Interview with Veteran Steven Witt

Veterans: Steven Witt & Cecily Buckley 

Interviewed by Rachel Swensen 11/9/2015

RS: Why did you decide to join the Military? 

SW: At the time it was beneficial to join for schooling and my family has a history of Military. My Dad served during Vietnam.

RS: Why did you choose the service branch you chose?

SW: The benefits for schooling mainly. They offered tuition assistance and GI bill and the GI kicker. Also access ability because it’s a lot easier to stay closer to home then it would have been to join active Army. 

RS: Where did you serve? 

SW: I have drilled out of Marshalltown Iowa and Elkhorn Nebraska then I did a tour in Afghanistan. Kuwait next year. 

RS: What was your job assignment? 

SW: Until last year I was a 31 Bravo which are Military Police. This last year I switched over to a 32 Echo which is a Corrections Specialist. 

RS: Did you see combat? 

SW: No. 

RS: Were there any causalities in your unit? 

SW: There were no causalities in my unit directly. While we were overseas we lost one individual

.

RS: What was your highest rank achieved? 

SW: So far it’s just E5 Sergeant. 

RS: How did you stay in touch with family? 

SW: Computer. I had brought my own laptop. They also had a USO where you could rent computers, phones.

RS: What did you do while on leave? 

SW: When I came home on leave I met my daughter for the first time and just pretty much chilled out at home. It was January so there really wasn’t much going on. 

RS: What did you think of your Officers and fellow Soldiers? 

SW: That’s a hit and miss type thing; either you like them or you don’t. Either they like you or they don’t.  It depended on the individual; I’ve had good fellow Soldiers, I’ve had good NCO’s and on the flip side I’ve had bad Officers, I’ve had bad NCO’S and I’ve had bad Soldiers. 

RS: How did your service and your experiences effect your life? 

SW: I would say it made me a lot more independent with a lot of people. I’ve had a lot of experiences and seen a lot of different places. I’ve been to Italy, I’ve been to Mississippi, I’ve been to California. Germany, Kirgizstan, Afghanistan, Kuwait. I’m a lot more of an independent thinker. A lot more confident in myself. 

RS: Did your Military experiences effect what you think about War or the Military in general? 

SW: It opened my eyes a lot to the different aspects to the Military. War is a broad term, people think War and they think fighting and everything. There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff people don’t see. I may not have seen combat but I have seen my fair share of bad guys. I’ve seen people who have killed fellow Soldiers. It’s not what people think War is. 

CCB: It’s not glorious it’s ugly. 

SW: War is hell.  Everybody thinks War and they think front line combat there’s a whole lot more to it.

CCB: They don’t see refugee camps or field hospitals. 

SW: They don’t think that either. Homes that were burned down and destroyed.

CCB: Fields that were burned.

RS: What was the hardest part of it all?

SW: Being away from my kids about the only other hard part is staying in shape. 

RS: Do you have any regrets from it all? 

SW: I have enjoyed my career so far, I’m hoping to keep going and finish it out and retire. 

RS: Would you do it all again? 

SW: I probably would do it all again. Would I do some of it different? Possibly. But you know all the experiences you get from doing it, the comradery, the friendship-you just can’t replace it. Some of my best friends I still chit chat with are fellow Soldiers that I served with.

RS: Was coming back hard at all? 

SW: It was hard because I was easily agitated. I couldn’t deal with stupid anymore. Basically, you go overseas your lifestyle simplifies but you have a lot of other stresses that people don’t think about, are we going to get attacked. I was in the middle of a shower and a mortar went off. I was just sitting there showering away and *EXPLOSION* and it actually hit like 20 feet from my Captain at that time. 

CCB: You have all those stresses but life is simple. It’s regimented, you have rules for every situation where your response it predetermined. Then you come back here-

SW: -There’s all these choices. One of the biggest choices I still have issues with is what I want to eat. There you go and they have it set out with your options you come back here and it’s like alright, what do I want to cook, do I want to eat out? 

RS: Was it hard to settle back into normal life? 

SW: I have a few friends who suffer because they did a different mission and they see things a lot differently than I did. My experience wasn’t so hard, I just couldn’t go from being a Sergeant of my own little section to going back to being a grunt, a nobody. 

The Theme for American Soldier Tribute

Interview with Veteran Jim Swensen

Veteran: Jim Swensen

Interviewed by Rachel Swensen 11/9/2015

RS: Why did you join the military?

JS: I got drafted. I got drafted into the Army. It was either get drafted into the Army or join the Navy which was four years and the Army was two. So they chose it for me.

RS: Where did you serve?

JS: I had Basic Training in Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, then I had AIT Training in Fort Bliss Texas and then I came back for the duration in Fort Riley Kansas but I went to Germany for one month on a treaty agreement the United States made with Germany during WW2 called Reforger. 

RS: Did you face combat? 

JS: No, I did not face combat. 

RS: What was your job assignment?

JS: My rank was Specialist 4. I was a Vulcan Crewman. There was four guys on an APC that shot or you were in charge of a 22 Millimeter gun, it was a gallon gun mounted on an APC. I had that job plus I was the company armor in Fort Riley.

RS: What did you do to keep in contact with your loved ones?

JS: The first part I made phone calls to Janet but then once we got the bill we stopped that. And her Dad made us pay it, it was $75 bucks and back in 1971 that was quite a bit of money. So then we quit and we started writing letters. So we just wrote letters then and I also came home to see her whenever I could. 

RS: What did you think of your fellow soldiers and officers? 

JS: The soldiers were fine they were just like me. They were kids who were trying to get along in a Dictatorship cause that’s what the Army is, it’s not a Democracy. So you are ordered and you do orders and the orders don’t have to make sense you just have to do them.  As far as the Officers go I learned to respect authority by respecting the uniform without respecting the person because a lot of times the person was not respectable but the uniform was so that’s how I separated the two. 

 RS: What did you do when you were on leave? 

JS: I mostly came home to see my girlfriend and spent time with her until I had to go back. 

RS: How did your military experience effect what you think of the military? 

JS:  My experience was that in 1971 there were no woman allowed. Especially in combat and none of the homosexual stuff that’s going on now. So I thought the Military back then was a lot better than it is now. 

RS: What was the hardest part of it all?

JS: The Vietnam War was a Political War so it was hard to figure out Patriotism and what you were fighting against.  So I was more than willing to fight for my country but the mission was never clear on what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to keep North Vietnam out of the South Vietnam but the politics and the politicians got so involved in it that they wouldn’t let you win so there was too much of that gone on. The American Military could have just stomped that whole country but we had to go by the Geneva Convention and they had to go by a whole bunch of things. Basically War is to break things and kill people and whoever breaks the most things and kills the most people wins. War is not a Political thing it’s a very ugly thing to decide an outcome. And so if you’re going to defend your country Communism or something like that then you have to be prepared to participate in a very ugly thing. I think it’s honorable to serve your country.

RS: What was the response when you came back?

JS: You kind of felt like you had to sneak back into society because you were NOT a hero. The News Media and the Liberals and the Hippies had protested against the War so much that if you were a participant in it they stuck you with it so if you were a Military person at all they figured you were involved in the Government and they would protest against you too. It was a very poor time where the Country you were willing to go and die but yet when you came home they didn’t want you here either so it was a lot different than it is nowadays.