T. Harry Williams Center for Oral
History Collection
ABSTRACT
INTERVIEWEE NAME: Brian T. Landry #
4700.0959
IDENTIFICATION: Vietnam veteran
INTERVIEWER: Dudley K. Meier, Jr.
PROJECT: Americans in Vietnam
DATES: 4/20/75
FOCUS DATES: Jan. 12, 1968-Mar. 21, 1971, Mar. 18, 1970-Mar. 18, 1971
ABSTRACT:
T 1396
Grew up in Franklin, LA; education, majored in mechanical
engineering at LA Tech; got drafted; father was a paratrooper in
Germany; father thought he should stay in school, college
education more important than military service; worries about
draft; Army did him a lot of good, didn't have negative feelings
toward it; basic training at Fort Polk, applied for OCS; AIT for
combat engineering; had to switch to infantry OCS instead because
he lacked college degree; OCS at Fort Benning, heavily Vietnam
oriented; wide cross section of people in OCS; Landry kept low
profile in OCS; learned about weaponry in OCS; qualifications for
OCS; volunteered for unpopular training at Fort Polk to avoid
jump school; Fort Polk was all Vietnam oriented, had fake
Vietnamese village set up; teaching them to dig holes, but
terrain different from Vietnam; training reminded him of John
Wayne movies; jungle training school in Panama Canal Zone;
Landry's whole class was going to be sent to Vietnam; raised lots
of hell in Panama; learned rappelling; dangers of moving at night
in Vietnam, scared of it; Canal Zone similar weather to Vietnam,
good acclimation period; doesn't know why jungle training school
in Canal Zone was disbanded; landed in Long Binh, Vietnam, sat
around in receiving station for a couple of days; orders to go to
Americal; in-country training; Vietnamese villages; rumors of
beautiful half-French whores in Saigon; ignorance of common
people; hard to compare conditions of Vietnamese villagers to
American standards; Vietnamese villagers didn't understand what
was going on around them; villagers caught in middle of VC and
Americans; getting assigned to a battalion; commanding officer
from New York; involved in operations right away; first mission
was a fiasco; losing a comrade; usefulness of training at Fort
Benning; first time he saw someone killed; quite cautious for a
while after seeing the guy killed; transporting men on foot, by
helicopter; was constantly on the move; sometimes the company
would split up; areas of operation, working in a circle, feeling
like he was accomplishing nothing; men often suffered from low
morale; infrequently shot at, few big contacts; men in platoon
became close; racial and socioeconomic diversity of unit; visited
Sydney, returned, hoping for a job in the rear; very opposed to
returning to field; Landry made temporary company commander;
spent two months as acting company commander; Landry didn't want
promotions; differences between responsibilities of a commander
and a platoon leader; how he dealt with his men as commander;
felt nervous and green all over again when he got sent back out
to field; personal satisfaction from praise by his underlings;
finally got a job in the rear coordinating air operations; got
moved back to base camp at Chu Lai; kinds of helicopter companies
he worked with; moved to smaller base camp; amenities of base
camp; getting resupplied.
Tape 1396, Side B
Camping out on a little knoll close to the Vietnamese; American
GIs secured all the guns; encounter with ARVNs in field,
unimpressed by them; distinguishing between people noises and
animal noises in the night; developing senses by listening
carefully in the dark; things Americans take for granted;
primitive life in the field, eating out of cans; took leave,
visited Bangkok; sent to Danang for two weeks, hospital commander
in Danang; carried beeper; no patience for petty gripes of
hospital commander; difference between seeing people suffer in
emergency room and seeing injuries in field; remembers pilots he
knew; legendary pilot named Joe; pilots were very
individualistic; inserting troops into different areas; some
pilots he didn't like, felt like shooting them down
himself;respect for Medevac pilots, contact with Medevac; Cobra
ships; scouting; Puff the Magic Dragons; contact with Vietnamese
villagers; Landry questioned what US was doing in Vietnam;
Vietnamese weren't intelligent or educated enough for democracy;
ARVNs were scared and lazy, were possibly in cahoots with VC;
American weapons, ammunition, found on dead VC; VC would pick up
American garbage, recycle it, use it against Americans; Landry
tripped a booby trap made of Coke cans; booby traps made of
melted dynamite in Coke cans with fuses; ingenuity of VC; people
in charge playing strategy games with big maps; Landry ordered to
dig up graves; soldiers with dope problems given jobs in the
rear; guys in the front depended on each other for their lives;
nickname for prostitutes; prostitution in the bush; VD; men in
field using drugs; military waste of ammunition; ammunition going
bad because of moisture in climate; Bangkok as a city that
catered to military personnel; people in Bangkok were just out to
get US money; girls who worked as escorts; got out of military in
March, 1971; money he saved in the military; didn't do much for
five months after returning from war; adjusting to being back in
US; felt very out of place when he returned to college, age
difference, experience difference; lingering feeling that someone
owes you something can drive you nuts; still wonders why he was
there, didn't seem to accomplish anything; doesn't know enough
about why he was there to decide if it was worth it or not; how
he feels about Communists taking over Vietnam, it seemed
inevitable; ARVNs didn't care, so Vietnam fell into Communist
hands when Americans pulled out; liked the way Nixon pulled US
out of Vietnam.
TAPES: 1
TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 1 hr, 20 minutes
# PAGES TRANSCRIPT: 4 page index
RESTRICTIONS: none