John E. Flinn

Wood: Today is August 25, 2016. I'm Cameron Wood. We're here at the Ohio History Connection with Mr. John Flinn, to discuss his military experiences. Mr. Flinn, can you please say and spell your name for me?

Flinn: My name is John Edward Flinn. My last name is spelled F-L-I-N-N, which is usually a problem. People always want to spell my name with the Y.

Wood: What was Where and when were you born?

Flinn: I was born September 20, 1948 in Akron, Ohio.

Wood: What was it like growing up in Akron, Ohio?

Flinn: Akron, Ohio was a pretty nice, quiet town. I have pretty much had a blissful youth until my mother died when I was 14. Used to shovel snow, rake 00:01:00leaves, work with that YMCA, used to volunteer, but was a member of the YMCA, went swimming, sold the Mets every year, things like that. My father was the pastor and founder of the New Hope Baptist Church, so I was involved in church most of my life.

Wood: What was it like being the son of a pastor?

Flinn: Its, We called it PKs, Preacher's Kids. We had to learn how to be twofold, and twofold, I mean, you knew that your father's reputation depended upon your conduct and character, so you had to conduct yourself in a certain way, but You also understood that he was still your father, and that's kind of a 00:02:00juxtaposition, because you hear him talk about love all the time, and then at home, you say, "Well, he's chastising me. That doesn't feel like love, but he's always saying, 'I'm doing this because I love you.'" You're like, "Okay."

Wood: Did you enjoy school when you were growing up?

Flinn: Yes, I did. I was a quiet child. I read a lot. I was really into science fiction, and went to Schumacher School, had a great time. I had Mrs. Stambaugh there. She was a great teacher. I remember her. She's the one that introduced me to reading, and I just fell in love with it. I went to Simon Perkins Junior High School. I had a good time there. At that time, I was one of the few blacks in the classes there at Schumacher and Simon Perkins, and even at Buchtel High 00:03:00School. As a matter of fact, I just came back a few weeks ago from our sixtieth class reunion.

Wood: Being one of the only African American people, did that ever cause you any?

Flinn: No. It was just a fact, that there were not many black people around, and you were one of the few that were. Just one of those facts of life, and I had lots of friends, and so it didn't really impact me at all.

Wood: When did you first get interested? Were you ever interested in the military growing up?

Flinn: Oh, yes, yes. I watched war movies. I loved war movies. I didn't know that this was a precursor of what was to come, but I loved watching those movies. It was just one of the things, every chance I got, I would watch a movie about war. Yeah. The submarines, you know the battles, the big ships on the 00:04:00seas, airplanes. As a matter of fact, I thought I wanted to be a pilot when I was growing up. Yeah.

Wood: Did your family have a history of military service?

Flinn: I wasn't aware of it, but I found out later that one of my uncles had been in the Navy, but it wasn't really a thing that was talked about, or we were give information about. It just wasn't. Yeah.

Wood: When you were growing up, what were your plans to do after high school?

Flinn: I really didn't know, but being from Akron, Ohio, it was almost a given that you would graduate from high school, you would get a job at one of the big rubber companies in Akron, and make lots of money, live happily ever after. That 00:05:00was just what we thought. Nobody said that, but that was the general feeling that you got.

Wood: How did that work out for you?

Flinn: I did work for a while with BF Goodrich, but it really didn't -- I was at a certain point in my life, after I graduated from high school, I became rebellious. I think I was always rebellious. I just had kept it under wraps, and I became just a little bit rebellious after high school, and that's just the way it went.

Wood: How did your rebellion show itself?

Flinn: My rebellion showed itself in the fact that I was working at Saint Thomas Hospital at the time, and I came home from work drunk one time, and passed out in my father's bed, and I was kicked out of the house. Yup. Yeah, it was just a 00:06:00matter of fact. I knew better than that, and I knew it was going to happen. I didn't know it was going to happen, but I knew that was not acceptable behavior. I knew that. I knew that. I knew that, so I rode with the results, and went to stay with my uncle.

Wood: How was, did you enjoy living with your uncle?

Flinn:Yes, because I had freedom. He was not my father, so therefore, he had his own life, and didn't bother with me so I was about 18, and so he just kind of let me go, and I had a good time, was partying, and hanging out with guys, and just doing the teenage thing.

Wood: So when did military service become a reality for you?

Flinn: It became a reality in 1968. I was enrolling in the University of Akron 00:07:00to be a student there, because I had been hanging around people, and people told me that I was smart, and that I needed to go to school, and better myself. I went to register for the University of Akron and When I got there, what happened during the registration process, they asked me about my selective service. I'm like, "Well, I don't have a selective service number." The reason for that was that we had been told, at some point in time, I don't exactly remember, but we were supposed to register with a selected service board, and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done that because I thought if I didn't register, they wouldn't know. I didn't know that the school would send them a list, or something like that. As I'm registering, they tell me that I needed to have a selective service designation. I didn't have one, so somebody sent me down, and talked with me, 00:08:00and told me that because I didn't do that, that I could possibly be in prison, or have to pay a $10,000 fine. I left the University of Akron, went straight to the Selective Service Board, which they gave me the address of, and volunteered my draft, because I was afraid of going to prison or have to pay $10,000, which I didn't have.

Wood: Right.

Flinn: It was the most logical thing to do, I thought. What happened almost immediately, I received my draft notice quickly, I think within a week. I was taken up to Cleveland, to the regional center up there, and I was inducted into the military. The most memorable thing about that was that as we were standing in line there, they went down the line, and said, "Army, Marine, Army, Marine, 00:09:00Army, Marine." I thought that I might become a Marine, and I looked up the line real quick, and did a quick calculation, and said, "Ooh, I'm going to be Army." I didn't want to be a Marine. I don't know why. I guess I did know why, because I'd seen them hit the beaches, and I'm like, "That's not good." In the movies. I said, "I don't want to be a Marine." That night, I was flown down to Fort Knox, Kentucky. You have Fort Knox.

Wood: Fort Knox, Kentucky?

Flinn: Yeah. I think it's Fort Knox, Kentucky. Yeah, I was flown to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I began my military career. We got there. We got our haircuts, and we put in the barracks and carrying on, and I really enjoyed it. I was healthy and physical, and I enjoyed the training, and I enjoyed the challenge, and 00:10:00excelled. One of the things that I had recognized was that they had looked at me for leadership training. They had looked at me for officer's candidate school, and so these were things that were in the back of my mind. As I went through basic, I got a chance to do some leadership. I became a squad leader, temporary E-4, E-3, something like that, E-2, something like that. Squad leader, and had a chance to try to get one of our barracks in order, and had a little bit of authority. I liked that, and I liked the challenge that it presented, and we got them together.

It would be marching every day, and we'd be singing the chants. I want to go to Vietnam. I want to go to Vietnam. I want to kill the Viet Kong, in our marches 00:11:00every day. I didn't really pay attention to that. It was fun It was a new and exhilarating experience, and I was having fun. I was having a good time. I graduated from boot camp, and I went to Fort Polk, Louisiana for my advanced infantry training. That was fun also, and one of the things that was prominent in the military was that we were allowed to go through the PX and get beer, and I liked that. I graduated from advanced infantry training, AIT, and it then began to dawn on me that we'd been doing the talk. We realized that we were probably going to Vietnam, and I remember the chants, and I'm like, "If I go to Vietnam, it's a possibility I could die. I don't want to die. I don't want to get killed."

Then I invoked something, that's why I called nuggets that they had given me, about leadership training, and I took some leadership training. I told them I wanted to go to -- They wanted to go to officer's candidates' school. I said, "No." I said, "Is there anything else?" They said, "NCO school." I said, "I'll go to NCO school." I went to NCO school in Fort Benning, Georgia, and I really liked it because I like to dress. You probably can see that. I like to dress, so we had this shiny red -- We had the shiny helmets. We had the starched uniforms every day, the polished boots, and my shoulders were back. Feeling it. Getting respect, because we were NCO candidates and stuff like that.

I'm doing this, and I'm doing fairly well at doing this. One day, I think I went 00:13:00to a dental appointment to see about my teeth, and on my way back, which is my usual practice, I would stop at the post exchange, and get me a pitcher of beer before I went back to training. This one day, I'm there getting this pitcher of beer, and these guys are sitting there. They're banged up, and they're talking about Vietnam. I go over, and I talk with them, and I find out that they had came through NCO school. What they related to me was that after going through NCO school, they'd went to Vietnam, and they had been on long-range patrols. We drop behind enemy lines, and be given a group to do some intelligence, and stuff like that.

I'm like, whoa. This is more than what I bargained for. I went back to my barracks, and I went to the headquarters, and I told them, I said, "I quit," 00:14:00because I understood by then that the military didn't understand the concept of quit. I knew that I would stymie them with that. My plan, since I had some knowledge about the military, was to quit, and get placed in a casual company, where I would be reassigned. I had some typing experience from high school, so I figured I could type, I could become a clerk. I quit. They gave me 24 hours to think about it, and I quit. I remember my commanding officer, I remember his name, Captain Brown. Captain Brown was black, and he tried to impress upon me the concept, this is a great opportunity for you. Why do you want to mess it up?

I was resolute in the fact that I don't want to die. That was my concept. I don't want to die, and from what I understand, I have a good chance of dying, 00:15:00which was my original thing for getting there, trying to avoid going to Vietnam and dying, or get killed. Finally, they understood that I was resolute, and I was sent to casual company. I think within a week or two of being a casual company, I'm going around trying to make contacts, trying to find somebody that could get me to somebody that would help me to get a clerical MO, clerical military operations specialty, MOS. Before I could get that done, I received orders to report to Scout Dog Training School. I'm like, "Hmm. This sounds like fun. I'm not going to Vietnam, so it's cool," so I went for it.

The Scout Dog Training School was very lucrative. Other words, we trained from 00:16:008:00 to about 4:00, 4:30 every day, and every night, we had a pass. We could go to town anytime we wanted, so this was wonderful. Didn't grow up with dogs, never really had a feeling for dogs, but this is what I need to do to keep from going to Vietnam, so I'll do it. I did it, and I became rather proficient at it. I was challenged to go to off leash training, which would be before -- In the training, we trained a dog with him attached to our left wrist by a leash, and we give commands, lay down, roll over, search, things like that. If he was away from us, how to get him to come back to us, and hand commands, and a couple things.

