Veteran Interview with Euell White (H)
(5:20) Mr. White tells about his experiences during the Vietnam War.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive Interview with Euell White June 22, 2011 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood Clip 8 Clint Alley: Well what was your assignment that third tour? Euell White...
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| Format: | Electronic |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/162 |
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Electronic |
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War Years at Home and Abroad Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Military life |
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Military life Veteran Interview with Euell White (H) Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Military life Prisoners of war; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 |
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(5:20) Mr. White tells about his experiences during the Vietnam War.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Euell White
June 22, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 8
Clint Alley: Well what was your assignment that third tour?
Euell White: I was Executive Officer of 3rd Battalion 187 and they call them the Rakkasans. They got that name in Japan. That means Falling Umbrella. And I was Executive Officer to an old friend of mine from Special Forces in Okinawa named Bryan Sutton. We were friends on Okinawa. He was a, when he was a Captain, I was a Lieutenant. He got killed on that tour. I joined the battalion in January and they designated us to be involved in a operation that, where the, the Vietnamese Army went into Laos. We didn’t actually go but we supported them. Of course our helicopter pilots and things did, but none of our ground units did.
CA: Um-hm.
EW: And he got killed in a helicopter crash during, in March. I believe it was the 18th of March.
CA: What year was that?
EW: 1971.
CA: 1971.
EW: I was just, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really get involved in the combat this time, you know. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been caisson when they was firing at us with rockets and artillery but I had a good bunker to get in, you know.
CA: Yeah.
EW: So I didn’t really get exposed to too much.
CA: Okay. So you, you got over there in January of ’71?
EW: Yeah.
CA: The third time and you were—.
EW: And I came home in November. CA: Okay.
EW: Managed to get out a little early. Got home on Thanks—, I arrived in Seattle on Thanksgiving Day.
CA: I bet your wife was pleased, wasn’t she?
EW: Yeah.
CA: Well, did you, ah, did you ever have like any, any contact with any prisoners of war or anything like that, or did you, like, get to talk to any of the enemy face to face?
EW: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had, we captured prisoners and we had people—they had a program called the Chieu Hoi program and Chieu Hoi meant “open arms”. And the guys that gave up on Chieu Hoi program, they were called Hoi Chanhs and the idea was to get them to give up, give up and come over and give us information. They, they had a price list, you know.
CA: Um.
EW: You get so much money for this and this and this for weapons and location of where your unit was and all that stuff. And we had a lot of those and prisoners were captured, you know, and, and I was I guess what you would call, not fluent but proficient, you know, in the language, you know, so I, I could speak, I could hear and I could write it and I could read it and I could understand it pretty good. Speaking it was a little more difficult because it’s so, it’s all, see their, their alphabet is the sa—same as ours except for two letters. No J; what’s the other one? I don’t remember. Twenty-four letters in the alphabet.
CA: Um-hm.
EW: That language was written by a French priest back in the 1500s. He just took the way they talked and did it phonetically, you know. And, ah, but it’s real tonal the way they, you know it’s, it’s almost musical. And it’s like our language, they have some words that looks the same, have a different meaning and sometimes it’s just a little mark that, you know that makes the difference.
CA: Yeah.
EW: And you get that tone off and you can be saying one thing and think you’re saying another. But, I remember once telling my houseboy to put some ice water in my canteen. We were going out on patrol. I was out there in the hot sun just putting off, you know, refreshing myself with that water and when I turned it up it burnt my lips. The water, the word for liquids is nguoc. N-g-u-o-c. And you would modi—that’s the way wo—, you modify that with the [??]. Nuoc mam means “fish sauce”, because mam is the word for fish.
CA: Um-hm. EW: And, ah, so, nuoc do, I may, I can’t pron—, that’s what, but anyway, d-o without the mark, with or with or without the mark it’s “ice” and with, the other way it’s “hot”. So I asked for hot water instead of ice water.
Rhonda Haygood: Oh, no.
EW: It’s that trick, you know.
CA: He probably thought you were strange, I bet, didn’t he?
EW: But, anyway, yeah I, and my battalion commander, well captain then, we were both captains then, all the Vietnamese Officers just about were from North Vietnam, I reckon, and they had us, you know—. And so when we got a North Vietnamese, now, you got a, got a Viet Cong you treated them pretty rough, you know, we, they used the water treatment, by the way, you know.
CA: Oh, yeah.
EW: And, ah, it, it didn’t do them any harm. I mean, they didn’t get a lot of information from them either, but you know, they, they did it. They’d be pretty rough on a, on a Viet Cong.
CA: Yeah.
EW: But if they got a guy from the North they’d have him for dinner so they could catch up on what’s happening back home, you know.
CA: Ummm.
EW: So I, you know, had a meal with them.
CA: My goodness.
