It is March 17th, 2002, and this is Cory Neil interviewing his father, Richard Neil, born March 4th, 1946, currently resides in Huntsville,

Alabama. Served in the Vietnam conflict and was in the Army, and his highest rank was Lieutenant Colonel. Okay, when did you first enter the service when you were serving?

I entered the service on the th of September in 1966.

What initially drew you to joining up in the Army? What were your main reasons for doing that would you say?

Well, the main reason I joined the Army was to learn how to fly. I had been going to college and I was planning on finishing a two-and-a-half year college and at that time you could enter the Naval flight program with two-and-a-half years of college, but I spent too much time not going to school and wasn't doing real well and I found out that the Army had a helicopter flight training program and that you only needed a high school diploma in order to enter that program so I looked into it and I decided that that would be a good way for me to learn how to fly, since I wasn't an especially good college student at the time. So that's the reason I joined the Army initially was to learn how to fly.

Okay. Had you always -- what -- you are a helicopter pilot.

Right.

Well, had you always wanted to fly helicopters or were you just really interested in overall being able to fly?

The answer to the question is I was interested just in flying, initially. As a young boy, about seven or eight, I had flown to Florida and I just decided at that time I wanted to be a pilot.

And as I said earlier, I wasn't doing real well trying to qualify for the Naval flight training program and this was an opportunity to learn to fly.

Okay. Did you have any of your relatives or anything in the Army or military at all and did that kind of influence you to join?

Most of the relatives, both my side of the family and on mom's side of the family, served in the military. My cousins and my father and my grandfather, I guess, served in World War I, World War II, Korea, but that didn't have any particular influence on me joining the military. I guess maybe it provided -- it influenced me not to be anti-military but it didn't really influence me to go in the service because my parents had served, or relatives.

When you first joined and got -- and first got into like boot camp and what have you and stuff, what were your first impressions and were you scared or, like, oh, I've made a big mistake or anything like that?

First impressions were confusion, initially. Went to boot camp down in Fort Polk, Louisiana and they flew us down to New Orleans, bused us out to the boot camp, arrived in the middle of the night, rainy, cold, and basically just a little bit confused, not really frightened, per se, but just confused as to what was going on, et cetera.

Had some idea of what was going to happen but it was just a little confusion.

Okay. Did any like close friends or anything join with you? Did you know anyone when you first entered the service at all?

None of -- none of the fellows that I grew up with joined the military. I was the only one that I'm aware of from that group that went into the -- went into the military that I'm familiar with. But when I entered the service there from New York, a group of us all entered for the flight training program at the same time, so we were kind of grouped together and went down to Fort Polk together and probably about a half a dozen of us became friends, but not growing up with them.

Okay. How did you -- after -- when you first realized that you were going to be sent to Vietnam were you -- did you join kind of expecting to go and sort of wanting to serve in that or were you a little upset about it and had you not really anticipated being sent in the service?

At that time, especially going into flight training, if you joined the military, especially the Army, you pretty much realized that you had about a 90 percent probability of, after you finished your training, ending up in Vietnam. For flight training you probably had about a 99 percent probability of ending up in Vietnam. No, I did not have any fear; I felt that basically we were trying to stop the Communists from taking over our country that didn't want to be Communist. I had -- I do take that back. I do have one friend who joined the service probably a couple years before me and the -- he served as a crew chief on a Medivac helicopter and was killed over in Vietnam, so, no, I didn't have any concerns about going to Vietnam at the time. I knew I was going to end up going there, probably, so --

Okay. How -- how did your, like, ideas of what it was going to be like over there change from -- I mean, did they change from the reality of it? Had you -- did you pretty much get into what you expected or was it a completely different world than what you anticipated?

That one's a little bit hard to answer because I don't know that I ever sat down and anticipated exactly what it would be like when I got there. Again, I guess the -- upon the initial arrival there, a totally new environment, totally different country, quasi-war zone, and everybody seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing.