Now I was going to a more advanced training, which would be that now he would be off the leash all the time, and I would command him with hand signals. I'm 00:17:00beginning to start this thing. I was like two or three weeks into this, maybe less than that. I'm not sure, but all of a sudden, I get called into the headquarters, and I'm trying to remember. I can't remember the name of the room, where the captain and everybody else was at. This is a Orderly room. I was called into the orderly room. I was presented with orders for Vietnam. My understanding of this was that I came in the military in March of '68, and now it was May of '69. I had felt rather successful. I successfully manipulated the military into keeping me state side for that long, and I figured that if I could stay that long, because I knew the tour was a year tour, and that I could 00:18:00probably not go to Vietnam, because I wouldn't have a year left, but I guess there was some rules or something, but I got scheduled for Vietnam.

Now I'm on my way, and I get a 15-day leave, and I go home, and I talk to my father about it. I'm like, "Daddy, you're a pastor, and the Bible says thou shall not kill, and what should I do?" He said, "Johnny," he said, "In this world, you have to do as the Romans do when you're under the command of the Romans." I'm like, "What the hell kind of answer is that?" Doesn't help me at all. I proceeded to go with my own plan, and my own plan was, everybody else got 30 days before they went to Vietnam, so I'm going to take 30 days. When I get to, actually, it was before May, because I went to -- It actually had to be in 00:19:00April that I got the orders, because I went to Vietnam in May.

I actually took the whole time, the 30 days, and I come into I think it was Oakland, California, and I'm reporting into the orderly room, and letting them know that I'm here, and that I'm here and Im 15 days late. I expected them to throw me in the brig, give me Article 15 disciplinary action, and that I would probably not go to Vietnam because of that, because I'd have the court proceeding, blah, blah, blah. I figured that would happen. It didn't happen. They said, "That's okay. You're going to Vietnam." I was like, "Oh, geez. I'm in." I'm not sure how many days it was, but I remember going downtown and the partying came back, and we got on a plane to Vietnam. It was a long flight. I think we stopped in Alaska. We stopped in Japan, and then we finally ended up in 00:20:00Long Binh.

The most horrendous sight that I saw at that particular time, and the sights, and the sounds, actually is when we were coming in, the Long Binh Airport was being mortar rounded. As we looked out the window, we could see all this black smoke curling up. Then as we disembarked from the plane, as we were walking down the right side, there was soldiers walking at the left side, going to the plane. Our uniforms were green, and bright, camouflage green, and still, these uniforms were faded. What was most important was the look on those guys' faces. It was this haggard, agony-torn look that they had. You could see, you could understand 00:21:00that they were happy to be leaving, but that happiness seemed to be burdened with a lot. It just seemed to express itself. I'm looking at them, shaking my head, like whoa, this is something else.

I come into Vietnam, and this sense of foreboding is already upon me, because I've seen these soldiers get on the plane. I'm hearing mortar rounds go off. I'm watching the black smoke rise all over the place, and when it was that, and I realized they were burning excrement. This is how they got rid of it, and I go, "Oh, this is someplace else." On the bus that took us over to the receiving station, they had bars on the window, and I'm looking at the people, and they're strange looking. The country is just strange It's just different, and I'm 00:22:00feeling this great sense of foreboding. I get to the temporary barracks that we were staying at, and we go through different training, in-country training to get us accustomed to the weather, and what we need to do here, and get our equipment, and stuff like that.

What happens is, there's mortar attacks all the time, and we're being jousted out of bed in the middle of the night. We got to run to the shelters, to get out of the way. I remember one occasion, I'm a very sound sleeper. I slept through a mortar attack, and they just ripped me up and down. You got to be out of the barracks during this, blah, blah, blah. I said, "Oh, here we go." Then I'm there, and I'm being assigned to my company. I'm being taken up to Chu Lai. I'm transported to Chu Lai. I'm transferred to Chu Lai, and it's a rear area there, 00:23:00and I'm supposed to report up to my LZ. I think it was LZ Hawk, and I think it's the LZ, but I'm not sure. I'm trying to get records down and verify that. I don't know if that'll be in there, but I think it was LZ Hawk Hill.

I'm supposed to go up. I'm in our replacement area, where guys come for temporary stay while they're waiting for transport. Deuce and a quarter truck would come down, and pick you up, and take you up to LZ Hawk Hill. I'm there, and I don't know where the decision come from, but I decided I'm not going to report. I decided I'm not going to report. I'm not going to go, and they come down. Johnny, you get on the truck. Let's go. No. I'm not going. I'm not going. We were leaving at so-and-so time. You better be on the truck. You got to go. I'm not going. I'm not going, because for some reason, I felt that if I went up 00:24:00to the LZ, that all hell would break loose, and that premonition was right. When I finally did, they finally convinced me that it was in my best interest to go up there, or else I would be -- For refusing orders, I would be going to Long Binh.

You can see my rebelliousness is always there. It's just under cover. I'm dancing the line. I'm pushing the envelope as far as I can, and when I see that I can't win, then I acquiesce. I go up to LZ Hawk Hill, and they go tents set up with cots that are for the new arrivals, and the rest of the guys got bunkers that they carved out of the ground, and they're in. During the day, we would be hanging out, doing little details. I remember having to dig a latrine, and stuff 00:25:00like that. Once you were there, you could order a pallet of beer. You could get a pallet of beer, and so we'd get a pallet of beer, and the guys -- We knew guys. We didn't have it, and they would share with us. We'd do that, and just drink, and talk about this and that. I was trying to get information about what was going on.

One of the most fantastic things that I've seen there, that really scared me to death, was there was this guy there. He was a white guy, and what he would do is every day at dusk, he would strip down, take off his jacket, and have his T-shirt on, and he'd take a couple knives, and he'd crawl through the barbed wire, and he would go out to kill the Viet Kong, and whatever NVA soldiers he would find out there. He would come back in the mornings, and I'm looking at him 00:26:00like, whoa. Is that what I'm going to become? I don't know. I don't know. One night, we get attacked. All of a sudden, we get Viet Kong in the wire, that we're firing, they're coming in. We bunker down in the bunkers. I run to somebody's bunker, get in there with them, and they come up into our area. They're in our area. They do kill them all, but it was just scary.

I'm feeling like we should be secure here. They should not be able to do this. Once again, that happens, and I'm really on edge about this whole situation. This is a really dangerous situation, and I just didn't have -- I don't know whether or not I really understood the concept of war from the movies I had watched as a youth, but all of a sudden, I'm like, this is more than what I 00:27:00thought it was. I'm out working one day, and I'm training with my dog. I got a dog. His name is Scout, and I'm training my dog, so I bring my dog in one day, and I guess I'd been working too close in proximity of one of the Vietnamese workers that came in, and so when I go to put my dog away, and I lock him in, and I walk away, one of the other guys who hadn't secured his dog good enough, with the tension reign so he wouldn't get away, the dog bites me in my left leg.

I understand our dogs, so when he clamps onto me, I just lay down, because I know if I struggle, he's going to struggle. I just lay down, and they finally get him off of me, and I got a dog bite, so I started getting that treated. Now I'm walking around. I got this dog bite. I'm getting it treated. I'm on crutches. I'm like, "Oh, god. This is really bad. This is really bad. If 00:28:00something happened, I'm not gonna get around," and I got all these scenarios going on in my mind. My wound gets infected, and so they have to cut a piece, the infection, they have to cut the infection out. When they cut the infection out, I'm in the infirmary there. The infirmary doctors decide that they're going to have to send me to Cam Ranh Bay for convalescence, it was called. 6CC, Convalescence and Care Center, something like that, but anyway, 6CC.

I go down to 6CC, and I get there, and they're saying it's through rehabilitation training during the day, where you're up every day. Were in Quonset huts, and throughout during the day, we got air conditioning. I'm not sure if it was air conditioning or fans, but it was cooler in the Quonset huts. Every evening after supper, we would go out. I'd band it with the black guys 00:29:00there. We were wearing the black wristbands, and we were doing the dap all the time. I banded with them, and so about 21 of us would go out to the beach. One of the guys had a reel to reel tape recorder, and we would just party out there. We could get marijuana in sandbags for about 20 MPC, which is the monetary equivalent of money over there. We could also get a carton of cool cigarettes that had the tobacco taken out of them and marijuana put into them, so we could smoke surreptitiously at different places during the day. Just light a cigarette.

We were doing this, and we were doing this, and we were doing this. Every night we were partying, and watching what we called, the planes taking people home, the freedom birds flight were going home, and we're like, "Yeah, one day, we'll 00:30:00be on one of those," and blah, blah. Just having a good time. I remember one of our favorite song is, I remember it, was we'd be playing on James Brown and popcorn. Oh, we just got the fooling over that. Yeah, we had a great time with that. Our ritual was when we had to go in, every night about 9:00, I think it was about 9:00 or quarter to be 9:00 we had to be back in quonset huts for the night. We would light up our -- We didn't roll joints then. We had pipes, because we had so much marijuana, we had pipes.

We put it in pipes, and we'd do our last pipe for the night because what would happen is the rock Marines would shell the sand pans in the sea out there, and we would watch this as our nightly fireworks show, with our nightly bowl of marijuana, nightly final bowl of marijuana. We'd been smoking many all night. 00:31:00We'd watch this show, and we were doing this for a while. One night, as we're getting ready to get ready for this, all of a sudden, we hear the tubes go off, go foop, foop, foop, foop, foop, and we hear the tubes. We're attentive enough to know that this is more than what it usually is, and that they're a little bit earlier. We're saying like, "They're really gonna do it one of the night."

I'm sitting there with my lighter. I can't remember the name of it now. I was going to say Bic, but it's not a Bic, but I'm setting there with my lighter, and I got my bowl. I'm lighting my bowl. I flick it, flick the thing back. I flick it, and I put it up, and I'm lighting my bowl. As I'm lighting my bowl, I see this big flame just flare up. I'm like, "Whoa," and I'm really high. The next 00:32:00thing I feel is this force just drives me up into the air, just propels me up into the air.I'm thinking, and all of a sudden, everything went deaf. I couldn't hear anything, and by then, I had some understanding that we probably had gotten hit by a mortar round. My thought was, as I went up in the air, as quiet and as peaceful as it seemed to be at that moment, I said, "I must be dead. I must be dead."

