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00:00:27My name is Soren Peter Sorenson II.
00:00:30And this is my namesake, Soren Peter Sorenson I.
00:00:32He was born over a century before me in Denmark in 1871, and he's pictured here at 17 in his
00:00:38Danish military uniform.
00:00:40Here's his son, my great-grandfather Ralph Sorenson, holding me at two months old as my
00:00:44father and grandfather look on.
00:00:46When I look at this photograph, I wonder if any of these men ever thought that my life
00:00:49would even remotely resemble theirs.
00:01:06There's a stranger lying in my bed It's laid out a sleep assassin in my head
00:01:19I keep on dying until I finally fall dead Every day has a way through
00:01:34There's an ether hanging at my door Across I crucify a keeping score
00:01:46I keep on smiling until I can't smile no more Every day fades to bloom
00:02:00We go walls and eyes are gray We go walls and eyes are gray
00:02:09We go walls and eyes are gray For one more day
00:02:20The first time my father took me to Washington, D.C., I was around 10 years old, too young
00:02:25to really get it.
00:02:27D.C. was one of a number of uniquely American destinations we used to visit, places like
00:02:31Annapolis and Gettysburg, where all I ever really learned from the monuments, memorials,
00:02:35reenactments, and powwows was that I loved the junk food that always seemed to accompany each
00:02:39day's outing.
00:02:40When we visited the Vietnam Memorial, I was hardly old enough to comprehend the Smithsonian
00:02:44or the Air and Space Museum, let alone Maya Lin's granite masterpiece honoring
00:02:48the more than 58,000 Americans who were killed during the Vietnam War.
00:02:54The experience always stayed with me because my dad made pencil rubbings of two of the names
00:02:58that day, Loring M. Bailey Jr. and Glenn D. Rickert.
00:03:03I remember standing as far away as I could from my teary-eyed father as he made the rubbings
00:03:07and took pictures of each of the names.
00:03:09Who are these people, I wondered to myself, these dead soldiers?
00:03:12He had never mentioned them before.
00:03:14I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen my father's eyes well up
00:03:18with tears and I'm not sure he's ever cried.
00:03:20But it wasn't a good feeling as a child, seeing that vulnerable, human side of a guy
00:03:24I imagined was invincible.
00:03:26This little effort to distance myself physically from my father in D.C. continued emotionally
00:03:30throughout my adolescence, manifesting itself as a fear of upsetting or disappointing him,
00:03:34as I intentionally grew into what I considered to be a much different person than he once was.
00:03:40This distance between us, real or imagined on my part, caused me to wait until I was over 30
00:03:45to ask him how he ended up in Vietnam.
00:03:51Not by choice, by chance.
00:03:53Or is it by chance, by choice?
00:03:55There was a recruiting slogan that had to do with, yeah, by choice but not by chance or something like
00:04:03that.
00:04:04You pick your branch and all that good stuff and you get a career path and go to college
00:04:10and become a Ph.D. machine gun runner.
00:04:12I backed into it.
00:04:13I knew that this was probably the biggest news story of my life.
00:04:16I knew that I wanted to be a journalist or that I thought I wanted to be a journalist.
00:04:20I was a political science major.
00:04:22There have been family males involved in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea,
00:04:30and this was just my war.
00:04:32There's a tradition of if you're a male and there's a war on, that's your job.
00:04:36That's what you do.
00:04:37It's just bad luck or good luck if you're into that sort of thing.
00:04:42So I was balancing not wanting to miss this news story, a dyed-in-the-wool Ernest Hemingway fan.
00:04:52On the other side of the coin, I knew that this was a bogus war.
00:04:56It was a civil war.
00:04:58The politicians were steering us astray, and I sure as hell didn't want to die over there.
00:05:04But you balance one against the other, and then depending upon where you want to go with discussions,
00:05:11you can play this out right to the day I got over there.
00:05:14It's avoidance tempered with, this is something I should be doing or want to be doing.
00:05:22In 1968, a lot of high school and college seniors were in the same situation as my father.
00:05:27And the perception of Vietnam as a working-class war fought only by America's poorest and least educated citizens was
00:05:33changing.
00:05:34In March, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election.
00:05:38In April, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
00:05:40In June, it was Robert F. Kennedy.
00:05:43In November, Richard Nixon was elected president.
00:05:45Nixon had a plan.
00:05:47I remember distinctly sitting in Fort Dix cleaning M-14 and listening to speeches.
00:05:53And Nixon had a plan to get us out of Vietnam.
00:05:56And I was thinking to myself, if he could do that in two months, I would vote for him.
00:06:00Another Connecticut resident who probably voted for Nixon in 1968 is Loring Bailey, then an employee of Groton-based Electric
00:06:06Boat,
00:06:07the largest manufacturer of submarines for the United States Navy.
00:06:10Bailey's only son, Loring Jr., or Ring, to his close friends and family, enlisted in the United States Army around
00:06:15the same time as my father, and for similar reasons.
00:06:18When the kids came out or graduated from school, from college, when they ended home here in Connecticut, well, all
00:06:29over the country, there lying in the pile of mail was the card for registration for the draft.
00:06:44Every senior faced that.
00:06:46A lot of people said, my God, if I'm going to be drafted, I'll enlist.
00:06:53I'll go before they call me.
00:06:56It surprised me to hear that so many young people in the late 60s, including my father and Ring Bailey,
00:07:01were still enlisting.
00:07:03Members of my generation, the sons and daughters of these baby boomers, seem to treat the topic of Vietnam either
00:07:08with overt criticism, including comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan, or eye rolls and apathy.
00:07:14I've honestly never spoken to very many people my age or any other come to think of it, willing to
00:07:18defend the American government's motivations for expanding our military's involvement in Vietnam.
00:07:22But the reasons people enlisted were not as simple as I once imagined.
00:07:26Because the United States military is now all volunteer, I always figured anyone who made a conscious decision to enlist
00:07:32rather than waiting for the draft or avoiding the war altogether, must have been enthusiastically anti-communist.
00:07:38That or too willing to please their fathers, members of Tom Brokaw's greatest generation.
00:07:43I think it's partly doing what is expected.
00:07:46So I think he was reared in the tradition of being responsible, doing the right thing, quote unquote, whatever that,
00:07:53however you define that, and not disappointing your family.
00:07:58And he had not just a father but a grandfather whom he loved and aunts and a family tradition that
00:08:03was one that would be a big deal to just walk out on that.
00:08:07The National Guard wasn't available unless you knew somebody, or your name was Bush, or you had some way of
00:08:12getting into the National Guard.
00:08:13The National Guard was closed out, the reserves were closed out, because they were really popular obviously.
00:08:18You weren't going to see action.
00:08:19I looked into the Army, the Army had a program where, and I was about to be drafted as far
00:08:25as I know.
00:08:25If you sign up for officer candidate school, at any point washout, you get the time that you spent in
00:08:32training subtracted from a two year draft.
00:08:35So my mind's cranking away, and I'm thinking to myself, it takes a couple months for basic, a couple months
00:08:44for advanced individual training, however long I can play out OCS.
00:08:53And then if you, again, throw in the towel, if I played it right, I'd have either less than a
00:09:00year, and at that point, if you had less than a year, they weren't shipping you out.
00:09:03So I would come pretty close to a year.
00:09:08If I had done something other than go, my father probably would have been disappointed.
00:09:11But in terms of my family, I received no input, either to go, not go, it's a good idea, bad
00:09:18idea.
00:09:18I think he cared about his father's impression of him, but I'm not sure, but I also think he resented
00:09:24it.
00:09:24It would have been an embarrassment, probably, because there was a stigma attached.
00:09:30Again, if you go back to that era, in a neighborhood, if somebody was evading, if somebody went to Canada,
00:09:37or something that neighbors talked to.
00:09:55Perhaps America's hindsight perception of 60s counterculture, hippies, and the sexual revolution
00:10:00produces the illusion of a greater protest movement than actually existed.
