VOHP Podcast Episode 1 Transcript
Over 58,000 American service members were killed and 150,000 were wounded in Vietnam. The VA estimates that 15% of Vietnam veterans have experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to their service experiences – not only veterans who experienced combat directly, but those who witnessed it from the sidelines as well. The three men whose stories will be shared today served in very different capacities, but they all had one thing in common – readjusting to civilian life after discharge. Vietnam vets have frequently reported difficulty readjusting due to discrimination, trauma, or both. These oral histories represent a sampling of experiences that veterans faced in the years following one of the most highly protested US wars.
One of our veterans, Ray Amelio, was a navy corpsman, commonly referred to as a medic, and served from March 1966-1969. Here, Ray describes his experience coming home after discharge.
Amelio: Now one of the things that—that I have to say, in my experience—and you hear of Vietnam veterans talking about people spitting on them and not treating them well—I have to tell you that never happened to me. It just didn’t. When I was in San Francisco—because we didn’t—we were at Treasure Island It took about five or seven days for us to get discharged. And in the evenings, we were allowed to go out on liberty. And I went to different bars with other guys that were getting discharged and I have to tell you that every place we went, that people bought me drinks and people said they knew that you’d had a rough year and it was an unpopular war. But they treated me with all the respect that you could ever—and I never once encountered that. So I’m wondering where—where that happened to people because never once—when I came home, nobody ever said anything other than they knew that it was a rough year and, you know, they really thanked me for what I did and knew that, you know, it could’ve been problematic. But that never happened to me, not once. And—
DeFries: You never saw it happen to any of your friends?
Amelio: No, no, nobody—never saw anybody, you know, saying words and walking through the airport or, you know, walking in town, never encountered that. And we were in San Francisco and I just never did. Now, maybe I was oblivious, but if somebody would’ve spit on me, that would’ve been a problem. I wouldn’t have stood for that. So I’d have to say no. And I remember in this one particular bar in San Francisco, there was a nice crowd and there was a piano player and people were sitting around the piano singing. And it was just a really nice evening. And everybody said—I bought not one drink. They bought drinks and they just were so happy that I had gotten home and it just was a very nice experience.
Ray returned to Duquesne after discharge to complete his degree and was a veteran student. Protests on college campuses were pretty common during this period – the most infamous of course being the Kent State massacre of university students during a mass protest of the war in May 1970. Here, Ray discusses contrast in the tone of Duquesne’s protests.
Amelio: There—I think that compared to—there were demonstrations and things that were happening around the country like up in Madison [Wisconsin] and some of the other—this was pretty benign. I mean, they had a couple of demonstrations and, you know, people protesting the war, but it was always very low key. I don’t remember anybody ever getting belligerent or, you know, no kinds of riots or anything like that. It was like peaceful demonstrations I would have to say. And there were a lot of students that just went about their business and didn’t, you know, didn’t pay too much—they were paying attention, but they didn’t get involved in it. And I know the veterans that came back, I never—I never got upset about that because I told you what my thoughts were anyway and so I understood it. But there was no way that I could see myself doing demonstrations and everything. I didn’t—I didn’t disagree with them, I said, you know, “You guys, you know, you’re not wrong, but, you know, everybody has to move through their life the way they’re going to move through their life.”
Ray describes having seen a lot of difficult things during his time as a medic, but considers himself fortunate to have escaped the war with relatively little trauma. He has dedicated much of his post-service life to working with veterans who have suffered mental and emotional trauma from the war.
Amelio: And one of the things that I started to figure out—that’s when I started wanting to work with veterans because one of the things that always kind of bothered me were these guys that came home and had trouble adjusting. And I always—this has been something that I’ve been thinking about my whole—my whole life since then—why some people come home and don’t miss a beat and other people can’t get past it. And that’s when I started working with veterans, that’s how I got involved because that always was something that fascinated me. Because, quite frankly, I came home—I was in combat, I came home, within four and a half weeks I picked up my life. And, to the best of my knowledge, there was no—other than I could talk about my experiences, I didn’t think I had any kind of PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] or anything like that. It just—and I wondered what—what transpires that some people can get past that and other people can’t. And that’s been my quest, working with, you know, veterans and trying to figure that out and helping veterans ever since because that just was something that always was on my mind.
Part of what may have made Ray’s readjustment experience just a bit easier is that he was discharged in early 1969. Anti-war sentiment really started to pick up in mid-1969, after the inauguration of Richard Nixon and the initiation of bombings in Cambodia. Thomas Meade, a combat vet, served into 1970, and had a somewhat different experience readjusting to civilian life.