More mortar rounds came in, and as they exploded underneath me, I started to hear them, and I realized I wasn't dead. When I hit the sand, I began to low crawl, then crawl, the run to the nearest tube where there were shelters that 00:33:00had sandbag, these big pipes that you go into them, and they were about this big, had people on both sides of them. I ran towards that, and as I'm running into that, running into that, I hear the mortar rounds coming, but I hear them walking the mortar rounds down the beach towards me. I knew I got to really get there, and I'm zigzagging because all the training I took just fell into place. I started zigzagging, and I finally make it into the bunker.

I run into the bunker, and when I first run in, they jump me, because they don't know who I am. They jump me, and I said, "American, American, American." I go, and I sit down. Other people are coming through the bunkers, and I'm watching these people as they come in. They're coming here, and then they're 00:34:00disappearing. Look there they are. They come in, they disappear. I look there they are. I don't realize it, but I got shrapnel all the way down the left side of my body, and I had a piece of shrapnel went into my face here, which has caused my eye to swell, which has caused a lot of bleeding. I wasn't aware of the bleeding. I don't know how, because I was bloody from here on down, and I don't know how I missed that, but I missed it.

Finally, the all-clear sounds, and we were called out of the bunkers. We're lined up, and they're putting us on buses, taking us to the Air Force hospital. The medics come out, and they're hitting us with the morphine, to ease the pain. I'm not in any pain, but they're like, "No, you gotta have this," and they hit me with the morphine. They asked me how I'm doing. I said, "I'm doing all 00:35:00right." We get to the hospital, and they tell me, "You need to take off your -- " They took off my jacket, just got my blouse, my infantry blouse. They took it off, and then they tell me, "We need to take off your pants." I look down, and there's blood all the way down through my pants, and through my crotch area.

I'm saying to myself, "I don't want to know." They're begging with me. Come on, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this, so I finally do this. They tell me everything is okay. Later on, I learned, and I thought this was something reckless, because I was in a position like this, a piece of shrapnel hit here, which they said it would've went through my heart if it hadn't, if I hadn't had my arm up lighting my bowl of marijuana. Of course, I 00:36:00took that as an omen to smoke marijuana for quite a number of years after that. We're at the hospital. We get in, and of course, I'm worried about the rest of the guys that I'm with.

If you notice, I don't have any names. I don't have any names in my story, and the reason I don't have any names in my story is because for some reason, as part of my coping mechanism, I came to the concLusion that I couldn't remember names, because if I remembered names, and somebody got killed, then it would impact me. I would not be able to keep myself alive, for some reason. That logic came to me, and so I don't have any names for all of this history that I'm giving here, and that's something that bothered me for years, but I finally talked to some people who explained that to me, explained why that was. I still have trouble remembering names. Not all names, but I'm better at it now.

Anyway, we get put in a hospital. I've got patches on my face, and I got patches 00:37:00and everything. They go and they operate. They take the shrapnel out of my cheekbone. I still got shrapnel that lodged here in the back of my head, but it's just a miracle that I wasn't killed at that particular time. We're all awarded a Purple Heart because we were the recipients of hostile fire. We're all awarded a Purple Heart, all 21 of us. The most compelling thing about this event is that because of the Purple Heart that I was awarded, I had orders to come home from Vietnam. I had orders to come home, but because of my rebelliousness, and my insistence that I check on my other brothers that went and hid, make sure they're all right, and do other things that I wanted to do, my orders were 00:38:00rescinded. My orders were rescinded.

I had a chance, the opportunity, to go to Vietnam, be the recipient of the Purple Heart, and come home without ever going out with my dog in the field. I had that opportunity, and I kicked it in the butt. I kicked it in the butt. Now I'm sent back to my unit after that stay, so it had to be -- That happened in August of '69, and I'm back in my unit after healing sometime close to the middle of September, a little bit before the middle of September. I get back, and of course, I'm top man on the roster because I've been absent. I've been absent, and so I go out on the next mission. I go out on the next mission, and 00:39:00I'm scared to death. I don't want to go. I just feel.

I remember one movie I was watching, and in the episode, he said, "Sergeant, I feel bad about this. I just feel really bad about this," and I identified with that because I felt really bad about this mission. I felt really bad about it. Oh, this is going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. I can feel it already. I'm sitting on the tarmac, and they're coming through, and they're calling for me. I'm sitting there, me and my dog, I'm sitting there, and I don't answer, but they seem not to see me. They seem not to recognize that I'm there. I got this mental ballad going on. Should I go? No. I don't want to go. It's going to be bad. It's going to be terrible. I don't want to go. I got to go. I can't go. No, I don't want to. I got this mental ballad going on now.

Finally, something says, you got to go. You got to go. You can't avoid this. You got to go, so I'm here. I get on the chopper. I'm briefed about the mission. I'm 00:40:00going to out to walk this company in. They'd been out to establish themselves as a blocking force for another company that was out, and so I'm going out to spend the night with them, and walk them back in the next morning. I'm like, oh, ain't as bad as what I thought. It ain't as bad as I thought. This is going to be already good. They tell me it's a cold landing zone, a cold LZ, which means that there's no hostile fire going on there. Our standard operating procedure, depending on what we were said, it was a cold LZ, then I was being inserted. If it was a hot LZ, I was to be brought back until the LZ chilled, cooled down, and then I was going to be reinserted.

We go out, and we're just about there, and I guess it's the time tell it -- Being up in a chopper, and flying over Vietnam. You're looking at the rice 00:41:00paddies. It was a beautiful country, beautiful country, green fields, mountains in the distance. You could be there in the midst of a war and have this serene, peaceful, beautiful setting in the midst of war. It was just so juxtaposition to what we were doing, just so at odds with each other. We're getting in proximity of the landing zone of the company that we're going out to meet, and all at once, a 51 caliber opens up on the chopper, and we're taking hits on the chopper.

I tell the pilot, I said, "Take me back. Take me back." I said, "It's supposed to be a cold LZ. It's a hot LZ. Take me back." He says, "No, buddy. I'm gonna get you in I'm like, "No, take me back." He said, "No." He said, "I'm gonna 00:42:00bank around. I'm gonna turn the chopper on its side, and just jump out." I'm like, "No, I don't want to do this. No, no." It's kind of more agitating than that. It sounds so calm now, but then I probably was yelling a lot of obscenities and things like that. Of course, I got my dog. He's on my left hand. I got my AR-15 in my right, and my packs on my back. When he banks around, and whenhe banks around, the gunner pushes me out, pushes me out. I'm like, I don't want to go, but I get pushed out.

Now it's survival mode. I realize, I can't maneuver very much with this dog on my leash, so I shake my leash and just let him go. I got to let you go, buddy. I'm sorry, but I got to go, and I got to fend for me now. You got to fend for yourself. They're firing at me while I'm in the air, and I finally hit the 00:43:00ground, and I low crawl to the nearest cover, and it stops. Now I do my job. I gather my dog, and I walk the perimeter of this company. As I'm walking the perimeter of this company, I get bout three quarters of the way around, and there's a valley there. It goes in the top of a hill, and there's a valley there. In the valley, I see them passing out weapons. I call my captain. He was a German captain. I can't remember his name now, but --

I said, "Look, they're getting ready to attack us," and so we decide that maybe we should call mortar rounds, and we discussed it, and I said, "What are we gonna do?" He was like, "Call mortar rounds. Call artillery in on them." We call artillery on them. We pound them. They scatter, but then we put the word out. Everybody needs to get your foxholes really deep. We're going to get hit tonight. They're coming to get us, and everybody else is on the perimeter around 00:44:00the top of the hill. Headquarters is right here. I'm right here, because I'm attached to headquarters, so I'm not on the line. We wait, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait.

This is early. Let me see, about 8:00 or 9:00. It's getting dark. We wait all the way until about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. The first thing that happens is rocket propelled grenades are shot across our position from both sides. They let us know, we're on both sides of you. They come zooming across. They come zooming across. We're jumping. We're cowering down. Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes. The next thing, no, no. Grenades came first. No, back that up, because by this time, I'm on my air mattress, and I got to take a nap. I got to go to sleep, so I'm on an air mattress, and grenades come in from both sides. Grenades 00:45:00just start flopping into the center. Grenades are going off, and my air mattress is hit. The air comes out of it. I jump down in the foxhole. Then the RPGs come across. Okay, they're really coming. They're really coming.

I get into my hole, lock and load. I'm already locked and loaded. I'm just getting set up. I got magazines in front of me, magazines in my cache, and I'm ready, because this is going to be -- This is fight time. This is fight time. We're waiting for them to come, we're waiting for them to come, and we're hearing sounds that they are coming. As I'm looking down at the perimeter, I see them coming through a opening in front of me. I shout down to the right machine gunner, I said, "They're there, they're there, they're there." He turns and fires on them, but as he turns and fires, his bullets are skipping right up over them, because they came right up. They're skipping over them.

I call to the left gun, and I said, "They're there. They're -- " He's like, "They're not." I'm firing. I see that they're not making it, so it's up to me, so I'm firing down the chute. I'm shooting them as they're coming through. It's about five days before my 21st birthday. All that's going through my mind is that I'm going to die in Vietnam before I turn 21. I'm in my foxhole, and I'm shooting. I'm crying. I'm cursing. I'm running in place. I'm just having a total fit, but I'm shooting them, and I'm shooting them, and I'm shooting them, and I'm shooting them. It was just surreal, because it was like I was in two different worlds.

I'm in one world of fear and apprehension. I'm in another world of killing, and 00:47:00these two worlds are existing side by side. They're operating as one, and it's just amazing. We sufficiently stopped that, but they're still coming. We still stop them coming through the gap, but they're still coming. We're about to get overran, and so then we are, the word goes around, "Get into the bottom of your holes. We're gonna call in 155 rounds on ourselves to keep us from being overran." We get into the bottom of our holes, we call the 155. Spooky is there. This is a really big fight, because Spooky's there. Spooky is this big C-140 plane that has machine guns, and it puts bullets every eight feet. It's running out of the perimeter, just burning up the ground with bullets, but that's not 00:48:00stopping them.

