Oscar Oliveraz
[b. 04/251 1937]
Meter # [000]
"Today is Thursday, September 18. I am Emma Skeels and I am interviewing Oscar Olivarez at
6525 Greenridge Drive. Mr. Olivarez is my friend's grandpa. Mr. Olivarez is 7J years old and
was born on April 25, 1937. Mr. Olivarez served in the Vietnam War. Mr. Olivarez was in 44th
Medical Brigade and held the following rank: Sergeant First Class.
ERS: What was your family background and educational background?
00: I was born in Texas. I had three brothers and three sisters. We were a family of seven. My
dad died in '59 and my mom died in'92. I have a Bachelor of Science.
ERS: What is your current occupation and current address?
00: I'm retired; I live at 3445 Mesquite Court, Indianapolis, IN.
ERS: At the time of the war were you in a relationship, married, or single?
00: I was married. I had three children.
ERS: Why did you join?
00: I joined because I needed a change in my life and I joined the Air Force, and I stayed there
for four and a half years, and then I switched over to the U.S. Army and I stayed seventeen years.
ERS: Why did you change from the Air Force to the Army?
00: Because I wanted to go back to Europe. I was in Europe for the Air Force-I was in France,
my wife is French, I got married to her, so I wanted to go back to Europe.
ERS: Do you recall your first days in the service?
00: Oh yes, they sent me to basic training in Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, in
September 1958.
ERS: Was this for the Air Force or for the ... ?
00: For the Air Force.
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
ERS: What did it feel like?
00: It was a complete change. They restrict you in every way and it was very hard training.
And then when I got out of the Air Force and [when I] went into the Army I had to go through
basic training again.
[3:43]
ERS: Oh yeah?
00: Yes, at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
What kind of planes did you fly? Like for the air force?
00: When I was in the Air Force they sent me to air police school right there in Lackland, in San
Antonio, and from there they sent me to France.
ERS: But you [yourself] didn't fly there, right?
00: No, I did not fly.
00: The Air Force only flies [to places]. I went back home to Germany in the army on the
u.s.s. Patch; it was a troop ship.
ERS: I don't know if I could remember that.
00: You don't forget. Ten days!
ERS: Were you seasick?
00: No, I never get seasick. They told me what to do, and I tried to do it.
ERS: Were there any memories that stood out or friends that you made?
00: Oh, I made a lot of friends in the military. Everywhere you move in the military, you move
every three or four years. When I went to France, I went to Chateau Roux, which is in France.
And I was at La Martinerie, which is the Air Base, and then from France I went to Wichita,
Kansas, McConnell Air Force Base. And then when I was in the army they sent us to Munich,
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
Germany, then to Denver at the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, then I went to Vietnam for one
year. And then I went to Walter Reed Army Hosiptal, after I came back from Saigon, and then I
went to Fitzsimmons in Denver, the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital. And from there we went to
Stuttgart, Germany, and from Stuttgart we went to El Paso, to live in William Beaumont
Hospital. And from living in El Paso, we went to Frankfurt, Germany. And then from Frankfurt
we went to Fort Hood, Texas. So that's a lot of places.
[7:29]
ERS: Were the kids still living with you?
00: Yes.
ERS: So that's a lot of places.
[Side Tracked]
ERS: Are you still friends with anybody you met in the military?
00: Oh yes, I have a friend that I met in Munich in 1963, and he lives in Brownsburg.
ERS: Oh really?
00: Yeah, I met him in Munich in 1963! He's around 65,61 years old? And we reconnected,
he's sick now.
ERS: How did you get through it? I mean was it good for you, or did you want to keep on
doing it or was it just for a change of pace or ... ?
00: Well, in the very early career it was very hard. There's a lot of training you have to go
through and sometimes you have to go through a lot of isolated areas and since I was always
interested in the medical field, I had pretty good positions, except when they assigned me to a
medical battalion, as they say high combat type in the army. And we went through a lot of
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
training and it was very hard, the training. The weather, and all that stuff. It's a hard life, it's not
an easy life. And sometimes you get a good assignments, but a lot of times you don't.
[11:03]
ERS: Where exactly did you go?
00: You mean in the war?
ERS: Yes.
