Warriors transcript

WARRIORS
Transcription edited by Beverly Patterson

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Warriors” opens with scenes filmed at the 1985 national powwow in Sisseton, South Dakota. The event was organized by the Vietnam Veterans Intertribal Association to honor Vietnam veterans. During much of the film, scenes from the powwow alternate with interviews in which veterans talk about their war experience and how it impacted them, their families and communities. When possible, the transcript identifies the speakers.

Although most of the following participants are not listed in the credits, they are identified as follows during the film:
Harold Barse, Vietnam Veterans Inter-Tribal Associatoin
Ed Yava, Tewa/Hopi Navajo
Vernon White, Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux
Myron Williams, Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux
Jim Northrup, Fond du Lac Chippewa
Pat Northrup (wife of Jim Northrup), Lower Agency Sioux
Bob St. John, Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux
Grady Renville, Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux
Ron Hernandez
Gerald Lidle
Chris White, Cherokee
Clarence Belgarde

Powwow scenes with voiceovers
VETERAN: I still have dreams about it. I've dreamed that-- I've dreamed I've gone back for the second time. And now my dreams are that I'm going back for the third tour in Vietnam. And I don't understand why I'm having these dreams. In my dreams, I'll be flying out of state someplace at a staging area. And I'll be looking around, and I can't figure out why I'm going back for the third time when there's some guys have never gone over there yet.

VETERAN: A lot of the dreams that I have when I first came back, what I would be in a firefight or in a battle and not have the rifle in my hand. These guys are coming and coming. And I'm pulling and pulling on a trigger, but I can't pull it. You know, just can't-- It won't fire. And they just come and overrun us. I see that battle that I was at where I got wounded at. They overrun us three times that first night.

VETERAN: So most the time I just try to look at it, you know, like a dream I guess I'd say, you know. Like, I never really was over there. I know I was. But I always felt this way-- like it was just something I dreamt. That is one of my ways of dealing with it, I guess.

Series of historic photographs
NARRATOR: [woman’s voice] Native Americans have served in combat in the United States Armed forces since World War I. It was in recognition of this service that Indians were granted citizenship in 1924. Yet 60 years later, recognition is still a problem for the Native American veteran. 82,000 American Indians served in the military during the Vietnam era, August, 1964 to May, 1975. This gives Indians the highest record of service per capita of all ethnic groups. Close to 90% of those Indian men enlisted, and over half served in actual combat positions. Nearly 300 of the 58,000 soldiers who died were American Indians.

HAROLD BARSE: Back in World War I, you know, well over 10,000 Indians served in the military. And citizenship wasn't granted to all American Indians until 1924. Six years after the war was over. And yet, these Indians voluntarily went and served. They couldn't have been drafted, but they voluntarily went and served in that war. And some of them, if you ask them, they felt that that was treaty obligation on their part. They signed a treaty with this country, and, you know, by way of treaty, if this country gets some problem, they're-- by treaty obligation-- they're obligated to go fight for the country.

ED YAVA: I was named by my great-grandfather. When I was a child, I was blessed by him and given a name, which means "a little warrior." And he told my mother that someday, that I would be the one to carry on our tradition as a warrior. So it was more or less since I was--at birth-- that I was kind of destined to probably serving in the military.

VERNON WHITE: I had a friend that got killed in Vietnam. Maybe he wasn't in Vietnam, you know, service more than six months. And I seen a lot of it on TV. And I couldn't really, you know, believe it, you know. It was just like a movie. And I thought, "Well, it couldn't really be that bad," you know. And I didn't know how to explain it, you know. And so I just joined.

MYRON WILLIAMS: And that was a way of getting away. It was their opportunity to get off the reservation, but for, like for me here, it was something to do. Didn't really want to wait to get drafted and just got tired of doing the same thing. So I said, "Might as well go."

03:54
HAROLD BARSE: Many Indian tribes have warrior dances, soldier dances, and peyote meetings, prayer meetings, feasts or something along those lines to prepare the individual to go--the bulletproofing ceremony for some tribes. And he's given recognition and honor when he leaves. So that might, you know, be a little bit different approach to why they went to Vietnam as opposed to the non-Indian where it's kind of vague. And on his coming home, those Indians-- we ran a survey and it looks about like 40% of maybe the American Indian veterans had some type of tribal recognition or feast or something going or coming home, one or the other. Or both. And that's 40%. So there's 60% out there that didn't have anything for themselves. You know, the people didn't-- And that could relate to many other families maybe didn't have the money to provide something like this. Or maybe the family was not a traditional family.

