Tunnel Rat in Vietnam: CAPT John Cotter

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Captain John Cotter. Cotter served as a combat engineer in the Australian Army in Vietnam. It was his job to crawl through enemy tunnels to map their network, seize supplies, flush out enemies, and place explosives.

CAPT John Cotter:

My name's John Cotter, C-O-T-T-E-R. I was a sapper in Vietnam. I retired 18 months ago as a captain of rural Australian engineers.

Well, at that stage back in 1963, I was working around the north, big wet seasons. Got tired of that, so I decided to join the army. It was a toss up between that or the mounted police. So the army won.

I choose engineers, yeah.

Well, they ensure that the battalion can move by providing roadworks, all that kind of stuff, if necessary. They ensure that they can survive, provide water supply, gas warfare. They look after the gas warfare. They take care of any of the mines that come up, lay mines to protect the battalion. Take care of enemy mines, booby traps, that kind of stuff. So the battalion can then get on with its primary role of fighting. Seizing ground and fighting, yeah.

Well, with my background as a farming background, that kind of work was more in line with shooting big guns or running around in tanks and were still being infantry, yeah.

Support infantry on operations. That was our main part. We also did a little bit of support back in camp, building structures, buildings toilets, all that kind of stuff. Providing water, all that kind of stuff.

We were part of one battalion, Royal Australian Regiment Group, which was part of 173rd Airborne Brigade. Was based in Bien Hoa.

Well, 173rd also had their own American engineers. We were there specifically to support the Australian Battalion on operations. Back in camp we came under 173rd Airborne brigades engineers for tasking, road building, all that kind of stuff.

Well, the first challenge we faced was the rain. I mean, it never rained, it just bucketed down. So of course you still had to work. If you were digging ditches, doing that kind of stuff, work still had to go on. So you had that. That was a challenge. The terrain, we went from open wooded type terrain into mountains, thick jungle. Primary and secondary jungle. Of course, there's a difference in those, primary jungle's not too bad. That's the Tarzan type stuff. Secondary jungle, of course, is where the primary jungle has been cleared somewhat and all this rubbish and vines and that come back. It's a lot thicker, hard to work through. So we had all that as well.

Not helped by our own policy and our own training of that we don't use tracks. So we let the enemy use the tracks, we work off the side. So that was a challenge as well. So you have the terrain, the thickness of the vegetation, the weather. When you get into the monsoon season, then you've got the closeness of it all. And for an engineers carrying 10 or 15 pound of explosives, that added up to the challenge.

Well we came off the boat off Sydney, well, that was a bit of a anticlimax, I guess. Previously, we'd only come back from Borneo a few months before we left for Vietnam. They asked for volunteers to go over to some southeast Asian country, wouldn't tell us where it was. And of course, we didn't know until the powers that be decided that we were to be trusted where we were going. And of course, the screaming [inaudible] was all over the place. Everyone that wore black was a baddy.

And of course, when we landed there, everyone including the cleaners, wore black pajamas. And obviously they weren't baddies. So coming off the boat was a big anti-climax that we landed in a friendly area. There was people going about their normal business and all that kind of stuff. Bien Hoa Airport, that's a bit different again. First impression was the sheer size of it. I mean, there was planes all over the place. We'd never seen so many planes in the one place at the one time, and all different types. And the couple of Australian ones looked kind of lost there. So yeah, first impressions, huge place.

First operation, well, the first couple of times we went out was basically a lead in to it. I mean, I think the first one was a short operation. From memory, about five days, something like that. So it was very much a matter of taking advice from people that had been out there from the infantry that had already been there, and just doing what was required. It wasn't until later on, of course, that we'd found out what we were all about. That we were able to make our own decisions and implement things ourselves.

First advice fit for first impressions, walking a long way. Continually walking and watching the infantry do their things. We simply traveled as a small group in the middle of the infantry, in their headquarters, wherever their headquarters was. And we simply went and done whatever they told us. So it was a matter of observing and seeing what they did and how they worked, and then doing what we were asked of.

But I think in the last war, they had a saying that the war was long moments of boredom, broken by short spells of sheer terror. And I guess that was the very similar to those first couple of operations of boredom, of moving along. And then if something happened, not being part of the infantry team, you were kind of a little bit out of it. So all you could do is pull your head in and wait.