00: Okay, I went to Vietnam in August of '66 and I came back in August of '67, and they sent
me to the biggest hospital in Saigon. When I was there, I repaired all of the medical equipment
in two hospitals, two field hospitals in that same location. And I was there, and there was this
one hospital which was the third Field Hospital, and the other was 51 st Field Hospital. So they
were both there, but that was a very challenging job, because when I was there, I was on call
twenty four hours a day because a lot of machines break down, and you need to go repair them to
save somebody's life. So it's a very important job and it was a big challenge.
ERS: Was it more of a mechanical aspect, like you were just fixing things, or did you have
to incorporate some of the medical intelligence there?
00: Yeah, well you have to know a lot of what the equipment is used for before you can figure
out what is the most important equipment. And you're always around all the medical staff and
everybody needs everybody, you know, I mean to do the complete job. I was in Vietnam and it
was a very harsh environment and the possibility of a debilitating, there's gunfire all over the
place, it's just not a safe area, and so it's really bad. You have very long hours, because there's
no place to go, you know you're there for a year and a lot oftimes you work fourteen to sixteen
hours a day, whatever is required. So once you're there, you finish your tour you're happy to get
out.
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
[14:12]
ERS: You know, when you see war movies, there's always like a battleground, but it was
just all over the place that they were fighting?
00: Oh yes, they mortared the hospital I was in December of '66, and a lot of people got
wounded, and once they got out they would come right back in wounded. It was kind of scary,
because normally you wouldn't expect the hospital to get hit, but the fighting goes on all the
time. You cannot try to be careful and try to stay safe.
ERS: Did your family come with you?
00: No, they were all in France. None of them spoke English because they were all in France!
[Wife was French so wife and children were staying with wife's family in France.]
[Side Tracked]
[16:29]
ERS: Do remember landing, and what was it like?
00: Oh yeah, I remember, it was a very long flight. We went from Oakland, California. We
had to stay there for a weekend, but the next stop was in Tokyo, Japan. The next stop was in
Saigon, and it's scary, you know? Getting there, and they tell you "You have to go over here." I
remember the moment I was leaving, a young soldier asked me, you know, "How was it over
there?" And I couldn't really explain it to him because it's something you have to go through to
really know what it's all about. So I told him, "I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to find
out." I didn't know how anybody was going to do. It's something really tragic to talk about, you
know? What you've gone through.
[Side Tracked]
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
00: I was in France for three years, and went from France to Wichita, Kansas, to the Strategic
Air Command, and it was in 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. And I was there, so
they clamped the Air Force Base, you know, you couldn't go out of it. So I had to call home and
tell my family, you know. And they had these nuclear weapons these big B-52s, that bombers
were ready to go to Cuba.
00: I was in the AFIP, which is the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. And I was in the sub-
basement, there were two basements a basement and sub-basement. And it was a beautiful
building, huge! I was in the radiation-pathology lab, and the machine that I had to take care of
was the 300 Maxitron, which was a fantastic machine that you x-ray with.
[20:37]
ERS: To cure cancer?
00: Well, there were a lot of experiments there, those little things that they do.
00: Another story is in Washington D.C., I got the flu, and they put me in bed because of the
temperature. In Vietnam it got up to 120°, 130 degrees, you know the temperature. It was a lot!
So then I went, in the middle of winter, to Washington D.C. And the change of temperature got
me.
ERS: Did you do combat?
00: In Vietnam, everyone was in a combat zone. I was in the hospital, but you had to wear the
bulletproof vests, like when they were mortaring the hospital, you had to wear all of that. They
had to sterilize all the water, it was always yellow. But you're thirsty. I mean, every day you had
to take a malaria tablet. See they had malaria from the mosquitoes.
[23:02]
ERS: So did you have to take a shot for that or was it just a tablet?
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
00: It was a tablet. Every day you had to take a tablet. Every day, when you went to eat your
breakfast. That's the first thing, somebody stand there handing you a tablet. But 1 had to get a
lot of shots, like plague, and all of the [ disease] shots.
ERS: Were there any type of injuries? I mean you're medical, so there were probably a
lot ...
00: I saw a lot of casualties, but none that I remember.
ERS: Did you ever get a chance to take care of a patient? Or were you taking care of the
machines?
00: I was keeping the machines ready all the time for the patients. I saw the patients as I would
go and perform maintenance on the machines. I saw a guy with a head wound, and he was in a
wheelchair he was bad, and he looked up at me and said, "You know what? You got it good."
And I looked at him, and I kind of felt bad, but then I thought to myself, well if I wasn't here he
wouldn't have the machinery. And it saves lives, you know, so I shook it off. You had to, you
know.