ED YAVA: I did have a kind of a wonderful experience in visiting my grandfather before he died and before I went over. My grandfather was about 117 years old. And it was kind of comical because he thought we were still fighting the Mexicans. And my people have a tradition of fighting the Spaniards and the Mexicans. So he thought, "Well," he said, "my grandson." He said, "I wish I was young enough I could ride on a horse next to you. And we'll ride down between those Mexicans and shoot them right and left," he said. But we had to explain to him that it was a different time. So I guess that was the only thing that made me feel good-- that someone was kind of supporting me and the efforts I was doing.

NARRATOR: Jim Northrop served with India Company 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines in 1965 and '66. Currently, Jim is a writer and editor of the Fond du Lac News. His short stories and poetry have been published in "Touchwood," a collection of contemporary Chippewa writings.

Conversation in Jim Northrup’s office.
JIM NORTHRUP: I grew up in boarding schools and on the reservation, And I guess in those days we didn't have the entertainment like they have today. But the big entertainment was to stand around telling stories, whether it was at a drinking party or out racing. It's real common to slip into storytelling. And I can name guys going back to World War I, the warriors, the veterans from all the wars all the way through. And I listened to these stories. And I said, "I'm from here. I'm a warrior. I come from a long line of warriors going back to when the Chippewa were fighting the Sioux and before." So I feel like I'm part of that line.
But here's where it gets kind of crazy. I don't want my son to do that. I want to break that line. I was in the Marine Corps for four years before I went over there. So by the time Vietnam came about, I was ready, I was primed. I was lean and mean and young and could run all day. I think it was in June of '66, maybe earlier. I don't remember what month. We were in the operation Georgia, and we went from south of Da Nang to An Hoa. And then we set up camp there and ran patrols, ambushes, sweeps. Walk all day, walk all night kinds of stuff. There's a lot of Bouncing Betties, snipers, mines, foot traps, mosquitoes, biting ants. We didn't have anything like whole squads wiped out. Not like till it was later on. Ours was more like, you know, you knew every guy that got killed.
My gram used to send me maple sugar cakes made from sap that she boiled down. And I'd make those-- make one sugar cake last a month. Just every other day or so, just take a little pinch. And that taste would bring me back to the reservation. It was the taste of cold mornings, big wood fire, stirring and stirring, slipping up and down the trails carrying sap. Even though I was where it was 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity, just that little taste-- Actually, I think it was easy over there being an Indian because I was recognizable as an Indian. Like you say, there was that sense, that respect paid to Indian warriors.

BOB ST. JOHN: Especially, I don't know, they have this thing about Indians being good fighters. And, you know, that's supposed to be a natural thing.

JIM NORTHRUP: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an old stereotype, too, from World War II movies. Every squad had an Indian in it named Chief.

BOB ST. JOHN: Yeah, the saying is, "Everybody knew Chief, but they didn't know his name."

JIM NORTHRUP: Yeah.

BOB ST. JOHN: They knew him by Chief, yeah.

JIM NORTHRUP: Yeah, I think outside of your small circle of people, they knew you by your name because they knew-- they were with you night and day and they knew your life history and the women that you lied about and the cars that you never had. So these are the guys that you got to know. But outside of that circle, it was Chief. Like, outside of five, six, eight people, it was Chief.

HAROLD BARSE: Of the first survey we did, the first batch that went into the computer, 37% had been wounded in action. And that's a pretty high percent rate for being wounded. And the reason for that is they were in the front lines. They were in the combat units. They were-- If you're an Indian, you're supposed to be good. Like I said, you know, well when they move out, "Hey, Chief, get to point." So they got to point. And they walk out there, and that point's a dangerous place to be when you're walking around in jungles with people shooting at you.

10:45
ED YAVA: You know, the Indian was supposed to be the great sneak artist and brave and all of these things, which is, you know, we were just as clumsy and just as noisy as a two-footed, a two-left-legged man or something. You know, we don't-- That was totally untrue. But every time that operations or things came up, you would find yourself either leading a patrol or the point man. And a lot of times, it is, you know, you often wondered, "Why? I just had my turn at point man, and I'm back up here again." I'm out here on LP. I'm supposed to be able to see through the dark. You know, I have infrared vision or something. They're always sitting out there. And when you question them, they say, "Well, you Indians have that sixth sensibility," you know. And a lot of times, I just said, "Bullshit," you know. Yeah. You know, I'm just as, have faults just as much as the other person.

HAROLD BARSE: We had one Navajo guy that was born and reared in the city. And he showed up, had no conception of finding his way around in the woods or anything. Yet, he was put on a point because he was an Indian. Casualty rate is high out there. So there is that mystique, that stereotype of the Indian warrior being good. But a lot of the guys asked for it too. Marines, Airborne, Ranger, all those type things. They wanted to come home with the boots bloused and the Airborne wings on or in that snappy looking Marine Corps uniform. They wanted those things, and then they got them.

