AHS Truth of War Project 2015: Interview with Teddy Jack

Transcript
Izzy: Hello, my name is Izzy Simpson and I am here with Teddy Jack on November 18th
at Animas High School. Teddy do you want to start out by telling us how you ended up
participating in the war?
Teddy: In my day, you signed up for the draft when you were 18 years old, so Id already
signed up, I was still in high school. I got out of high school in May, I turned 19 in May, and I got
my draft papers almost immediately after I got out of high school. So I thought that when you
were drafted you went for two years, and I thought that Id take the idiots year, and sign up and
join the army that Id get into a better school, but that didnt turn out right. So I ended up going
three years, an extra year, to get a school that I got to choose out of. So I felt cheated and had
kind of a bad attitude right from the beginning. And I went through my basic training at Fort
Lewis Washington, I got to begin in the winter, and it would rain until it got cold enough to turn to
snow. It was all wet and snowy and wed have to crawl on our bellies under the barbed wire and
run these obstacle courses. And after that I went to a truck mechanic school, in Fort Ord
California, and I graduated head of my class so they sent me to Fort Benning Georgia to be a
tank mechanic. So after I graduated from tank mechanic I had a drivers license for everything in
the army and run on rubber tires, for everything that ran on tracks. And then I went from my first
practical experience was in Fort Hood Texas, where I stayed about a year or so, we were
training tankers, and I would teach the drivers classes and the tankers classes, until they
graduated a class of tankers every three months. So after Id been there nine months or so I
had done three classes, then I myself was sent to Vietnam, and I was supposed to be sent over
to the DMZ, but I met people coming out as I was going in, and they said yeah, your life
expectancy is about two months over there. So I heard them say they needed to find some
welders over there quick and send them up to the first air cavalry division, and so I lied and told
them I was a welder and they sent me up there. But when I got there they could see I didnt
know how to weld right away, and they were angry with me, and every day, every platoon would
have to give up one of their persons to do the dirty details, you know string up barbed wire, dig
post holes, set out mines, do all these things. And so my first three-four months in Vietnam I
was pretty much the permanent duty guy, and then I had learned how to weld a little bit. Since
I had a drivers liscence I was driving the field trucks, the ammo trucks, any of these. If they
would have hit them, Id probably die, do you know, but I didnt care, I thought I was gonna die
anyway. I didnt expect to come home when I first got there. But so I got a lot of chance to go
out on the road, and see people, and look at the countryside.
Izzy: What were some of the most moving things that you saw?
Teddy: Its the children, everywhere you went there was children, begging children.
Theyd put them in an orphanage until they were about five years old, then theyd take them out
of the orphanage, and theyre expected to know enough, be big enough, to do something to
earn a couple of little bowls of rice every day, and I have a picture that I took of a little girl,
carrying water. She had two five gallon buckets, and these water weighs eight pounds a gallon,
so thats fourty, thats eight pounds of water in these five gallon buckets. She had a stick shed

put on her shoulders, and shed squat down and rest, then put the stick on her shoulder and
jump up and go to crop as far as she could go and then shed sit the buckets down. And Id see
her just about any time of the day I passed through this town shes either going back to the river
for more water, or coming up now with But that water would have weighed eighty pounds, and
she probably didnt weigh sixty. And she was always smiling and waving to me, I couldnt
believe what a happy child she was, she was just trying to get her bowls of rice, you know.
Izzy: So how have your opinions on war changed since you became a part of it?
Teddy: It was like a glamorous thing in the beginning, I was gonna be a soldier, I was
gonna, we were gonna win, and everything was gonna be good, we were gonna help these
people out, and By the end of my year, I could see that that wasnt happening, you know?
There was too much politics, wasnt just a war, the politicians were telling us how to do and
where to go, and So then its just a matter of doing right things, so that I could live to come
home. By the time Id been there six months, maybe I realized that I was not fighting for peace, I
was fighting for my own life. That was my goal, I could see we wasnt gonna solve this conflict in
my time, you know, it was just, I was fighting for my life, and my friends.
Izzy: Yeah, thats really moving. Did you ever meet anyone in Vietnam that you, like,
connected with?