ERS: Yeah, you're job's just as important.
[Phone in backround]
OO[Started talking about his Army training experiences]: We tried to hit the target with
these mortars, they're big and round, like that [gestures with hands], and they take off so much
of the explosive, and how far you wanted it to go because they have something that measures
how far you want it to go. And you have to get instructions and all, and say the first round hits
here, you're trying to get one round to hit here and here. Once you have these two rounds, you
can fire as many as you want, because it's going to hit about right there, right where you want it
to. So I knew the concept of mortars, so it was very scary when I was in Vietnam, and I knew
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
mortars were coming. But you have to wear all this protective equipment, and all these steel
helmets, and it's very heavy.
[26:10]
ERS: So what did you do? Was there anything you could do? Did you just continue on with
your work, or ... ?
00: No, they said you should just go out and cover. Because we're in the hospital, you know,
we're not supposed to be fighting. First thing in the Army, just like in the Air Force, they train-
you to be an infantry soldier. And then they train you to be something else. But it's always like
that. The basic training is to train you for any kind of job as an infantry soldier. But then they
choose you to say, "Oh, we want you; we need you to learn this for this particular kind of job."
ERS: Did you get to choose your job or did they pick one out for you? For the military.
00: Well, in the Air Force, when I was there that's where they wanted me. But when I went in
the Army, they said they wanted me in Military Police, and I said, "No, I'd rather not." So they
said well, we've got to put you in the medical field, because that's where I wanted to be in the
Air Force, but that just didn't happen. So then I stayed for almost three years.
[27:38]
ERS: Tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences.
00: Well, I was in the Texas National Guard, and the unit was the 49th Infantry Division, and
from 1956 to '58, we used to go to training at North Fort Hood, and I remember I was in the
Mortar Squad, and we had five on the teams. And we used to ride a half track, which they don't
make anymore those half tracks, it's like the back part of a tank track, and the front is a regular
car. And it's all on one wheel. And then we had to learn how to fight, and how to fire different
rounds, and estimate where the target was and how we had to land. And so I remember this
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
because, when I was in Vietnam, they mortared the hospital I was at. And I remembered the
different concepts I learned at Fort Hood when I was in the National Guard, and I remembered
that mortars can fall at any place. And that's what makes it so scary and dangerous, to know that
type of information. And when I was in Vietnam and they mortared the hospital I was at, it just
kind of brought back those memories about how I learned how to fire a mortar. And so, I went
to North Fort Hood for the National Guard about three or four times. We went for summer
training. And I remember a lot oflong days, and, you know, all the training that we had there.
And I was a very young man, I was in my late teens, and so my first experience was with the
military. And then when I got back to Fort Hood, I was at a different part I was at the South Fort
Hood, which is the biggest part of Fort Hood. Fort Hood happens to be the biggest army post in
the world, its part of [an] area, and so there was a lot of training area that they could use in Fort
Hood, and they have so many different kinds of equipment, and vehicles that they use. And, so
this was after I came back from Germany, and I was almost at the end of my military career.
When I was in the military, I met a lot of interesting people. Every Army post that I went to, we
made a lot of good friends, and we had a lot of good experiences, and it was a very close knit
family in the military, because you try to help each other, and you have these long lasting
memories of all these people you meet. And a lot of them still contact me, and they call me and
it's unusual, because you know as we get older you say "I wonder whatever happened to that
person," you know and so we had long lasting memories of how we as Americans help each
other. And I had a very good military career, and I've met and seen a lot of places. There were
some rough times, but also some good times. Everywhere you go is a different challenge; you
get to learn a lot more than you knew before. Even after, I meet a lot of veterans, like I belong to
the American Legions, and I belong to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and different clubs like
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
that. And you see these old soldiers and we all have one thing or another in common, that we
served the military for our country.
[34:02]
ERS: You said you were awarded quite a few medals and whatnot, and would you mind
telling me about those?
00: I got a lot of awards and medals. When I was in Vietnam, there were five different medals:
one for being in Vietnam, one for being in a combat zone, and they gave me.an army
commendation medal. I had about, also eight or ten awards, and that's a lot of medals. When I
was in different posts, they kind of commend you for a job well done, and a lot of times they
award you particular medals, you know, and I had a very good resume from different awards.
[35:35]
ERS: You were never a prisoner of war, right?