Meade: The atmosphere coming home, it wasn’t that great. People didn’t look up to you or anything like that. They didn’t respect you, put it that way. The only thing that I remember from coming home and being respected was my younger brother, he was like in second or third grade, and he said, “Tom, can you come to school and give a little speech,” and I came to school, to his class and they had it all decorated and everything for me and that. They all come up and hugged me and held my leg and stuff. And Billy was elated that I was there and what can I talk about to these little kids? You know, say how bad war was, not to do it if possible. Just to be there though, I guess made it different for him. And that’s one of the things I remember just doing because any place I went, you killed people for a living. And I mean, not that I know that I did kill somebody, everything was dark. And I could have, no problem, but between you and me, I was never this close to Viet Cong. Maybe I was, I don’t know, because they were there during the day and at night and I worked with them a lot, so—but it’s totally different when you come home. And it took a long time to get over it.
Many veterans have difficulty “getting over it,” as Tom says. Here he describes some of the ways he noticed that trauma had followed him back home.
Meade: The days when I got out of the service and came back home—the worst day of the year for me was Fourth of July because I—firecrackers and everything around you hear this all the time. And I didn’t do anything on the Fourth of July. I didn’t go out or anything like that for a couple years. And people would say, Talk about it, and then you did talk about it, if somebody was there and they knew what was going on, I talked to them about, but if they weren’t there and didn’t know anything about it—there was very few people I talked about my service, until now.
DeFries: How did you deal with some of the more difficult things you might have seen when you were there?
Meade: Well, I saw a lot of dead people. And when I came home, I had some guns in my house. And after a couple years, I said, “I can’t take this anymore.” I got rid of all the guns. I either gave them away—in fact, I did give the three guns that I had, I gave them away to other people. And I said, “I’ll never fire a gun again.” And I have not in, what, forty years, forty-some years. You know, I go out with other people that do it, but I don’t, myself, put it that way. So I’ve seen too many dead people and too many things that guns can do to people.
DeFries: So when you found out—well when you became short—when it got time toward—how did you feel, when you knew it was getting close to time to leave?
Meade: Oh, I was elated. Yes, I wanted to come home in the worst way and I put all my stuff together and had it all ready to go two weeks before I was going home. And in fact, I brought a gun home. One of the guns, AK-47, one of the ones we found in one of the things. Like I was being the armorer, I could take it home. And I—well within the last couple months, they said, You can’t take any automatic weapons home with you anymore. You know, the guy before me, I gave it to him. Like Sergeant Galacious left about two or three months before I did, he was a good friend of mine, and he took it home. Excuse me. So I got an SKS [Soviet semi-automatic carbine rifle], like a bolt action rifle that we had, and I brought that home with me. So I brought that home, my dad brought a big case for it and put it on the wall and stuff like that and every time I’d look at it I’d say, “No, that’s not for me,” and I ended up giving it away. I told him why and he said, “Okay, go ahead. No problem.”
One last veteran I want us to hear from is Daniel McBride, a US Air Force Captain who was commissioned in ’66 and served for five years, until June 1971. Dan felt the affects of veteran discrimination upon applying for a job here at Duquesne after service.
McBride: I have to say there’s one bad experience I had with Duquesne. I applied for a graduate assistantship in the school of education and the gentleman that I had to interview with asked what I did in the service. And I told him and he said, “How could you do that?” If I had known about discrimination in those days, I might have been able to do something with it, but that was—that was a real slap in the face because if I wanted—if I wanted anything in my career, it would’ve been to work here.
DeFries: What was your reaction at the time to that comment?
McBride: That was the reaction of people in that day. You know, we were all baby killers.
DeFries: Did you have other experiences?
McBride: No that’s the biggest one because I didn’t put myself in the position to get that kind of a reaction. This, I wanted that assistantship and you know, so I—and I was honest. I can’t not be, that’s just not part of me and so I was disappointed in him. I don’t blame the whole university for that, but unfortunately he had the power at that time and I didn’t get it.
Despite that stigma, Dan feels that he was overall very fortunate in his readjustment to civilian life.
McBride: Like I said, my—my service was sanitary, was saccharine, and I couldn’t watch a Vietnam program on PBS for about fifteen years. Now there’s something back there that I don’t know—don’t know what it is and I don’t think I want to, but I, you know, feel like I did the right thing at the time and that’s where I have to let it lay because you know too many people—you’ve heard a lot of these stories about the veterans, especially the ground veterans, suicide and, you know—it’s not natural what you do in war, it’s not natural, and I was lucky—I was lucky because, you know I had my difficulties, but I survived it and, you know, led a decent life. Never got anywhere particular, but a decent life.
We really appreciate the time and vulnerability that these veterans have contributed to the Duquesne Veterans Oral History Project. Their stories open our eyes to new perspectives on a difficult war and a traumatic time in American history. If you are a veteran who is also a Duquesne student or graduate and would like to participate in this project, please reach out to oral historian Megan DeFries in the university archives at 412.396.4870.
And finally, if you are a veteran and are in need of support, please call the non-profit Veterans Crisis Line at 800.273.8255.
Thanks for listening.
Back to Podcast