Omaha Folklore Project: Interview with Staff Sergeant Myan



-DC: Hi, this is Dave Conley. American History 112 since 1865 with Professor Smith. This is my oral interview. My interview will be involving the Vietnam War and the political affairs around it. I will be interviewing an army sergeant, and his name and rank will be determined later in the tape. Thank you.

-Staff Sergeant Myan (Myan): My name is Staff Sergeant Myan, United States Army.

-DC: How long were you in Vietnam?

-MYAN: Well, two-fold, actually. I was in personnel for awhile, and I was in the infantry for awhile.

-DC: You know, there's a saying, no war is a good war. What do you think the Vietnam War turned out to be?

-MYAN: My personal opinions of the Vietnam War, it was basically a farce. The reason we were there, wasn't a good clear-cut reason, it was never declared actually conflict. It was more or less a political type of conflict instead of a 00:01:00military action. What we were doing in Vietnam, I don't think anybody really and truthfully knew.

-DC: We didn't declare war on them, correct?

-MYAN: That's correct.

-DC: For not declaring war, we lost a lot of casualties.

-MYAN: Yes, we did.

-DC: Should we have stayed out?

-MYAN: That's personal opinion, again. You know, a lot of people think the military got us into Vietnam. They didn't. Your mother, your father, my mother, my father got us into Vietnam by electing the politicians that ended up getting us into Vietnam. It was not the military.

-DC: Do you think we would have been better off if we would've stayed out or ended it real quick? Because I'm sure with our manpower, we probably could've demolished it real quick if we wanted to.

-MYAN: If they'd've wanted to get to Vietnam cleared up, it would've taken about 00:02:0030-45 days, with the manpower, machinery, munitions, everything that we had there, it would've taken 30-45 days.

-DC: Why didn't we do it?

-MYAN: Politics. It's good for the economy. Basically, it's good for the economy.

-DC: Those wars maybe aren't proving that, but the American people personally, the civilians, the young students didn't like it. It's the first time in American history, United States history, that we had anti-war demonstrations. World War I, we got into it, and we were happy. World War II, everybody's dream was to turn 18 and join the army. What happened with the Vietnam War, in your opinion?

-MYAN: It's like I said before. It was politics. All right. The military did not necessarily wanna be there. We had no choice. All right? It was Congress and the President that got us into the Vietnam conflict, it was eventually, a president that got us out of it.

-DC: Richard Nixon.

-MYAN: Correct. Correct, and personally, the way I feel about the way we got out of it was less than honorable. Was less than honorable. I kind of personally feel that we owed something to the kids that went to Vietnam who were crippled for life, or ruined for life, or killed. We owed something to these people by spilling their blood over there. We owed 'em something. Not to get out of Vietnam with our tail between our legs, like we ended up doing.

-DC: Yeah, we did. I think we didn't come out a winner, we didn't come out a loser, it was more of a tie. Lost a lot of life in a tie.

-MYAN: Exactly, exactly.

-DC: Cause you know, my brother went over there, and he was there for two years, and he was shot in the foot through a helicopter, he was a helicopter pilot. And he came out, and he gets so sad he can't even talk about it, cause he had saw a 00:04:00psychiatrist for two years, cause he kept on dreaming of killing those kids.

-MYAN: Well, now like in your brother's case, all right, yes, he's got some hangups, as far as psychological hangups go. You take a lot of people, not only a war. It depends on the individual, in that case. You have a lot of people that have a car accident, have the same thing. Yes, he has a lot of bad memories and lasting memories in the back of his mind that he can't get out of because of the war, but there was many people who was killed in Vietnam, not even somebody killed. Ones that were wounded, lost a leg, lost an arm, something this this. I feel that we owed those kids something other than to get out of there the way that we did.

-DC: Okay, another question. The My Lai Massacre, where eventually the captain was tried, was that happened all the time? That's one thing my brother did say. He said, they'd go over a village and they'd sweep it; they'd kill everybody in the village. And that's the same thing they did, really.

-MYAN: Vietnam was the worst conflict, war, whatever you want to put, all right, 00:05:00where you have a blue suit on, I have a gray suit. We know we're enemies, all right? The Vietnamese people, they ran around in the black pajama type uniform, outfit, all right? You really didn't know who the enemy was. All right, this was the reason for the feeling about going in, turning out everything. That way you know you got the right one. You see what I'm saying? We actually had hooch mates, which were clean up the hooches, you know, work, on compounds. We had a conflict at night, or an aggression. The next morning, we'd go out, and we'd find them out there dead. They'd been hunting ammunition or something like that. So they were actually VC or whatever you wanna call it, they worked for the Americans in the day time. So over there, in that type of a conflict, who's the enemy? Who is the enemy?