00: No, I was never a prisoner of war. I did see a lot of casualties when I was in Vietnam,
because I worked at a hospital, and I saw a lot of wounded soldiers that were being taken care of.
I had to mantain the equipment that kept them alive [and] in good shape. And sometimes the
equipment would break and you had to fix it, and you had to do it now, you could not wait until
some other time. And that was a very interesting part of my military career was repairing the
equipment in the hospital, because it's a very technical career that keeps the function of the
hospital going and a lot of people depended on this equipment working, and in Vietnam it was a
very harsh environment. The weather didn't help you and it was always raining, and everything
would rust, and the heat, it was very hot, 120-130 degrees all the time. A very good area in my
military career because you learn so much about different things.
[37:19]
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
ERS: Like [about] the machines you had to fix or, in general, like life lessons or ... ?
00: Well, yes, the machines that I had to fix and had to maintain a lot of times had to go to
intensive care wards, and see all these soldiers. Sometimes they call you in the middle of the
night to corne and make sure that something important [is fixed], to keep somebody alive. And
you meet this person, and you talk to them, and you talk to the nurse, and then you corne and
check on that person in the morning, and they're gone. They didn't make it through the night,
you know? And you tried everything that you were supposed to do, and you kind of get to know
these people, you know, and then you corne and check on them to see how they've progressed,
and sometimes they've turned for the worse. And it's not your fault, you know, it's just they had
so many wounds, and that. And you feel bad, because you were hoping that person would make
it.
[38:331
ERS: I know that some ofthe veterans from Vietnam had a hard time getting through it,
like getting through all the wounds and everything, and I was just wondering if there was
anything specific you did to keep your head up and get through the tough situations and
times.
00: Oh yes, the tour in Vietnam was twelve months, and, you know, my wife and my children
were in France at the time - I sent them to France to my wife's family. And you know, you think
about them all the time, so that kind of keeps you going. And you say you're going to make it
through there, even though you see so much misery and everything there. You're always
looking forward for that day that you leave, you know? And, I know a lot of the soldiers that
went to Vietnam and that was a long time ago, in the late sixties, and they're still having
problems mentally [people that fought in the war]. I have a neighbor that lives not too far from
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me, and he gets relapses all the time, and that's because he remembers all the stuffhe saw over
there and that affected him mentally, you know? Me, I happened to be in a better environment,
you know, and you don't think about what's going on, you just try to do your job and since
you're always on the go for twenty-four hours a day, every day, there's no time off in Vietnam
for a whole year, you just work seven days a week. You kind of just tell yourself "Hey, just do
the best job you can, and we try to save as many lives as we can, since we're in the medical part
of the war.
[40:48]
ERS: How did you stay in touch with your family?
00: Well, you know, my wife and children were in France and my wife used to write to me just
about every day. And she would send me letters and pictures. [It was in the] late sixties. [Wife
talking in background] We didn't talk on the phone. And my wife would send me care packages
with a lot of good food from France, [talking to wife] : and what else did you send me and tell
me all of the things going on over there. It was a long year, twelve months, it seems like it isn't,
but it's a very long year.
ERS: And was Jerome [their son] still a baby, too?
00: Vince, Vince [other son] was.
ERS: So did Dr. Olivarez [daughter) or, did they [other children) ever try to write you little
letters or ... ?
00: Little notes and stuff.
Wife of 00: Not writing or anything, but little designs ... [incoherent]
[Side conversation with wife]
[43:26)
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
ERS: Was there anything you did for good luck?
00: For good luck? No, I just. .. there's that thing that when you get letters and pictures you
kind of feel that you get something to make it through, to make it through there. They asked me
to stay longer, and I said "No, that's okay, I served my time", and I left. I did my commitment,
you know? But some people stay over there, some soldiers, they don't come home, they stay.
couldn't do that because I had a family back home. Some soldiers don't. .. they stay for the
duration of the war, you know. And I knew some of them too. They don't look forward to
getting out of there, you know, I did.
ERS: So it was really sort of a joint effort you and Meme [wife], that kind of got you
through the war.
00: Oh yes, oh yes Meme, she would write me every day, and looking forward [to the
letters] .... [to wife]: You used to write me a lot!
[Side conversation with wife]
[45:07]
ERS: Okay, what was the food like?