00:10:05As much as I can imagine enlisting in the military during the Vietnam era, for my father and Ring Bailey,
00:10:10evading, avoiding, dodging the draft, or going to Canada weren't really options.
00:10:14When I contacted Ring Bailey's widow, Maris, to request an interview, she respectfully declined, stating,
00:10:19The years since Ring's death have done little to soften my heartache and anger over his loss.
00:10:25Maris put me in touch with her brother, Rick, who invited me to his home in Burlington, Vermont.
00:10:30Rick's deaf in his left ear, so he received a 4F designation, meaning unfit for service upon completing his physical.
00:10:36He told me the outcome of the physical didn't matter. He wasn't going to Vietnam.
00:10:43Did it look like me? I would have gone to jail.
00:10:47They sent draft resisters to Allenwood Prison Farm in Pennsylvania.
00:10:51It's minimum security. There's no barbed wire.
00:10:59Ring became my sister's boyfriend.
00:11:02Ring was two years older than me.
00:11:05And he became a mentor.
00:11:08He went to Trinity College in Hartford.
00:11:12He was really smart.
00:11:14And I really liked him.
00:11:16And here he was with my sister.
00:11:18And we hung out together.
00:11:22And so that's how I met him.
00:11:23And he eventually married my sister.
00:11:26You know, it's Ring.
00:11:29And by gosh, the telephone call that I received the night that he went down to Fort Dix was,
00:11:38Hey, Dad, I'm in the infantry.
00:11:42Well, you take Ring's glasses off and he couldn't see a hundred yards and make out anything without glasses in
00:11:54a hundred yards.
00:11:55But here he was in the infantry.
00:11:58Well, okay.
00:11:59So you'll learn how to march.
00:12:02Ring liked automobiles.
00:12:03He was a real automobile enthusiast.
00:12:06His father was an automobile enthusiast.
00:12:09His father had a XK 140 Jaguar Coupe.
00:12:13Most of them are roadsters.
00:12:14This one was a coupe.
00:12:15It was swooping.
00:12:17And I learned the appreciation of these automobiles from Ring.
00:12:21He drew cars.
00:12:22He knew race cars.
00:12:24He had little die-cast miniature cars and collected them.
00:12:29And now I do.
00:12:30He had a bug-eyed Sprite.
00:12:31Before he went to Vietnam, he bought a bug-eyed Sprite.
00:12:35And I bought a 1600 Fiat Roadster.
00:12:37And in his time off between...
00:12:40Before he went to Vietnam, we worked on these two cars and we drove around and...
00:12:48Fun.
00:12:49With a cloud over your head, fun.
00:12:52My father met Ring Bailey in 1969 at OCS, Officer Candidate School in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
00:12:59They were both aspiring writers, Ernest Hemingway fans from small southern New England towns.
00:13:03And the seemingly insignificant common ground they shared led to an alliance that almost spared them both from service outside
00:13:08the United States.
00:13:10He was going to be a journalist.
00:13:11He was going to want to go into writing.
00:13:13And he found a colonel who was looking for people to write training manuals.
00:13:18And the colonel said, I need half a dozen, I need four writers.
00:13:23And he got the job.
00:13:24And he came back and said, hey, look, go down there.
00:13:27He said, you will spend the next year outside of Washington.
00:13:30He was married.
00:13:31I was about to get married.
00:13:32He said, we'll spend the rest of the...
00:13:34Either a year or a year plus writing training manuals at Fort Belvoir, which is a suburb of Washington, D
00:13:40.C., with our spouses.
00:13:41And what could be better?
00:13:43So in any case, I went down, interviewed, got the job.
00:13:47And in both cases, our orders for Vietnam got cut before the orders for the writing job.
00:13:55My father and Ring both decided against finishing OCS and were sent to different bases.
00:13:59They weren't gung ho by any stretch of the imagination.
00:14:03Neither were countless other Americans who found themselves in Vietnam.
00:14:06Selective service and self-preservation were not as contradictory then as they seem to be today.
00:14:11When my father received word that he would be shipping out in October of 69, my parents had to move
00:14:15their wedding up from September to August.
00:14:18People in my mother's hometown, Wheeling, West Virginia, were convinced she was pregnant.
00:14:21The day that he left for Vietnam, my parents didn't feel comfortable having me drive him to the airport because
00:14:27I was going to be upset.
00:14:28And so they arranged that, you know, bus trip or limo trip for him.
00:14:34So the thing came around the circle.
00:14:36I remember vividly saying goodbye to him and opening that door and having him walk and get in that car.
00:14:46It could have been near America.
00:14:48But it was a commercial flight with stewards or stewardesses.
00:14:53Although we were wearing jungle fatigues, we landed in Hawaii and Guam for refueling.
00:15:00But essentially, other than the fatigues, it was like, I don't recall a movie in flight movie, but we had
00:15:07meals and it was like nothing was happening.
00:15:16And on the way down, everybody was sort of hanging on to their seat and kind of concerned because we
00:15:21were in this commercial setting and sort of a tradition.
00:15:25This is just a regular airplane flight.
00:15:27And the next thing we knew were like a 45 degree angle coming down.
00:15:33And when we landed, I asked the one of the stewardesses what the story was.
00:15:38And she said, when we get to Vietnam, we do military landings to lessen the exposure to enemy fire.
00:15:44And on the way down, it was like, we were looking at each other like, we're not going to make
00:15:49it.
00:15:49I mean, we're not even going to land this plane where there's been a mechanical difficulty.
00:15:53We saw the South China Sea. We saw Vietnam. And the next thing we knew, we were just seemingly crash
00:15:59landing.
00:15:59We hit the deck. They opened the door. Once it was open, it was like a blast furnace.
00:16:04Went from an air-conditioned cabin from originating a flight from Fort Lewis, Washington.
00:16:11And the heat and humidity was unbearable. It was just very difficult to communicate.
00:16:16And then within two hours, I was on the perimeter of Cam'ron Bay stringing concertina wire.
00:16:23And I figured I was going to make it 24 hours. I figured the environment or the temperature was going
00:16:30to do me in.
00:16:30I wasn't going to make it because of the weather.
00:16:32I was scared that something might happen. I knew he wasn't going to be in the jungle.
00:16:37That would have freaked me out. I guess I didn't constantly fear the way I would if he had been
00:16:41in combat or a Marine.
00:16:42And then at night, I remember there was some kind of either an arc light, which is a B-52
00:16:46drop,
00:16:47or there was a firefight, something going on in the mountains.
00:16:50And I remember looking, coming out of the hooch and looking toward the mountains,
00:16:55and it was like there was a large thunderstorm.
00:16:59And you'd see a flash, and then there would be a four-minute or whatever delay,
00:17:05and then you'd feel a concussion.
00:17:09And again, it brought home that this is, you know, where you are.
00:17:12And then tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, you're going to be closer to what's going on there.
00:17:16Loring was assigned to an infantry brigade or infantry battalion.
00:17:21I was assigned to an engineer company, and essentially he went off and did his thing, and I went off
00:17:26and did my thing.
00:17:27His first letter indicated that he had, on the day of his arrival, that night, they went out on a
00:17:36snake.
00:17:38That was a case of where you blackened your faces, you were heavily armored,
00:17:45and he was with a group of machine gunners, and they set up a blocking force.
00:17:54And he said, the blocking force, we were there, but nothing, nothing occurred.
00:18:00From Cam'ron Bay orders to Chu Lai, which is the corporate, the military headquarters company,
00:18:08or headquarters for the AmeriCal Division, and was there.
00:18:12They had what they call the combat center, which is like graduate school.
00:18:15And for a week, you were there to acclimatize yourself, and then also go through quick-kill course,
00:18:21where you had a BB gun, you'd shoot at pop-up targets, booby traps in mines, and try not to
00:18:27set them off.
00:18:29Everybody set off something, which is kind of debilitating when you're through one.
00:18:34Warning lectures on drugs.
00:18:35All the hooches had essentially plywood walls, screens, and then corrugated ten roofs.