I was not a hundred percent sure that I knew what I was supposed to be doing. And so for about the first three or four weeks, it was, again, a little confusion, a little apprehension, per se. Not so much from fear as from doing something wrong, okay, and making a mistake and causing some problems somewhere.

Okay. When did you first -- when were you sent to Vietnam?

Went into the service in 80 --

September of '66, left for Vietnam with the 101st in December of '67, and we deployed over there, 101st Airborne Division deployed over.

Okay. How -- how far had the conflict come along since its beginning in all that time?

Well, it had progressed from the earlier stages with the U.S. involvement where it was primarily advisors working with the Vietnamese units to the point where we were doing a major buildup of American forces, both ground forces and aviation units. The war was pretty well transitioning over to a U. S. operation and most of the initial contacts, the search and destroy missions and so on, were being handled by U. S. forces. The intent at the time was to let the South Vietnamese forces regroup, build themselves up, get better trained and so on, so they could then take it over.

Uh-huh. How were -- I know that time was -- there's a lot of conflict at that time, not only with Vietnam and what have you going on but also severe racial and civil rights conflicts going on, as well. How did -- did that really play a part amongst the American solders? Was that still prevalent there while you were at war or had it like where the focus is more toward the mission at hand?

I guess the answer to that's two - both. In the -- the units that were out in the field, the infantry units, the artillery, the combat units, I did not notice the aviation units that were flying, there was no significant racial tensions and so on. Everybody realized they had to depend upon the other person, no matter what color he was. In the rear areas there where the folks were not involved in day-to-day combat, where they were doing maintenance and supply and so on and they worked a relatively 9:00 to 5:00 type operation and could go to clubs and so on afterwards, in those areas there was more racial tension but not any more than I'd noticed, you know, anywhere back in the States at that point in time, okay?

Okay. I know a fair bit of your time -- like most of your time was probably spent in active duty while you were there, but the free time that you would have and stuff, what would you -- what would you and your friends do while you guys were over there? Would you go into towns and stuff? Were you close enough that you could go into towns and everything or --

The situations varied depending upon what units you were assigned to and where -- where you were assigned. I was with the 101st and it was a combat unit, as opposed to a support unit. We normally did not go into town. We normally were not allowed to go into town just for recreation and to go downtown and have a few beers and everything. There were officers clubs and enlisted clubs on the Army facility there. There were tents and so on but you could go in and have a beer and listen to music and things of this nature. So most of the off time was either in your -- what they call your hooch or your tent or in some of these clubs. And in the evenings they would have outdoor movies. Every month or two they would have a USO show come by with entertainers and they would put on a USO show. The mess hall every month or two would have a cookout and things of this nature. So mostly all of it revolved around the unit and the area and not interacting with the Vietnamese. Other units who were based in and closer to major cities did have a little bit more contact with the population and go into town. But generally speaking they tried to keep the GIs out of the towns as a recreational activity.

Okay. Was it really dangerous for American soldiers to interact with the Vietnamese and stuff or --

I guess the answer to that question is my impression was no. The South Vietnamese people that we interacted with in the cities and so on, or around the camps there, in the smaller towns, that we did interact with, did not seem to be anti-American. We would go out and help with some of the orphanages and so on and provide food and support to those and it was well received.

I'm sure a lot of them were sympathetic to the Viet Cong in trying to liberate their country, but, no, there wasn't a lot of danger along those lines. I mean, you could drive through town in your Jeep and generally speaking you would feel relatively safe.

It's when you got out into the countryside and were driving between towns and the more remote roads and areas where you would be in danger and mostly that would be from land mines and so on that had been planted on the roadways and either command detonated or detonated by driving over them.

Okay. What were your personal feelings toward the local people? How -- as far as like their treatment of you and how well you guys got along and stuff? Were you suspicious, kind of, of everyone or were you more relaxed? Well, did you have -- did you have much interaction with local people?