GRADY RENVILLE: My biggest concern was to be a good combat medic, you know. And that's what I endeavored to do, you know, for the whole time that I was there. Because they give Navy corpsmen a lot of responsibility. Like, I carried narcotics. You know, syrettes of morphine. I did IVs. I did suturing. I sewed up people. Delivered a baby one time. And did a lot of things that I really wasn't trained for. But you had to learn in order to be a good, you know, medic. And that's really where, I guess, the pride was.
See, the Marines call us doc, you know. And they meant it. And to me, that was like, it was almost like music, you know. You know, having coming from the reservation and not really been, say, given a lot of, say, responsibility or given a lot of respect, you know, Nam was the place where I got a lot of respect. And so therefore, you know, I tried to be, you know, good corpsman.

HAROLD BARSE: Back in the '60s, everything was a race problem. Blacks were on one side, whites on the other side. And you didn't get between them except in the bush in Vietnam. It didn't make any difference what color you were. You had to depend-- If he was black, you had to depend on him. If he was a Southern cracker, you had to depend on him. And that took away the racial stuff out in the bush. They had the problems in the base camps and stuff. But when you're out in that jungle, it doesn't make any difference what color that guy is next to you. You've got to depend on him.

JIM NORTHRUP: It was spooky enough in Vietnam to shoot at those people and go look at them because they had, you know, almost same color skin, same color hair and color eyes. And the spirit they had of making do with what they had, kind of like Indian people.

14:32
MYRON WILLIAMS: I think the thing that really sticks out in my mind and it kind of really shook me all the way down to, I guess, right down to the soul was when, while we were in a place and we were moving these people out, and we created places like they call kill zones. So what we were doing was herding these people out of there. And this old man came up to me. He just came up to me and he kept going, "Same, same," you know. "Same, same." And he'd stand beside me. And he left and he came back, and he had two chickens. And they were skinny things and, you know, the butts on them were all red. There was hardly no feathers, and he kept trying to give them to me. "Here." Not really "here," but, you know, he'd hold them up and I'd tell him I didn't want them and keep pushing them back. So we're walking and and he was just walking down and he'd hold onto my arm like that, "Same, same." I just, "Yeah." I said, "You'll be okay."
Then I looked up and seen all these people. They were herding them to all one area and they had these Chinooks were out there and they were loading them on there. The people were crying and everything else, and they didn't hardly have nothing. And they were throwing everything in piles and they were burning them and their hooches. We were burning on all their hooches. And their water buffalo and stuff, we were herding them into that field. And I didn't really know what was going on at that time. I thought they were just herding into there. And later, I guess, we killed them all. They killed everything, all the water buffalo, and burnt everything down and they were herding these people out.
And while I was sitting out there, I think what really dawned on me was, this is what they did to my people 100 years ago. The same thing. And I guess it was after that that kind of my whole enthusiasm, or whatever it was, for that war just kind of just went. And about two weeks later is when I was wounded.

NARRATOR: In 1985, the Vietnam Veterans Intertribal Association held a national powwow in Sisseton, South Dakota. The purpose of this event was to honor the Indian veterans and provide a setting where they could come together and help each other heal the wounds.

HAROLD BARSE: Indian people have always respected their veterans. It's never made any difference, you know, with the politics of the war. If it was a good war, bad war. They recognize these people who have done a sacrifice for them. When they serve, they're serving for their people. They're serving for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, or they're serving for the Kiowa people. Or they're sacrificing for the Sioux people. And that's who they do it for. And Indians recognize this. So when they come home, you know, they come home with honor and dignity, not like so many of the non-Indians who came home to outright hostility from Vietnam.
    Yet, that does not keep you from having problems. Indians are human beings too. Traumatic events are traumatic events for us, as well as for non-Indian people. And the only thing Indian people do to help-- they recognize this. Indian people have recognized that war changes people. For centuries and centuries and centuries, they've known this. So when you send a person to war, something happens to him out there. But they're not held in any low esteem. You know, they'll recognize that these people did something that is completely against the law of the universe. They stepped into total turmoil, disruption. And they did this for their people. They made this sacrifice. They gave up something for the people.
    And when they bring them back in, they need to be taken care of, but they're also honored for the sacrifice that they made. You know, they had to pay a price for being a Vietnam veteran, being a combat veteran. And they're always going to carry this. That price is always a steep price to pay. And they're always going to have some of these things. The nightmares and things like that, you know, they may be with them periodically from now on. That's just one of the prices you pay for being a warrior.
     Hopefully, you know, this thing, the powow we're having here in Sisseton now, that we'll be able to, you know, that it'll be a healing process. Some of those wounds that are still open, you know, will now be taken care of. That circle will once again become closed.