00:18:44And then attached, or very close by, there were culverts, or half shells, covered with sandbags,
00:18:49which were for rocket attacks or incoming, defensive positions, essentially.
00:18:55The first night I was there, we had incoming rockets.
00:18:57There was an explosion.
00:19:00We were green, we were looking at each other.
00:19:02What was that?
00:19:03And finally, somebody came running through the hooch and said,
00:19:09everybody in the shelter.
00:19:10And we all got in the shelter.
00:19:12And there were three or four more rockets that came in that night.
00:19:16So the first night that I was in Chu Lai, we received the rocket attacks,
00:19:20probably B-10s or Soviet-made rockets.
00:19:23They were just set up with bamboo stakes out in the hinterlands,
00:19:28and they were launched toward the American base.
00:19:31I don't think there were any casualties or anything,
00:19:34but that was my introduction to incoming.
00:19:36From there, I got orders to Duk-Fo, which is about 50 miles south on the coast.
00:19:41It's in Quang-Nai Province.
00:19:42I was assigned to the engineers.
00:19:44For the engineers, I was shipped out to LZ Liz, or Landing Zone Liz,
00:19:48which is a forward fire support base.
00:19:50And there were three mountains, one large lump where the LZ was located.
00:19:56There were a couple of howitzers there.
00:19:58And I stayed there for four months or so, five months,
00:20:01doing mine sweeps and construction.
00:20:05For soldiers of the Vietnam era and their loved ones,
00:20:08letter-writing was the most useful method of communication.
00:20:11As much as pictures tell us what the war was like for these young men,
00:20:14their letters home are as remarkable,
00:20:16not only for what was written, but also for what was left out.
00:20:20He wrote to us to protect us.
00:20:23You know, he wrote to us and tried to look at the light side.
00:20:27His letters he wrote about, he wrote a letter about a duckling
00:20:31that he took with him for three days,
00:20:33a little duckling that he carried on helicopter rides
00:20:36and finally let go somewhere.
00:20:38There was Pete the Puppy Dog who followed them around.
00:20:41He wrote about micro frogs.
00:20:43Oh, he was upbeat.
00:20:45It was an upbeat deal.
00:20:47He made it that way.
00:20:49I can tell you one letter that he sent to his wife.
00:20:54Three or four paragraphs of disassembling and assembling
00:21:01a machine gun, a .50 caliber machine gun.
00:21:04I don't think he copied it out of the manual,
00:21:08but it was very, very close.
00:21:10And he wrote this.
00:21:14Also, saw an enormous python the other day.
00:21:18Those exciting animal names grow a bit meaningless or prosaic
00:21:22when we think of them as automobile models
00:21:24or can opener trademarks.
00:21:26But a real python opens your eyes
00:21:29and gives new meaning and respect to the name.
00:21:32He was in a God-awful environment.
00:21:41Just hideous.
00:21:42He was carrying 70 pounds of pack
00:21:45and then going from place to place
00:21:46and then at night setting up ambushes.
00:21:49And if it was the monsoon season, you were wet.
00:21:53I mean, you were cut to the bone.
00:21:5548 hours, three days, four or five days at a time.
00:21:58Elizabeth I wrote once a day.
00:21:59If I missed a day, I used to write two,
00:22:01so I probably got back an equal amount.
00:22:05It wasn't like World War II where everybody wrote
00:22:07and everybody sent cookies and everybody did this.
00:22:09It was fairly confined to the closest relatives
00:22:12or the closest friends,
00:22:14so you didn't get groundswells of mail.
00:22:17The ones I counted, obviously, were Elizabeth's and friends.
00:22:21I wrote him a letter every day and did that,
00:22:25but when he was gone, he left in September,
00:22:27and at Christmas, which was a big family gathering
00:22:30around the Christmas table with my parents
00:22:32and Aunt Susie and Uncle Atwood
00:22:34and all of the cousins and everybody.
00:22:36And here I was, having been married one month,
00:22:38and he left in September, and it was Christmas.
00:22:41The entire Christmas day
00:22:43and through the entire Christmas dinner,
00:22:44not one person mentioned him.
00:22:46He was not toasted.
00:22:47He was not, he just wasn't in their conscious.
00:22:51Part of our job was to get up very punctual
00:22:54so that everybody knew we were coming,
00:22:55but there's at least eight of us, this parade of people
00:22:57going down the road.
00:22:58We did the sweep, and then at the end of the sweep,
00:23:01what happened was a five-ton dump truck
00:23:03would be filled up with sand.
00:23:05It was called pressure testing,
00:23:06and it would back down the road.
00:23:08So anything that we missed electronically,
00:23:11theoretically, the dump truck would set off.
00:23:14We did this one day, got onto the truck,
00:23:17the pressure testing had been done,
00:23:18and they would drive us back up to the LZ Liz.
00:23:20On this particular day, we were working on bunkers,
00:23:23and then all of a sudden we heard an explosion
00:23:24down toward the road.
00:23:26It was after the monsoon,
00:23:28so they were repairing the road.
00:23:29Anyway, we got down there,
00:23:30and the medevac was just leaving the dump truck driver.
00:23:34The mine went off right under the cab,
00:23:36and it blew his eye out,
00:23:38and he had other injuries,
00:23:40but we had to do another mine sweep of the road.
00:23:42So this is the second mine sweep within four hours, five hours,
00:23:45and they did another pressure test.
00:23:47We got back on the dump truck to LZ Liz,
00:23:49started working on the bunkers,
00:23:52and we heard another explosion.
00:23:54Another truck bringing a load of dirt blew up.
00:23:58Again, the medevac was there,
00:23:59but there were those two in one morning,
00:24:01and the next day they had sniffer dogs.
00:24:05They accompanied us for the next week
00:24:07and never found anything else,
00:24:09but we lost two dump trucks, two guys.
00:24:12This is a Corgi die-cast miniature car.
00:24:16You know, I don't know the scale.
00:24:18It's a Di Tommaso Mangusta
00:24:20that I sent to him as a Christmas present,
00:24:22and we liked our cars, and he wrote to me.
00:24:25He said,
00:24:26In the dark watches of the night,
00:24:28I roll the Di Tommaso Mangusta Corgi toy car
00:24:31that Rick sent me back and forth very quietly.
00:24:34I sit squishing the suspension up and down
00:24:37for minutes at a time,
00:24:38looking at it at eye level,
00:24:40digging its amber headlights,
00:24:42but that's another form of devotion entirely.
00:24:45Huddled under my poncho,
00:24:47trying to preserve the condition of my stationary,
00:24:50all thought of quality gone,
00:24:52writing away while monitoring my trusty two-way radio,
00:24:55looking out at the little plastic Christmas tree
00:24:58that one of our machine gunners received in the mail
00:25:00and planted before his draped poncho.
00:25:03Put the little metal car,
00:25:05the Di Tommaso Mangusta that I carry in my pocket
00:25:07beneath the plastic tree,
00:25:09and lo and behold,
00:25:11we'll have toys under the tree come tomorrow morning.
00:25:13All the amenities are not lost.
00:25:15One little Tupperware container of mother's best cookies, too.
00:25:19No, all is certainly not lost at Christmas time.
00:25:22Next Christmas Eve,
00:25:24I'll perhaps remember my rainy night,
00:25:26squatting beside my radio on my plastic-covered map
00:25:29to keep my bottom unsuccessfully dry,
00:25:32watching the bushes move,
00:25:34and every so often munching on mixed nuts without peanuts.
00:25:38Maybe this was the Christmas Eve and Christmas
00:25:41to make the rest worthwhile.
00:25:43.
00:25:43.
00:25:44.
00:25:44.
00:25:46.
00:25:46.
00:25:49.
00:26:50And we would go out on patrol during the day, and we'd set up ambushes at night.
00:26:54Most of what we were looking for were resupply issues.
00:26:58The area we were in had been defoliated, bulldozed, burned, and was a free fire zone.
00:27:05So anybody out there, theoretically, was a target.