Well, you feel kind of helpless because you're not in the picture of what's going on. Of course, the platoon commander has got other things to do, rather than worry about what his couple of engineers are doing. He's only interested in that you're out of the way, out of his way and not getting in his way. So until we became a little bit more experienced with them and knew how they operated, yeah, it was quite a sight and quite a feeling, not knowing everything that was going on.

They were patrols, usually search and destroy patrols. Search for the enemy and destroy them. So the patrols would simply start off in the morning at first light and move all day to a predetermined pattern, of course. Stopping for lunch, a brew now and then. Yep. You would spend a long time moving through areas and see nothing and hear absolutely nothing. So no contact, no sign of the enemy or anything like that. And then once the brain had started to become a little numb, I guess, and then something would happen. You'd have shots and all that going on, and then, yeah, that would be the adrenaline would start to flow, and the head would be trying to make sure the backside's not going to be in danger and we were in business. But that's how it went for a long time. And that's mainly the way with the infantry work with the patrols. I mean, for them, the tension was there all the time because they were up the sharp end, whereas we were in the middle of the group pretty well protected.

If the booby trap looked particularly dangerous, and we weren't particularly brave that day, we would simply pull it. You would attach a grappling to it, get back a safe distance behind cover, and pull it and detonate it. Other times we would simply delouse it. So disarm it, put the pins back in, that kind of thing, and then pull the whole thing apart and take it with us.

Their usual ones were wire activated, so there'd be a wire stretched across the track or a vine or something like that, that would be stretched across the track. And it would simply be a matter of them following procedures and delousing it.

Unless we were actually doing a search, we would not likely to find any. The infantry would find them, usually the lead scout or something like that. The patrol would stop, and then we would be called forward to deal with it. The infantry had their pioneers who could also deal with it, but they were back at the battalion headquarters. They weren't out with the patrols. So we'd get called forward, deal with the problem, and then the patrol would carry on.

Each house in the village had its own little underground bunker for protection, and they quite often had a tunnel leading off that. Sometimes just for protection, other times just to get away from that building. So they would exit, say, on the side of a creek or something like that. So those tunnels were our first introduction to it, but they were pretty benign. There was really no danger in them. There may have been people hiding in them or virtually taking shelter. In those cases, it was more a matter of convincing the local inhabitants to get out of the tunnel and come upstairs where we wanted to talk to them.

The other type of tunnels, the dangerous type ones, the ones that fought back a little bit, that was Operation Crimp and Ho Bo Woods. And that was a large complex of tunnels that ultimately we found to form part of the larger network, which would've formed then part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the long resupply trail from North Vietnam down into the south.

We hadn't seen anything like it. I mean, the tunnels in the villages were, that was logical. I mean, if you were going to get bombed, you needed somewhere to go to. These people had been at war for a lot of years. And of course, self-protection was their prime aim. These things were a little bit different. They were used for communication purposes, so they could move people and stores and equipment up and down the line. Used to hide their people. And also used as a means of moving from one fighting point to another, which was actually how it was all initiated. So by firing on the forward elements of the infantry.

One of them I remember, was a little slit in an ant nest. And that was the outward appearance of that particular machine gun post. And one of those engaged the forward enemy or the forward elements of the battalion. And of course, he then disappeared. So having fired his couple of shots, disappeared. Makes it very hard for those people trying to bring fire to bear, especially when the same gunner then appeared somewhere else and did the same thing. So it was like trying to pin down a little will-o'-the-wisp. So it wasn't until later on that you're actually able to cite where the thing was coming from and actually pinpoint it on the ground that you could do something with it. Then you could bring fire up here and all that kind of stuff. And of course, then once you opened up one of these things, well, then you had access into it.

Well, the first major tunnel was crimp. After it all finished, the infantry action had finished, and they went into all round protection. So they completely surrounded this particular piece of real estate. Our job then was to go in and find out what it was all about. A couple of the opening slits were blown to make it bigger to go in, and then it was a matter of going in and then finding where they all went to. At that stage of course, we had no idea of what the size of this stuff was, where it was going, or what it was even there for. Other than the fact that we knew that a couple of enemy bunkers were obviously connected by a tunnel. That's nothing new in tunnel warfare, but the newness of it was the extent of this whole thing.

