Ed White

Other than the usual, I was brought up a catholic but I’m not a Catholic now. I went to grammar school and high school college and graduate school in terms of Catholic schools. I went to Loyola in Chicago and got a BS then a MA in diplomatic history at Manhattan college in New York City. I started graduate school and then when I came back from the war I finished graduate school.

Question 3:Were you drafted or did you volunteer?

I am a former Marine Corps officer, so I volunteered. I remember distinctly I went down to a recruiting office New York City so I went in and said I would like to sign up, and there was a very old crusty Marine Corp sergeant and he said, “Don’t you know there is a war on?” I said, "Yes I am aware of that." He said "Ok go in the back and take a test." I got to that point more because of family influence more than anything else. I was an Irish Catholic, and Irish Catholics go towards the battle, and don’t run away.

Question 4: What were you doing before you went to vietnam?

As you know you can get a deferment if you are in graduate school, which is a very unfair system to say the least, and a lot of people were going to graduate school to get the deferment. I wanted to get a degree in history, but I was in graduate school when I decided or my family decided that I should go off to war.

Question 5: What was your job in the army and how long were you deployed?

In the marine corps they wanted you to be there for 13 months but the army the other services were 12 months. It's part of this macho thing the Marine Corps wants to do.

Question 6: Did you get along with your fellow soldiers and did you stay in touch later?

Yeah I got along with them, I left the service as a first lieutenant so I had a platoon my first 6 months. I was on a hill west of Da Nang. The second seven months was in battalion headquarters as an intelligence officer and civil affairs and stuff like that. So I had staff in the last part and a platoon in the first part. Most enlisted men don't like officers so they would answer the question differently. Liam asked were you in Saigon for the last part? Yeah I got briefings from the first marine divisions in Da Nang and then brought it back to the battalion and gave them a briefing. I was also a part physiological warfare. We dropped leaflets in various areas called chows. There you could surrender and get various benefits as a result. And they had loudspeakers, doing the same thing. Not very effective because Vietnamese were just waiting for us to leave. Which we did leave. Then I would bribe village people to give me ordinance about the VC in the area. Liam asked: How many were in your platoon? It depends when I first went to Vietnam I had 30 men, about 4 squads 7 or 8 per squad. Then later when I was in admin I had 4 or 5 people Liam asked: Did you go out with your squad into the jungle? I was an engineering officer so every morning we would clear the road of mines. So we walked down the road dug up the mines and blew them up. We also built things for the American trucks, vehicles and also tanks to make it easier for them to get from one place to another. People shot at me and I shot at them. They didn’t like what we were doing and that's called war.

Question 7: Were you excited when you heard you were going home?

I was ready. I might have had a calendar. But the thing is a draftee had to be in the service for 2 years and you didn't want to be there, he wanted to go home as quickly as possible. But the officers had a little more training and that was our job. If you asked me what I did I would say that was my job. So I was going from one place to another. Generally in war you get medals for doing various things and you increase your rank as you go on and I decided not to stay in the Marine Corp. So in terms of excited to go home I guess I would say yeah. I wasn't eager to stay so yeah I guess I was excited.

Question 8: What was it like when you came home and did you feel supported?

No support at all. A lot of Veteran army personnel in stories I’ve heard since said not wear your uniform when you travel on commercial airlines. If you use your uniform you get a discount on domestic flights. I used my uniform to get the discount and all and everyone ignored me. It wasn't as if they wanted to know what it was really like. You were just another passenger on the plane. But a couple years later I had a friend who putting together the welcome home Vietnam veteran parade. He asked me, "Do you want to go to it?" I said sure then after a little while I said nah I don’t need anyone to thank me that was my job and that was the end of it. One time at a cocktail party I was called baby killer. Nobody spat at me; it was one of the worst wars to come home from wars to come home from. Maybe Korea as well.

Question 10: Was it hard to adjust back to normal life? And what did you do in the years after the war?

Well when I got back I eventually got married and I guess I was in the process of let's get on with life and get married etc. But anyone who goes to war doesn't leave it that quickly so my experiences were put in a little box and every now and then the box opens. Anyone who is seen in combat doesn't leave the war even till this day. I got a degree from New York University and moved back to New York City. I started on the trail of being an accountant, and then the manager of accounting and about 5 or 6 years ago I retired from the YMCA as the CFO here in Oak Park. But I also taught at various community colleges because that is what I wanted to do. But you don't pay many bills on an adjunct professor salary.

Question 11: What’s one way your life was changed by the war that you wouldn’t have thought of?

It changed me completely, it changed the thoughtfulness of what it means to go to war. How we as American citizens ought to give more concern about that. As a result of that I got involved with that and in college I taught Vietnam war history all along encouraging people to become better citizens getting their their thought process together whether we should go to war or not. The war definitely changed me and has been a part of my life but again it's a matter of putting things into perspective.

Question 12: Have you ever thought about going back?

Yeah, back and forth. I have actually done a google map search as to where on a hill we were. The hill we were on was an old French fort. The Vietnamese have been fighting everybody for a thousand years and naturally the Americans took over the French forts. It was a village called Dai Loc and I googled it and it was totally different. Probably if I were to go back to Southeast Asia and I would mostly want to go to Hong Kong or Shanghai and maybe Vietnam. I have no regrets in terms of one way or another. I like architecture and there is more architecture in Shanghai and Hong Kong.