We got artillery coming in. We got all kinds of stuff coming in, and it's not stopping them. We finally call 155 rounds on ourselves, and we made it. We made it. It's all over. It's all over. It's done. It's quiet. The smell of cordite is in the air from all the rounds we expended. There is kind of a fog of all the, I guess all the guns have been fired, kind of a fog there, but it's peace. There's quiet. We're checking. Nobody's hurt. Everybody has made it nobody's wounded, and then we hear a report that one of the guys with the infantry company had put a bayonet through his foot. He was like, "This is it. Get me out of here." That was a common way of getting out.

I felt sorry for the guys in infantry companies. I felt sorry for them because they were spending months out in the field. I was coming out for five days, and then I go back. They were spending months in the field. I understood, and I had no -- I was not negative about him. I had no bad things to say about him. I just understood. I just understood that there's only so much you can take, and at some point, you got to go. You got to get out of here. Dawn comes, and we're getting ready to walk out, and as we're getting ready to walk out, two NVA, Viet Kong soldiers jump up and say, "Chieu Hoi." Chieu Hoi means that they give up.

I'm not in the mood for taking prisoners. After what you put me through last 00:50:00night, yeah, I'm not in the mood. Chieu Hoi this. I fire my weapon. It jams on me. I'm like, damn. I was like, "Get over here." I get them over, gather them up. We tell the captain that we've got a couple prisoners, and they call in. They call intelligence. Intelligence sends out a chopper to pick up the two prisoners. From what I recollect, as the chopper going off, one of the guys tell me, he says, "They're gonna talk." I'm like, "Why?" He says, "They're gonna talk." One of the guys comes flying out of the helicopter. I said, "Oh. He's gonna talk. He's gonna talk." I'm like, "Okay."

We walk back into the LZ, and I'm back. I decide that it's time for some R and 00:51:00R. I just. For two days, I'm telling my first sergeant. My first sergeant was black. I'm telling him, "I got sunburnt." Ah, you aint got sunburn. Day two, I tell him, I got sunburnt, because I want to go to Danang. I've learned that at the track, you get on a chopper, you go to Danang, you go up there and hang out with the Air Force guys. You eat at the Air Force cafeteria, and just have fun. There's a bunch of guys over there. We get together, and smoke, and drink, and just have fun. They got an enlisted man's club up there in the canteen, so it's a place to go to party.

Finally, the third day, I'm standing in formation. I don't have my shirt on, and he's like, "Flinn, what's the matter with you?" I said, "I got a sunburn. I've 00:52:00been telling you for two days, I got a sunburn." I turn around and show him how the skin's peeling on my back, so he says, "Well, you need to go up." I go up, and I talk to the clerk there, I need a couple days. I need a couple days up here. Say you got to do, whatever you got to do, but give me a couple days, and then I'll get on the chopper in two or three days and go back. I go up to hang out, and hang out in Danang. I don't know what it was. I remember going up there many times hanging out. We'd be hanging out all night.

One of the things I discovered besides the marijuana was obesitol, which was a liquid speed that we would use to keep us up. Now I decide, "Okay, this is something I can take back with me, and next time I'm out, I can be up and be alert." Our whole theory was, at least my whole theory was, live, drink, and be merry, for tomorow we die. That was my constant. I had some camaraderie with 00:53:00the guys there that I was with, but I don't remember. I remember us doing things, and I remember dealing with the workers that came into the LZ to do stuff with the laundry and stuff, the kids, and then the women. Us doing stuff like if we needed some stuff, we would go and get it from another company, stuff like that.

What I remember most about it is our missions, my missions. I have no clue how many missions that I went on. I really don't. I didn't count. For some reason, I thought that counting was not a good thing. When it came my time to go, I just went, and did what I had to do, and come back. There were a few missions I went on that were particularly harrowing. One mission that I went on that was 00:54:00particularly harrowing, I'm walking point for -- We're at the LZ, and they say to me, "We're gonna walk point. We're gonna give you directions to walk. You walk to this position, and then we'll tell you where to go from that position, and then this. Surprise, we leave about 3:30, 4:00 in the morning. We leave of course in light. We're walking, we're walking, we're walking, and walking, and we give you directions, going, going, going, going, going.

Finally, we get to the designated point, and when I walk through the bush into the clearing, Mama-san is there set up with ice cold Coca-Colas. Scared the bejesus out of me. I almost killed them, because I didn't expected them. This was to be a secret mission. I didn't expect them. I always put my weapon on automatic walking point. Procedure was to put it on semi-automatic and fire a 00:55:00three round first, but I'm like, "No, you get 20 the first time, because I ain't go time to turn around, to see if I got you." You get 20 off the bat. You get 20 off the bat. I can reload. That just scares the dickens out of me. How did they know where we were going, when I didn't even know where we were going until we got there? That really scared me.

Another incident that happened is we're walking into a village, and as we're walking through this village, and one of the guys to lead. I'm in the front, and this Vietnamese women, she said, "Why are you here?" I said, "I'm here to fight for your freedom." She says to me, "How can you fight my freedom and you aren't free?" Such a profound statement from people who I thought were backwards. Im like Whoa. It gave me pause to think. Wow, she really hit me to my heart, 00:56:00because we knew that there were soldiers that were going back, there were black soldiers, couldn't be buried in cemeteries. We knew that we were suffering from race problems, this country at that time, that were paramount.

Even though we had race problems in Vietnam, it didn't manifest itself unless we got bored, and usually most of the time, we were beyond those problems, because it was a matter of keeping each other safe, because if you're safe, I'm safe. If I'm safe, you're safe. Kind of a closet piece that existed. Another time, I'm walking point for a company, and one of the training aids that I would use is if the wind is coming from my right, then it is my job to make sure that I check the left, because my dog would not be able to pick up that scent. One of the 00:57:00things that was supposed to happen, too, I was supposed to have a shotgun, somebody over my left shoulder that would take care of my left side, but that never happened. I asked about a shotgun one time. They looked at me like, huh? Okay. We understand. That is never happening there.

I'm going through the jungle, and I'm looking. I'm checking, and one of the things that you learn in combat is that you listen to the birds. You listen to the animals running through the forest. One of the things you learn is that as long as they're doing their usual thing, there's nobody in the area. All of a sudden, it got quiet, and I'm like, okay. Something out here. I don't know what it is, but something's out here. It might be a predator getting ready to attack, and that's why they quiet, but to me, it was, the enemy's out there somewhere. 00:58:00I'm walking along the path, and I'm checking. I'm doing my damnedest to be as good as I can possibly be.

I'm walking along. It's not really a path, I'm just going through jungle, and I'm walking along, and all of a sudden, I hear this movement behind me. I know that the rest of the soldiers aren't close enough to me to be that close. I know that it's not one of us, and so when I look over my right shoulder, I see a Viet Kong, and he has his weapon in this position. What he does is he locks and loads. I hear the click when he locks and loads. That's when I hear the click, and I look around, and there he is. He just let the bolt go forward, and he's aiming down on me. My thought at that particular time was, "Damn. I'm dead. I'm dead."

After that thought was the thought, "Well, I got one or two chances." Now I can 00:59:00swing around to my left, and try to get out of the way of his bullet, and shoot him, but then my dog might get in the way. I think it's best that I go to my right, drop my weapon into a position down the side of me so that I can go to the left and fall away, and keep my gun on target, and as I fall to the left, fire on him. This seems like forever, but I got these thoughts. These thoughts had to be going through my head in milliseconds. Quicker than that. I decide this is what I must do, and I begin to move to do this. As I drop my weapon and go back, and I'm getting about halfway up, and I'm starting to fall to the left, 01:00:00I hear him pull his trigger, and it goes click. I said, "Oh, god. You're through now." I shoot him.

One of the things that I learned in Vietnam was that I did not approach dead bodies. I didn't need to see to know what I did. I did not go through their pockets. I don't want what you got, because look what you got. I don't want what you got. I don't want to get tainted like that. That was another one of the harrowing incidents. Another incidence is that we were going into this territory that was very densely populated with NVA. We had double points. Two of us were 01:01:00walking points. I can't even remember the guy's name, but two of us are walking point. I'm on the right, he's on the left. We're walking, and we're going up the side of this mountain.

As we're going up the side of this mountain, we look over to the left, and down in the valley is a Mama-san and Papa-san in the field, in the rice field. Our instincts told us that they were Viet Kong. It was automatic. There wasn't a second thought about, are those farmers? No, they're Viet Kong. We stopped, and we discussed the situation. We need to shoot them, or else they're going to shoot us. We need to shoot them. No, but we can't shoot them, because there's not a weapon present, because there were those rules, rules of engagement. There had to be a weapon present for us to shoot them. We couldn't just shoot them, even though our instincts were telling us that these were Viet Kong.

We're watching them. We're watching them for a few. They go on about their farming duties. They don't seem to be necessarily concerned with us. We decide, okay, all right. They get to live today. They get to live today. We turn and start to proceed up the hill, and as I turn and take about a step, all of them, the dirt up above me, comes flying into my face, just being -- It was good ten to 15 rounds that hit in there. Mama-san and Papa-san had picked up their weapons, and were going to take us out. One of the things I'd heard and never seen, but I'd heard that we as dog handlers had a bounty on our heads. A bounty on us, and a bounty on the dog. They take us out, meant money in your pocket. I 01:03:00could understand that.

Dirt just flies into my face, and I'm realizing, and I'm pissed. I'm mad as hell. You just tried to take my head off. You just tried to kill me. We turn around, and we return fire, but by this time, they've scattered. They're gone. Those are some of the things that happened to me. I'm trying to remember more, but a lot of my memory is clouded because when I finally got back, I didn't want to remember because I had seen how much negativity that it caused in othr people. I'm trying to remember another time. I remember we were someplace. We were on a plateau. We were on a plateau, and I can't remember where it was, but it was on a plateau. I had been flown in to walk the company back out.