So we're operating in teams in the various companies. So initially, it wasn't as if all the engineers were together, we were spread out. We came together later on, and that's when Sandy MacGregor was able to coordinate all that kind of stuff going on. So once we found a way in, then it was relatively simple to find a way out. To locate the way out was simple. To open the way out was a different thing altogether, because it was obviously trap doors and quite obviously booby trapped. Now, these things were booby trap so that people outside initiated the booby trap. But if you were on the inside, you didn't know whether it was booby trapped, how it was activated, so you couldn't open it. So that was a bit of a problem. So you then had to come upstairs and locate it on the surface, the booby trap or the trap door rather. Then delouse any booby traps were there, and then you were back in business.

We traveled in teams of about two and came together then to form bigger teams. So the teams were changing all the time. I operated with up to a four man team at times. Sometimes it was a two-man team. With Dennis, he and I were actually down there on our way to help extricate another man that was having trouble in the tunnels. He'd got into trouble because of the smoke. It was thought initially that once you found these tunnels, and an easy way to find out where the exits were and all that kind of stuff, was to throw some smoke grenades down there. If you thought that there was some enemy down there, well the infantry would throw some tear gas down there. Which didn't seem to hurt the enemy a great deal, made it a bit uncomfortable for us. So you then had a mixture of this smoke and tear gas down there. The tunnels being the size they were, probably two foot by two foot on average. There wasn't any way for this stuff to disperse. So anyone going down there ran the risk of running into trouble, especially if he didn't have a gas mask. And even if he did have a gas mask, sometimes it was still too much for it.

So one of our fellows did get into trouble. We were on our way down to help others to pull him out, and that's when, I guess, we got the first indication that there were other people down there. We did go past a little aperture or a hole in the wall, and there was a blue bag, a bit like a mail bag, I guess, or something like that. And we didn't do anything about that at that stage. We figured, well, we didn't have enough time to investigate that and then do what we were supposed to do in the first place, which our primary job was to help with his extrication. So we left it and went on. Came back to that point later, and it was gone. So people had been there. So we weren't the only ones down there at that stage. That was a bit of a shock. At that stage we were sailing along believing that anyone that was there would've gone further away. Lower down maybe. But yeah, then all of a sudden they hadn't.

It put the wind up you a little bit to know that there are those down there, especially people that do know what they're doing as far as those tunnels go. Because they obviously had been down there for quite some time, so they knew where everything was.

They were built without any shoring in the main, I mean, they ranged from probably three or four feet below the ground surface down to probably 20 feet in parts. Good material to dig in, was good, hard clay. So therefore you didn't need any shoring for it. In places, especially where it came up underneath the trees where you could see the roots and all that kind of stuff. And then down further where they enlarged into larger rooms, store rooms, wells. It was wells down there. So quite a big complex. And they didn't waste any energy on doing things that weren't necessary. So it was big enough to crawl through for them. They weren't very nice to us. They didn't make it big enough for us in some places.

Well, the teams I were with never ever came face-to-face with anyone. One of the other fellas came face-to-face with the dog at one stage and decided that discretion being the better part of valor, I think he put about nine bullets into it before he disappeared. But no, we never came face-to-face with anyone. The blue bag incident indicated that there was people down there. Tracks on the floor of the tunnel indicated that yes, people had been there. I mean, we found bits of equipment, meals, that kind of thing. So people had been there.. But no, we never came to face-to-face.

The first 10 minutes of the first time we went down was probably... I guess it was once you turned the torch off, it was totally devoid of light. There was no light at all, so you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You couldn't see anything. So a totally alien environment, and you really had to sit and think for a couple of minutes to get your wits about you and to make sure that everything was where it was supposed to be in your brain before you went on. Once you'd done that, then it wasn't too bad. And of course, once you'd been down for 40 or 50 minutes or so, came to the surface, then it was easy. It was always easy the next time. But the first time, no, that was a little bit windy.

So cave-ins was the biggest fear. Because if anything else happened, gas, smoke or anything like that, you could be got out one way or the other. Well, you had a better chance of getting out. On crimp, it wasn't a problem because we didn't have anyone moving up above us. But we also didn't know what the condition of all the tunnels were in, especially when you came up a bit high in the tunnels where you could see the roots. And from there, they quite often dropped down 15, 20 feet. So if that soil was quite good as far as tunneling goes, it wasn't compacted, then there could have been a problem. If it was a cave-in and you were underneath it, then your chance was pretty slim.

