone pole and demolished my car, smashed up my face and 00:43:00everything. I was in the hospital for a little while and when I went back to the reserves, they said, Well, you have to make up that weekend that you lost and so they told me I had to make it up this certain weekend, which means it was between the two other weekends that I had regular reserve duty.

So the reserve duty three weekends in a row, I said, I don't think my employer is gonna be too appreciative of that because they were upset that I was taking the weekend off because they needed me. So I made the decision to back out the reserves to keep my job. And I could and have already spent my time in. Up there in the reserve outfit, they were really hounding these guys. I mean, they were 00:44:00scaring them because they were they started off as reserves most of them and they could threaten them by telling them they can make them go active duty, which was the green card says, you know, we'll slap you with the green card if you don't square away. That means you would go active duty and we'd go to Nam. Well, these guys weren't too thrilled with that idea, so they squared away. But as far as we're concerned, we already had the green card and we're done with it, so they couldn't tell us anything like that. But it didn't last too long. So I spent five whole years in the military, active and reserve.

Chelsey Moore: Are you in are you in any type of um, military group now?

William White: Well, I'm with military guys, but their former military, they're not active duty military now with the American Legion and the Marine Corps League.

Chelsey Moore: OK. Um, what were your thoughts on the five presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and how they handled the war?

William White: Well the war didn't get started until. Well, actually, it was Kennedy who, he got suckered into the war originally and he was told to go back out. Get away from it, don't get messed up with that thing. Other people, advisers told him, but the military wanted to get into the war and get more involved with it.

Eisenhower. Had his own problems with the Korean War. And of course uh, What 's his name? One before him

Chelsey Moore: Truman

William White: Truman, and he had the end of World War Two to worry about so. But. As far as those guys were concerned, I am neutral on that, but Johnson, he's the guy. He's the one that messed up the war for us. He hired Westmoreland, who was not our favorite leader. The Marines did not like Westmoreland. We have a different agenda than the army as far as Vietnam. Plus, we found out that Johnson was dictating movements by company size outfits in Vietnam from the White House. Telling, the guys in Vietnam, what to do with the companies, where to put them and all this other stuff that just wasn't his job, it was a general's job. Not his. And I didn't like Westmoreland's attitude as far as we 00:47:00were concerned. He wanted to use the Marines as basically a trap for the North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive. That's why they stuck us out in Khe Sahn. So there's nobody around anywhere. It was like being in Dien Bien Phu with the French. The only thing was we had air power. They didn't back then. And he stuck us out there as a ploy to get the North Vietnamese to attack us. And then he would wipe them out with air power. Well, it worked out pretty good, but I like being a sucker out there in the middle of nowhere. But then I came back after I transitioned back to the states, and I found out that. What's his name? The reporter. Channel 10, Cronkite. Yeah, he had gone over to Vietnam during Tet and 00:48:00we observed what was going on over there, and he came back and on his program, nightly news, he says.

I was over there and I found out that we could not win that war. There's no way, the way we're operating over there, we can't win the war and then, Johnson heard this or was told this, and he came on the air and he said, Well, if Cronkite says we can't win the war, I guess we can't win the war. And this is a president saying this, this is the guy in charge of the war, that's supposed to be running it, and he's taking the lead from a correspondent as far as what the correspondent's viewpoint is on the war. And Johnson said, Well, we can't win the war, I guess we can't win the war. I thought. What? I think from that point I had zero confidence in Johnson, I had no respect for him. And then Nixon came 00:49:00in and he did a lot of things to end the war quicker. I mean, they bombed the North and it was, He wasn't afraid, of Russia or China coming in. He just said all our bombing B-52s, wipe them out until they come to the peace table. And he mined Haiphong Harbor, which was where all these neutral ships would come in and drop off their supplies for the North, and they could very easily have been sunk. And he said, I don't care, if you're going to do a trade with them, you take the responsibility. If you get sunk, that's your problem, not ours. And I liked his attitude and we did bring the peace table eventually. So he was all right. Too bad he screwed up, but and got caught and got forced out of office. 00:50:00But as far as the war goes, I think he was doing the right thing.

Chelsey Moore: Did you receive any medals or awards for your service over in Vietnam?

William White: Yeah.

A Couple. But. A couple of awards from the South Vietnamese government. Um, No, I didn't win any major medals or anything. I didn't get my Purple Heart. I didn't report them, so therefore they didn't know about so they weren't going to issue them.