Not a lot. We had various local indigenous personnel would come onto base. They would do the laundry. They'd take the laundry back and they'd deliver it and pick it up and so on. They also had barbers -- excuse me -- who would come in and you'd go to the little barber shop there and they would cut your hair and so on. And they all seemed very nice. The -- I personally kind of, I guess, being a little naive, assumed that before they would be allowed onto the U. S. bases they had been relatively well screened to make sure that they were, you know, supportive of the Vietnamese government and what we were doing. It turned out in -- slightly after Tet of 1968, our camp was attacked by a ground attack and they found at least one of the personnel who was Vietnamese or Viet Cong that was killed coming through the wire happened to be our barber.

So you never really knew. But -- so I guess that's the answer. I was probably a little bit naive assuming that, in that respect. Can I add one comment to that?

Feel free to --

The general -- at least the general feeling with myself and most of the people I was with in the unit with the 101st was that -- we more or less felt sorry for the Vietnamese people.

They basically were an agrarian people. They lived in their villages and they wanted basically to be left alone. They wanted a government that would not abuse them and would not either use them from a U. S. supported government standpoint or abuse them from a Communist standpoint. They just wanted to be able to go out and raise their families, farm their lands, and, you know, they were caught up in a rather devastating situation for not just the time we were there but from back in the thirties and forties through the conflict with the French and everybody else. So we kind of felt for them, that they were very industrious, they were hard workers, very, you know, educated people who were just kind of stuck in the middle.

Okay. Moving along, your first actual assignment in the field where you had to go out and do what have you, can you just tell me what like your feelings on that were, how -- did you -- like were you -- it's kind of silly to ask were you nervous, I'm sure, but just what were your general impressions and stuff on that first mission?

As I mentioned earlier, when I went over -- when I deployed overseas, most of our flight class was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division in the States before the division deployed so we were there about maybe 90 days and then we deployed. So we went over as a unit. We were all mostly pretty much right out of flight school with very little experience. So when we got in country, for about the first six or eight weeks, they what they call infused us. They took us in, assigned us to other aviation units that had been operating for a while, and then after that six- or eight-week period of time, we came back. So, actually, when we were assigned to the unit I was assigned to and the pilot who was in charge when I was flying copilot, getting up to speed on how things functioned in Vietnam and also some experience, the flying was -- I felt very confident because this young fellow had about 600,

, 800 hours of flying time, knew what he was doing and so on. Some of the initial combat assaults was nervous but still confidence because I had that experience riding with me and so on.

What kind of -- what sort of missions would you fly? What was your --

Well, when we first -- first came in, while I was infused, I went to an assault helicopter company, the 116th, I think it was, and their mission was to fly combat assaults. So what we'd do, we'd primarily load up troops in the back of the aircraft and go out with a flight of ten aircraft and then orbit, waiting for the ground commander to determine which village they were going to go in and try to secure and then search for NVA and so on. So that's the type of missions we did. We did some combat assaults. Most of them were not hot. Most of them there was no fire. A couple of them there were some hot LZs. We took some minimal amounts of fire, but, I mean, not heavy concentrations of fire and stuff like that. And I don't remember anyone being hurt while I was with the 116th, as far as any of the crews or stuff like that.

Okay. Once -- once you were finished with that initial assignment, what sort -- what were your main kind of missions that you would fly? What was your --

After they sent us back to the unit, which was the 101st Aviation Battalion, and I was with the lift company, our missions varied. They were some combat assault missions on occasion but most of the missions I flew for the first -- well, for most of the tour there, were resupply missions,

Medivac missions, what they call flare missions where we would go up and orbit over a combat unit at night and drop flares to illuminate the battle field for them. We did command and control missions, we did what they call sniffer missions and later on in the tour flew what they call ?pink? team missions where you would fly a scout aircraft down low and have a gun ship up high and basically hover around the jungle canopies and try to find signs of the enemy, either footprints or some type of fortifications or indications that there were bad guys out in the jungle somewhere. And the -- the only other one would be we did some radio relay missions when they attacked the embassy in -- during Tet. We were doing some radio relay between the people in the embassy and the people at the Mac-V (ph) headquarters.