Operations further on in '66, we actually did have cave-ins. We had APCs running over the top of us while we were in the tunnels. And of course, those tunnels were only three or four feet from the surface, and they caved them in. So especially when they, instead of going across the tunnel, they inadvertently went up the tunnel and put one track on it, and 12 ton machinery dropped it in.

We were in the tunnel when it caved, yeah. That's how we knew that the... Because you'd hear the APCs rumbling on top of you, because you're only three or four feet underground. You can't do a lot. You can't really go backwards because they're coming. At that stage, they were coming towards us from behind. So we just had to sit and wait and hope that we had enough time to react if we saw the roof coming down. And as it turned out, they came onto the tunnel diagonally in front of us and caved it in front of us. So we were able to get out through their cave-in actually.

Oh, I just dug our way out. Because it was only three or four feet from the surface when they caved the top in, we then dug up diagonally through it and through to the surface.

I think they were more shocked than we were. One, that they'd run over a tunnel and caved it in. And two, that they didn't know that anyone was down below. I guess a lack of communication somewhere along the line. But yeah, but it all ended pretty well.

When we'd pulled it all out and we actually saw the extent of all the equipment and the paperwork that we got out, that was pretty satisfying. We then knew that, well, all our efforts over those days weren't wasted. At that stage we'd lost one man underground. I think the troop on Operation Crimp had about 40 or 30 something, 30 or 40 people that went out on the operation of engineers. At one stage I think we calculated that all the people that were involved in the tunnel search, we had something like 3% fit to go underground. And I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I wasn't affected by the smoke or the gas, so I was there from the start to go. Other people got affected, some people more so from the smoke and the gas than others. Some became claustrophobic, which was understandable. I mean, these things are so small that two foot by two foot trap doors, even smaller than that. Yeah, so they suffered quite a bit, the claustrophobic fellas.

Interviewer:

Do you see men crack and just turn and say, "There's no way?"

CAPT John Cotter:

Well, it wasn't so much, it wasn't dramatic or anything like that. There was no throw down the gas mask and settle soldier no more. It was more or less that they went and had a quiet word with the boss, and they were simply taken off the searching parties and put on something else.

It wasn't a case of volunteering. It was a case of that was the job. I mean, we were engineers over there to support the battalion to do a job. Tunnels came up. It was a job that had to be done. I mean, there was no volunteering. Everyone understood that that was a job. You went down below and got on with it. I mean, the first couple of times underground was a matter of teaching yourself. There was no books or anything written on this, and it was a matter of applying some common sense and [inaudible] to the situation in hand, and then getting on with it.

If you came up outside the circle and you started to open a trap door, well, then you wouldn't have a chance of seeing anyone pointing a rifle at you, because they would start shooting as soon as that trap door, or as soon as the head appeared through the trap door. One of the things that we used to make sure of that we had our bush hats, the green hat. Now through the brim of the hat was a colored piece of ribbon. I think it was white for one of the battalions, yellow for another one. Of course, you made sure you had that on your nut when you came up through the hole so that then the gunner wouldn't shoot it off, hopefully. So you needed to know where that was. And to be able to do that, we developed a series of plotting underground based on compass bearings of each leg and how far that little leg went. So these legs very seldom went more than a couple of meters, six foot. So it was pretty easy to estimate how far each leg was. And then of course, with these plotted and either written down in the tunnel or sent up via telephone, it was then easy on the surface to plot where the thing was. And then of course, you had the advantage then, if anyone did get stuck, of knowing where you could dig, the best place to dig. And also, when it came time to blow it up, from the infantry's point of view, they dearly love to know where the explosives were underground so they could be far enough back when we blew the thing. Charges that were used were all big. Military demolitions was like that, you make sure that the jobs done properly the first time. So the charges were big. There was CS powder involved that we put next to the charger. So the concussion of the charger would force the powder along the tunnel and deny that tunnel to the enemy, because all this powder would be all over the earth. And of course, we would then just initiate it, blow it, and go back and check the results. I mean, you could never, ever destroy the tunnel completely unless you devoted a lot of time and explosions to doing it. The idea was to deny the enemy the tunnel for a length of time. And the CS powder would do that, deny it up to a few months.