POWWOW ANNOUNCER: I'm going to ask now that you'll be attentive for just a few minutes.

VETERAN: [Reading] On November 1st, 1967, my unit was operating in a place called Boi Loi Woods. At that time, we knew we were going into a place that was very bad. Usually, we go in quite a few helicopters at a time. But they said, "No, this time you're going into a clearing, that's only going to hold three helicopters. You guys got to secure the area first."
At that time, I was a 20-year-old sergeant in charge of them, making decisions over life and death. And I knew what fear was at that time because I didn't know how to react to it. This time, I was going to see them face to face. So then the first wave went in. They went in. And the second wave. Now I was in the third wave. I told them then to "Get out as fast as you can. Get down. Keep covered. Keep holding them back." And as soon as we got there, the mortar fire and machine gun fire was already there. So we stayed there all that day until the rest of the helicopters got in there and the rest of the battalions got in there.
And that night, they came again in full force. Three times that night, they overrun us. And three times, we repelled them. We fought all that night, and the next day. And the next day, they came back again. And we fought them again and we repelled them again. We stayed there for seven days. And finally, on the seventh day, I was wounded. And that was when I came home.

HAROLD BARSE: We found that those even non-Indian vets who came home to a good support system, good family support system, a good community support system, seemed to have less problems than those that came home and didn't find a good support system. And the Indians, we just emphasize a little more the support.
And it's not like-- it's not like a pat on the head. "Good job, you did great. That's fine." The Indian people, the families, the extended family-- in a way, you'll see this at the powow-- assume some of the burden of this individual himself. They're there to support it. And they assume some of the problems, you know. You know, it's just not a-- like I said--it's not a pat on the head. "Good job" and it's over with. These people actually out there dancing, they show their support, they show their love for the individual and shoulder some of the problems, you know, that he's dealing with.

RON HERNANDEZ: These are some of the people I went to school with, some of the people that I grew up with, some of the people I played with, walked around in the countryside with. I especially remember Blair Two Crow's name because he's the person I went into the service with from Martin, South Dakota. And we talked of the time when we would see each other again after the war. Apparently, he didn't make it. A bomb blew up in front of him and blew him away.

23:16
NARRATOR: Ron Hernandez served with C Company 1st Battalion, 66th Artillery in 1969. He is employed as an architect by HGA Associates in Minneapolis and is currently setting up an independent firm of Native American designs. He travels frequently to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where he's working on a project for a museum at Wounded Knee.

RON HERNANDEZ: A lot of the problems that a lot of Native American Vietnam vets have is much deeper than just the drugs and the alcoholism. It just runs deeper. I think there's a lot of inner things that are happening within that person, you know. Be it cultural differences or what they've seen or what they experienced, you know. The mud and the blood and, you know, all those things. I think that is deeper than the drugs itself.
    I was in artillery and I was on a 175 gun, which shot 20 miles. So, naturally, I couldn't see-- we couldn't see--what we hit, killed or damaged. Our forward observer, which was in a helicopter plane, would come back and tell us how much we killed. But to look down and see a dead Viet Cong there, you know, his head blown away from a 50 caliber, to see that, you know. And back home on a reservation, you see dead dogs and cats and deer and whatever, you know.
    But to see that Viet Cong, there was, it's quite an experience. It was like going to a wax museum and seeing all these wax figures. You know, there's no spirit or soul in that wax museum. But to look down and see something similar to that, you know, it's quite an impression. You know, then you start to see everything in plastic and your body is just plastic and tubes and meat and blood and, you know, there's no soul and spirit in it. Or there is one in there, and you somehow start to separate that, and you come back to the states and you carry that with you because life is, really, nothing.
    I mean, you have that mentality from basic training. Kill, kill, kill, kill. So you carry that with you. And then the law in Vietnam was really not there. But the law on the state side is here. Reality is, there's a law. But in Vietnam, I mean, you kill somebody, you could get a medal. You know. You kill somebody up here, you do time, you know.
26:22
VETERAN: I felt insecure after you got two weeks to reenlist. But when I took that uniform off, I felt like, you know, nobody gave a shit for me.

RON HERNANDEZ: That's right.

VETERAN: Nobody cared. My family. Nobody, I couldn't adjust. But the only thing I had was that uniform hanging on the wall there. When I put it back on, then I feel comfortable. I'm somebody. I'm me. Did you ever get that feeling, the insecurity?

RON HERNANDEZ: I think I didn't quite get that feeling, but I knew I was there. The reason why I knew I was there was, I knew I was there because I experienced it. But nobody else knew it. And I wanted people to know it, but no one seemed to care, especially from a border town like Gordon, Nebraska, you know, where the stereotyping is really high there. Racism is high, and they look at Indians a certain way. And to find a Vietnam vet--

VETERAN: In the middle of that, right.