Okay. What -- out of the missions that you had to go on, what were the most dangerous ones that -- where you were at the greatest risk, probably?

There were two types of risks out there, as far as when you were flying. One was if you were flying into a hot LZ, or a combat area, in other words, where the ground troops were in contact, and you were -- you were subject to receiving enemy fire and so on. And I don't know what -- which would be the most scariest. I guess the most scariest is the one that comes to mind was later on in the tour we were putting in a combat assault in a jungle on a ridge line that was relatively heavily occupied and they had lost a lot of ships in earlier operations on it and we were orbiting, waiting to go in, and they were putting in a B-52 strike along the ridge line and the B-52s went in and had a direct hit along the ridge line and the first wave of ships went in and as soon as they landed -- we could only land two or three ships at a time -- the Viet Cong folks that had not been killed, they popped out of their little bunkers and stuff and proceeded to shoot up the aircraft. And the -- as we were orbiting, we were taking RPG rounds. And we knew we had to go in, because we already had troops on the ground. You couldn't leave them. You had to go in and put more troops on the ground. So I guess that was a little bit -- probably about the scariest from that aspect of it. You know it's there, you know you don't have a choice, and you know you have to go and all you do is you try to focus on the flying. There's not much else you can do. You've got to go in and land. So you try not to kill yourself. If you happen to get shot, well, that's the other guy's fault. At least you didn't commit suicide by doing something stupid and killing yourself flying the aircraft.

Uh-huh.

And the other side of the house the scariest operations were going out into the jungle to do resupplies. In the mountains, the winds would get pretty strong, try to go into these LZs and hover on the side of the mountain, try to get the skid onto the side of the hill so the people get off.

And basically the difficulties associated with landing in very small hover-down holes in the jungle that you'd have to hover down 100 feet and hopefully you wouldn't stick your blade into the trees. Or going into a pinnacle in a mountain somewhere and hopefully you wouldn't catch a down draft and get blown into the side of the mountain. So it was the flying aspects of it in some areas were a little bit scary, too. And doing some of those things at night was particularly -- particularly not fun.

Yeah. Did you -- did you find yourself getting -- did you get more worked up when you were sent into an area and you knew that there was heavy conflict that you were going to be -- that you knew exactly what you were getting into and you knew it was a dangerous area or dangerous mission or were the ones where you were sent out into an area where you really weren't sure what you were going to encounter, which -- which would have been more --

Let --

Were there situations where you had more or less no idea what you were getting into?

Let me -- let me answer that this way. Yeah, there were situations where you would be surprised that you -- maybe you'd flown through an area, if you were doing scouting missions, or if you were resupplying and you'd flown in that area several days in a row and not had any hostile contact, you may have gotten a little complaisant somewhat and you'd be surprised. I guess the other - the other part of it is, as long as you were operating with and in conjunction with American forces -- in other words, if you knew that there were American infantry on the ground out in the jungle and you were going out to support them or you were going out with other -- in a lift ship and you had other ships available, you were much more at ease because you knew if something happened they would at least know where you were. And, too, you knew they would come to try to get you out. So some of the scare --

I guess the one scary mission was a single ship mission where they sent us out to do some photo reconnaissance in the Upshaw Valley (ph), which was well outside the areas controlled by any of the friendly forces and they were planning an operation in there and didn't think much of it when we got the mission until we started flying out there and realized we had flown well past where the last friendly forces were and that there was nobody out there but bad guys and that there was nobody flying with me so that if the aircraft went down, had an engine failure or anything else like that, nobody would know where we were, nobody would know we went down. So it was a little -- a little tense.

Uh-huh. I completely forgot my next question I was going to ask you.