00: Over there? Well, the Army cooks were very innovative - they used to capture all this
white rice, and they used to make a lot of things out of rice. Every day you ate rice. Those
cooks, they made cakes out of rice, they made all kinds .... I mean rice, they cooked it many
different ways, every day, but it was because they would capture all this rice! So, I mean, you
know, I've got to give it to those Army cooks, I mean they found a way to change the menu but
it was always with rice. And before we ate we always had to take a malaria tablet. I remember
there was somebody standing in the line waiting before you go [to eat]. You go, and they give
you a malaria tablet, because you've got to take it because of the mosquitoes over there, there
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was a lot of mosquitoes, and they don't want you to catch malaria, so that's why they give you a
malaria tablet. And you had to make sure you took it every day.
ERS: So lot's of mosquito bites?
00: Well the thing is, they didn't want you to get sick. They made sure you took it.
ERS: Did you dry swallow it? Or were you supposed to take it with water?
00: Oh yes, they gave it to you and you were supposed to take it with your meal.
ERS: How did people entertain themselves? Were there entertainers, or ... ?
00: Yes, there were a lot of usa entertainers on the stage, I got to see Bob Hope, I got to see
Nancy Sinatra, I got to see James Gardiner. I remember they had a group ofladies singing, and
they were dancing on the stage, you know, different singing groups. They always had, at least
once a month, they had somebody come to entertain on stage, you know. And the wounded
soldiers! That's why there were coming, they were entertaining the wounded soldiers so we got
to see them because we were staff, you know we were part of the hospital. There was two
hospitals for all of that, combined. It was very interesting to see all these celebrities.
[47:50]
ERS: So they came over there?
00: Yes.
ERS: And did you get to go on leave? Did you get to go back to France for Christmas or
something, or was it just for the entire year?
00: No, they had, you could take a week off, and they call it, you could go on Rand R, which
stood for Rest and Relaxation. And you could a week, and they had different areas, YQU could go
to Tokyo, Japan, you could go to Hong Kong, China, you could go to the Philippines, you could
go to Thailand, and you could go to Guam, and they had many different places that you could
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
choose to go for that week. And me, I didn't take that week because they were going to open a
place that I wanted to go for that week was in Australia, and they never did open it until a month
after I left, so I never took the Rand R week, but they did give me a week to get out of there
earlier, so it tumed out pretty good. Who knew that week that I was authorized to use for that.
The only place that appealed to me was going to Australia. And they opened it a month after I
left Vietnam; they opened that part, you know, that area to go to.
[49:41J
ERS: Did you keep a personal diary?
00: No, I had a calendar over there, the soldiers were very innovative, and they had a picture of
a young lady in a bathing suit, and they had little squares on it, one through three hundred sixty
five, and every day you crossed out a number, that day, and so you started at the head and you'd
go all the way to the toes, you know. And r brought it back with me, and I don't know what I did
with it, but, that, I remember kind of marking offthose days, you know, it was very encouraging.
ERS: So it wasn't like a normal flip calendar with a .... ?
00: It was a board, and it was a young lady in a bathing suit, and it had squares of numbers,
and I do remember it because I brought it back. [To wife]: Do you remember the calendar I
brought back? [To me]: I brought it back. It's one of those little things that keeps you going
every day. It's getting less, and less, and less! And I did do something in Vietnam that was
very commendable. I helped, I volunteered to help; I don't know if I said it before that Seven
Day Adventist Hospital? It was downtown, and a friend of mine who worked with me, he was
already volunteering, and what we were doing, we were keeping the equipment going at that
hospital, repairing it, because they were a, what do you call it? A volunteer group to help the
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local people, you know, survive, the different things of war, and they helped a lot of little
children, too. And we would go once a week and give some time to help.
ERS: To help repair or ... ?
00: Yes to keep their equipment going, which means yeah, we had to help repair their
equipment. And they were very happy.
[52:18]
ERS: Was it a Vietnamese hospital?
00: No, it was a Seventh Day Adventist group from the faith, you know the religious group?
That went over there and set up this hospital to help the local people. I thought that was very
commendable of these people to go over there, and I said, well, you know, I can help them
manage it.
ERS: Do you have any photographs of the experience, any like Polaroid pictures or
anything?
00: We had a whole bunch yeah, pictures of Vietnam. I brought an album back. [To wife]: We
still have it, huh? [Side conversation] I got a portrait of you. [To ERS]: I had a Vietnamese guy
make it from a photo, a portrait of Meme [wife]. She was young at the time. That's still in
France, I don't have it. [To wife]: Does your sister still have it?