Chelsey Moore: So looking back, you know, decades later, how do you make sense of the Vietnam War?

William White: You don't. Uh, It's in the past and it's something you went through your transition to adulthood. Every, it seems like every generation has 00:51:00its war. And Vietnam was our war. It didn't turn out to be so good. It's a matter of fact we haven't won a war since 1945. But Vietnam was our war. At least we did our job. We, suppressed the enemy. Our job was done well when we left there. We weren't ashamed or disappointed, with how we worked and how we fought the war. Other people might have been other people said we lost, we don't feel we lost. We feel that the government politicians just gave up on it. So. As far as we're concerned, it's done over with. We served, we feel proud that we 00:52:00served. And as of right now, well back in 91, when we had the first Gulf War, Vietnam vets were the ones that primarily were the backers of the troops for the Gulf War and the people who were around back, they will remember all the ribbons and everything that were hung up for the troops when they came home. There was total support in this country for the Vets of the Gulf War and alot of the Vietnam veterans were behind that. Pushing forward. We didn't get that kind of treatment, but we want to make sure that they did so. As far as our thinking about Vietnam, as far as my thinking about it's, it's over.

William White: It took me. I don't know how many years, eight, 10 years, maybe, before I went down to visit the wall in Washington, after they built it, I didn't want to go anywhere near it. But eventually I went and I was glad I did after I got there. But I know a lot of vets that still have a problem. They can't get down. But it's all in how you lived the war and how you survived it. Some people didn't survive it too well and a lot of problems, mental problems as well as physical. My physical problems cured themselves, so I didn't have any lasting, although, There has been some talk about Agent Orange that popped up. 00:54:00Some of the problems I have now, some doctors have attributed to Agent Orange. And a couple of other diseases that I have that kind of attributed to Agent Orange, you said, were you in any that they had Agent Orange? I said, Well, not that I remember. And then recently, in the last year or so, I found out that they had sprayed Agent Orange around the circumference of the DeNang combat base along the fencing area and everything, and we traveled in and out of that area all the time. But they did it, so they kill all the vegetation so that we could see the enemy coming up on the bench area before they got to it.

Chelsey Moore: Now,

William White: Huh?

Chelsey Moore: That was your first deployment or your second when they did that?

William White: Well, the second one. Got in some jungle area. And there could have been Agent Orange sprayed in that area, and they did spray it in a lot of areas, exposed the hiding places for the enemy. It would kill vegetation. There's no place they get hide, it varies but what we were bringing in helicopters in areas that were cleared.

William White: I didn't pay attention, but whether it looked like defoliant or whether it was just found pieces and there's nothing left of it. So I didn't, we didn't pay attention to that, but it could have been an Agent Orange, so I don't know. I haven't pursued it with the veterans organizations. I had some coverage with my employer, and they can take care of any problem I have. I don't want to 00:56:00deal with that, too much paperwork, too much red tape. So I think that that's how.

Chelsey Moore: How, how do you think your life would have been if you did not go to Vietnam?

William White: I don't know. If we didn't have a war, if I didn't go?

Chelsey Moore: If you didn't, you go?

William White: I don't know. This friend I joined the Marines with, they backed out at the last minute. I was in Vietnam and I got a postcard from him, and he said that he had been drafted into the army. I figured well that's good, but the problem was that, he sent the postcard from Italy. They sent him to Italy, continuing the story, he told me about these trips up in the mountains, go 00:57:00skiing and everything. And it figures. He never did get to Vietnam. So. I would have went to college.

Chelsey Moore: OK. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?

William White: No.

Chelsey Moore: OK. Well, I'm just going to give a little summary of what we did today. So this interview is being conducted for the WCUPA History 600 course on oral histories in the Vietnam War. My name again is Chelsey Moore and I was interviewing William Bill White on Thursday, April 14th, 2022 in Gap, Pennsylvania. This interview is being recorded, and then we'll go on deposit at the Louis B.

William White: Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. They 00:58:00will then be made accessible to the public on the Nunn's center website that West Chester University students will create in the fall of 2022 and planned exhibits of publications thereafter. So again, I want to thank you, Mr. White, for being my interviewee and willing to work with me in the university and US students to help understand the Vietnam War and its soldiers. So thank you again.