Teddy: Yeah, there was a, one place where we were, these people were so dirt poor, you
just cant comprehend it. And everybodys littler than they look, a fourteen year old boy looks like
hes about eight years old, cause theyre smaller, and they just dont mature as early as some of
us here, in some ways theyre faster, theyre ahead of us, but They had this little boy, has a
piece of welding glass, that, I dont know, welding hood thats been taped into a piece of
cardboard. He had this rickety welder thats fixed up, and hed have to hold his cardboard, and I
could just see the dangerous rays, you know, coming around this cardboard and getting on his
face. So one day I took him a welding hood, brand new and right out of the box, some extra
lenses, and all these things, I took them and gave them to him, and from then on every time Id
go by that shop, Id holler at him and hed wave to me, you know. Some of my friends or
acquaintances said dont give him that hood, hell just give it to the Viet Cong, and their people
will use this to make bombs or something, but Id used to stop by and visit that little boy and give
him a welding lesson once in awhile. We built some swings in a orphanage for the kids, and and
a lot of them kids would recognize me when Id drive by that church. They realized I was the one
that built, cause when I used to go out and help them set it up and everything, and some of
these kids realized it. For the most part, they were like super smart, these kids were really
smart, youd show them something one time, and they would remember it. You could let them in
any of our trucks and they would drive them. You know wed put down to this place where there
was a big sand dune, and wed pay them a penny a piece to fill a sandbag, and throw it in a
truck. Since I had a drivers license, I'd drive a truck down there and give bows of sandbags and
bring them back, wed stack them around our tent and some stuff. But these kids would see you
one time turn the levers and lift the bed up, and the next time you came in there, they could do it
for you. Get out, G.I, and let me. But they were real smart, learning stuff.

Izzy: Wow. So it there was one decision that you would change, that you made in the
war, what would it be?
Teddy: ...I shot this woman with a pistol, point blank almost, and One thing that really
weighs heavy on my mind is, when I first got there I was all gung-ho, and they said that if youd
shoot a, if you shot someone, you could prove a kill that could get a promotion. So I went into
this search and destroy place, and they were taking everyone out of the houses, and burning
houses, and I could see this head bobbing up, down through the cattails in the marsh there, and
I thought there was somebody escaping and the head popped up and I shot. And after
everything quit and I went over there it was an old grandma, caught there, trying to go to the
bathroom, and I wish I hadn't have done that. And then there was a young lady. I didnt know
what her intentions were, they may have been good and I shot her anyway, you know.
Izzy: How does that experience change the way you knew the war?
Teddy: Yeah, I was beginning to catch on at that point that was At first I thought I was
fighting for the country, and then I thought maybe we was fighting for texaco, and by now, by
this point in time, I couldnt figure out what we was fighting for, there didnt seem to be damn
sense to it, you know. But it was something thatd come to us, we were there, and there was no
ignoring it, I mean they brought it to us, daily, nightly, anytime they felt like it. Where we lived in,
mostly I lived in camps, so we couldnt run like the guys in the jungle, they could go from one
place to the next and hide, where we couldnt so we had to stay, right there. That was the
scariest part, probably, that we were just waiting for the next thing to happen,
Izzy: Was there ever a particular time or moment in which you experienced pure fear?
Teddy: Yeah. Thats happen pretty often, you know, there was some scary times. There
was just- I dont even remember what I was doing there, but I was issued an M-16, I had the
semi-automatic rifle, and probably a thousand rounds of ammo. But when I got there I bought a
45 pistol for 25 dollars that somebodyd had taken off a dead person, and I carried it right here. I
was in a house, and I dont know what I was doing in there by myself, I still dont remember, but.