Let me -- let me -- you asked the earlier question whether I was surprised, and I just thought of another situation that fit into that category. In 1968, when the Tet offensive started, myself and one other ship was sent north to the Phu Bai area. The fighting up there had been pretty intense and the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong had kind of overrun the city. Well, we had been used to dealing with basically insurgents, Viet Cong, and we were flying around the city because it was occupied by bad guys and we flew around the city and picked up the road north of the city to head up to our designation which was about maybe 20, 30 miles further north. And so we just kind of skirted around the city and we swung back over -- come in over the jungle, came back in and picked up the roadway, the main roadway up to the next camp. And as we hit the road and turned north, there was a large number of troops in uniform marching down the roadway. Well, the only troops we'd ever been were U. S. troops or South Vietnamese troops. The rest were basically insurgents, black pajamas-type affair. We thought they were South Vietnamese or U. S. troops moving toward the city to help retake it and so we flew right over the top of them until they started shooting at us and we realized that it was north Vietnamese regular units and that this war had changed from a, quote, insurgency with guerillas to some major pitched battle type affair, so that was a surprise.

What are -- I don't like to say favorite -- but what are some of your more like vivid memories or stories that you have, like what were some things that really just stuck with you that --

Well, a couple of things. While I was there I was very lucky in that the base camp we were assigned to only received one ground attack while we were there and the -- and that stuck with me quite a bit. Most of the time we'd get mortar or rockets but never had anybody attack the camp, per se. And it started out with a -- with a mortar attack and we all rolled out of bed and jumped in the bunkers and thought, you know, another ten minutes or so -- it was probably about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning -- it would be over, and we'd all go back to bed. And it wasn't -- but shortly after getting into the bunkers we started hearing small arms fire on the perimeter and then we started seeing tracers coming - instead of going out from the perimeter, which was the normal case, we saw them starting to come back and then we started to see figures running through the camp in front of us and we realized it was a ground attack. And it's something that, as an aviator, is totally out of your environment. You're just not used to dealing with that. Most of the time, even when we went to the bunkers, as with this time, we're all in there and nobody had a weapon.

Everybody had left their weapons by their bunks and everything because we just thought it was a mortar attack. So that came pretty vivid because we anticipated the enemy kind of rolling through the camp and rolling up on us and we're all standing there saying, okay, has anybody got a gun? And so -- and we all answered no. So we had to crawl back into our hooches and stuff and try to get some weapons and ammunition. Luckily the infantry forces on the perimeter and there were some infantry units in front of us, between us and the perimeter, and they stopped the attack so they never got back to us. But that was a very vivid moment for me --

Uh-huh.

-- from that -- from that perspective.

Were you ever involved in any kind of ground like conflicts where you had to like go into battle, physically, yourself, instead of just flying?

No, that was the only time.

Everything else was basically flying type affair. We would go in and, like I say, many of the missions were resupply missions for guns or for ammo and meals and supplies for the infantry out in the field. And I guess the -- you asked any moments that would stick with me. There were two, I guess, that stick with me. One was early and it was down around south of Saigon where a U. S. unit was overrun in a defensive position. They had moved into a Vietnamese defensive compound for the night and the U. S. troops took one half of the perimeter to defend and the local South Vietnamese troops took the other side. Apparently they weren't quite as loyal as everyone thought they were, so in the middle of the night, when there was an attack by the Viet Cong, the Vietnamese troops basically pulled out and let them through and lost a large number of U. S. soldiers because they were surprised from behind. We were called in to bring in ammo and resupply and so on. We also had to carry out the wounded and killed and our ship got to carry out the killed and it was rather startling for me, early on in the tour, when they loaded on about six young 18, 19-year-old GIs, not in body bags, just in their uniforms with their guns and threw them -- basically piled them in the back of the aircraft and got a little emotional carrying -- carrying them back, you know. And then the other -- the other time was also a Medivac, we were called in to pick up a soldier who had been carrying a recoilless (ph) rifle round on his back. They came under fire and the round was struck and exploded and so we landed in the field to pick him up and they put him on in two pieces, his upper torso and his lower torso, and he was still alive. And the -- got him to the Medivac station, and the medics, who see quite a bit, when they come out, run out to the plane with the stretchers and so on, and these guys, who had seen all kinds of wounds, ran up to the plane, saw this guy, saw he was still alive, and they broke down.