We had walked out, and I came -- I remember having a discussion with the officer in charge. He was like, "I want you to go down this path here." I'm like, "I'm not going down the path." He says, "I said go down the path." I said, "I don't care what you said." I said, "That's not a good thing to do. They usually set up ambushes around paths." I got a machete. I said, "I'm hacking my way through here." He said, "Well, I told you to go back down the path." I said, "Well, Sir," I said, "Here's the way it goes. If you want to go down the path, you go. I'm going this way, and we'll see who the soldiers follow, okay? It's up to you, but I'm not going down the path. I'm not dying like that. Not dying like that." He relented, and let me leave.

We go down, and we come to an opening. We come down out the plateau. We come to 01:05:00an opening, and as we come out of this jungle that's pretty thick, I come to a clearing. There's a rice field there. It's rice field about from -- It's a good click, click and a half. It's a big rice field, and then on the side, it's woods, it's jungle, it's jungle. I'm saying to myself, "This is a good place for an ambush." They'll let us all get out, and then they'll fire on us. I sent the word back. We got to go forward, but be vigilant. We were walking into the open. We were walking in the open. I get out, we walk into the opening, and I'm walking, and we get about halfway there. Nothing is happening. I'm saying, "Well, maybe I was wrong."

We get about three quarters of the way across the open expanse and shots ring 01:06:00out. I dive down into this rice, this rice field. You must remember that rice fields are fertilized. It's not a pleasant feeling to have to dive down into that stuff. I'm trying to identify where the sniper is, so we can get some fire on him. I lift my head, and he puts a bullet right beside my head. I wait, and wait, and wait, and I move a little bit. When I move, he shoots in front of me. Oh, Jesus. He knows where I'm at. Oh. This is happening all up and down the line. Every time we move, they're just keeping us, pinning us down. They're pinning us down. We're drinking this water, and this fertilizer, but it's all we got to do.

Finally, we lift our heads up, and there's no firing. We later learned that a sister company had been attacked down the way, and their job I guess was to hold us up, make sure we didn't come to their assistance. It was something else. I remember one time that -- I don't know. I was drunk and high, and up in Danang, and I just started crying. I didn't understand why, and I couldn't understand why, but I just started crying, because I had this foreboding feeling after 01:08:00these incidents that happened. We had a kind of a barometer that lets you know that death was creeping up on you, close calls, that you knew they were coming -- Not you knew they were coming, but you realized that it was getting close to your time.

One of the things I learned is I couldn't think about dying, because I figured if I thought about dying, that would bring death to me. Another thing I thought about was that I had to steel myself. When I first got to Vietnam, and explosions would go off, I'd be in the dirt, face down, deep as much as I could 01:09:00dig down. After a little while, a month, maybe two months, when the explosion went off, I crouched, because it's not close enough. I can tell now it's not close enough. By halfway through my time there, when bullets were fired, explosions went off, I didn't flinch. I didn't flinch because by that time, I understood if I heard the explosion and I heard the bullets, I'm all right. I'm all right, so why duck and die and why beat yourself up? You're good. It wasn't you. It wasn't your time.

The incidents that happened let me know that I was getting closer and closer. 01:10:00The guy on the path, and Mama-san and Papa-san, in the rice paddy, let me know that death was creeping up on me. One of the things that I knew and understood, there's nothing you can do about that but just be more vigilant. We often talked about that. How do you want to die? Quick, no, no pain, no suffering. Quick. Just take me out. We had often discussed survival methods. On walking point, I carried a surgical razor with me. I always, whenever we were out on a long -- One time, we were on a long march, and we were marching from one place, from point A to point B. I can't remember exactly what the mission was, but we were marching.

It's a hot, hot, hot, hot day. We're marching, and different guys are starting 01:11:00to unload whatever they don't need. They're getting rid of their ammo, I'm picking up. You don't want your ammo, give it to me. One of the things that I understand is that I got to have ammo. When I'm out of ammo, I'm out. Those things that happened, it's weight, and so, yeah. Yeah, that was the day. That was the day. We're walking, and we're supposed to go to -- The maps were not as correct. We were supposed to be going to this particular point, and we couldn't find it. It wasn't on the map, but we knew where we were, and so what they decided to do was to bring us in, so they sent choppers out to pick us up.

This was I think the last thing that happened before I got my orders to come 01:12:00home. We're out in this clearing. We're having choppers come and pick up, and they're picking up the companies squad by squad. I'm not attached to a squad, so I'm last one to go. There's two or three of us that are waiting on the last chopper, and I remember as the chopper pulled away, and they said, "We'll be right back to get you guys. No, we can't take any more." I remember us forming a triangle, back to back, standing there, waiting for it to come. It seemed like the chopper took forever to get back, forever, but we're joking, and laughing quietly. We're out here. It's just us, but we're back to back, waiting for the 01:13:00chopper to come back, and it comes back and picks us up.

One of the things that I had learned was that I could get an early out if I said I wanted to go to school, so I did the paperwork. The way that I had calculated it, I would not be able to get out of Vietnam until January, maybe late December, early January. The paperwork might come back quick enough to get approved, quick enough so they can get me out. What happened was Nixon decreed that anybody with the, and I think it was Christmas '69, that anybody with 90 days or less to ECS would be out. Somehow, I got included in that. I guess because of, I don't know. I had no clue, but I got included in that, so they 01:14:00give me orders and tell me that I'm going home.

As scared as I had been, as apprehensive as I had been, now the apprehension really hits me, the fear really hits me, because I had heard enough stories about guys on their way home, and how he had a day to go, and this happened. He had two days to go, and that happened. He had a week to go, and this happened, and he didn't make it. He was that close to the door, and he couldn't get through. I was very apprehensive about the situation. To make my apprehension any more deeper, when we got to the Long Binh, I think it was where we flew out of, when we go to the Long Binh, they took our weapons. My weapon had become a extension of my body. I slept on my back while I was in Vietnam, with my hand 01:15:00around the grip of my weapon, with my finger stretched across the trigger well, to be ready whenever.

One of the things that I understand now is that I never really slept in Vietnam. You're hypersensitive. You're on 24 hour alert. Things can happen any time, so you're always ready, always ready. Now I'm at Long Binh, and they took our weapon, and I am feeling so naked. I'm feeling so vulnerable that I don't know what to do. There's nothing to do. I just have to accept it, hope for the best, 01:16:00that nothing happens. I told you that I was a son of a pastor of a church, but by the time I got to Vietnam, I had no god. I had no god. People talk about foxhole prayers. I had none. I had this intrinsic belief that I, through my superior training, and understanding, and intellect, could beat this.

I believed wholeheartedly in myself. I'm not sure if that was a quality that got me through, but I know that it was, in somehow, it did help me. I know that in spite of all the dire situations, I still had self-confidence that I would make 01:17:00it through, no matter what. Just part of that, I think. I took R and R in Bangkok. There's not too much I can say about it except it was one hell of a time. We went to Bangkok, and we just had -- We lived like we would never live again, and I came back from that, came back to combat, and rode on that for a while, because it was like heaven, heaven. Nobody was firing at me. Nobody was shooting at me. As far as I was concerned, there wasn't any reason to die.

When I got back, to the United States, one of the places where I had to exercise 01:18:00extreme restraint was when I got to the -- They took us into, it wasn't California. It was Washington. I forget the city, but they took us into the State of Washington. I remember going to the airport in uniform, shoulders reared back, proud that I had made it, proud to be an American, proud to be a black American, just proud. I had did the deal, and I won. As I'm walking through the airport, I'm hearing critical remarks. I'm hearing baby killer. I'm hearing murderer. I'm hearing all these things, and I'm getting ready to boil, and I'm saying, "I'll show you. Since you want to talk stuff, I'll show you what 01:19:00the real thing is."

A better mind got ahold of me, and said, "Go change," so I went and put on civilian clothes, so that I could stop that. It was not nice. It goes back to my youth, and watching movies. Every time the soldier came home, he was walking with both arms. People were smiling, they were glad to see him, but this was not the case, in December of '69. I got back home, and I wanted to tell them what I did, and nobody wanted to hear. The family didn't want to hear. I enrolled in the University of Akron, and started going to school there, and every time I'd open my mouth to say something about what I was doing, I always hear the words baby killer, and how could you kill them. I tried to explain for a while, then I said, "They're not listening."

I decided, I'm not going to talk about it anymore. I'm not going to tell them nothing. I'm not going to tell them anything. The road back to sanity took me from 1970 to 1995, 25 years. For 25 years, I drank, I used drugs, I did all kinds of things that would put me on the edge. I lived out on the edge, became a criminal, went to prison, did some time in a mental institution. All because I could not get rid of the demons. I couldn't get rid of the demons that plagued 01:21:00me, and I finally found out when I talked to somebody in '95. The demons that plagued me were survivor's guilt. I couldn't understand or accept that I was able to make it through, and many others hadn't made it through.

I couldn't accept the modality of life in the peaceful world. It was too boring. I had to find a way to live on the edge. I had to find a way to make life exciting. I had to find a way to make life challenging. Of course, that led me around the roads of homelessness, and mini jobs, and everything. What finally 01:22:00brought me around, and it started in 1992, I got a job with the State of Ohio. I was a temporary employee, as a veterans' representative, to help veterans find jobs. I got a temporary position. It was that. I had already been through one marriage. I was a womanizer, of course, and I was working my way through my second marriage already. It was going down the drains because of my behaviors.

I got this job with the state, and all of a sudden, my ego just flashed into existence again, and with greater brilliance, because now, I had this little model that I had. Once an inmate of the state, now an employee of the state, and 01:23:00I was just walking on air. I was walking on air, doing all the things that I've still been doing. I'd been a drug dealer. I still dabble in that a little bit, and I'm still smoking. I'm still doing cocaine. I'm still drinking alcohol, Wild Irish Rose. I'm going from the top shelf to the bottom shelf sometimes in one day, because I got to have that edgy feeling. I got to be out there on the edge. I got to be dancing on the presipice of the cliff. I got to be hanging by a string so I could feel that I'm alive, so I can be happy that I'm alive.

After about three years with the state, about two and a half, three years, I remember we had a long weekend, and I went out and did my usual thing. We were off on Monday, and when I called into the office, I thought it was Tuesday, and 01:24:00I told them I was sick, and I would be in on Wednesday. They said, "John, it is Wednesday." Like, okay, I'll be right in. They decided that they were going to put me on the street for three days, to see if I really wanted this position. A moment of clarity came into my mind, and it told me, it said, "Johnny, with the things that you're doing, you will never get back in the door." With that, my union rep told me that they couldn't do that, they had to go to EAP.