[Wife talking in side conversation about what he brought back from Vietnam for children;
jackets for the boys and a doll for the girl]
[54:31:4]
ERS: Do you recall any particular humorous or unusual events or pranks that you pulled
or anything?
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00: Oh yes, once I was working at the Intensive Care Unit, and we had some machines which
we call sterilizers which sterilize all the equipment, medical equipment, and I was there fixing
the big autoclave, which sterilizes all the equipment. And there was a water buffalo that came
down the ramp! I guess he escaped from somewhere and came down this ramp, and went into the
intensive care unit, and bounced around on the walls and stuff, you know to try and get out of
there, and he hurt himself, and finally we kind of pointed him in the right direction to get out of
there before he did any more damage, and finally we got him out of the compound there. And it
was very dangerous and it was very scary when I saw this water buffalo go right by me, I just
happened to be in a safe area. I got in between these two autoclaves, which are the sterilizers,
and so I didn't get hurt.
[56:04]
ERS: None of the soldiers got hurt or anything did they?
00: No, the water buffalo was more scared of us, you know, because he didn't know where he
was. And finally we got him out of the compound, and they got rid of him. We didn't really
care what happened to him, we just wanted him out of there! It's a true story, I forgot that
happened.
ERS: Do you recall the day your service ended?
00: Yes, I retired from the Army in May of 1980 at Fort Hood, and they had a very big
ceremony, because I worked at a very big hospital. And I used to work at the office of the
Hospital Commander, and so they had a big ceremony for me and it was really something to see
all these people. They gave me all kinds of commendations and stuff. [To wife]: Were you
there for my retirement? Because they gave a certificate to you too. [To ERS]: It was very nice,
it was very nice.
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
ERS: I bet it made you feel pretty proud.
00: Oh yes. [To wife]: Do you remember that, Mom? All the commanders were there.
ERS: We're pretty much done, unless you recall any other unusual events or anything.
00: No.
[58:53:4]
ERS: Did you have plenty of supplies when you were in Vietnam?
00: Oh yes, we had plenty of supplies, and if nothing else there we would barter. In the Air
Force, you know, if we needed different shops or ... we knew what to get. And so maybe there
would be Band-Aids, for example, and we had that, and maybe we needed a part or something,
and we would do it that way. But we always had something, to make sure the equipment was in
good shape.
ERS: What exactly did you stay in? Like when I think of military I think of a tent or
something, but was that where you stayed in or was there a little apartment building where
all the soldiers were or ... ?
00: Well, when I first got there I lived at the hospital, they had a place. There were six hospital
buildings, because I was in Saigon, and, again, it was the biggest hospital we had. And when I
first got there, maybe three to maybe six months, I stayed at the hospital, and then they promoted
me so they put me in a ... what they call bachelor quarters. They rent these areas, you know, and
you have your own individual room. Yeah, I was getting a little higher. And so, it was about a
mile away from the hospital and I walked that mile every day, and I walked that mile every day.
And you could take the bus, but me, I was a young person, so I walked, you know?
[1:00:56]
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
ERS: Do you remember anything specifically memorable from your first day, like getting
off of the airplane or friends you met on the way there?
00: Well, I remember getting on the airplane at San Francisco at a big Army, and Air Force
bases outside of San Francisco. First we went to Oakland, and they took us right outside San
Francisco. And the airplane took about twenty hours. We stopped [for] a layover in Tokyo,
Japan to pick up more troops. Then we got there, right outside Saigon, it said Ben-Hua, it's a big
airfield. And then they had different camps where they took you initially. So they had assigned
me to this evacuation hospital, and then somebody had got there before me so they didn't need
me. And then they assigned me to M.A.S.H. hospital, which is a Mobile Army Surgical
Hospital, and then they found out that they had already sent somebody there so, in a way, I got
lucky, and they said "Well, we're going to send you to Saigon to a field hospital."
[1:02:42]
ERS: You got lucky because it was a bigger hospital or ... ?
00: Well, a M.A.S.H. unit is out there in the jungle. And so that's not a very good place to be,
because they move you from place to place, kind of a mobile hospital, not a very good place to
be. So I went to the field hospital, and I did my time. [To wife]: I got lucky, huh Mom? [To
ERS]: Oh yeah, it was where they were shooting, you know. There was no safe area. You hear
the artillery going day in and day out. You just tune it out.
ERS: Did you get scared?