00:27:08That made it difficult when you actually wanted to eliminate a target.
00:27:12You were told that you could possibly impact some poor, innocent civilian who wasn't supposed to be there in the
00:27:18first place.
00:27:19So I was involved in planning, deploying the troops, making sure everybody knew what their mission was,
00:27:26making sure the resupply came in, whether it was weapons, food, whatever it was.
00:27:31Ring volunteered to go out and carry the radio.
00:27:37I wrote back to him saying, you get rid of the radio as fast as you possibly can.
00:27:43That is a highly visible target.
00:27:47He had already been in this unit, my first unit that I was assigned to.
00:27:52So when I first met Loring, he was Spec 4, I believe was his rank at the time.
00:27:58And he was my radio guy.
00:28:01And so he was responsible for any communication out of our field unit to anything else, anything or anybody else
00:28:09we needed.
00:28:09Actually, when I saw the picture, I realized I hadn't remembered a whole lot from the picture you sent me.
00:28:17I remember dark hair.
00:28:20I always had the impression he was a lot taller than I was, but I'm not sure if he was
00:28:23or not.
00:28:26And the glasses.
00:28:30But I, he seemed like a, and it sounds terrible, not that the other people weren't civilized people,
00:28:35but he seemed more civilized, reasonable, intelligent than many other people I ran into.
00:28:39I'm the guy that when he went fishing as a kid, I threw the fish back in.
00:28:43You know, I didn't, I never hunted.
00:28:44I'd never been around weapons.
00:28:45I didn't come from a family that was an outdoors.
00:28:49You know, we were tennis players and swimmers.
00:28:50And so this, this gung-ho, try to keep yourself from being killed, you know, carrying a hundred pounds of
00:28:58supplies and, and being armed and shoot the kilt.
00:29:03Very, very strange.
00:29:06The minute I was in country and the night that we were rocketed, I knew that I did not want
00:29:10to be a combat engineer.
00:29:11And I knew that I wanted to get as far from the ugliness as I could.
00:29:16And I went to the division headquarters and I got a unit transfer application, dutifully filled it out the second
00:29:24day or third day that I was in country, or in Chulai, and then did not hear anything for four
00:29:29months.
00:29:30During that period, we were in Moduck building a bridge.
00:29:33And I took pictures and I wrote a story about the project and I submitted it to the 31st Public
00:29:41Information Office and that was that.
00:29:43And about three weeks later, two weeks later, the squad leader over the radio received a call from the captain
00:29:50in charge of the engineers.
00:29:52Have Sorensen on the LZ at a certain hour with all his equipment.
00:29:57And the squad leader, of course, looked a little askance at me and said, where are you going and how'd
00:30:03you do it?
00:30:03So anyway, I got on the LZ and next thing I know, the captain's personal helicopter was there, picked me
00:30:09up, and then flew me back to Bronco, all five miles.
00:30:15And the captain was in his jeep waiting to pick me up, and he looked at me and he said,
00:30:21something to the effect that you look a little scruffy to be someone who's working in the rear now.
00:30:28He explained that I'd been reassigned to the Public Information Office.
00:30:32The story that I had written appeared in either Army Times and or Stars and Stripes.
00:30:38And so someone said, take this guy out of the engineers and put him in the Public Information Office.
00:30:44There happened to be an opening.
00:30:46So that was a transition.
00:30:48It was abrupt.
00:30:49There were four people assigned to the Public Information Office, and two of them were officers, two were enlisted.
00:30:54So I was in a position where I could come and go as I pleased.
00:30:58As long as I maintained a certain flow of stories and pictures out of that office, they didn't care if
00:31:05I showed up.
00:31:06They didn't care what I did.
00:31:07And sort of to further add to the confusion and the elation on my part, the division thought the brigade
00:31:16was in charge of the Public Information Office.
00:31:18The brigade thought the division was in charge, so nobody was in charge.
00:31:29One of the things I did was fly with either the Combat Assault Unit or they have a Light Observation
00:31:35Helicopter Unit
00:31:35that did scouting work or drew fire or visual reconnaissance flights.
00:31:43And there was a pilot named Rickard, and I typically flew with him.
00:31:47Glenn Rickard was a captain, very accessible, very friendly.
00:31:52When I had to take pictures, when we needed aerial photographs or reconnaissance photographs, I would go out.
00:31:58Or if I needed to take pictures of a body or something like that, he would fly me out there.
00:32:17This is Glenn Aurelius.
00:32:19He flew Light Observation Helicopters with Glenn Rickard in Vietnam in 1970.
00:32:23For him, the Vietnam War represented an opportunity to pursue his love of flying.
00:32:27He works as a pilot to this day.
00:32:30I looked up to him, yeah.
00:32:32Yeah, maybe a role model.
00:32:34Yeah, I believe that would be the case.
00:32:36He had a commanding presence, soft-spoken.
00:32:40I wasn't the only one that would say this to him, but probably the first, and I've said it many
00:32:44times because we were close.
00:32:46The job we were doing was very dangerous, very risky, every day.
00:32:50You never knew what was going to happen.
00:32:51And I told him a couple of times that I could do all of those trips and he wouldn't have
00:32:56to do any because he had a wife and a child now and that there was more to lose there
00:33:03if something happened to him.
00:33:06But I remember the conversations with him, and he said, no.
00:33:10He said, thank you.
00:33:11He said, but I really like flying these flights.
00:33:17Like my father and Ring Bailey, Glenn Rickard had only been married a short time before shipping out.
00:33:22His son, Glenn Jr., was only an infant at the time.
00:33:26He and his mother, Margie, still live in Pennsylvania, not far from where Glenn Sr. grew up.
00:33:31I think it was a little bit after the parade for Bucks County Vietnam Memorial.
00:33:39I finally started realizing my heritage, so I finally wanted to get it all put together.
00:33:44The letters, the uniforms, things of that.
00:33:48So it was a lot of information, so I figured I'd just kind of start throwing it all together in
00:33:55some type of format just so I could show people.
00:33:59Because a lot of people were asking after that time, you know.
00:34:01And then in school, I did a project about his life.
00:34:05That helped out a lot, too, with being able to share that.
00:34:08He wanted to go.
00:34:09He wanted to do his part, and he really believed in what he was doing.
00:34:13It wasn't that he didn't feel that we should be there.
00:34:16I mean, of course, everybody has mixed feelings about war.
00:34:20Nobody likes war, but if you believe in what the purpose of it is, trying to liberate and oppress people,
00:34:26basically, that's what it comes down to.
00:34:28And he believed in that.
00:34:29He was a very moral person, and, you know, he was a Christian, so he valued life, every life, regardless
00:34:35of their politics.
00:34:36In Vietnam, there was a time when I was so wrapped up in the war and what I was doing
00:34:43over there that I didn't really write regularly.
00:34:46It was Glenn that told me one time that my parents were trying to get a hold of me, or
00:34:51that the Red Cross had contacted him to tell me that I needed to write home.
00:34:55Because, you know, I hadn't written or contacted them for, you know, maybe a couple of months.
00:35:01And when you think about it, that's pretty sad.
00:35:04With all that was going on on TV every day of the week, every hour, there were pictures of helicopters
00:35:10being shot down and people getting killed by the thousands.
00:35:13And so I thought it was very selfish of me to be that way and not communicate.
00:35:19But I just isolated myself over there, and I just really detached myself from the rest of the world.
00:35:25It just didn't exist.
00:35:27No newspapers.
00:35:28I didn't see any TV.
00:35:30It was really what was going on right there then.
00:35:34But then when the Red Cross contacted me through Glenn Rickert, then I realized there that I really needed to
00:35:43communicate and that they cared and they wanted to hear from me.
00:35:46So I kind of, it was a wake-up call.
00:35:48Because of his morality and his beliefs, I believe that's why on weekends he would go to the orphanage.
00:35:53That was an outlet for him that he felt probably counteracted all the death and destruction through the week whenever
00:36:00he could, you know, go to the orphanage and do something in a more positive vein.