I went to EAP, and talked to a counselor. She got me involved in Detox Riverside, which got me involved with AA, which had me talk to the VA for the first time, truthfully, and explain to them, because I had filed for PTSD. I 01:25:00told them, "I need to file for PTSD," and I did it. My service opt said, "You need to file for PTSD," and I'm like -- I'd always had a problem with people with PTSD. I'm like, "You weakling. You wimp." You're a man, ain't you? Its what you do. Now I understood that they weren't weaklings, and they weren't wimps. They were just suffering from the experiences of war. One of the things that we used to talk about when we were sitting together in Vietnam was, when we grew up, when the bad guy bushwhacked you, ambushed you, that's what the bad guys did.

Now we were taking glory in bushwhacking the enemy, so we had a juxtaposition of values, that we grew up with the values that we now understood as being part of war. When I talked with the psychiatrist from the VA, he said, "John, you need 01:26:00to understand who you are, and why you are the way you are." Okay. You think you got something new to tell me. I know who I am, and I'm 40 something years old. You can't tell me anything, but as he began to explain my survivor's guilt, my desperation to hang onto that edginess, that hyper-vigilence that I'd picked up in the war, it began to make sense to me. It was then that I accepted who I am, and I began to accept the fact that you are a good soldier. You are a decorated soldier. You are a good person, and just because there were some bad things that you did doesn't make you any less of a good person, because everybody makes mistakes.

Everybody has their own way of dealing with traumatic situations in their life. I was like, wow. I must say that my life has made 100% turnaround. Somebody asked me this morning, and I told them that I was going to do this. They said, "John, how can you do that?" I said, "Because I made peace with it. I made with peace with it," and I said, "You have to make peace with it. It is what it is. Why fight it?" I've made peace with it, and so therefore, I can talk about it now. I said, "And what this has done for me. I've sent for my records. I want to know more now." I don't know why in my 67 years, I didn't want to know more, but now I want to know more, because if my records tell me some more about me, I need to know more about me. I guess that's it. Any questions?

Wood: A few. Actually, a lot.

Flinn: Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. go for it.

Wood: I guess I'll start with the early ones.

Flinn: Right.

Wood: You mentioned that you chose not to go to officer school. Why did you choose NCO school over officer school?

Flinn: In my understanding, I would be an officer for life. Once you became an officer, they could always call you up, and so that was my thing. That was my position at that particular time, yeah.

Wood: Did that position ever change as you were out in the field, and things, or?

linn: No, because the examples of the officers that I'd seen, as a person who is in combat, they had -- To me, they had the book learning of how to fight a war, but they didn't have the practical experience of fighting a war. They 01:29:00didn't really understand that we view things quite different from a soldier's standpoint view. Why spend men, time, ammunition, on a hill, and then walk away from it the next day? Didn't they understand how demoralizing it was for us to go out on this secret mission, and then walk into Mama-san at the point that we're supposed to be? They didn't seem to understand the practical aspect of war. They understood the theoretical aspect of war, but not the practical aspect of war. They didn't seem to understand that they needed to give us encouragement at all times, because we needed that. We needed explanations. We needed not just do what I tell you to do, but here's why we're doing it. Not just do it, or I'll court marshal you for that insubordination. Give me some substance to work with, 01:30:00and I'll work better. Just give me an abstract, or yeah, I might carry through, but I'm carrying through with less than full speed. Yeah.

Wood: I guess one of the questions I had was, what were the point of having scout dogs?

Flinn: I never explained that. The point of having scout dog was to sniff out booby traps, snipers, ambushes, because that was one of their favorite tactics, was to walk us into an ambush, to walk us into a bamboo pit, to walk us into trip wires. You're right. I never explained. Walk us into trip wires, so that we -- One of the principles of warfare is that if I maim you, or wound you, it 01:31:00takes X number of manpower to take care of that. Therefore, not only are you down those people that are wounded or maimed, you're down those people that have to take care of them. We're reducing the number of people that I have to fight against you in order to conquer you.

Wood: In your experience, did it work well, with the dogs?

Flinn: Yeah. The dogs worked very well. As a matter of fact, throughout my tour there, I never lost a man when I was walking point. As far as I know, nobody, no company that I walked point for lost anybody. It's a combination of you and the dog, and one of the things that I did was I tried to create a camaraderie between me and the men that I was walking point for. I tried to let them know that, I'm here for you. Yeah, I'm special, and I know you don't really like me 01:32:00because you spend buku days out here, and I spend a few days out here, but hey, I'm here for you. I'm here for you, so let's be straight at a point. I'm going to do what's best for you, and that's your officer.

Wood: Did you always have -- You said the dog was Scout. Did you always work with the same dog?

Flinn: Yeah, same dog, Scout. Yeah. I named him Scout because I said if I ever get in a situation where I'm wounded or anything, I'm sure that I will not forget that. Simplistic logic.

Wood: Don't want to forget your dog.

Flinn: No.

Wood: What happened? Do you know what happened to Scout once you left?

Flinn: The dogs were left in country. They were left in country for the next people to come and take them over, but they were left in country. In my understanding, they were not allowed to come back because they had the taste of blood.

Wood: They wouldn't make very good pets.

Flinn: No. No. No, no. They wouldn't. They were very protective, and they were protective to the point of being lethal. There was an incident. I went out to walk point. I just thought about this. I went out to walk point for this company one time, and I came in late afternoon, and I was probably early, because I still didn't really understand. The officer in charge says, "No, we're gonna take the dog out with us as we do this night patrol." As I'm out there crashing through the bush with this dog, I'm saying, "Oh, Jesus, Lord. This is not good. They'll hear us coming a mile away, because it's dark, we're crashing through things." I'm like, "This is not good." The next night, he wanted me to go out, so I knew what time he was going to come get me at dusk, so I put my -- I didn't 01:34:00wear a helmet. I had a hat that I wore to keep my profile from being a helmet, and I put it over my eyes, and I said, "Scout. Guard," and laid back. As they had tried to approach me, and I thought, "Rrrr." He was very protective. If I told him to guard, he would not let anybody near me, anybody. I don't care if you're American. You're not coming near him, so they were very protective, and all I had to do was say guard, and that was it. If you stepped over the line, he let you know that you're getting close, but you step on the line, he's going to dive into you. We had taught them the dive for the crotch or for the throat, so you going to hurt.

Wood: Did you have an affectionate relationship with Scout over time?

Flinn: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Me and Scout, we were buddies. Yeah. We were buddies 01:35:00beyond buddies. We were always together. I'm not particularly fond of dogs or pets now, but at that time, I was fond of him. He was my guy. He's my running buddy.

Wood: He was keeping you alive.

Flinn: That's right.

Wood: You talked about getting marijuana in the sandbags. Do you remember how you got it, and where it came from, or?

Flinn: Yeah. Around any base, or any LZ, there would always be those who understood what you did, Mama-san, Papa-san, Baby-san, and what you -- You just explained to them what you wanted. All you had to do was tell them what you wanted. They were very resourceful people. Tell them what you want, and they will get it for you. We're transferring, and this a poor, agrarian society. When 01:36:00you go down into the village, there will be skinned rats hanging up for sale for meat. You understand how desperate these people are. We're the rich Americans. We still are in America. When you go someplace, you just let them know what you want, and they will get it for you, because they know that you're going to have the money to give to them, which is going to be hard to come by some other way. We just let them know what we wanted, and of course they become entrepreneurial. They came up with a cool package, the ones in the cigarette, because they understood that we smoked cools. Most of us smoked cools at that time, and that we would like to have a marijuana and a non-descriptive form that we could hide in our foot lockers, and be able to smoke in places where we wouldn't normally smoke. Pulling out a bowl and filling a bowl, and this big puff of smoke. Big 01:37:00difference is, ah. Its easy to discard. If someones coming, hey let it go.

Wood: You mentioned the MPC, the currency that you would use in country.

Flinn: Yeah. It was monetary, I forget what they call it, but we called it MPC. It was the exchange -- We were issued MPCs instead of American dollars so we could deal with them. This is the currency they use. I guess that was used to keep us from inflating the economy and stuff like that, because our dollar bills, they're worth a lot more. There were some cases where I heard about people who were doing the best, native inhabitants doing their best to collect dollar pills so they could take them and exchange for their money, which would 01:38:00be a whole lot more money. They were worth a lot more than our money, but to us, it was nothing, 20 MPCs. I guess for every dollar, maybe. Let's say every $5. I'm just trying to make a comparison. For every $5 would be like 20 MBCs. If I have $20, I can have 80 MPCs. Our money was worth a lot more, and so I guess to keep us from inflating the economy because we're never going to spend money, we would do that. Yeah.

Wood: There was also base currency that they would have sometimes.

Flinn: I never got involved with that currency, because never -- Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to tell you when I got my army accommodation medal for that night on the hill, right before my 21st birthday. That's when I got that. The chairman 01:39:00captain, I can't think of his name, but he came the next day, and said, "John, you did a good job last night. I'm gonna recommend this for you."

Wood: Yeah. Speaking of that, Was that one of your first fights

Flinn: First. First. First. First.

Wood: That's a big first.

Flinn: My very first. After that, I was seasoned.

Wood: Did you feel like there was a change, personally, after that night?

Flinn: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was more cavalier after that. I was really cavalier after that. I wasn't afraid of nothing. I got into, I think about this now. One time, I'm out on a mission. It's muddy. It's the rainy season. It's muddy. I'm 01:40:00sweaty. Somewhere I discarded my blouse, because it got soaked with wet mud and stuff like. I get on the chopper with just my T-shirt on, a sleeved T-shirt, and my pants, and my dog. I'm muddy, and I'm tired, everything. There's this officer sitting on the plane. He says, "Soldier, where's your blouse?" I locked and loaded, and said, "You want to ask your question again?" You want to ask your question again? Yeah. No, don't talk to me when I've been out on the field, and you're in your pressed uniform, and ask me where's my blouse? Thank me for keeping my life. Soldier, you must've did a good job out there, because I see you made it through. It must've been rough out there. Don't ask me where my blouse is. You ask me, and I shoot you. I got that cavalier, because now, I 01:41:00said, "I'm not gonna let you tell me what to do, or demand that I do anything. You gave me bullets and a gun. We're gonna negotiate."