Those two stuck with me. He didn't make it, by the way.

Yeah. What were some more fond memory -- like -- I'm sure there were points there where you had fun and enjoyed yourself and stuff.

What were some of the -- outside of battle kind of stories that you really enjoy?

The fun part about it, if you can do that, any enjoyment part about it, was the flying. Most of the flying was done -- or a lot of the flying was done low level, in the trees, or you were at high altitude. And the low level flying was a lot of fun. You got to maneuver the aircraft around, you just really enjoyed the opportunity to -- for lack of a better word -- hot rod the aircraft and have a lot of fun. The -- most of the missions that you flew were uneventful. Most of them were resupplies and things of this nature. It wasn't every day that you run into the combat situations.

That -- that aspect of it and just the times that you would spend in the evenings after the day was over, either at the club or with a group of -- of the other aviators and whatnot, horsing around, telling jokes, drinking beers, doing some childish type pranks, et cetera, were fond memories, if you will, fun times, a bit of an adventure.

I know you said when you first joined and had anticipated, yes, I was going to go to Vietnam, I know you said you were -- you'd felt that it was a worthwhile cause.

Uh-huh.

You were, in a way, eager to help this cause. You wanted to assist this. You thought it was worth your time and --

Uh-huh.

-- worth the sacrifice. Did -- did that change at all, like once you had gotten there and really seen some of the -- what was going on and stuff?

Well, let me try to -- let me try to answer this. If -- if it were not for wanting to learn how to fly, I was not as gung ho as waving a flag and saying I want to go to Vietnam and I want to be an infantryman. If I were drafted or something at that point in time, I certainly would have gone, but I was not basically gung ho to go over there and -- and subject myself to possibly getting killed, other than the fact that it was an opportunity for me to learn how to fly and so I took that and I realized that I would have to go. I didn't object to going,

I just wasn't jumping up and down trying to say send me, send me.

Uh-huh.

After I got over there -- and even today -- I still believe that the -- from the little bit I know of the history and so on, that the South Vietnamese people wanted to be left alone.

They did not want to be part of North Vietnam. They partitioned the country, many millions of the people, especially Catholic Vietnamese, moved south because they did not want to be under the Communist domination, and I still believe it was not improper for us to go and try and help those people maintain their independence. I think it turned into something more political and I was disheartened with the way the war was run over there. It was a politically orchestrated war. There were areas where we could not return fire when we were fired upon unless we got clearance through our own command post and then through the Vietnamese command post. Many of the Vietnamese political leaders, district leaders, were corrupt, really were out for themselves, so it was very difficult for the people to support them, and so, yeah, in a way I was disheartened about the way things were run, but not, again, not about the purpose of why we were there. And even today I think the purpose was proper.

On the political side of it, like the impressions that the people had back home of the war and the actual real situation, what was going on and stuff were, from what I understand, dramatically different from the reality of what was going on, like - did you feel they were -- how -- what were your feelings toward the anti-war movement here and things like draft dodgers and people -- people that thought and wholeheartedly were completely against it and stuff, did you feel they were just misinformed and did not understand the situation or that they were just wrong?

My feelings at the time were, I guess, if you did not support the war and you morally felt it was wrong to do that, I guess I basically respected that. I think you should be morally -- have the moral fortitude to follow through with your beliefs, and if you refuse to go, refuse to go and stand, and if it means that you are going to get taken to court and so on, then stand behind your morals. I had very little respect for the folks that said, well, I'm not going to fight this war, I think it's immoral, but I think I'm going to bug out because I don't think that I'm -- my morals aren't strong enough to really stand up and stay here and fight that, okay.

Uh-huh.

So I have very little respect for those people, okay.

Uh-huh.