Well, the first reaction was that when it went off was one that you'd done the job properly. Infantry commanders don't like engineers that set charges and then nothing happens, because then you have to wait for about 30 minutes or so before you can go back in to take care of it. And in that time, of course, the infantry is sitting around twiddling their thumbs. And they don't like it at all. Of course, you can't leave the explosives there because then the enemy may find them, or in fact, they would find them and they would use them. So they'd take them away and use them.

So yeah. So that was the first reaction. It had gone off and so you'd done that part of the job right. And then of course, when you went back and had a look at the job, the next reaction was that if the job was right, well then you were happy because all your calculations were right. Because the engineers doing the job had to do their own calculations. I mean, Sandy MacGregor or no one else did any calculations for you, you did them yourself. So if you fouled up, well then you wore it. And if you fouled up, the first one that you wore it from was the infantry commander. 'Cause he wouldn't be happy. Any ones that I laid were done properly and they went off.

Hard to say whether it saved lives. I mean, it's very hard to say in warfare, whether what you do save lives, unless you can see the end result of it and get a handle on what happened after that. Whether it aided the war effort, no doubt, from the amount of documentary material stocks and all that kind of stuff. Weapons that came out of it would've been a blow to the enemy at that stage. So I think from my point of view, I think it was more that it was aiding the war effort or aiding our war effort more than saving lives.

We didn't know what the Americans were doing really, especially up further north, what their engineers were doing. We had an idea that there hadn't been a lot of work done on tunnels because we hadn't had any intelligence back on it as far as what to look for and all that kind of stuff. But yeah. No, there was no feeling of we're the first and all that kind of stuff. No. It was more a case of getting on with the job and doing what we had trained to.

Yeah, it's a sore point. The American philosophy of war is quite different to ours. Their idea is to create a big presence, a high profile, get the enemy to commit themselves to them, and then reply with superior manpower and firepower. Our philosophy has always been that, no, we don't do that. We prefer to take the enemy on at their own game. So we prefer to find him before he finds us and see him before he sees us. And that was the biggest difference.

A lot of operating differences. The Americans had a quaint little thing of clearing their front by fire. So at nighttime come dusk, and they settled down for the night to clear the front to make sure there were no baddies out the front. Everyone simply fired their weapon in the general direction of the baddies. Whereas the Australian forces never, ever did that. You never fired unless you had something to fire at. And we actually cleared it by sending people out to patrol around the perimeter and clear any enemy from their way.

So there were operational things like that that were different. The manner of the Americans moving through the terrain was different. We didn't like it. To our eyes, they lacked self-discipline. They lacked discipline on moving, all that kind of stuff.

Actually if we were operating with the Americans, we felt that the way that they moved through the bush, the way they conducted themselves did compromise us, and we weren't happy with it at all. We preferred to be well away from them. Unless, of course there was lots of baddies out there. Then we preferred to be a little bit closer because they had all the big firepower. And yeah, we weren't adverse to that at all. But moving through the scrub, no, we preferred to be on our own.

The first thing, of course, is to find out where it goes and what it is. I mean, if it's a small tunnel that's used for a hide or protection, well, then you may not do anything with it unless the infantry commander on the spot wants it destroyed, and then we would simply blow it up with explosions. If it's a bigger one and it contains stores, equipment, all that kind of stuff, well, then we would bring it out. So basically, it's a matter of going down, finding what's there and bringing it up. You needed to find out where the tunnels were going. Once it became extensive, because with the infantry on top, I guess in a rough all round defense, you needed to know where you were going to be when you came to the surface. If you were inside the circle, that wasn't too bad. Then you would probably have someone, as the trap door opened, you would probably have someone up top with a rifle pointing at you.

The best memory? The Farewell Parade. When we left the brigadier at that stage, I think said something along the lines that he would love to serve with us again or have us, but he wouldn't have us all together in the one organization. I think we'd created a bit of history over there, or a bit of a history in doing the things that we did, both in the field and off duty. We figured that we'd probably earned our trip home, and we figured that some people mustn't have liked us too much. Our going away present from over there after the parade was we went down to Vung Tau where we got rid of our weapons and handed in all our bits and pieces and all that kind of stuff, and picked up new uniforms. And then on Back Beach, they simply put up a couple of marquees down on the beach, at Back Beach. Outside the protective wire around the base. Put a 44 gallon drum at each end and half filled it with ice, and that was our home for I think a couple of days or two or three days before we left the country. We more or less floated in and out of there as required. I think everyone got into a suitable amount of trouble and imbibed a suitable amount of alcoholic type stuff before we went home.