RON HERNANDEZ: Yeah, was nothing. Six months, I spent my time there just searching and, you know, feeling all those things. "So this is America," you know. "This is what I fought for,” you know.

VETERAN: Yeah.

RON HERNANDEZ: Yeah. And getting all these remarks. And it's hard, you know. And that's why I said there's differences between-- You know, there's no colorblindness. There's differences, and I don't think we should apologize for that.

28:10
GRADY RENVILLE: I came home and I got discharged at Treasure Island. And I flew back to South Dakota and I hitchhiked the last 60 miles or so. And I had my marine uniform on. Of course, it's the only clothes I had at the time and my little medals, and I had a suitcase. And I was standing on a road and I could not get a ride to save my life. And I guess the reality of life in America, you know, hit me smack in the face.

GERALD LIDLE: The first time I went to Vietnam, I was 19 years old. I turned 20 in Vietnam. And that was really the most hazardous tour of duty in Vietnam because I did see a lot of action. I spent a lot of time as an infantryman in the jungles and in the rice paddies. And I saw a lot of people die that first time in 1967, '68. And it hardened me. It hardened me to a point where I-- I didn't believe in a lot of the things that I'd been taught to believe in. The goodness of man and God and trust, things like that. And that first tour in Vietnam destroyed a lot of things within me.

29:58
NARRATOR: Gerald Lidle served with A Company 4th Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade in 1967, '68, and again in 1971. He is currently enrolled at USD in Vermilion, finishing a degree in criminal justice.

GERALD LIDLE: I did my part. I did what was asked of me, and I did it to the best of my ability. And now, and now, you know, I can't say that I think that I deserve what everybody else does, but I want to have that option, you know. I want to have the option of being able to say, "Yeah, I fought for what America thought was right, so I shouldn't be put down anymore." In one case, a fellow police officer who didn't realize that I was Indian, didn't know me that well, was talking about Indians and making jokes and making fun of Indians. And I finally told him that I was Indian. And his remark was, "Yeah, but you're a good Indian, you know." And that made me madder than the jokes he was telling. I shouldn't have to hear that. I don't want to hear it. And now, not when I went into the army, or not when I got out of the Army, but now since coming back to college, coming back to school, I'm getting into my roots and I'm starting to feel like I belong. And that's in the Indian culture, Indian Lakota culture. I'm starting to take an interest in Lakota language and the values and history. I'm drifting more into that than I ever have, and I'm proud to be an Indian.

HAROLD BARSE: All societies, even the one we live in, recognize that there's a contract between, if you're gonna send somebody to war, there's an unwritten contract saying that you're gonna bring these people home with honor and respect. And it's always happened, even with this country, except for the Vietnam War. The frustration of the country being torn apart by the divisiveness of the war, its frustration fell upon the Vietnam vet himself. They turned out to be the bad guys. So that's caused a great deal-- They broke that sacred unwritten contract. This country broke that contract. And that's probably why there's the magnitude of the problems among the Vietnam veterans. Why the problems have persisted so long.

32:57
VERNON WHITE: When I first got back, I don't know, I had a lot of anger in me, I guess. I don't know why. Maybe because, you know, I understood more about it after I got back than I did when I was over there. You know, I didn't-- I didn't have no idea what, you know, except I thought I was doing my job, you know. Then I ran into other people and talked to them, and everybody seemed to be against the war. And so I just, you know, never talked about it and just kept it to myself and my opinions. And just got angrier and angrier. And I did a lot of drugs, I suppose, and drinking. That was part of it too, I guess, trying to forget.

JIM NORTHRUP: I think since the war, I've just been cruising along. No highs, no lows. I know the right time to feel emotions. Go to a funeral, you feel sad. You watched your son being born, you feel happy. I know that's the right time to feel those things, but I don't really feel them. Just cruise through.

GRADY RENVILLE: The reason, I guess, I suffered from delayed stress was that having been in the service for about seven years, we had a phrase that we used, we call it hardcore, you know. That was kind of a compliment if you were hardcore. But it had a negative effect when I did come home because up until that period in my life, I hadn't really experienced any intense emotions other than fear. But I hadn't really experienced grief and intense hate or intense love or anything like that. And in the Marine Corps, to some degree, you know, you try to suppress those kinds of emotions. You know, you're hardcore on the outside. And then after my brother got killed, you know, all of these emotions, you know, came out. And I had a hard time dealing with them.