EW: He was still a prisoner but they, you know, I mean they’d sit around and talk to him. He’d tell them what was going on back, back in Hanoi. |
| title |
Veteran Interview with Euell White (H) |
| titleStr |
Veteran Interview with Euell White (H) |
| author |
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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FLCPLwar162 |
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https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/war/id/162 |
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http://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/war/id/162 |
| _version_ |
1705462192902504448 |
| spelling |
Veteran Interview with Euell White (H)Prisoners of war; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975(5:20) Mr. White tells about his experiences during the Vietnam War.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryEuell White2011-06-22sound/textaudio/mp3; text/pdfEnglishPart of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library CollectionMay be protected by U.S. Copyright laws. Contact the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to use.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Euell White
June 22, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 8
Clint Alley: Well what was your assignment that third tour?
Euell White: I was Executive Officer of 3rd Battalion 187 and they call them the Rakkasans. They got that name in Japan. That means Falling Umbrella. And I was Executive Officer to an old friend of mine from Special Forces in Okinawa named Bryan Sutton. We were friends on Okinawa. He was a, when he was a Captain, I was a Lieutenant. He got killed on that tour. I joined the battalion in January and they designated us to be involved in a operation that, where the, the Vietnamese Army went into Laos. We didn’t actually go but we supported them. Of course our helicopter pilots and things did, but none of our ground units did.
CA: Um-hm.
EW: And he got killed in a helicopter crash during, in March. I believe it was the 18th of March.
CA: What year was that?
EW: 1971.
CA: 1971.
EW: I was just, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really get involved in the combat this time, you know. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been caisson when they was firing at us with rockets and artillery but I had a good bunker to get in, you know.
CA: Yeah.
EW: So I didn’t really get exposed to too much.
CA: Okay. So you, you got over there in January of ’71?
EW: Yeah.
CA: The third time and you were—.
EW: And I came home in November. CA: Okay.
EW: Managed to get out a little early. Got home on Thanks—, I arrived in Seattle on Thanksgiving Day.
CA: I bet your wife was pleased, wasn’t she?
EW: Yeah.
CA: Well, did you, ah, did you ever have like any, any contact with any prisoners of war or anything like that, or did you, like, get to talk to any of the enemy face to face?
EW: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had, we captured prisoners and we had people—they had a program called the Chieu Hoi program and Chieu Hoi meant “open arms”. And the guys that gave up on Chieu Hoi program, they were called Hoi Chanhs and the idea was to get them to give up, give up and come over and give us information. They, they had a price list, you know.
CA: Um.
EW: You get so much money for this and this and this for weapons and location of where your unit was and all that stuff. And we had a lot of those and prisoners were captured, you know, and, and I was I guess what you would call, not fluent but proficient, you know, in the language, you know, so I, I could speak, I could hear and I could write it and I could read it and I could understand it pretty good. Speaking it was a little more difficult because it’s so, it’s all, see their, their alphabet is the sa—same as ours except for two letters. No J; what’s the other one? I don’t remember. Twenty-four letters in the alphabet.
CA: Um-hm.
EW: That language was written by a French priest back in the 1500s. He just took the way they talked and did it phonetically, you know. And, ah, but it’s real tonal the way they, you know it’s, it’s almost musical. And it’s like our language, they have some words that looks the same, have a different meaning and sometimes it’s just a little mark that, you know that makes the difference.
CA: Yeah.
EW: And you get that tone off and you can be saying one thing and think you’re saying another. But, I remember once telling my houseboy to put some ice water in my canteen. We were going out on patrol. I was out there in the hot sun just putting off, you know, refreshing myself with that water and when I turned it up it burnt my lips. The water, the word for liquids is nguoc. N-g-u-o-c. And you would modi—that’s the way wo—, you modify that with the [??]. Nuoc mam means “fish sauce”, because mam is the word for fish.
CA: Um-hm. EW: And, ah, so, nuoc do, I may, I can’t pron—, that’s what, but anyway, d-o without the mark, with or with or without the mark it’s “ice” and with, the other way it’s “hot”. So I asked for hot water instead of ice water.
Rhonda Haygood: Oh, no.
EW: It’s that trick, you know.
CA: He probably thought you were strange, I bet, didn’t he?
EW: But, anyway, yeah I, and my battalion commander, well captain then, we were both captains then, all the Vietnamese Officers just about were from North Vietnam, I reckon, and they had us, you know—. And so when we got a North Vietnamese, now, you got a, got a Viet Cong you treated them pretty rough, you know, we, they used the water treatment, by the way, you know.
CA: Oh, yeah.
EW: And, ah, it, it didn’t do them any harm. I mean, they didn’t get a lot of information from them either, but you know, they, they did it. They’d be pretty rough on a, on a Viet Cong.
CA: Yeah.
EW: But if they got a guy from the North they’d have him for dinner so they could catch up on what’s happening back home, you know.
CA: Ummm.
EW: So I, you know, had a meal with them.
CA: My goodness.
EW: He was still a prisoner but they, you know, I mean they’d sit around and talk to him. He’d tell them what was going on back, back in Hanoi.http://server15947.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/war,162 |