I guess we weren't on the best of terms with the people down at Vung Tau, at the logistics base. And I think that went back to when we first went to Vang Tau from Bien Hoa, and they kind of saw us as a bit of a soft touch. Being a superior organization, they simply decided they'd confiscate things from us as they wanted: lighting, plants, showers, hot water showers, that kind of stuff. And they just moved us around the various bits of terrain as they decided they wanted that particular bit of terrain. So there wasn't any love loss between us. I mean, someone fresh from Australia would see that we were on a nice little knoll where our tents were set up and decide that his organization should be there. Being a superior type headquarters, he would simply bump us off that. So we'd pack our bongos and go somewhere else. And we had a lighting plant that we had got from the Americans that had powered our whole camp. They decided they wanted that. We had no use for it. Well we didn't need it because we were going up to [inaudible] where everything else would be. But yeah, they decided they needed that, so they decided they'd have it. A couple of our mechanics, I think, thought otherwise and would've kind of did its thing and disintegrated.

That was a generator, yep. And yeah, with a little bit of tender loving care with the spanner at the last minute, it self-destructed. So no one got the generator. I think the showers, the hot water showers, we left a memento on that. We booby trapped that before we left. They were all harmless, obviously. They weren't going to hurt anyone. But yeah, the message got through. I mean, these things we had acquired at Bien Hoa from, in some cases from our own money where we went out and bought plumbing fixtures, that kind of stuff. Other things we'd traded with the Americans from their big salvage dump there. Yep.

Whether it was a war that we should have been in or should not have been in, I left that for the politicians to decide. As a professional soldier my thought was, "Oh, that's where the army is going. That's where I've been sent, and that's the job that I'll do." I think all of the people were of the same, all of the troop were of the same opinion. There may have been the odd one that didn't want to go, reckon they shouldn't have been there. But bearing in mind, this was a troop that was made up of all volunteers. It was a troop that was made up also all regular army. There was no national servicemen in it. So we wanted to be there. Quite a lot of us had been over in Borneo before that, New Guinea. So overseas service wasn't something new.

We thought we'd done a good job. What the problem was, was when we came back, the reaction of the people. That was what we weren't prepared for. Spurred on, I guess, by the actions of the politicians. The parade, the one battalion's parade through Sydney, that was different. I think the woman with the red paint, the tin of red paint, I think she was lucky that she never ended up in the ranks. So I think if she ended up in the ranks, she wouldn't have got out again.

So those kind of actions didn't go down well with the soldiers. No. And later on, of course, the actions of people like Bob Hawke went down even less well. So we never appreciated his efforts either. The irony of that, of course, was that on the Welcome Home Parade, he was on the [inaudible]. And I think that was also not well received by a lot of soldiers. So we weren't very enamored of a lot of our leaders, our political leaders at that stage. And especially our would be political leaders, the people in opposition.

The climate when it all came back, there was even dissension between the RSL, the mainstream RSL and the Vietnam vets, which caused them to form their own organizations, the Vietnam Veterans Association and the Federation. That's slowly being integrated now. I mean, a lot of RSLs now have Vietnam veteran type people in their committees and running it and all that kind of stuff. So that was one area where there was a little bit of animosity.

The [inaudible] one of the department that runs vet affairs, I guess it's the same in every country. I guess we're lucky we're not like Russia where you don't get anything. So that was another one where people are constantly fighting for what they see as their entitlement for having been maimed or hurt or whatever over there. That's one area. But I think for the general public, I think it's now coming around. I think there's still people that will go to their grave saying that we shouldn't have been there and all that kind of stuff. I think the later generations accepting of the fact that it wasn't the services fault that they were there. I mean, we were sent there by our political leaders. So the target of all the agitation was the wrong target. So they were trying to shoot the messenger instead of aiming at the politicians, the people that sent us there.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was SSG Aquilino Gonell. To learn more about Gonell, check out his book, American Shield, or listen to his interview on our other podcast, Burn the Boats. The link is in the show description.

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