00:36:05I think that was an outlet for him.
00:36:07He was really a very humane guy, you know, really cared about.
00:36:11He wasn't prejudiced.
00:36:13He didn't look at the Vietnamese as being, whereas some pilots, they looked at the Vietnamese as being maybe unhuman.
00:36:22Not like them.
00:36:24But really, we were all the same.
00:36:27And Glenn looked at the Vietnamese, both the enemy and not the enemy, as being people.
00:36:36And there was an orphanage in Quang Nghai.
00:36:38He wanted me to do a favor for him.
00:36:40He had adopted an infant Vietnamese girl.
00:36:43She was probably six months, four months old.
00:36:46And anyway, he just asked, you know, as a favor, would you mind taking pictures of the baby so I
00:36:50could send it home to my wife?
00:36:52It was kind of strange because she was a part of his life.
00:36:55But of course, to me, it was just a picture.
00:36:57But I knew I'd be able to love her like he did.
00:36:59He flew me up there and we got out and I met the baby and took pictures and printed up
00:37:04some pictures for him.
00:37:06I had it in our kitchen.
00:37:08Well, Glenn was so little.
00:37:09I also had a bank where I was saving money towards our R&R in Hawaii.
00:37:14So it was kind of like Lon and the bank were right there.
00:37:17And it was just, that was what we were, you know, that was our goal to get to R&R
00:37:23and then to adopt Lon.
00:37:27Glenn Rickert shot this 8mm footage while piloting his light observation helicopter over Vietnam in 1970.
00:37:34Margie told me that Glenn had always wanted to fly helicopters and that in a way, he was very much
00:37:38in his element during the war.
00:37:45For Ring Bailey, unfortunately, things were not going quite as well.
00:37:51So I think it was at least two occasions, once before and once after I was in the public information
00:37:57office, his unit, I crossed paths with his unit and he was there.
00:38:02And he was, I got insights or, he had no axe to grind and he was an honest person or
00:38:17candid with me.
00:38:19I had no reason to believe he'd color the facts or would say anything that was inaccurate.
00:38:25But the first time, he was seemingly pretty down in terms of spirits.
00:38:31The unit was involved with, this is a company, either practicing or calling in airstrikes on farmers, clearly not military
00:38:44targets.
00:38:45And they were either just for the hell of it or they were practicing.
00:38:50There were situations like that or just the day-to-day grind was getting them down.
00:38:54The lack of sleep, the physical work, the snipers, the ambushes that were set up night after night.
00:39:02He was not in a good place mentally, let's put it that way.
00:39:04He wasn't depressed, but he was just exhausted, I think.
00:39:07I had a cat named Miranda and I had her bred and she had kittens and I had written them
00:39:15up about the kittens.
00:39:17And here he was in the jungle and he said, you know how I'd react, but it's really hard for
00:39:23me to understand
00:39:26the joy of being a cat with kittens when I'm out here, you know, in the jungle.
00:39:34The second time I saw him, we were about to get an opening in the public information office and I
00:39:38said,
00:39:39and in fact I mentioned it the last time, I said, you know, if I can put your name in,
00:39:44or would you mind if I put your name in for, you know, position, you know, writing and taking photographs.
00:39:49And of course he said, you know, jumped on it, and it was about the time that that vacancy became
00:39:54available
00:39:55that I found out that he was killed.
00:39:57It was just another day going out on patrol.
00:40:01We were getting toward evening, we were setting up a night defensive perimeter for the platoon,
00:40:08and so I had both Robert and Loring with me up on the knoll,
00:40:16giving out instructions, okay, we want our grenade launchers to cover that, you know, those gullies over there,
00:40:22we want the M-60s along this straight area, this flat area that's open.
00:40:28You know, normal things you would do to set up for a perimeter.
00:40:34Can't recall exactly how long we were up there, but we were up there shuffling around this area for quite
00:40:37some time,
00:40:38and then I said, okay, let's get that set up, and I walked away, and that's when the explosion went
00:40:44off.
00:40:47And to my knowledge, there really wasn't anything left of either Loring or Robert.
00:40:51I was blown through the air, what seemed like quite a long distance,
00:40:56but I really don't have any way of objectively measuring that.
00:41:00I know that one individual about arm's length in front of me had a big piece of shrapnel sticking out
00:41:07through his shoulder,
00:41:09He survived, but had significant nerve damage on his right arm, his shoulder.
00:41:14And everything would have had to be, it would have had to have gone within inches or a foot of
00:41:19me to hit him,
00:41:20just with the line of sight.
00:41:23So, that's, and I remember lying there, not knowing what the heck had happened.
00:41:28You know, ears are ringing, and I remember saying, you know, my legs, my legs.
00:41:36And another lieutenant came along, and I can still picture him.
00:41:40He said, it seems funny, but in this tragic situation, and he'd say,
00:41:45hey, nothing wrong with your legs, Wilson, get up.
00:41:47And so I got up, but I just, you know, the rest of it's really pretty hazy.
00:41:53Every night, somebody had to go in at 12 o'clock at our office, the information office,
00:41:58and then go over to the technical operations center,
00:42:01where all of the communications from the field was filtered into one room.
00:42:07It's sort of an action room, war room, where the colonel could come and see the area of operation
00:42:14and see where various units are, what military intelligence was telling us, where people were.
00:42:19And then there was a list on the corner of enemy and friendly, missing in action, killed in action, wounded
00:42:27in action.
00:42:28And that particular day, I was on duty, so I had to go over, and I went over at noontime,
00:42:33or not noontime, midnight.
00:42:35And it said, on the board, it said, 2 KIA, 1st of the 20th.
00:42:43Before I went back to wire it in, I went down to graves registrations, where the bodies went.
00:42:48And I asked the enlisted in charge if the names of the people who were killed.
00:42:54And one was a sergeant, and the other was, you know, Loring Bailey.
00:42:59And I said, how did he die?
00:43:00And the euphemisms for a booby trap was, minor booby trap was traumatic amputation.
00:43:09So he died of traumatic amputations.
00:43:14And then he sort of sarcastically said, you want to see the body.
00:43:19And I declined.
00:43:21I didn't think I could take it.
00:43:24And anyway, dutifully went back to the detachment and called the division, called the numbers in.
00:43:32And Loring became a number.
00:43:33Went from a person to a number.
00:43:37The device that killed both Loring and Robert was either an artillery round or a mortar round.
00:43:46And we suspected it was either a 155 or 175 millimeter round.
00:43:52And that was triggered, we think, by a battery, a couple of metal plates.
00:44:00And when the contact was made, completed the circuit, and up it went.
00:44:04The officer that came and announced Loring's death, I was at work.
00:44:15And I was putting my coat and hat on the rack, and I heard someone say, he just came up
00:44:22on the elevator.
00:44:23And then another man that worked with me came down and said, look, they want you in the conference room
00:44:32right away.
00:44:34So he and I walked up to the office, and he opened the door, and I stepped in, thinking that
00:44:43he would come in right behind me.
00:44:45But he closed the door.
00:44:47And here I was, face to face, with a service officer, a major, and a major sergeant major.
00:44:57And he was on one side of the board table, and I was facing him across the table, and the
00:45:05sergeant was on his right.
00:45:10And he introduced himself as major so-and-so, I can't think of his name right now.
00:45:16His daughter worked in super ships across the street, so we had a little chat about the fact that I
00:45:25knew his daughter.
00:45:27And then he said, well, I looked at him, and it was perfectly reasonable.
00:45:35I saw that he had a bronze oak leaf, and the device on his lapel indicated that he was of
00:45:46the engineer corps, corps of engineers.
00:45:49And that seemed to be perfectly normal to me, so, well, what's this all about?
00:45:57It never dawned on me until he said, I have some very bad news for you.
00:46:06And even then, until he went to work and said, your son was killed on the 15th, Monday, the 15th.
00:46:16And this was Wednesday.
00:46:18It was two days later.
00:46:23February?
00:46:25March 17th, darling.
