are you a Vietnam veteran Dudley
uh no
no do you have family who were in the Vietnam War
uh no my father was uh came in right after world war two
okay so he was too old and you're too young right yeah all right do you know some folks who have been there
i am too young yeah
um yes a couple
okay
okay how did it influence them
uh the the one guy i worked with down in Austin hated it uh he was a lineman down there and while he was there he caught some kind of a strange disease
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and uh all his hair fell out and he had like a hundred and five fever for a while and
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uh what about long lasting effects on him has he still suffering from those problems
i do not think he was in combat so
um-hum well i've talked with a number of Vietnam veterans and i really i had no one directly related to me involved
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but uh my sister's husband was in Vietnam and it it really made a completely different man out of him he went to Vietnam one man and came back another not better
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yeah
then uh another friend of mine went and he was in combat but he came back and he said okay that's it that is behind me i am going on with my life much like what Roger Staubach did
right
he was uh he was a Vietnam war veteran and uh
yeah
but he was in the Navy though he was it makes a lot of difference
yeah that's true
right and but uh most of the folks that i have met that were actually on the land or in combat are still still carry a lot of anger
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they really do and uh i i i i really do not think that we did those young men right i think that uh Desert Storm shows a lot of learning since that time
oh yeah
uh
well the armed forces did so much to you know Agent Orange they did so much to their own people all during that time you know and they take they take a even now uh they take a free hand as far as medicine and
yeah that's true yeah
uh you know how they treat the war casualties you know if you come back and your leg's blown off you know or or it is hanging by a thread they still can't put it back together now but
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uh-huh
but what they do afterwards and how they rehabilitate rehabilitate you
well you know one of the most troublesome things that i have
encountered as a result is the incredible influx of southeast Asians into this country since that conflict uh not so much that i say i do not want you here but there is just such a surge
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yeah
of southeast Asians it has affected the culture of this country uh very much
oh yeah
it's about it's about nine or ten percent now
yeah yeah yeah well uh the culture's changing look how much more oriental food we have restaurants now for example
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uh
even ten years ago
there weren't that many a lot of shops are are operated by uh southeast Asians
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a lot of people have complained in the schools there is a culture change there the southeast Asians seem to be very hungry there seem to be very studious
and uh tends to cause our kids to really have to buckle down to keep up with them which is not bad not really uh but it might in the long run you can see where
yeah
scholarships for example uh even jobs
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uh jobs that would normally go to an American with a lesser education
might be going to to some of these people here and that is all a result of of of Vietnam and and you see a lot of a lot of men that were over there brought families back
yeah that's
uh and it concerns me that there is probably a lot of mixed breed youngsters still there and i'd be concerned or interested to find out how they are doing now
um-hum
well they are probably not doing very well at all because i know there's there's still people even in the Dallas area there are there are still people trying to get some member of their family back from uh Vietnam
i know that they're
you are talking about POW's or missing in actions
um uh native native Vietnamese people
native Vietnamese people okay
yeah they were lost you know when they were little and and they could never did get back
oh i hadn't that that hadn't occurred to me
yeah
that'd be an interesting concept
and uh and uh that's is really a big waste because they didn't they didn't win they didn't regain any of the land that they had it spilled over into uh now i can't even think of the country but
Cambodia
yeah Cambodia and to Laos and
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and all they did is run and hide and they weren't really fighting you know it it would've been the same as Desert Storm if all they had been fighting was North Vietnam
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but and i am not even sure who was involved more whether it was China or Russia you know they were pouring they were pouring weapons in there and
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and advising well digging tunnels for them you know and there is no way that they could ever catch them
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well i think the terrain had a lot to do with the the success of Desert Storm as opposed to that in Vietnam
yeah that is right
you know there is incredible cover in Vietnam and you can't find much cover on in a sand dune
um-hum
yeah yeah and all they can do is dig in and they you know and then they try to camouflage the top
that's right
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well now even i think even now in in Vietnam they could probably have done a better job
because they could they could kill all those plants you know which would devastate the country as far as farming from then on but and the and the Corps of Engineers i think do a better job now like they did in Desert Storm
well
because they had he he dug a bunch of moats and filled them with oil and he set a lot of booby traps all along the way as they went and they had to you know they had to blow them up or
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or disarm them and then they had to fill in little bridges all the way where he where he'd made those moats
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what war do you think they found the experience for that
uh
don't you think they learned from the mistakes in Vietnam
well yeah partially uh-huh yeah part of it is technology yeah because all go ahead
part of it's that part of it's technology but
but when when
when you get into trouble like that in a place like Vietnam you do tend to analyze the problems that you get into and you sa y never more and and you overcome those problems and you are prepared next time
yeah
i think that's one of the reasons that they've they've pretty much avoided getting involved in South America because
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look what happened when they were looking for Noriega and they lost him for four hours when they were right on top of him you know he probably just went down into a tunnel
right um-hum
sure sure sure
well i know that from a personal standpoint people
was one of the finest assets that we lost we didn't actually physically lose them they did not lose their lives but they lost a whole lot of the life they might have had
yeah that is right
uh being entirely different people i had dinner Monday night with a Vietnam veteran who is just now beginning to recover from the drug and alcohol struggle that he had
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that's a long time to suffer
yeah and they they really need everybody that's that's stood there it's when in in Vietnam i think it was much closer contact you stand there with a rifle and blow a a piece of somebody apart
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or blow their head off and that has to affect you if you are human you know so they had to work all that that anger out and the and the nightmares that come along with it
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oh yeah yeah i can't uh
oh yeah you bet you bet
i don't i do not really think that anybody can ever forget forget that but they can they can reason and and try to adjust to to why they were there
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yeah well you see that's what the veterans are so angry about now they say well we're going to listen to this and we're going to look at this find out what our mistakes were and we're not gonna make them again but that doesn't undo the ones that were done and that's what makes the veterans angry
right
and i can't blame them i don't know a solution
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but i sure can't blame them for being angry on the other hand you know you can be angry about something for a very long time or you can say well that is the way it is and go on with your life
right
uh
for the most part i wish that it hadn't happened but it did so
yeah and that and that was that was in the in the era when Kennedy was president that they were afraid of everything you know and and and they fought initially got into it because of Eisenhower
that's right
and he just he didn't want to be in it any more than than what we started out in August with Desert Storm and then it just blew up into the war
oh yeah
well it has been that way for a very very long time though i can remember when i was in the sixth grade and that was many years ago we were reading about the French struggling with that in southeast Asia
French yeah um-hum
so and and and the Asians historically have always had these kinds of wars going on there there has not been a lot of peace in that part of the world
right
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i really i don't know it we should not have maybe gotten involved but if we did we certainly should have supported our people who were there more so supported them when they got home
yeah
right
and uh i am afraid that they were treated as castaways for the most part
exactly
and i i saw the movie Born On The Fourth Of July and i think it did a good job depicting the temperament of the times
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yeah more than was apocalypse now
um-hum well Dudley have we pretty well discussed the subject well i think so i enjoyed talking to you uh-huh bye-bye
yeah i think so yes it was nice talking to you okay bye-bye