I sit there all night, and anybody, Id see the door wiggle and Id hear somebody stepping, Id call
out to them real quietly, you know, and if they didnt answer Id just start shooting, through the
door, through the straw walls, and nobody else was near me to help me, and I was in that house
all night, and I still wake up at night, shooting, shooting, looking around for my extra clips,
seeing if Id dropped my clips in the dark, you know. Id wake up in bed, crying, screaming, and
shooting, you know, and looking under the bed for my clips. But I was separated, I was isolated
by myself, for all I knew I was the only one left standing, I was sitting in the corner But that
was pretty scary, that was a long night, it was pretty scary. One night, just as we were finishing
up our day, we were starting over to the kitchen to get something to eat, and we started getting
rockets, and the rockets are 122 millimeters, and theyre the first, theyre about ten feet long, the
first full explosive, and the last three-foot is a rocket motor. And they would go six miles, and
theyd shoot them down on us from this little range of mountains, and theyd shoot them down
on us, and theyd, they were Russian made, and the ho chi minh trail had these rockets put on a
paved road, within two miles of where we lived, so wed never run out of them, they had plenty
of them. Theyd shoot these rockets down on us, and one night they started shooting down on

us, and they hit our ammo dump, and the powder started burning, and explosives, and there
were lots of minor explosions here and there. Theyd burned up 147 million dollars worth of
ammo, all of our fuel which was in plaster, these big rubber bags burned, and whenever it would
get, whenever wed start to be hit, receive an incoming, the helicopter crews would run out and
fire up the helicopters and try to get them off the ground, but before they could get the
helicopters off the ground, they blew up 58 of our helicopters. Smoke was coming off all the
gasoline and avgas, and everything was burning, our oil supplies were burning, and our ammo
was burning, our food was in cardboard boxes and all that was burning. It went on until about
midnight, and wed thought it was, since it was only a few months after Tet, who had just
reclaimed all that land, after Tet of 68, when theyd overrun most of the country. Wed utilized
every weapon we had against them, and they were on the mountain shooting down, we brought
in bombers, and we bombed the side of that mountain till it looked like it was plowed, you know,
it was bare dirt, and we had the helicopters, we were the first ones to get the helicopters, they
resembled the black hawk, they were narrow helicopters, and theyd fly upside down, and theyd
had a gatling gun in the nose that would do about a 150 rounds a minute. If you went down that
highway here, if you went down that 60 miles an hour in that helicopter, then youd put a bullet
every four minutes, cross that road. The crosshairs were on the pilots eyes, were on the hood,
and wherever he looked, thats where that gun went. We had all our own gunships out straight,
and all the fields, bushes, we had the bombers bombing them out inside, with big bombs, and
the marines had a cargo helicopter that theyd busted out every window of it, on one side, and
they had these gatling guns in each window. They called it Puff the Magic Dragon. These guys
were out buzzing up and down, shooting things up, and then wed send our own infantry out,
start shooting more back on them, and fought them way back. It was about midnight, you know,
before we brought them down, and they looked at all the radar blips, and all the holes in the
ground, and they say that that was one of the, that we had taken more of the incoming in a
smaller place in shorter time, than anybody in the war. Wed just come out of the welding shop,
and we dove in a ditch, and my friends were with me, and I said, lets get under the dozer, they
had brought in a dozer for repair work, it was parked in our front yard, so five of us I think dove
under that dozer, and no sooner than we had gotten under the dozer had those rockets hit in
front of it, dispersed into little red squares of red hot steel, and they hit that scraper in the front
of that dozer so hard, that they welded themselves there. If we had been in the first ditch we
were hiding in, then wed all be dead. Because that split second decision Id made to get under
the dozer, and me and the little Puerto Rican guy, and a Muslim, was under there, and was all
praying, and the Puerto Rican was going, Holy Mary mother of Jesus, save us! and the Muslim
was going, Its too late, its too late, even Allah cannot save us! And I was praying the way my
mother taught me, but About midnight, when it had calmed down, I got up to get out and look
around, and theyd blown up a big pile of the plastic explosives, and it blowed me through the
wall and made a big gash in my head right here, and I came through and blood was running all
over, I thought I was dying, but my buddies got a couple of cans of beer and washed it off, and
tied it up, and I still got this funny place on my head, because it didnt heal ups straight, but
That was a pretty scary day, hiding under the bulldozer, you didnt want the buttons on your
shirt, you gotta get down, dig a little hole, youd wanna get down just as far as you could. But
that was pretty scary.
Izzy: Wow.

Teddy: That was the most spectacular, if not the most scariest, I was more scared in the
ti-zi, it was spectacular, all the burning, all the explosions, all the screaming and hollering, the
crying in the night.
Izzy: Wow, I cant even imagine. Well, can you remember where you were and what
emotions you had when you heard that the war had ended?
Teddy: I was I dont remember exactly where I was, Id been home for a couple years
when I got word that it was over, and I was After Id come home, I went to Dallas Texas to
welding school, on a G.I. Bill, there was a university there, they used to have rock concerts in
the, they had a big park, a big grassed area, in that campus, and wed go down there, see the
girls, mostly, but, there was about five of us, and we were, I think it was John Carry, or one of
these high-profile politicians was a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, I had
joined that group while I was in Dallas. And wed go down campus on Sunday afternoon, and we
told him, young men, you know, do something, just dont sit around and wait for the draft, just
stay in school, go to Canada, you know, do whatever you can, dont go, this isnt getting
anything done, were wasting lives, you know. So I turned anti-war, the police come down there
to break up the riot of another, and theyd come, wed have our booth and theyd beat us all up,
and held me on the ground, three officers held me down and the third one sicked his dog on me,
I was laying on my belly, and that dog was biting all up my legs and Id try to close my legs and
theyd kick my legs apart so they could bite me on the inside where it was nice and tender So
I got beat up for being anti-war person at that point.