00:46:27March 17th.
00:46:33And that was a tough thing.
00:46:59March 17th, my mother called me and told me that he was gone.
00:47:26I mean, she said, he's gone.
00:47:30And I walked out the back door, and I went home.
00:47:33And I went home.
00:47:34And, you know, you see it in movies, you know, the olive green sedan with the dress uniforms that drives
00:47:46up to the house.
00:47:46And there was the olive green sedan in front of my mother's house.
00:47:50And my sister was there.
00:48:04I'm sorry.
00:48:08And the army men were there.
00:48:11And their shoes were so, so fucking shiny.
00:48:15At the time that we were informed of his death, the officer that was responsible went to the apartment, the
00:48:29address that Ring had.
00:48:31That was his abode at the time that he went into the service, was Hartford.
00:48:37And so that officer went to the Hartford apartment, and he received a very unpleasant greeting from a member of
00:48:50Maris' family.
00:48:52When they were leaving, I said to him in my anger, I said, it's too bad he was fighting on
00:49:01the wrong side.
00:49:02The young brother, Maris' young brother, was a sort of a wild kid in college.
00:49:11And I don't know what the name of the association was, but he represented the ultra-extreme student opposition to
00:49:22the war.
00:49:23I was involved in anti-war activity.
00:49:27I had a choice.
00:49:28I had a choice when I went to college.
00:49:30Some of my friends went further to the left, went to what they called the Weather Underground.
00:49:35I was involved with a group called Students for a Democratic Society.
00:49:39It was SDS, and I went with what was called the Moratorium.
00:49:45The Moratorium was symbolized by the dove, and it was the peace movement.
00:49:52And it wasn't just kids like us with long hair dressed.
00:49:57It was grandmothers, and it was, I mean, it was real people who really wanted to end this war and
00:50:04make the world a better place.
00:50:06So I talked with the older brother, and I gave him a little bit of warning.
00:50:14I said, as a result of Rick's involvement, I think you should be aware that I've been informed that there's
00:50:26a possibility that students may go to work and demonstrate.
00:50:32They were concerned about me at the funeral.
00:50:38They were concerned that I'd do things that would, I don't know, you know, all I did was cry.
00:50:49And I couldn't drive my car, and I've never known that amount of grief, ever.
00:50:58Loring M. Bailey Jr. was killed on March 15, 1970, in an explosion that also killed 19-year-old Staff
00:51:05Sergeant Robert A. Wood of Savannah, Georgia.
00:51:08In a letter to my mother dated March 17, my father wrote,
00:51:11I just learned yesterday that a good friend of mine was killed by a booby trap.
00:51:16I'm sure you remember me speaking of a Loring Bailey after OCS and a few months ago when I met
00:51:20him on LZ Liz.
00:51:22It is such a damn waste.
00:51:24I tried ever since I got a job in the rear to get him into the office and out of
00:51:27the field.
00:51:28Now I feel like I didn't try hard enough.
00:51:32A little over two months later, on May 20th, the helicopter Glenn Rickert was piloting received enemy fire, and he
00:51:37was killed.
00:51:38It's hard to recollect because I wasn't there, but from the information that I got, which was sparse,
00:51:46and the way I envision it in my mind is that he was on a combat assault, combat recon.
00:51:56He had cover, aerial cover, with maybe some other types of gunships, or maybe another loach.
00:52:04More than likely other gunships, and he was doing low-level reconnaissance, I believe.
00:52:14When I say that, we're talking about five feet above the ground, hovering around, low and slow, blowing the bushes
00:52:22away,
00:52:23looking behind rocks and looking for tunnels and all that.
00:52:27I believe it was on the side of a mountain, maybe 150 feet or 200 feet above the valley.
00:52:35It wasn't unusual to uncover hiding places and have people just get up and start moving and running and shooting.
00:52:44From what I was told, that's what happened.
00:52:47He uncovered the enemy or somebody was there, and they, maybe from behind a rock, shot him down.
00:52:55The bullet that killed him actually came in through his back, through his shoulder, and hit his heart.
00:53:02So it was instant.
00:53:05So somehow, even though he had protective armor on, it came in at a side angle, but still directly hit
00:53:14his heart.
00:53:15I was thankful it wasn't a painful death.
00:53:18For us, it was very decisive, and we knew, you know, it was quick.
00:53:23And, I mean, that's small comfort, but...
00:53:28I don't remember too much about Vietnam after that day, actually.
00:53:33I'm not sure of the day, whether it was close to the end of my tour, I don't know.
00:53:38But I don't really have much of a recollection of Vietnam or what happened after that.
00:53:45Before Glenn Rickard's body was shipped home, there was a short memorial service held to honor the popular captain.
00:53:51When my father was given the assignment to shoot these pictures, he initially refused.
00:53:55So saddened was he by the loss of his colleague.
00:53:58When threatened with an Article 15 letter of reprimand, he reluctantly documented the ceremony.
00:54:03We had been living up in Sellersville, Glenn Jr. and myself.
00:54:09And that Saturday, there was a parade, a Memorial Day parade.
00:54:14And, of course, came right down past our house, and we were outside, and then came down to a little
00:54:19town square,
00:54:20and they had a little ceremony, and I'll always remember at that time,
00:54:25I prayed and was thinking about all the women who were widows or who had lost loved ones,
00:54:34that were mothers who had lost loved ones.
00:54:36And, you know, I said a prayer for them, just in remembrance, because this was a Memorial Day parade.
00:54:42And then the next day was Sunday.
00:54:44I had gone with Glenn's parents, and then we came home to Glenn's parents' home in Southerton.
00:54:50We came in the back door, and as we came in the back door, the doorbell was ringing at the
00:54:56front.
00:54:57And I walked through the living room and saw the uniform, and you just know.
00:55:02I mean, there's just—so I opened the door, and the poor guy there, I said,
00:55:08Just tell me he's not dead.
00:55:10And, of course, what could he say?
00:55:12You know, just, I regret to inform you.
00:55:15And then Glenn's mom came in the room behind me, and she just started crying, because she just knew.
00:55:22I mean, that's the day I always remember.
00:55:24I'm feeling emotions right now, because it's just something you don't ever want to hear.
00:55:28But the minute you see the uniform, I mean, they're not coming to tell you he's fine, you know, that
00:55:33it's bad news.
00:55:35So that's how we found out.
00:55:36We were together.
00:55:37And after Glenn had been killed, the proceedings just stopped.
00:55:42I had received one phone call, like, the week I found out Glenn was killed.
00:55:47And they said, Oh, we're sorry.
00:55:49And they hung up.
00:55:50And if I had wanted to go on, I had no connections, because Glenn was handling everything over there.
00:55:57And it's been a source of guilt, like, whatever happened to Lon.
00:56:02I pray that maybe someone else adopted her, or, you know, that she was able to come here to America.
00:56:08But I often wonder what happened to her.
00:56:11Every once in a while I wonder if, in fact, this child got over here.
00:56:17The follow-up, again, the psychology, or my psychology was such, and I think the psychology and the part of
00:56:24a lot of people that served over there was,
00:56:26you serve your time, you get back, and then you get back into the world, and you do your thing,
00:56:30which is essentially what I did.
00:57:01You get back into the world.
00:57:23Where Ring's Death fell in terms of my activity,
00:57:29I can't really recall now, after he was killed, we defaced a billboard.
00:57:42A billboard said to an unemployed veteran, peace is hell.
00:57:48And so we changed it with spray paint to a dead veteran, war is hell.
00:57:52And for the first time in the history of the Hartford Times newspaper,
00:57:55they printed a picture on the editorial page.
00:57:58And we wrote this letter about it called Years in Uncertainty.
00:58:02We called ourselves the Children of American Blood.
00:58:07But now, we were young and we were immature.
00:58:10When President Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor, a group of us, there are maybe 20 of us,
00:58:19got together when we got some 40-gallon steel drums and we made mines out of them.
00:58:27We painted Kaboom on them and tied them with ropes and cinder blocks.