The people who felt that it was worthwhile to support the country, et cetera, even the ones who went in the service and didn't necessarily fully support the war, supported their country. I think the people who didn't support the war out of moral obligation, they think the country is wrong, they need to stay and try to change it, not bug out. So, as far as the -- the people that saw it like most things, what was reported in many instances was probably accurate at times, the My Lai Massacre, some of the bungling by some of the units and people getting killed, but like everything else, it was the exception rather than the rule. It needed to be dealt with, it needed to be corrected, people needed to be held to task for it, but it was reported, like everything else, it was sensationalized so that the Tet offensive was sensationalized because the South - or the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong made some striking gains in the first few days. It was a surprise attack and they did very well for the first day or two. But they were totally defeated, took a lot of casualties, relatively speaking. We did. But the report was back there that, hey, you know, we're getting whipped, and it was quite the opposite. They threw everything they had at us, stopped it, and then beat the hell out of them. So -- but that's not the way it was reported back here. It was a little bit sensationalized in the wrong direction, in my opinion. And the country was not prepared to continue its support.

I think this side of the tape is actually just about done, so might as well stop it and switch it.

Okay, what sort of -- how did your views of people and the world in general, pretty much like your personal morals and philosophies and stuff, how did they -- how did your experience actually in service in Vietnam change those or did it change them from before you went in, in your original outlook on the whole situation to after?

Okay. I think I'd answer that by saying it -- I think it reinforced some of the beliefs and morals that I'd been raised with. And how did it -- I don't know if this answers the question or not, but it changed me, I think. Early on when I went over there, about three months into the tour, I took over as the brigade aviation officer and I'd only been in the service less than two years - three years -- less than three years. I'd been out of flight school less than -- less than a year.

And then I was responsible for 12 aircraft and probably about 75 people. And it didn't strike me at the time, but looking back on it, I think I matured pretty quickly there. Just, as an example, you've heard of the tunnel rats, and most of the aviators over there were young, 19, 20, 21-year-old aviators, helicopter pilots. And one we had in our unit was a young fellow, very thin, wiry, and he wanted to go down and go out with the infantry units and thought it would be cool to go in with a .45 as a tunnel rat.

And the infantry folks were going to let him go ahead and do it. And I was about the same age as he, but before I was responsible for anything, I wouldn't have thought anything about it. Being responsible for him, I said, this is foolish. This fellow has not been trained to do that, this is a lark by a young -- young fellow, and somebody is letting him go do that. And so, you know, I made myself unpopular by opposing it and talking to the unit commander and talking to him and saying, hey, you know, this is foolish. He doesn't know what he's doing, he's never been trained for it, and the other part is, if he gets hurt over there and the government just spent ,000 in a year to train him to fly helicopters, not go down and get shot in a hole in the ground somewhere. So I guess it changed my maturity level a little bit on that aspect of it. I -- I don't know that I -- I had always thought that the support we had over there was correct. I think, I guess, the other thing was it changed my view of -- of politicians and politics and -- and really reinforced me to the premise if you're going to put young men and women into harm's way, then you need to do that with the intent of supporting them 110 percent and not tying their hands for what's perceived to be political reasons. You don't have the right to do that.

Looking back on it now, if -- if you had the opportunity to relive that time again, would you still have -- would you have changed anything? Would you have still -- if you knew now -- if you knew then what you know now, would you have done the same thing? Would you have still entered the service and --

I -- well, there's a twofold answer to that. Yes, I think I would have -- looking back on it now, I feel that I did the right thing. I feel I can go to bed at night and feel good about myself. Now, the other question is, would you have done the same thing now. And the answer to the question is, on the other hand, no, I wouldn't have done the same thing. I would have pulled my head out of my tail and I would not have messed up my college education. I would have finished my college education and I probably would have ended up over Vietnam, possibly, flying Navy fighters and so on.