Izzy: Wow. What was different, other than that, when you had come home from the was
versus when you left for the war?
Teddy: Id come home and Id started drinking in the army, and Id come home and I was
hanging around my mothers house in Bayfield, about a week after Id come home and Id come
home and been drinking, and my mother didnt approve, and my mother said, I dont even know
you anymore, youre not the same person you used to be, and you get out of my house. When I
got home from Vietnam, the first day I landed in Fort Lewis Washington, and they took us by bus
to the San Francisco airport, to fly home, we went in the airport, got our bus tickets, we were
going down this long hallway, and theres this whole row of freaks lined up.Theyre spitting at us
and calling us baby burners and rapers and all these things. One of them ran up by the line and
spit at me, and I grabbed him and backhanded him, and knocked him back on his side of the
line. One cop clubbed me on this arm, and one cop clubbed me on this arm. The old cop said If
you dont want to spend your first night home in jail then you get back in line. He said these
people have a permit to protect them. So my first day home Im clubbed by the police and they
wonder why I dont like police, you know.
Izzy: Was that one of the biggest points of realization that you had returned home?
Teddy: Yeah, that was my welcome home, you know.
Izzy: What message would you like to leave for generations to come on the topic of the
war?

Teddy: Wars really never solved nothing, you know, a lot of people die, especially poor
people and women and children, and more than the combatants know, and Its just a losing
thing, you know, its always been a part, ever since Adam and Eve, wars been here, hatred. Its
no good, you know, but, 58 thousand of us died in Vietnam, and it didnt change nothing. The
capital of Vietnam is still Hanoi instead of Saigon. Wars are no good, its the devils business.
Izzy: Is there anything final youd like to add, any stories or opinions?
Teddy: Oh, we did funny things, I guess, you know. I used to hear that little Puerto Rican
and the Muslim and a couple other guys I was working with thatd be out behind the shop, about
quitting time, youd hear them all laughing, I swear they were laughing, and youd look behind
and see they was all stoned, and theyd be laughing, theyd say, you just try a little bit of this
and youll be laughing too. So thats one occasion. So I started smoking pot with these guys
and theyd think it was kind of funny. I mean everything was funny, we laughed at everything
whether it was funny or not. But there wasnt much funny things, you know, there wasnt a lot of
humor where we were. We didnt get a lot of army radio stations, we didnt get the army
television station, we didnt get the news station. One thing that I suppose was kind of funny is
there was a woman newscaster in Hanoi, and there was, one the army radio, its got one knob,
theres like, eighty notches on it, and 140 on the other one but if you could get the right two
combinations, you could pick up this radio station in Hanoi, and this lady in Hanoi would say,
you guys might as well give up, theres not gonna be a live first trooper in the northern part of
Vietnam before the month is out. We heard her say this a couple times so we thought it was
another invasion, so we were stocking cases of hand grenades, and lots of ammo and things
under our beds and our trucks and our work areas we kept little bazookas and all kinds of things
we could get. Then one day we were going to work in the morning, going down for like
breakfast, and the captain said, everybody gather around he said were moving today. Which
wasnt unusual, we moved all the time. He said I just found out about this last night, but were
gonna dazzle the world, and were gonna more men and machines than have ever been moved
in the history of worlds. In three days, were gonna move all of you to Saigon and all the people
in Saigon are coming here. And he told me go to the, get yourself something to eat, go down
and put as many tools as you can on the welding truck, and go down to the airport. As soon as
they loaded an airplane, I drove the truck up on in there and we piled everything else in there,
and by ten oclock in the morning I was in Saigon, which was like from this end of the country to
that end of the country, three-four hundred miles. Anyway, I got there and there was nobody, I
was the first one to unload, I was on the first wave. There was nobody there to meet me,
nobody telling me where to do, so I was driving around in my welding truck, and all of a sudden I
was downtown and it was like going to Las Vegas. These guys had cafes, bars, everybody lived
in hotels, you could go in and buy real food, there were food vendors with loafs of bread and
things I didnt have nobody to meet me or tell me what I could or couldnt do, so just like going
to Las Vegas, man, once in a while. That was a good fun day, you know, couple of days before
everybody come looking for me.
Izzy: Yeah. Well is there anything else that you would like to add?