00:58:32And in the middle of the night, drove over the Connecticut River and dropped these drums off into the river
00:58:37and drove to the other side.
00:58:39And when we were all secure, people called all the media and said,
00:58:42we mined the Connecticut River in a protest.
00:58:45And I used to say Nixon. Now I say President Nixon.
00:58:48I mean, I hate the man, but there's a respect that's important.
00:58:53And then we held a press conference in front of City Hall in Hartford and turned ourselves in.
00:59:00This is what we did and this is why we did it.
00:59:04But that put the people onto us, the people, whoever they were, the FBI, Army Intelligence, whoever they were.
00:59:13And they were parked outside our apartment.
00:59:18So we moved and I was the last one to leave and I came to Vermont.
00:59:24The safety of Vermont.
00:59:26We were no more liberating that country than we were liberating Iraq.
00:59:33We weren't even invading, we were trying to prop up a puppet state to our own ends,
00:59:40either for economic reasons or to, quote unquote, stop communism, stop the domino from falling.
00:59:47He changed. He was always pretty serious.
00:59:50But I think this experience would be life-changing for anyone.
00:59:54And I think it was life-changing for him.
00:59:56So in the immediate return, his startled response was high.
01:00:02We were driving home from a trip right after he got back and a helicopter flew over
01:00:07and he almost, you know, dove out of the car.
01:00:10I mean, he just, he just was much more, and that would be typical.
01:00:13And I also think that it just did.
01:00:17It made him more grave and a little bit darker.
01:00:19I feel guilt about surviving. That doesn't go away.
01:00:23Collateral damage extends not only to the individual who survives or is in fact killed,
01:00:30but there's a ripple effect. It affects the family in physical and psychological ways.
01:00:37Elizabeth essentially has had to contend with a different person than she married after one year.
01:00:44The person you had, or my offspring experienced a different person than I was before I went into the military.
01:00:54And those things don't go away. Those things are, they're perpetuated.
01:01:00And it's like the ringing in my ears from the concussion.
01:01:05It's there all the time, and it's very close to the surface, and I can hear it all the time.
01:01:10And it's just, sometimes it's louder, sometimes it's softer, but it's always there.
01:01:15And that's self-serving, because I also know it affects my son, my daughter, my wife.
01:01:23It's not that I feel guilty for surviving. I just, I just, you know, why do these things happen?
01:01:33I don't, you know, it's hard to, I'm trying to find the right words.
01:01:36I'm not guilty for surviving, but I guess you wonder, well, what made me walk away at that moment?
01:01:47You know, where was I going? Was I truly done there? Did somebody call me away to do something else?
01:01:55Why wasn't I there?
01:01:56I went years and years dealing with the symptoms, and then we figured out, oh, of course, it's post-traumatic.
01:02:07So, you know, one of the options here is to take some, you know, antidepressants or whatever,
01:02:11which didn't seem to do the job, but it's still there.
01:02:17I mean, it's, if it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not necessarily going to kill you, but it's there.
01:02:24You can't rationalize it, but you can identify it, but you can't make it go away.
01:02:28I would like to be able to remember everyone's face that I lost in my unit.
01:02:32I would like to know the names. I would like to be able to, in some way, go back through
01:02:39those,
01:02:39even though they were horrible things, because I, you know, I just feel like I'm not doing justice to them
01:02:50to not be able to remember who the heck they were when they died there right in front of me,
01:02:54you know, doing things that we were all supposed to be doing.
01:02:57I have a very low startle threshold. If I was napping or if you came up behind me in the
01:03:03garage,
01:03:03you know, tapped me on the shoulder, my reaction is to spin around or to put up my hands
01:03:09or somehow go into a defensive position. I'm telegraphing to, you know, whether it's Elizabeth or you or my daughter,
01:03:15that the world is hostile, that you have, if you want to survive, this is how you have to be.
01:03:21And it's an unspoken message. It's telegraphed.
01:03:25I remember him overreacting to certain things, but the thing is that that's sort of, that's Dad.
01:03:33So he would over, he will overreact to things, but then it'll be fine.
01:03:37And, and his overreaction wasn't a big deal to me ever, ever.
01:03:42It was just the way it was. And, and it's sort of like, it's, I knew it wasn't something that
01:03:48he can, he could control.
01:03:49My daughter, my son, my wife have experienced somebody who, since coming back,
01:03:57oftentimes does, does not take that step of thinking, but reacts as if in the jungle.
01:04:04He's definitely been, been affected by Vietnam. I mean, he, he's, he probably was a different person before Vietnam.
01:04:10But, you know, he's not a bad person now. He's a great person now.
01:04:14Living with guilt is awful. And I think that guilt and regret and remorse and all those things are real
01:04:19wastes of emotion,
01:04:20because you can do something about them. So if you, you, if you feel guilty about something,
01:04:25what can you choose to do?
01:04:26I was always, had this interest in terms of finding where Loring Bailey was buried.
01:04:31I checked a couple of graves registrations and went on the internet when the internet was available
01:04:36and, you know, found nothing in the immediate area. And of course, 20 years later,
01:04:41it was our first Memorial Day weekend here in Mystic. Elizabeth said,
01:04:46you're not going to believe, or take a look at the front page of the paper.
01:04:50The front page of the paper had that, the picture I showed you of Loring Bailey,
01:04:54the son, in Vietnam. And the story that accompanied it had to do with Memorial Day
01:05:00and the mother and father living in Stonington, which is four miles away, three miles away.
01:05:06And in fact, Loring's buried less than two miles from where I'm living right now.
01:05:09In any case, I read the article and it was incredulous.
01:05:12You know, after all these years and my failure to find where he was buried,
01:05:19the front page of the newspaper sort of rubbed my nose and said,
01:05:21hey, here they are. Here's the family.
01:05:24So I picked up the telephone, introduced myself,
01:05:28and I apologize in advance if this is a painful subject.
01:05:32But I just want to let you know I knew your son. He was a wonderful person.
01:05:35Your father said, you don't know who I am, but I was with your son in Vietnam,
01:05:47and I was with him at OCS.
01:05:51And I said, oh, where are you?
01:05:57Well, he said, I'm in Old Mystic. The thought that I had was, well,
01:06:01he must have picked up Ring's name from the stone, the monument, down in Old Mystic.
01:06:10And I hesitate to call you because I didn't want to bring back bad memories,
01:06:14and I hope you don't mind. And he said, you know, I don't mind at all.
01:06:20And he said, I'll stop by sometime. He said, what are you doing in ten minutes?
01:06:27We would like very much to see you.
01:06:32He said, well, I'd be glad to come over,
01:06:35and I'll come over as soon as I change my clothes.
01:06:41I said, well, that's fine.
01:06:44So I hung up, I turned the dot, and I said, I have no idea where he is.
01:06:49He said, he's going in to change his clothes.
01:06:51He couldn't have been at the monument in Old Mystic.
01:06:56It never dawned on me that he was living in the area.
01:07:01So he came up the front door, and that's how we met, at the front door.
01:07:08It was quite interesting.
01:07:10We've been visiting each other ever since.
01:07:13And as I told them, I was, for 20 years, 30 years,
01:07:19more interested in where he was buried than where they were living,
01:07:23which is probably a regret or probably a monumental oversight,
01:07:28but it was just that's the way it played out.
01:07:30And I think he felt like he helped them really get to understand what their sons,
01:07:35some of the times that he spent in his last year of his life,
01:07:38because when your son's in training or OCS.
01:07:41So just the stories that he could tell and a little bit about what his last months
01:07:45might have been like or what it was like in Vietnam.
01:07:47I know he performed a service and really was helpful to them.
01:07:51Dorothy's obviously feels a loss and is still very, very sensitive.
01:07:58Not to say he isn't, but he's in the military history and that kind of thing,
01:08:03and follows the history of his son's involvement.
01:08:08And when we talk, we talk about, typically I'm talking to the father.