Wood: You can't argue with that.

Flinn: No. Especially in the field. Back at the base, that's a different thing, but still. I'm going to let you know that I'm not just going to go for what you say. I might do it surreptitiously. You say, "John, do something," and I look at my weapon, and I flick, and I say, "Now, are we supposed to keep this on semi-automatic or automatic?" Little things, just to let him know, hey, you're 01:42:00pushing me.

Wood: Did you work a lot with the, or have a lot of interactions with the native Vietnamese over there?

Flinn: Yes. Not really. It was usually a hostile interaction. We were coming to a village. The positive interactions, we would deal with what we call Kit Carson scouts, which were south Vietnamese, who maybe turned NVA, or turned to Viet Kong, who would work with us to help us. No, not a lot of interaction with the local people. Our most compelling dilemma there was, you can't tell who the enemy is. We can't tell who the enemy is. Our LZs would get mortar rounds, and 01:43:00so I thought was, is that the Mama-sans or Papa-sans we had coming in during the day to do work for us would pace off the distances for the mortar rounders. At night, they go, "Here's this." If I was in a situation, I would understand very well how I would do that. Oh, yeah. I'll do your laundry. Now, between me picking up the laundry at your barracks here, I'm going to pass the orderly room, I'm going to pass artillery installation, I'm going to pass different things, the field depot, the ammunition dump.

I'm going to pass different things in just the carrying out of my duties. All I need to do is say, okay, here's where I was. I walk 50 steps from that particular point, we can just establish that point. You can hit the ammunition dump here, and then 50 more paces down here, there's a field. It's simple. We 01:44:00allowed them into our camp. We would have a truck come every morning, and let them in, clean the hooches, do the laundry. There was some cooking. All kinds of different things. We would let them into our camps, which was stupid. We're Americans. We expect people to do things for us, so we go to war, we expect the indigenous population to do things for us.

Wood: Got a little it more than you bargained for.

Flinn: Yeah, and we all put them out.

Wood: Right. If you're going to bomb me later, at least give me a discount.

Flinn: Yeah. Exactly.

Wood: Did you have any close friends while you were there that you have contact with?

Flinn: Yeah, I did, but that's the problem. I can't remember any of their names. Not one name. Not one name, and that is so miraculous to begin with, that as I -- What I did was, it's retrograded the time that I had Vietnam, all the way back through to when I came in, I had no name memory of anybody that I was with, guys I was in the barracks at AI, and basic, and AIT, and NCO school, and scout dog school. Nothing. It's an empty bucket. There's not a name in there that I can pull out and say, "Oh, I remember him." I'm like, wow. How did I do that? How did I do that? It's just amazing how I was able to do that, and then make it such a expansive thing to cover almost two years out of my life, that they're just gone. I was there, but I wasn't.

Wood: Is it different with, do you remember any of the dogs' names? Is it different with them?

Flinn: Just mine.

Wood: Just yours.

Flinn: Just mine. It's all around me.

Wood: No names.

Flinn: No names.

Wood: When you got back, the response you got wasn't what you expected. I should say, did you kind of have an idea to expect then, or was it unexpected?

Flinn: My upbringing, my watching of movies, the historical aspect of World War Two veterans, had led me to believe that there would be this joyous homecoming, 01:47:00and led me to believe that that would be people receptive to want to know about what I did in defense of my country. When I got back, what I faced was nobody really wanted to know. Nobody wanted to hear. I would start to tell them, "No, we don't want to hear about that. We don't want to hear about it." I was miffed, because I'm a hero. I'm not just any soldier coming back. I'm a hero, and you don't even want to hear. You don't even want to know what it took for me to become this. You don't want to know what it took me to get a Purple Heart. You don't know what it took me to get an Army Commendation Medal. I just didn't go to the PX and buy one, but you don't want to know. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody 01:48:00wanted to know. Oh, my god. What's wrong with you all? At that time, my whole thing was, there's a lot wrong with the people. There's nothing wrong with me. There was something wrong with me. I just couldn't see it.

Wood: How did your parents feel?

Flinn: My father didn't want to know. My brothers and sisters didn't want to know. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody. Nobody. Even people I would hang around with, they would listen for a minute, but then they didn't want to know. That's enough, John. That's enough.

Wood: Did you spend any time stateside with other vets?

Flinn: I didn't do that from the very beginning. I didn't do that until I was in prison, in London Correctional. There, I got in touch with Dave Bradley of VA, 01:49:00down at Veterans of America. He's deceased now, and I'd been talking with some veterans there in prison, because they knew I was a veteran, because I was getting disability. I formed a chapter of incarcerated veterans at London Correctional. When I came out, I became associated with Vietnam Veterans for America, attended their meetings. That was in '85, '86 when I started finally touching bases with veterans. Before that, I had not even attempted to join a veterans' organization, or inquired about joining a veterans' organization. I wasn't interested. What I had heard already, from what I thought was good sources, that a lot of the different posts were not receptive to Vietnam 01:50:00veterans, because they considered it a police action and not a war, so therefore, we were not accepted in their posts. I don't want to waste my time bothering with you, since you don't think I'm a veteran. My position is, if somebody's shooting at me, and I'm not here in the United States, then I'm a vet.

Wood: That sounds like a veteran of a foreign war. Have you stayed active with veterans' organizations?

Flinn: Yeah, I'm currently active with the Military Order of Purple Heart. I've been past Commander of Chapter 142, the Am-Vets. I was the office manager for Vietnam Veterans of America for a while. I testified in front of Congress on behalf of incarcerated veterans. I stayed in contact, but what I found out is 01:51:00that I want to be involved with an organization that is putting forth what veterans have done, and not becoming caught up in the quagmire of political infighting within chapters about who's going to be the next president, be the next commander, and those kind of things. One time, I was sitting on a board that was for Vietnam Veterans for America, that was involved in getting a grant for housing for the homeless.

One of the positions I had to take was that, these were people with mental disabilities. One of the positions I had to take was PTSD was a mental disability, which was hard for me to hold that position, because first of all, I didn't believe in it. That kind of thing going on, and then with other 01:52:00organizations, with me and some other guys at veterans bureau of employment services formed Chapter 42 of the Disabled American Veterans. People always want us to side with them on different issues, and no. We're trying to help veterans, and I couldn't find many organizations that were actually in the business of helping veterans. They were more in the business of helping themselves.

I finally got involved. Somebody kept telling me, "Get involved with Purple Heart," so I got involved with Purple Heart. What we have done, we put a monument to Purple Heart veterans out at the Motts Museum. We put one at the Chalmers P. Wylie Center. We received a $50,000 donation to put one on the new 01:53:00mall that's going up downtown, the Veterans' Memorial Mall, so we're going to be putting that statue there. We wanted to do things that would recognize and bring the attention to the general public about veterans, because we understand that, and one of the biggest things that I understood from dealing with a lot of veterans as the vet rep for the state of Ohio, working employment as the manager of a program, is that we're great as long as we got the uniform on, but we take the uniform off, and people forget about who we are.

They forget that freedom is not free, and that it takes the lives of many to keep us free. Those lives which are still, those of us which have given their life, and those which still live. I've had people many times tell me, "John, why don't you just forget about it?" I tell them, "You don't understand how hard I 01:54:00tried to do that. It don't work." That's like me forgetting that I grew up. How do you do that? You can't do that, so I tried. I tried for a long time to forget, and it just doesn't work. At some point, I had to come to confront that, and say, okay, I am who I am, and there's no use trying to deny that, because that's who I am.

Wood: Do you feel that -- How do you feel that the -- Do you feel that your military experience affected you in a positive way?

Flinn: Oh, yes. I would never give it up. I often tell people this, that are dissatisfied with their position in life. I said, "Look, everything that you went through, good and bad, are the things that make who you are today. If you take any piece of that out of it, you're not who you are." I said, "We don't 01:55:00know how it works, but it all works together to come the complete whole of you, but if you take one part of that out, then you're not you anymore. You're somebody else. You'll have the same name, but you're somebody else. You're not the personality, the person that you are with the -- " It gave me a lot of skills, it gave me a lot of abilities. It was a great experience. I wouldn't give it up for nothing in the world.

As hard as it was, and as rough as it was, and as scary as it was, I wouldn't give it up, because I have a unique experience that a lot of people don't share, and they don't have that. They can't get that. It also makes me more attune to these last few wars we've been in, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War, and Iraq. All 01:56:00of a sudden, we flipped the script. It used to be the regular US soldiers went, and they had, after World War Two, they determined that they had a -- War in Korea, they had a prescribed time to be there, and then they were out. Now these reservists and natural guardsmen, they're bounced back, and forth, and back, and forth, and back, and forth.

War has a debilitating effect on a person. It changes who you are from the minute you go there, and then each time, each successive time, they go -- It grinds you. It grinds you down. It grind you down, so I have concerns about the Gulf War veterans, the Iraqi veterans, the Afghan veterans, because I'm seeing them being ground down, and I understand that it doesn't take much. We're seeing statistics that show that there's an increase in suicides for these particular 01:57:00veterans, an increase in domestic violence, increases in divorce, increases in homelessness. All these are manifestations of their war experience to me. That's what it boils down to.

Wood: You mentioned suicide. Do you know if that was -- Was that ever a problem in Vietnam?

Flinn: Survivor's guilt. Survivor's guilt will take you there, because I'm not worthy. How am I better than they who died, and that if you let that kind of thought carry you, it will carry you to death. That's as far as I see it. It 01:58:00will carry you to death. I've always had this ego, which kept me from that particular end, but at the same time, my behavior put me on a very violent environment, where I could've been killed by somebody else. It operates on both ends. Because of my survivor's guilt, I either go this way, or I go that way, and both those --. One living on the edge is just as bad as suicide because ultimately, the person ends up dead. The result is the same, and now I'm worthy because I'm dead just like they are.

Wood: Given your experience with veterans, are there similarities that you see of veterans from different wars? Do you see things like similarities about 01:59:00Vietnam vets that you don't see about other vets that you've met?