Teddy: You know Ive got this picture here with the little home made, its called a jungle
penetrator, like when the canopy on the trees, the factory made ones had a real pointed tipping
on them, and lowered them down on a winch on a helicopter, and had these levers you pull and
one of the seats would fold down, and theyd strap the wounded on there and theyd pull them
back up through the canopy into the helicopter. But it was so technical, that nobody could figure
out how to work all the levers and things. So theyd come to me and Id make one with two
seats, and it was basically wired up there with baylin wire, and have safety straps wrapped
around them. But the ones they were buying were like 2,000 dollars, and the one I made was
about 5 bucks for the scrap iron, and I made lots of them. They kept coming back, and wanting
more of these. There was one accomplishment in that. The agent orange sprayers , I made
agent orange sprayers for three months until I started coughing, and I still cough. But nobody
told us how dangerous it was, you know. Now they just found out that all these health issues Ive
had was related to it but theres If all I get is when it turns to cancer theyll treat you for cancer,
they wont treat me for any of the other things that are wrong. Thats my one big disappointment,
I felt cheated. If Id lost an arm or a leg, theyd have put me in a wheelchair and given me an
early retirement, my kids couldve went to college for free, but I give them my lungs and my
sinuses and my throat, and I dont get nothing for it, you know. There was a couple of other
good stories that I could, you know When we went into where the ishaw valley truck was and
all this stuff, when we went into the Ishaw valley we saw one of the biggest offences in the
whole war. Wed done this, if you get a chance, go to the movies, We Were Soldiers, that movie
is based on that offensive. I went to the movie, thats the last time I went to the movies, it was
like twelve fourteen years ago, but Now Ive lost my train of thought. Oh well. I had these
friends who used to come and visit me Anyway, its kind of a boring story, but I wanted to
somehow show you the But I dont know where it is See theres the little girl carrying
water, you see how small she is Thats not what I was looking for I have a picture, these
pictures right here you see a truck on the end of a house, the detonators right on the point, its a
percussion drill. Sometimes theyd come in at an angle and just skim across the swamp, and not
detonate, so theyd put them in the road, and the first car that would run over them, would blow
itself all to bits. And this truck, this bus, is like a panel truck, it was all filled with women and
children, and it was basically I think the wives of the Whenever the South Vietnamese army
would move their woman and kids would follow behind them, and this was who was in there. But
I was down there and I went down there to try and help, and you cant get where Buddha is, if
you dont have all your body parts.They save their finger nail snippings, their hair, out of their
comb, they save all that stuff in a box and when they die they put them all together and cremate
them. But you cant get where Buddha is if you dont have all your body parts. So these people
would be out there missing an arm or a leg from this explosion, and wed gather them up and
put them on a stretcher, but before wed get them on a helicopter theyd be flipping out, theyre
rolling round in the dirt with one leg, theyre looking for their other leg, and theyd be holding a
leg or an arm when youd put them on the stretcher because they didnt want to die without all
their parts, you know. So thats why you saw so much mutilation, you know, in Vietnam. Thats
why wed cut their ears off, and hook them on a chain, theyd hang them on their dog tag chain
and theyd have all these ears. Sometimes theyd go out to battle and come back with eight or
ten new ears. But when they went into Ashaw, and cleaned that out, these infantry guys, they
were heroine junkies from L.A., some Chicano guys, four of them, theyd been there three or
four tours in Vietnam, they like it, you know, they found a hole about this big around, and they
went down in that hole, and we thought they were all dead, we didnt see them for like a week,

and then they come around one night, and I says where you been, and they say we was
partying all night, dinner was really good, thats what you do, he said, well, we found this
hospital three layers deep, in the mountains, and we went down this hole, and they went down
and anybody who resisted they shot them right away, and then they went in the wards, and
where they had Russian and Chinese nurses in there, there were girls, nurses and doctors. So
they went in there and got into the booze and the food and they started eating, making these
guys cook for them, and then they got into the drugs but they couldnt read it, cause it was
Chinese or Russian, so if theyd find something that looked like meth or morphine theyd go out
and hit the patients up, see what itd done for the patients, if it made them feel real good then
theyd hit themselves up, and then theyd hit the nurses up, and they went in there raping and
pillaging for three days, and when theyd come out they had no survivors and they blew the hole
up when they come out. This one friend of mine had eighteen blue ears on his dog tag chain,
but That was kind of a sad story. But they thought they was having fun.
Izzy: Wow. Well thank you so much for talking to us and sharing your story.
Teddy: Well its more fun when Ive got a whole group of people to talk to.