35:30:
ANNOUNCER: At this time, ladies and gentlemen, we've been asked to read off the names of the US military personnel that was killed or missing or were captured in the Vietnam War from 1957 through 1984. These are all American Indians.
    Theodore Baltezore from Gettysburg, South Dakota. Killed in action, June 20th, 1979.
    Lawrence William Shay Jr. from Portland, Maine. Killed in action, 15th of June, 1966.
    James Bigtree from Syracuse, New York. Died of hostile injuries. Wounds received in hostile fire on the 11th of January, 1966.
    Conrad Flying Horse from McIntosh, South Dakota. Died of hostile injury Quang Nam 1970.
    Arden Renville from Sisseton, South Dakota. Killed in action.
    Garold Simmers from Rock Hill, South Carolina. Killed in action, 24th of February, 1969.
    Ronald Goodiron from Shields, North Dakota. Killed in action, 28th of February, 1968.
    Theodore Hatle from Sisseton, South Dakota. Killed in action.
    George Kilbuck from Bethel, Alaska. Died of hostile injuries, listed as missing, August the 27th of 1965.
    John McDowell from Corsica, South Dakota. Died of hostile wounds, January 9th, 1968.
    Josh Noah from Hugo, Oklahoma. Listed as missing and reported dead of hostile injuries, 20th of November, 1967.
    Gale Stow from Huntington Park, California. Listed as missing, killed in action, body not returned from Laos, on 11th of January, 1968.
    Jimmie Slim from Cow Springs, Arizona. Died of non-hostile activity, 4th of July, 1970.
    Gus Smith from Oso, Washington. Listed as killed in action, also listed as missing, 25th of April, 1970.

38:00
CHRIS WHITE: I was leaving. We went down to to catch a flight out. And it was-- I was really happy. And we got on a transport plane, and all of us were kidding around and grab-assing and stuff on a plane. And we were all going home. We'd made it and we were telling pilot, "Take off, let's go." And they started closing the rear doors of the plane, and then they stopped before they closed completely shut. And they started opening back up again, and I guess it was one of the members of the flight crew, Air Force person, that was on the plane, said, "We got some more passengers coming on." And I said, "Well, get them on so we can get the hell out of here." And there was a forklift that came up and placed several caskets in the plane with us. And it got quiet in the plane. And we started thinking about those guys, how they were going back, how we were still alive.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that there's a lot of guilt concerning coming home when a lot of our buddies didn't come back?

CHRIS WHITE: Guilt on whose part?

INTERVIEWER: On our part.

CHRIS WHITE: I think... I guess there is. Some of us probably feel a little bit of guilt that we don't understand why that we were the ones to come back. Some of the others didn't make it back alive. That we see some of our brothers that's not able to walk right. Some of them have nervous disorders and things of this nature that's still affecting them now. That Vietnam took so much from so many of them, our young men and women that were over there.

40:22
VERNON WHITE: I’ve got a lot of medical problems now since I came back. I don't know if it's from the Agent Orange or what. I have some kind of-- might have some kind of bone cancer and I have anemia. And diagnosis, I have a systemic lupus. I don't know if the chemicals over there used caused it, and the doctors don't seem to know and they won't tell me anyway, no.

PAT NORTHRUP: I've just come to realize, you know, how much my father was affected, how much he carried, how much responsibility he carried with him and not wanting his family to be burdened with that. And I see that, you know, having known Jim before as compared to now. It was like how my dad was before. He didn't share that much, you know. And now through the years dealing with the different areas in his life and how the Vietnam War affected him and stuff and how he's able to be proud, you know, be proud to have had those experiences, and they're like having teachings that he can help others and help maybe families to understand, you know, really what's happening inside.

JIM NORTHRUP: To fight a political war like Vietnam gave you the exposure to combat that this-- this line of warriors have had. But it was for-- it was a purposeless war. So you got the combat experience, but I don't want my son going to get his combat experience in Nicaragua or wherever the policy makers want to send these young guys. I know I have one other son who's 15, he wants to go. And I keep telling him, you know, he's come under the influence of "Rambo" and things. And I see this, it's real common among kids that age group, you know, that idealize the military and that way of life. But they don't know what it's like to throw a body bag on a helicopter or throw a stretcher on the helicopter. And I guess-- I wish there was some way I could explain that to him-- that it's not all fun and games. It's deadly serious business-- making decisions that you're going to be feeling 20 years later.

43:24
Classroom visit scenes alternate with interviews
STUDENT: How often would these get the (indistinct)?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: It varies. Like I said, if you were in a camping area like that, it probably came in every few days. If you're up in combat zone, the first thing they always brought to you was ammo. That came ahead of food or anything else.

NARRATOR: Clarence Belgarde served with K Company 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines in 1967 and '68. He's currently an x-ray technician and director of ambulance services at the Indian Health Service of Belcourt.