-DC: That's true. Good/bad politics was the whole war was politics. How do you 00:06:00think Kennedy took it? They've written that Kennedy really got us into the whole war. He's the one that jumped into it. Because before, with presidents before, we'd always stayed on board or we just sent advisers, we sent ammunition, so really, it wasn't until Kennedy got in, Kennedy and Johnson jumped us all the way in.

-MYAN: Well, if you look at the history of Vietnam, they'd be fighting over there --

-DC: Since '54.

-MYAN: Since '53, '54, something like that. And you had the French in there before us, and you know, it's just been a constant conflict over in that area. As far as who you gotta hang the responsibility of Vietnam on, pick somebody. Pick somebody, really. I think one person was as much at fault as the next.

-DC: Okay, now you were talking about the way we got out of the war. You don't think, you know, that was a big issue in the 1972 presidential campaign between 00:07:00Richard Nixon and George McGovern. Under the circumstances, I think, in my opinion, we came out as best we could. It was already, we already had the ceasefire at the time, we were trying to get our POWs back, get all the troops out, and one of the major concerns is how you get the POWs back. Richard Nixon's thing was forcefully take them, demand them, you know, just show our strength, which we eventually did and McGovern was to beg, get on his hands and knees. If you was a soldier, would you wanna come out with your President of the United States on his hands and knees, begging to let the prisoners out?

-MYAN: As far as the President goes, I personally, that's between him and his conscience and whatever, what he does, all right? I have my feelings; you have your feelings. All right? The way we got out of Vietnam, we just upped and left. Today we're there, tomorrow we're gone. Look at the machinery, munitions, equipment we left in Vietnam. I'm not sure about, I think Vietnam right now has 00:08:00the fourth and fifth largest army in the world, from the stuff that we literally left there. You mentioned POWs. How do you know that we've got all our POWs back? There's still a question in a lot of people's minds about that, if we still have got all the POWs back. So by getting out of Vietnam, they didn't turn over their records and everything to us, what POWs. They just gave us a token of what they wanted us to have. Are all the POWs out of Vietnam right now?

-DC: No.

-MYAN: This is it. We don't know. All right? We haven't been able to go in and visually check and see if they're all out. So the POW thing, that's kind of, in my opinion, a cop. All right, yeah, we'll pull out of Vietnam if you promise to give all the POWs back. If they did or not, is strictly on their word and their honor. We don't know if they did or not. There's still a lot of questions in a lot of people's minds about that.

-DC: Yeah, recent, to change the subject. Recently, in a lot of movies about the 00:09:00Vietnam War, you had Deer Hunter, and the last one, I think, was Apocalypse Now. What'd you think of those movies?

-MYAN: Truthfully, I haven't seen either one of them. Okay, I haven't seen either one of them. I think, as far as a movie like that goes, back a few years ago, when Vietnam was going on, the 60s and early 70s, it was a popular thing to be against the Vietnam War. Kids in high school, kids in college, whatever. Everybody got on the bandwagon against the government, more or less, for being in it. If they could make a movie that portrays this, it's gonna make 'em money. It's gonna make 'em money. And let's admit that the movie industry is not there running historical things just for the heck of it. They're there for the bucks. They're there for the bucks, but like I said, I have not seen either one of those movies.

-DC: I have. To me, they were both, I wasn't sure of my opinion there, but they 00:10:00were both good movies, that were well drawn out.

-MYAN: Why were they good movies?

-DC: Well, just they had a plot to them, but you really didn't know what was happening, but it's just, like Apocalypse Now, you knew something was wrong when he walks up the steps and the steps is surrounded by heads, where the Colonel who was over there on a mission went crazy and cut up all the Vietnamese heads, and had lined the steps with heads.

-MYAN: See, when you get into a situation like, yeah, all right, we're sitting here in an office, you can say, all right, you don't know what your reactions are gonna be until you actually face it yourself. Psychologically, you don't know how you're gonna handle it. You can talk, ah, man, no problem, all right, I've got all my eggs in one basket. When something like this happens, you're confronted with something like a Vietnam, you don't know how you're gonna act, react, psychologically what it's gonna do to you or anything else like this. We 00:11:00hadn't been in a conflict, thank heavens, the United States, for quite awhile. We got people into it, and yeah, there was probably quite a bit of stuff actually like that happened. But there were just as many guys that went out to the villages, and helped them build up the villages, take clothes out to the little kids, take food out and stuff like this. They don't like showing that part of it, because it won't sell movies. The blood and guts sell movies.

-DC: Yeah, it does.

-MYAN: It sells movies.

-DC: It does. Cause you know, I told everybody, hey, it's a good movie, but it's bloody.

-MYAN: Yeah. If it showed them taking Christmas packages out to the mountain yards, okay, and doing stuff like that, would you have told your friends to go see it? Probably not.