01:08:11I think about him now and it's just sadness that a man would lose his son at the age of
01:08:1924,
01:08:20that the whole lifetime would be taken away.
01:08:23And now here I am, I'm 60 years old and my son is a Marine.
01:08:29And who would have thought that my son would be a Marine?
01:08:34Now I fly an American flag in front of my house and I wouldn't have thought of it then,
01:08:39or I would have flown it upside down or something like that, you know?
01:08:43I think it's fascinating that there have, at least you've told me,
01:08:46a number of people you've been in touch with about this process of making this,
01:08:49working on this film, where they have said,
01:08:52I never thought I'd talk to anybody about this.
01:08:54I've never talked about this before.
01:08:56So remember that dad and many people, they don't talk about themselves unless they're asked.
01:09:02I'll talk about myself whether you ask or not.
01:09:05Dad's introverted, so if you look at type, he's an introvert.
01:09:08He generally needs to be drawn out.
01:09:12And so when people say, how was the war?
01:09:15They want you to say, fine.
01:09:16And they might say, you know, what was the best thing that happened to you
01:09:19or the worst thing that happened?
01:09:20But if you sit down and say, I want to know what was the hardest thing about it
01:09:24or what was the best thing about it or what elated you?
01:09:27Those, I believe, are the things that he's willing to talk about.
01:09:29But you need to feel the interest when you're somebody that has his particular type.
01:09:34I mean, I would think that'd be true of almost anybody.
01:09:36It's not a conversation I ever have.
01:09:38No one's interested.
01:09:40You're interested.
01:09:42Would you be interested if your father had not had a similar type of experience?
01:09:46Would you be asking these questions and things?
01:09:50Maybe you would.
01:09:54If this starts out with, you know, you wanting to know more about your father
01:09:58and what his experience was and what was going on at the time
01:10:01and how did he deal with all this?
01:10:06You know, was that the thing that started you?
01:10:09If you hadn't had that connection, would it just have been something that happened in history
01:10:13and you wouldn't be here today?
01:10:16I'm really glad you're here and I'm really glad I have a chance to talk about Ring.
01:10:22I'm just thrilled that I have a chance to let this out.
01:10:29I'm talking to you today because of the way you presented yourself as someone who's got a serious interest
01:10:37in putting together a little piece of history, some people that are intertwined somehow.
01:10:43And, you know, if there was something I could say that would add to that, I'd be happy to do
01:10:49that,
01:10:50although I've never had a conversation like this with anybody else before.
01:10:53When David graduated from Parris Island and he was a young recruit,
01:10:59Parris Island, eyes like deer and headlights, you know,
01:11:04and we brought him home and we passed through airports
01:11:08and it was obvious that we were parents and he was a Marine.
01:11:13And people came out of the crowd to shake his hand, to pat him on the back,
01:11:20to show the respect was overwhelming.
01:11:24And as a parent, it just made us immensely proud.
01:11:29And that's, and I'm sure that that's what Mr. Bailey felt.
01:11:33But the pride and the respect for my son is wonderful, is wonderful.
01:11:41You know, and I see it and I hear it all the time.
01:11:45People say, how's your boy doing? Where is he now?
01:11:47And I always say, thanks for asking.
01:11:50Thanks for asking, because we're very proud of him too.
01:11:53I have to say, it's been interesting.
01:11:55I have run into some people in the last few years,
01:11:58and not just when you go in and see a doctor at the VA,
01:12:02because they're all primed to say, thank you for your service, thank you for your service.
01:12:05That's kind of part of their, the mantra down there.
01:12:09But I have run into other people and it's caught me quite off guard.
01:12:14When somehow they've found out, and I'm not sure if I can't point to a specific conversation,
01:12:19but when they find out that I was in Vietnam and I was in the infantry,
01:12:26and very sincerely they, they say thank you.
01:12:35And it catches me off guard.
01:12:37Like just saying it now is kind of, because nobody ever said that.
01:12:44And I didn't realize anybody really thought about it.
01:12:49And it's kind of unnerving because I don't think I did anything to be thanked for.
01:12:54It could have been anybody.
01:12:56It could have been anybody going, anybody being killed, anybody surviving.
01:13:01The difference was, you know, between somebody wounded, somebody being killed,
01:13:06somebody not being hurt, a couple of inches, a few seconds in time.
01:13:11When my son is in harm's way, Barbara and I live with a level of fear.
01:13:23Every car that comes down the street, I look to see if it has government plates.
01:13:30That's hard.
01:13:33Because you know what that looks like.
01:13:35I do.
01:13:36Those shoes.
01:13:38Oh, shiny.
01:13:39Shiny, shiny shoes.
01:13:42How do they get them so shiny?
01:13:45Three or four months into the tour, I was noticing the ringing
01:13:49and the inability to understand people when they were talking.
01:13:53And I went to Chu Lai and they said, they tested my ears and they said,
01:13:56you've got a hearing loss in the mid-range, the nerves are destroyed, it's not temporary.
01:14:01The middle range is where the consonants are formed,
01:14:03which means that you're going to have trouble understanding people when they talk.
01:14:07Here are some earplugs.
01:14:09So if you're going to be in a situation where there's loud noise, where are your earplugs?
01:14:14My father took this picture in Vietnam in 1970.
01:14:18Seconds later, he took this one.
01:14:20When he first showed me these prints, he asked me if I could tell the difference.
01:14:24I pointed out the obvious, or what had become obvious to me during the making of this film,
01:14:27after pouring through hundreds of others like it.
01:14:29The barrel of the 155mm howitzer is recoiled in the second picture,
01:14:34and you can see the dust rising from the ground under the weight of the gun's thunderous discharge.
01:14:38He asked me if I noticed anything else and I couldn't think of anything.
01:14:41So we pointed to the people in the second shot and said,
01:14:44they're all holding their ears. I was holding a camera.
01:14:48You know, you think about back on your life and what are the things you wouldn't change.
01:14:52I think this is one of the things that he wouldn't change.
01:14:54It was phenomenal for him in the best way and the worst way.
01:14:58My father has often asked me why I'm making this film.
01:15:01As different as we are, we share this story, this presence like the ringing in his ears.
01:15:06My wife Carrie and I even named our first-born son Loring,
01:15:09after both Loring Baileys, junior and senior, who meant so much to my father.
01:15:13And I suppose the journalistic process of making a documentary has brought me closer to him.
01:15:18But in this picture, he still looks about as far away from me as my namesake.
01:15:22Soren Peter Sorensen I, born over a century before me in Denmark in 1871,
01:15:28pictured here at 17 in his Danish military uniform.
01:15:42On the train from Jackson to Chicago, Providence has yet to be revealed.
01:15:57A sudden blur of trees, a sudden blur of trees,
01:16:02rushing through the Delta veins.
01:16:06On the train from Jackson to Chicago,
01:16:10licking all the wounds that never healed.
01:16:12The sun by the way in the center of the world.
01:16:14Turn around, turn around,
01:16:18Now you're at the end of the line.
01:16:22Don't look down, don't look down,
01:16:26You're standing on the shoulders,
01:16:27You're standing on the shoulders of giants.
01:16:37Every day the shadow of my father is painted on the walls and on the floors
01:16:45It stretches out across the open water and crashes on the sandy eastern shores
01:16:53Searching in the dark, searching in the dark
01:16:57Looking for a clue to what's been lost
01:17:01Now I see the shadow of my father on the shoulders of the one that came before
01:17:09Turn around, turn around, now you're at the end of the line
01:17:17Don't look down, don't look down, you're standing on the shoulders, you're standing on the shoulders of giants
01:17:28A clear run, a blue sky, downhill, a free ride, a stone's throw, a straight line from here
01:18:00Turn around, turn around, now you're at the end of the line
01:18:08Don't look down, don't look down, you're standing on the shoulders, you're standing on the shoulders
01:18:15Turn around, turn around, now you're at the end of the line
01:18:24Don't look down, don't look down, you're standing on the shoulders, you're standing on the shoulders of giants
01:18:36Ooh
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