CLARENCE BELGARDE: Laying at the hospital. We had some nurses there. I think about it before I left, the health lady come up here now. Well, what am I going to-- We'll wait and see what questions they asked to what you want to talk about. You know, it's hard to say, you know, try and talk about six, seven months’ worth in a matter of a couple minutes, you know, half hour or so. Then again, you wonder, you know what you really want to talk about.

STUDENT: What kind of stuff did you use to fight with?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: I carried a machine gun. I carried an M60 machine gun. But the thing, now I look back on it, a machine gunner's life expectancy in combat is 3.5 seconds. So you are only supposed to live like three, four seconds long. And it stood to reason, anytime you opened up with an automatic weapon, they always try to knock it out. And we were trained to do the same thing. If somebody opened up on you with an automatic weapon, everybody would shoot at them, try to knock it out because he puts out the most fire. Like, some of the questions that goes along the lines, you know, you see so many of these "Rambo" movies. That's the thing that, you know, that they were talking about.

STUDENT: On that show, "Rambo," and he jumped right off and he made it.

CLARENCE BELGARDE: Yeah, he wouldn't have made it though if it would've been the real thing. Because even a hand grenade--within 15 feet of just a regular hand grenade, generally, you don't get away because the fragments fly. You're going to get hit bad. So if you are within 15 feet of it, you've had it, just like there on the show. It showed him in the mouth of that tunnel, and they shot a 3.5 rocket launcher. You know, 3.5 rocket or bazookas as they call them. Fired that right into the tunnel, and that blew up. There was no way he could have made it out of there. It's a big joke because the guys don't get killed. It's like with "Rambo," you know. They don't get killed. If it was a real thing, they do die. You know, the odds are going to get you sooner or later. It's just a matter of when.
And that's like, I'm a firm believer, when your number's up, your number's up. There's nothing you going to do about it. Because I've seen guys over there that got hit through the arm, really, you know, nothing that major, and die on you. They go into shock and die. Which, to me, they shouldn't have died because they weren't hit that bad. When I took it through the neck, I should have never moved again. Technically, the concussion should have shattered the spine, it should've killed me because it's C2 level.
Now knowing as I do as an EMT, you were not handled very gently over there. Like, you're not working as an EMT. You get anybody with neck injuries, you handle them so carefully because you're scared you might do more damage. When I got shot through the neck, I had a broken neck and everything else, they took me by my feet and drug me out. You know. That's why I said if I knew then what I knew now, I'd have died, for sure. But, you know, what can you do? You're getting shot at. You can't say, "Well, geez, we got to move this guy carefully." When you're being shot at, you just get him out. Yes.

STUDENT: How old were you ?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: I was about 18.

STUDENT: How old were you when you got shot?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: Right around 18.

STUDENT: Were you always scared to get hit?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: I always was scared to get hit. It's-- I guess you just, you learn to be scared of dying after a while because you never know if the next morning you're going to be alive there or not.
One thing that you never had one of them ask you though, "Did you kill anybody?" I never had-- That was one question-- I was expecting that question to come up, but that never did.

INTERVIEWER: It is interesting.

CLARENCE BELGARDE: Yeah, there was not one of them that asked that because I think a lot of them think along the lines like, when you watch a movie now, you're seeing them, they'll see people kill, but the person isn't doing anything. He's either dropping artillery shells or whatever. Artillery coming, bombs being dropped. They don't really think about, especially with the infantry, that you're looking at the person that you're shooting. You know, you're looking down the sights of the rifle at the guy you're going to shoot. You know, because you have to aim to get it.
It's a matter of, it comes down to you get them before they get you. You know. It's--it's hard to explain why. I said a lot of it was just plain brainwashing is what it came down to. You were taught not to think. You were taught, "In this situation, you react by doing this." You know, you didn't think, "Well, geez, should I do or shouldn't I do?" Because in the combat situation, if you just take time to stop and think about it, it's too late.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever run into any of the Native Americans?

CLARENCE BELGARDE: Not really. Well, I had one guy. Can't think-- To this day, I don't remember his real name. We just called him “Chief.” He was from Oklahoma. And he died in about January that year. The company got overrun-- the company he was with. But he was the only other one that I really ran into over there. To this day, I still don't remember his name. The only thing I knew him by was Chief.

MYRON WILLIAMS: If you look at a lot of the Vietnam veterans and look through a lot of the, I guess, Indian activist periods and stuff like that, you'll find a lot of them are Vietnam veterans. And if you look through a lot of their tribal councils and stuff like that, you'll find that there's a lot of Vietnam veterans still even there that are still involved in that and, you know, pushing their tribes towards, I don't know what you call it, government call it self-determination or--

INTERVIEWER: Sovereignty?

MYRON WILLIAMS: Sovereignty. But they're still moving towards that, that they can take care of themselves. I think that's probably a tribute to Vietnam veterans because they've had to get up and, you know, kind of shake off that image that they've had and come back and say, "Well, we are leaders."