-DC: That's about all I got on the Vietnam, well, I guess I can, if you got time, I'll ask your opinion on the Iranian crisis.

-MYAN: That is something right now that we cannot comment on.

-DC: Can't comment on that?

-MYAN: No comment.

-DC: No comment at all? I guess that ends my interview. Thanks a lot. Last 00:12:00question. How did the Vietnam War affect you? What were your personal feelings and go ahead, all your opinions on it.

-MYAN: Kind of a difficult question. Where would you have been if you hadn't been to Vietnam? Okay? This is it. Personally, I don't think it affected me as much or as bad as it affected a lot of people. Due to my family upbringing and stuff like this, I believe in the United States, I believe in our government, I believe in our military. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in it right now. I saw a lot of people taking off to Canada, burning their draft cards, burning the American flag That is what bothered me about Vietnam more than being there. Anybody that could be brought up in a free society and world like the United States has given us and doing that against the country and the people that were in Vietnam, not because of their own choosing. They came in, they were in the service, and the 00:13:00service says, yes, boom, you're gonna go. A lot of the kids were drafted into Vietnam. Your friends and neighbors have selected you for service in the United States and whatever service. I was drafted, I was drafted. I didn't have any choice. But what bothered me the worst was the protests, was the protests. Burning the American flag. I don't care if it's against the Vietnam conflict, I don't care what it's against. That kind of gets the hair up on the back of my neck faster than anything. See, watching someone or some group burn the American flag, anything that's against the United States. Granted, the United States is not all perfect and everything like that. But it comes as close to it as any country or government or society in the world today.

-DC: I think the majority of the people in the United States did feel the anti 00:14:00demonstrations in the war weren't, you know, the burning the American flag, you know, that's always been, in our family, the same. It's always been a tradition, all my brothers, they've been drafted. I'm the only one left who hasn't gone into service.

-MYAN: I'd like to talk to you about that.

(laughing)

-DC: I gotta finish college. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking of going to the ROTC at Creighton. I can't say that on tape. But my brother just got his commission, as 2nd Lieutenant in the Army. My brother's in the Army for two years until he was wounded, and my brother James, in the Air Force for six years. And my dad's a 34 year retired colonel, Air Force. And that's something that really bothered my dad.

-MYAN: Unbearably.

-DC: Yeah, cause, on base he'd see something, he'd report it, and he was a bastard, not to put it bluntly, but to burn the American flag, that was something that, the Iran crisis, that was something that most of anything would upset a lot of people. I drove by my neighborhood, what was it, Sunday? It was every flag that was out for the day they had called flag day for the hostages.

-MYAN: That's something different. You know, the Vietnam crisis was a very unpopular conflict. Now, with the Iranians starting it they way they have, treating our hostages the way they have, burning the American flag and you know, such and such, if something would happen as far as that goes, the feeling in the United States would be completely different than the Vietnam era.

-DC: I know, myself, I know if a war started, and they needed a volunteer army, I'd probably join. Because you know, it's a different thing. The difference between Vietnam, World War I, World War II, Korean, Vietnam War is in World War II, we were fighting for our country.

-MYAN: You had a purpose.

-DC: You had a purpose. Really, you don't have a purpose. Why waste an American life in Vietnam when you're not gonna get any goal on it? Only reason we went over there, in my opinion, was cause the French moved out, was to take over the riches that the French had. You know, they had a lot of raw materials there we 00:16:00needed, and that was a selfish reason to lose what, millions of lives?

-MYAN: You know, I don't think it was millions, but it was way up there.

-DC: Couple million, wasn't it?

-MYAN: I don't really know the exact statistic of it, but okay. The ones that were killed, that's a shame. It's a crying shame. Should've never happened, right? But the ones that I feel sorry for still have it in their memory. All right, can't shake the memory. That's the ones that you oughta feel sorry for. The kids that have lost a leg, or lost an arm, you know, really messed their head up for the rest of their life. That's the ones you oughta feel sorry for.

-DC: My brother will probably have his memory for the rest of his life. It's nothing very pleasant. I mean, he does still dream about it. It really upsets him. He was lucky to get out. He had another two more years to go, to draw another two more years, so he would've been there, if he wouldn't have been shot in the foot, where no damage was done to him, he would have probably been there for, he probably would've never came back. Cause he was there in the last '60s.

-MYAN: If your brother was there for two years --

-DC: Well, he extended, he was trying again. He, driving a helicopter, helicopter pilot, really you don't have that many dangers, and I guess he enjoyed it, that was the thing that bothered him the most. He enjoyed it.

-MYAN: In Vietnam, one of the lowest life expectancies was a helicopter pilot.

-DC: And he did it for two years. That's probably why he's having so many problems, because he enjoyed it, otherwise he wouldn't have stayed there so long. That's what I think bothers him the most, is he enjoyed it.