00: I got scared one time, one time. Right after. . .I got scared the longest right after they
mortared the hospital, and I remembered my experience learning about mortars, and I that's
when you say "Hey, you know they could go anywhere!" You don't know .... you can't say "Hey,
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
let me get here because it's going to hit over there", you don't know where it's going to hit!
[1:04:02]
ERS: So, did you say you were in the like the lowest level of the hospital?
00: Yes, 1 was in the maintenance shop, and they had these big workbenches and we went
under them, but we had to wear steel helmets, you know, because to protect the head and we had
bulletproof vests, and we had a rifle, and all that stuff is very heavy, very heavy. But, you know,
it's to protect you.
[1:04:41]
ERS: Did you feel pressure to kind of get it done [fixing the military equipment]?
00: No, because you know what 1 got pretty good ... because, you know, when you get there
they say, this is a pretty important job, somebody might be saved because of you. So if you are
very conscientious, which most of us were, we learned the equipment so good, that we could
repair it [the equipment] even with a blindfold, you know what 1 mean? Because we got that
good, that proficient.
ERS: So it took a little bit of getting used to, but you got it down?
00: Yes, and it's one of those things that...See when you feel pressure, it was just about time
that they mortared the hospital, and then after that, you start thinking to yourself, "I can't live
like this, and I won't make it here,". You start worrying about everything, you don't survive,
you block it out. Because if you start worrying about it every day, you feel pressured, and so you
have to make up your mind and say "Hey, you're here, you just have to do your job." And it's
true, that's how 1 made it back, I just said, "What's going to happen is going to happen, I can't
stop it." You have to reason it out, you know you have to tell yourself"Hey, am 1 going to be
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
scared for one year, here?" Well, more than one year here! People get shot right there, going out
the gate of the hospital.
[1:06:501
ERS: Like, right when you were going out?
00: I saw them going home. They had a lot of snipers firing everywhere. And some of these
people were leaving the hospital because they were being released, and they were getting shot
right there at the gate, and we had to bring them back and they had to operate on these people.
You see that, and you think, "Hey, it's not safe around here ... "
ERS: Okay, I just remembered something you said earlier and it's not the Vietnam War,
but you said you were in Washington, or Canada, I think you said ... the Cuban Missile
Crisis, when that happened?
00: I was in the Air Force, and it was 1962, and it was the Cuban Crisis. And I was a
policeman, I was a United States Air Force policeman in Wichita, Kansas at the Strategic Air
Command Base, which is a reaIIy rugged, highly sophisticated base that the Air Force had, and
they had these B-52's loaded with nuclear weapons. And they were ready to take off. And we as
military police had to guard that nobody would come near them, because they were ready to go,
when the President said go, it was that close. All he had to do was say the word. And that was
when President Kennedy was over there, but then they diffused it, and, you know, it didn't
happen, but we were very close. And I remember these B-52s, because I was there, you know,
making sure nobody came near them. And we were on high alert, you know, we couldn't go off
the post, you have to stay at the base there, we just had to call home and say "We're not coming
home." Until this thing ended. So that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. [To Wife]: What year was
that? [To ERS]: That was in '62. After that, I got out of the Air Force right after that. Yeah,
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Vietnam War - Olivarez
they wanted me to stay and they would promote me and everything, and I said no, I said just give
me my discharge. I wanted to change jobs, and they didn't want to give me the job I wanted, so I
said just give me my discharge, so they gave me my honorable discharge, and I got out.
[1:09:53]
ERS: So was that scary for you, the really close call for the [Cuban Missile Crisis]?
[never answered; changed subjects]
OO[About hearing about President Kennedy's assassination in Munich, and seeing the
reaction of African-American soldiers]: Somebody that was going to help them a lot, and see
that's what they've got, and they just lost.. . you know that's all they had, that things were going
to be different. Because that was during the Civil Rights, I don't know if you studied that. And
President Kennedy happened to be President when all the Civil Rights [were happening], and
then Johnson continues that, and I remember the sadness, and it's really something to experience,
you know? Like, why would someone want to kill the president? That was in '63. November of
'63, because we were in Munich, Germany. And I was on this Medical Company, Combat
Medical Company, we didn't have to make the guns, you know, we had to combat, we wore
heavy guns.
[1:11:33]
ERS: Were they guns?
00: The ambulances were kind of square, you know? They were square, you know? Those are
the ones you drive into combat because they're more sturdy, you know, they bring them for war,
and we had combat ambulances. It was something, it was something.
[1:13:18]