49:05
GRADY RENVILLE: Because when you come back from the service, you come back with forgetting for a minute, a moment, the, say, the delayed stress and kind of the mixed feelings that I had immediately after the war. But you come back with a lot of, you know, skills. Or at least I did. When I came back, having served in the army, I was in-- When I was in the army, I was in administration. In finance. I did that kind of background. And, of course, when I was a Navy, I had medical background. And you come back with a certain amount of maturity. You come back with a certain amount of confidence.
I mean, some people have the misconstrued idea that there's a fence around the reservation, or you have to get a pass to leave, but it's not that way at all. And admittedly, you know, I've wanted to leave a number of times, but I felt that my survival in Vietnam was almost spiritual or religious. And by that, I mean that when I came home for my brother's funeral when he was killed, I came in the back door of our house, and my mother grabbed me and she started crying. And she said, "I thought you would be the one that was going to get killed in Nam."
And I thought about that for many years. And I think that I was spared-- I mean that sounds a little pretentious, I guess, on my part. But I think that God spared me to come back and to live and to work on the reservation. And I guess I've been true to that ideal. Of course, the other part of the ideal is that, so that my brother's death was not in vain.

51:28
VETERAN: I don't think that the American Indian has to go into the service to survive. I think they go because they want to. I think they go because they're super patriots. I mean, any powwow you go to, the American flag--after all that the United States government has done to Indian people--the American flag is still there. Always. You'll always see it there. And I think they're super patriots. I think any war that the United States will fight, there'll be Indians in a higher, at a higher ratio involved in the actual fighting.-

VERNON WHITE: I guess they do feel there's a lot of pride in, you know, serving your country. And well, you serve your country, you're serving, you know, like, protecting your people too because we're in this country too. And I guess maybe that's one way of saying, you know, you can have pride in yourself. I am-- By myself, I just look at it as a job, you know. Something I did, you know-- And I asked to go over there, so I can't complain about it, you know. You know, if I didn't enlist, I probably never went to Vietnam. I probably never even went in the Army. There's this-- I was young looking for some adventure maybe, I don't know. After, I kind of mellowed out since then. I don't look for excitement no more.

53:22
GRADY RENVILLE: Well, one of the things the Vietnam experience has done for me, I guess, is that, probably the most profound experience that I could say a tribute to Vietnam is that it's given me an attitude that I've never had before. And this attitude is not a boast or it's not that this country owes me anything, or anything like that, but what it does is it's giving me, it has solidified my place in this country. I mean, I don't have to take, you know, backseat to nobody now. I mean, I paid my dues.
I was talking with my young son the other day and I was asking of him, I was asking him if he wanted to go into service when he gets out of school. And he says, shakes his head and he says, "No." And that's all right see. And I told him that because I paid our dues. His uncle who was killed in Vietnam paid the price. And he don't have to go. You know, he can go to college and whatever else he wants to do.

54:52
Classroom visit
TEACHER: Well, I think the sixth grade would like to do something to honor you. And the way that we can honor you is by singing the "Marines' Hymn" for you. So if...

CLARENCE BELGARDE: They know it?

TEACHER: They know it.-

CLARENCE BELGARDE: I haven’t heard that in years.

TEACHER [to class]: Okay. And remember what we talked about, respect. So, let's sing with pride.

Teacher and class singng:
From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli We fight our country's battles
In the air on land and sea
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marines
Our flag's unfurled to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun
We have fought in every clime and place
Where we could take a gun
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes
You will find us always on the job
The United States Marines

CREDITS
Producer Deborah Wallwork
Associate Producer Pam Needham

Production Assistants:
Ross Rorvig
Torry Norling

Interviewers:
Bob St. John
Mike Toahty
Pat Janis

Film Researcher:
DeeAnn Dart
Great American Stock

Music:
Kevin Locke,    “Lakota National Anthem”
Jim Pepper,    “Custer Gets It”

Special thanks to:
Sam and Jayce DeCory
Joe Flying Horse
Tom Irons
Bill Iron Moccasin
Harold Iron Shield
Les LaFountain
Norman Redwing
Chuck Richards
Charity Shatz
VA Hospital, Fargo, North Dakota
Sisseton-Wahpeton Vietnam Vets
Oglala Lakota Vietnam Vets
Standing Rock Vietnam Vets

Photos Courtesy of:
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
North Dakota Historical Society

Vietnam Footage Furnished By:
Department of Defense, Norton Air Force Base

This program was supported in part with a grant from
Film In The Cities, with funds made available by
The Jerome Foundation
The National Endowment for the Arts
The American Film Institute

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1987 | 57mins