Flinn: In my dealing with veterans, and my employment what I found out that first of all, we as veterans are a rebellious lot. Because of our military, we don't like orders anymore. Don't tell me what to do. I'll do what I want to do. We're very individualistic. I found out that we share commonalities of experience with the military. One of the reasons that I was a vet rep is because the government found that it was easier for a person who had been in the military to work with a person who had been in the military, as opposed with somebody who had not had the military experience, because we had similar language, and similar understanding of things. It makes for a better relationship, where we go back and forth. Also, I am able to recognize through 02:00:00my experiences their experiences, and say, "Hey, I understand, and maybe you need to go talk to somebody. Maybe you need to do this or do that, because I've been through that, and I know about that, because I suffer from that too." This identification factor, because war is the same no matter where you go. It's a brutal affair. If you are exposed to a brutal affair, you have certain feelings and things that tie you into that, and so those things, we can share those experiences, even though it might've been a different war.

Wood: When you were younger, growing up, did you know any World War Two vets?

Flinn: In those times, I grew up in the fifties and the sixties, people just didn't talk about that. I think that was what happened to the Vietnam veterans, 02:01:00is because people didn't talk about their war experiences, it was kind of a community understanding that we didn't talk about these things. Therefore, when we came back and wanted to talk, they didn't want to hear us, because don't you understand? We don't talk about those things. Yeah, and I think that's part of the problem, is that there's some World War Two veterans. I've heard reports from some people who say, "My grandfather or my father's a World War Two veteran, and he has never talked about it yet." One thing that's different between us and them, especially World War Two and Korean veterans, there still was this camaraderie within the group, where they usually deployed together, and came back together. There was this period of time where they could take some of 02:02:00the edge off of their experiences by the conversation with each other, as they're on their way back. They could get each other together, for the new battle is coming, which is called civilian life.

Wood: When you got home from Vietnam, what do you think was your biggest struggle getting back into civilian life?

Flinn: My struggle with my PTSD, which I didn't understand that I suffered from, which I didn't recognize, which I thought was less than a man to be like that, and survivor's guilt. It took me, from the time that I got back, and I think it was before -- I became maladjusted in Vietnam, and I remained maladjusted until 02:03:00'95. That's the way I see it, is that I lived in a state of maladjustment for a decade and a half, 25 years. Decade and a half, and a mental state, a waking state, a feeling state, and whatever state it was, I was in a maladjusted state doing all of that. Very maladjusted. What made it so, I guess made it so terrible, was that I could not see my maladjustment, or I thought what I was doing was right. I often relate the way that my conceptual thought was. My conceptual thought was that I was a warrior, I was a survivor, and I was a phoenix that rose from the ashes. Because of my warrior and survival benefits, 02:04:00whenever I got knocked down, I would rise back up. It's something.

Wood: It's something.

Flinn: That's the way I believed, and so therefore, I operated up on those principles. So a man believeth, so is he.

Wood: Do you feel like today, do you feel like you're the same person you were back before '95. Do you feel like you've come so far that you're --

Flinn: I feel more adjusted now. I can look back on my life, and all its ups and downs, and twists, and turns, and terrible things, and appreciate it. I feel 02:05:00that it has made me the person that I am today, and I feel that it took all of that, first of all, to puncture my ego, to get me to just be human, and accept the fact that I'm fallible, and accept the fact that I have defects of character, and accept the fact that it is my job to work on them and everybody else's. If I know something's wrong, I'm supposed to do something about it.

Wood: Something we've been asking all the veterans. Only, less than 1% of the American population served in wars. What do you think the 99% that don't serve, what do you think is most important for them to know about those who have?

Flinn: The one thing that we always say is that freedom isn't free. I would say 02:06:00that the 99% live in a bubble, and a lot of time that bubble prevents us from taking necessary military action to protect out freedom. At the same time, I'm not going to venerate the government, because the government at the time uses that fact to advance military operations. We have this juxtaposition of those that live in a bubble, that think that everything is just peachy keen, and we don't have to worry about anything, and everybody's afraid of us, and we don't have to worry them, because we can take care of them, need to understand that it is because of our history, because of the 1%, that we have the respect that we have in the world.

It is because of that that people have respect for us, because we have been able 02:07:00to weather the storm. I think that World War Two would have not turned against the axis power if it had not been for us. It took us and our massive production capability, and once the American people are turned loose on a war effort, they're very resilient, and very productive. At the same time, we entered, and this is what I came to find. We entered Vietnam under a shroud of unbelief, and a shroud of facts that weren't exactly the facts, that weren't the case. What this did was it caused the American people to lash out. They'd seen that the 02:08:00government was too big to lash out at, so they lashed out at us, the soldiers.

That's what happens in government, is that what happens is that when the government does something that is so wrong that it is seen as wrong by the population, they don't turn their anger. They do turn their anger at the government, but the ones that receive the brunt of the anger are the individual soldiers, and the way they're treated individually in each and every one of their communities. It takes military families to understand what that person in their family has been through. If they don't have that military experience, they don't have a concept, and so they're given concepts by different entities about what it's all about, and they don't have anything else to believe but that. I hope that answered your questions.

Wood: Yes. You mentioned the unfairness, and the being angry at government, and 02:09:00I know there's a lot of talk about the unfairness of the draft. Were you aware of that?

Flinn: No.

Wood: As a young man?

Flinn: No. I wasn't aware of that, but there was nothing in my mindset at that particular time that made the military either positive or negative. I didn't have a concept of it. It was just something that I chose not to do. It was just one of those youthful things that I chose not to do because I didn't think I really had to do it. In other words, I didn't realize that it was a requirement until it was explained to me that it was a requirement. I didn't see it as a requirement, so I didn't do anything about it, so I just chose not to do it. I don't know if I missed the message, or garbled the message, but I knew that 02:10:00somewhere along the line, I made a choice not to do what I was supposed to do. I don't know how that came about, but I made a choice not to do it.

Wood: Did you have any friends who ended up going to Vietnam before you ended up?

Flinn: No, no, no. I didn't know anybody that went, had been to Vietnam, or anybody. I think that would've made me a conscious objective, if I'd have known. They'd have a chance to talk to me, and explain to me. Okay. Maybe I can find this way out. What I found, and I got to take that back, because what I found out was at heart, I'm very patriotic. I didn't know that, but at heart, I'm very patriotic. I'm glad to be an American, and I'll defend this country. That's what my military experience showed me, is that I might not agree with the politics of the situation, but I'll stand up for it. We'll iron that out later.

Wood: Your own draft, you were in college. They kind of work you up about selective service, and then you go directly and enlist. Do you think that was fair? Do you think it was an honest procedure, or do you think you were somewhat kind of-

Flinn: No, I don't think I was manipulated. I think I was just told the facts, and once I got the facts, and viewed them, I realized that I was at fault, and the best way that I could make this up was to volunteer my draft. That was my concept at the time, was that, okay, I'm wrong. I need to find a way around the wrong without incurring the penalties of being wrong.

Wood: When you went to enlist, did they give you any, oh, here's what you -- Did 02:12:00you even get any choices, or was it just like, here it is. This is --

Flinn: No, they didn't give me any choice. They was just glad to see that I had came forward, and at that time, I think you were just -- It was wherever they needed you, and what they needed at the time was Army guys, Marine guys. Guys became Marines just because they were chosen to be a Marine, not because they wanted to. It's far different from the military today, which is a whole different concept today. It's volunteer, so we have a core of people who are willing to go into service, who are willing to go to a war theater, who are willing to do this, so it's a whole different concept. Before, it was not a factor of being willing. It was the fact that this is my patriotic duty to do. At that time, the ethos of which America was, that's what you did, and you 02:13:00didn't really argue about it, or have qualms about it.

Wood: I could probably pick your brain for hours, but I guess I'll ask, is there anything else that you want to share that you haven't shared?

Flinn: Not that I can think of at this time. Yeah. Not that I can think of at this time, no. It's been great. I enjoyed this. I understand this as being part of the healing process. We must put things out there in order for us to heal, because as long as we hold them in, and like I told you, I didn't realize that I needed to heal some more until I found myself dancing, trying to get out of this. That wasn't required. It was just a request, and I kind of started 02:14:00dancing, and making excuses. I'm busy. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, what are you doing? You have a chance, an opportunity, to tell your story? Don't you want to do that? Yeah. Then why don't you do it? Even this far into recovery, and getting back, getting more out of maladjustment, I think there's still some fringes that hold on, that you still have this thing, and it just came to me. It was like, you're still avoiding it. You still have some avoidance tendencies when it comes to this, so you need to face up to this, and go ahead and do it. Yeah.

Wood: Related to my own work, do you think -- I sometimes run into veterans who, 02:15:00they're kind of interested, and then they kind of back away, or fade away. Do you think I should pursue them?

Flinn: This is a noble enterprise. This is a noble enterprise because of the way our society is set up today. We can avoid this. Our children, they don't have to go to history class. They don't have to take history. They can avoid it, but we need this here so that they understand what it takes to be America, and an American. We have this, and we talked about it many times when I was dealing with veterans, we had this attitude that, I deserve this, and therefore I should get it. We forget the fact that you have to work for what you get, and this, serves, as a reminder that a lot of work went into getting this freedom that we have, to make that choice, that we don't really need to do that. One of the 02:16:00things I tell other people, "So-and-so says so-and-so." No, no, no, no, no, no. This is America. They have a right to say anything they want to out of their mouths, so don't be alarmed if they say what they want to say.

Wood: I may have you write me a note, so I can hold it up, and say, "Mr. Flinn says Im allowed to harass you

Flinn: We have hidden impulses. I guess things that are adverse to us, and because war is an adverse situation, we can still find ourselves after we feel that we've completed adjusted and accepted it, we can still find ourselves, when it comes to really putting it on the line, we're still a little bit hesitant, just a little bit hesitant, and still just saying, "Okay, I need to do this." Not for me. It helps me, but I need to do this for the future, because I don't 02:17:00know who this is going to touch, and how it's going to make them feel, but I hope it gives them the understanding that yeah, it's a rough thing to do, but you can do it. Yeah, it's not a pretty thing, but this is what had to be done to make this pretty country that we got. It didn't get pretty all by itself, okay?

Wood: It's a lot of work.

Flinn: A lot of work.

Wood: Yeah.

Flinn: A lot of work still to be done. Yeah.