So not from the standpoint of, you know, no, I wouldn't not continue on to try to learn to fly and how to do that, I just would have done it a little bit differently, so I might not have been flying helicopters, I might have been flying something else, but I would have gotten my education first. And that's not a plug, it's just looking back on it, you know, it was a foolish thing for me to do, because later in life, when I married and your sister came along, and I was still in the service, I did not have a degree. I had to spend a lot of time going to night school in order to get a degree and to continue to advance in the military and that time I did not get to spend with your sister and -- when she was a baby, and growing up, and with your mom. So I shorted them and I shorted myself by not doing that.

Over -- based on your experiences with the Army and actually being in conflict and serving and stuff, and being overseas, what's your general opinion of how things operate and how we, as, like, a country, more or less act like the police of the world, you know, we go into different areas and stuff, but what are your feelings on that? Do you agree with that idea, that we should be in that position or we shouldn't because of our capabilities and what have you, that we should do things like that or --

Okay, the -- the short answer to that is we live in a world that is very much integrated as far as the resources that are needed by all the different countries of the world. No one any longer has all of those resources, so we have to, if we're going to move forward as a people on this planet, we have to be able to trade and interact and come together as nations. And just like we do in our own society here, we have to have businesses and we have to go to work and we have to -- businesses have to interact with each other. And people, whether it just be in this country or across the world, are not all nice people. Hence we have police forces. We have Federal and we have local police forces because everybody doesn't behave the way they should behave.

Nations are pretty much the same. Some of them don't behave the way they should behave. There has to be a police force. We have yet to reach the stage where the United Nations is of a force, both political and militarily, that can perform that function. Hence the biggest guy on the block, hopefully, has got the moral fiber to be the leader and provide the basis for policing the world with the support of other like-minded countries. Hopefully we do it in a moral way. Probably not as moral as it could be, it's just not a perfect world. We need to be better at it and we need to consider some of the other peoples in the world and their circumstances and try to -- the best that we can -- help them raise their standards of living and things of this nature. But we're -- we happen to be blessed with all of the resources and the -- the people whom make this country what it is, and we have an obligation, then, not only to protect ourselves but to also try to help keep the world a reasonable place to live in. I don't know if that answered the question, but that's kind of my thoughts.

All right, just, I guess, try and get a closing overall little statement on your impressions and feelings towards your service in the military, specifically, with your involvement in Vietnam.

I -- I had always thought, when we were growing up, I always thought we lived reasonably well. We were not by any means wealthy, we were lower middle class, but always had a decent place to live, plenty of food on the table, and whatnot. And I always felt that I needed to try to share the benefits that I had received by living in this country, by being raised here and having the opportunities that this nation offers to basically everybody that wants to work for it. I found that -- and it wasn't my intent to go there, but looking back on it, and after I'd been in the service for a while, that one way of giving back to the country and trying to help it is by providing service to it. I chose the military. I believe there are other ways to serve the country; the Peace Corp, the AmeriCorps, involvement in your own community, things of this nature. I think it is a very good character building, responsible building step in a person's life to go out and do something that's not just for themselves but also benefits others. They don't have to make a career out of it, but as it used to be, you know, send the bad boy into the military, and it will make a man out of him type affair. That's maybe a little bit too simplistic, but it's not entirely wrong. I think any type of service like that where responsibility is meted out to young people in their early stages and they get an opportunity to serve themselves and other people benefits them in the long run and also benefits mankind. So, I think, from that respect, because I wanted to fly, I got into the service, I learned a lot of other benefits associated with serving, and I think, as you may recall when I was in New Jersey, in Penns Grove, serving on some of the township committees and volunteering and, you know, running for the local office and so on, it was very important for me to try to give back what I perceived to be the benefits I got from living in this country to the people who I lived with. And I think if -- if everyone had a little bit more of that the place would probably be a little bit better, if you weren't out a hundred percent for yourself but got a little bit of satisfaction out of giving back.

I hope that doesn't get too confusing.

No, that's perfectly all right.

All right, I guess that's it.

All right.

This is -- this was -- this has been Cory Neil, interviewing his father, Richard Neil, on the 17th of March, 2002, in Auburn, Alabama.