T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT

INTERVIEWEE NAME: Benjamin S. Goebel # 4700.0953

IDENTIFICATION: Vietnam veteran

INTERVIEWER: Jacob J. Oberman

PROJECT: Americans in Vietnam

DATES: 1/2/75

FOCUS DATES: Oct. 1967-Feb. 1971

ABSTRACT:

T 1390

Family upbringing; parents were doctors; mother had nervous breakdown, institutionalized; siblings; education; joining service; father was in White Caps chopper squadron, was flight surgeon; involvement in Washington DC social elite; played basketball; relevance of ball playing and teamwork to success in military; played basketball on Air Force team; attended demolition school for Vietnam; spent a lot of time in gym, working out; basic training in San Antonio; trained with Army in Kentucky at demolition school; arrival in Vietnam; pre-Vietnam psychological briefing, learning esprit de corps; Goebel's job was setting mines, mixed emotions about his job; records of the duties he performed; saw ARVNs killed by mines; stories about people being chopped up with machetes; training South Vietnamese army; hard to hear story about shooting; emotions about killings; Goebel didn't see that much combat; wounded by mortar blast; description of being hit by mortar blast, woke up in Japan; drugs in Vietnam; alcohol use; prostitutes; beaches, recreation; prostitutes sometimes turned out to be VC agents; corruption in Vietnam; black market activity; hitmen for hire in Vietnam; class structure in Vietnam; men urinated right in street of Saigon; wounds don't heal in Vietnam because of dampness, gangrene; hated what he was doing over there, didn't want to fight; anti-war movement; unusual experience of war, bad experience; US should pull out of financial dealings with Vietnam.


TAPES: 1

TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 40 minutes

# PAGES TRANSCRIPT: 2 page index

RESTRICTIONS: none