Copyright Anchorage Daily News
In the 1960s, the Vietnam War was in full swing. The U.S. government was sending out draft notices faster than mail from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. “You have won the opportunity to participate.” Not everyone applied for a deferment and went on the journey. War, like life, is colored by personal perspective. It has been about half a century since the end of the Vietnam War. There are as many stories as there were soldiers — to a lieutenant colonel trying desperately to become a full bird, to the drafted doing time. It was a nice fall day, and I was driving my latest car, a 1965 Chevrolet Impala convertible with the top down. Everything seemed right with the world, except it was 1968. And I was on my way to Bangor, Maine, for a trip to New Jersey at the government’s expense for two months of Army basic training. Three of my traveling companions, Paul, Richard and Steven, had something in common — college and repeating what their academic advisers told them about the future. It’s not likely that the advisers suggested the Vietnam War as a career move. After basic training, Richard was assigned to advanced infantry training. Three of us were sent to Oklahoma for artillery training. A couple of months later, we were all in Vietnam. In Vietnam, I learned that Paul was on the same base, so I drove over to visit. He was at the bottom of a very large bunker — he told me he was doing secret work — that is where he spent his tour of duty. I was driving a track vehicle about 80 miles outside of Saigon, defoliating potential ambush sites. We stopped outside of a base waiting for the next convoy north, when I saw Richard going into the front gate. After a handshake, we went over to his room and talked. He told me that because of stress, he was taken out of combat and assigned to teaching GIs how to get GEDs. For 20 minutes, Richard alternated between talking about the importance of education and learning about ambushes and dying soldiers. The Army has a habit of putting the wrong person in the wrong job. Two weeks before I left Vietnam, I saw Steven. He told me that while he was working on an artillery gun, it recoiled and broke his leg. He went on to say he did not think his leg would ever heal to be the same. The other person I remember is Carl. He was from Virginia. He told me that before he was drafted, he got a good job working nights cleaning Greyhound buses. Carl also told me that when he was young, he would squeeze himself into played-out coal seams with a burlap bag, collecting coal to make money. I always felt the Army experience was never going to give Carl PTSD because the Army was never going to fundamentally change Carl. The Vietnam War changed society from the wayward hippies buying marijuana at $5 a pound to the frustrated social engineers who moved easily onto the college campus and then into politics. In the 1970s, the common effort of dropping out and dropping in would be the seed of change in America. After five days in Oakland, California, filling out papers, I was officially out of the Army on April 22, 1970. I spent a week in San Francisco winding down, sleeping late, and having lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf. Two weeks later, I was in Maine, bought a 1965 Mustang convertible — two car classics with a war in between. Dorrance Collins lives in Anchorage and volunteers as a psychiatric patient rights activist.
