(instrumental music) - Three hundred or four hundred meters south east.

(booms) (gun fires) - [Narrator] They took the young and the brave.

- It's quite emotional to try to patch these kids up.

I mean, I wasn't much older.

They were probably 18 and 19 and I was 20.

- (garbled speech) go in the bar, gotta be 21.

I was only 19.

- [Radio] Driver been secured let's get the hell out of here.

- [Radio] Okay copy we're coming out.

- [Narrator] And dropped them into fierce battles in the jungle far from their desert homes.

(gun fires) - The Viet Kong and NVA ruled the night.

- Military people don't love war.

But it is our job.

We signed up for it and that's what we're all about.

(instrumental music) - [Narrator] For some, their service wasn't optional and returning alive to Arizona wasn't guaranteed.

Over 600 Arizonans were killed.

- You know damn well that you're gonna lose friends.

But I did not expect to lose so many.

- [Narrator] Most of those that did return came back with scars on their bodies and in their minds.

- A lot of land mine injuries, so you know, amputated legs, a lot of shrapnel, gun shot wounds, blast injuries.

- I had PTSD.

I remember they told me they thought I was a schizophrenic.

And I don't know what the hell a schizophrenic was until I went and asked somebody.

- It was in a welcoming party coming back, Jesus Christ, coming back here, you know and nobody wanted to give you a job or anything.

- [Narrator] Arizonans played a crucial role.

- I'm incredibly proud of my service and the opportunity to serve the country.

And given the chance to do it again, I would do it again.

(instrumental music) - [Narrator] The Vietnam conflict was a war that had ensnared many countries for decades, even before the mid 1960's, when the United States became heavily involved.

(gun fires) - The major build up of the U.S.

Forces starts in the summer of 1965.

So between 1965 and 1968 when it hits its height, at about 550,000 troops, you see a significant escalations.

High numbers of Mexican Americans from many of the smaller communities are the first ones taken.

So it generally fell-- Especially the front line fighting as opposed to the officer corp, which is a different story, fell to the lower middle class, working class kids, off the farms, out of the mines, factories and were taken and put into primarily a lot of times, the front line troops in Vietnam.

- I grew up here in Douglas when the smelter was going strong, you know.

They were the main employer in town.

- I was born in Nogales, Arizona.

We actually went to Sarilla for the first two years, then we moved to Tucson and I started in Tucson in third grade.

- I was born in Puertoville, Arizona.

- I was born in (foreign language), Sonora Mexico.

I came to Arizona.

I went to work in San Simone, Arizona.

- we came out out here to Phoenix, Arizona.

We went everywhere barefooted and I do recall that when it was the middle of the summer you had to kind of pick your steps from shade spot to shade spot.

You didn't just walk on that very very hot asphalt.

- [Narrator] In the 1960's, Arizona's population was well below 2 million people and was spread out over much of the state.

Midwesterners didn't flock to Phoenix and Tucson until late in the decade, after the wide spreaded option of air condition.

Mirroring our changing population, Arizona Vietnam veterans came from the mix of native born and transplanted.

Some arrived after the war was over.

At the time, Arizona's main military installations were the Army's Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and two Air Force bases in Phoenix, Luke and Williams.

- I got checked out in the F100 at Luke.

- After I got my wings I went to Luke and got my first assignment to F100.

So that was six months of training at Luke.

- I went to Williams Air Force Base up in Phoenix for pilot training.

Williams was the first choice of the bases because it had the new T38 aircraft, the new supersonic aircraft.

- [Narrator] The vast majority of the people who served in Vietnam did so not in the air, but on the ground.

65% of the over 58,000 deaths in Vietnam were soldiers in the Army.

And the Army is likely where you were destined if you were drafted.

- We see the first peacetime draft in 1947.

So as soon as the Cold War starts in the aftermath of World War II, the draft is implemented.

So from really '46 through 1974, you have a draft that is a fundamental part of every young man's life in the United States.

They're from primarily lower middle class, working class groups, because they didn't have the tools available to them to avoid the draft.

There were draft deferments for college students through 1967.

High numbers of Mexican Americans from many of the smaller communities are the first ones taken, because they're not going off like many of the others to college and so, you know, that effects it.

- You know the draft picked me up as soon as I dropped out I got that letter, you know, from Uncle Sam.

Saying greetings, you have been inducted into the Armed Forces of the United States.

You have to report in the Phoenix area.

- I was working at Uveracraft, which is Raytheon now.

December 10, 1966 I got a letter in the mail that said greetings from the President of the United States.

It told me that, you know, I was being inducted into the United States Army Forces.

- Actually, I never went to school here in the United States so as a matter of fact, I got a letter on April 19, 1969.

It was right on my birthday.

It was drafted.

I was still a citizen of Mexico.

- [Narrator] While foreign male citizens were drafted, women were not.

- Well, at the time, when I was in high school, there were really about three maybe four things that women could do.

That was be a nurse, be a teacher, get married, or be a secretary, so, I chose the nurse.

I was, you know, graduate nurse and I wanted to find something else to do instead of just working in a hospital in the United States.

So when one of the recruiters from the Navy came out, I really like the uniforms a lot better than the Army and the Air Force.

They were kind of dull compared to the Navy.

- I was put into the United States Army reserve and called up immediately after my residency was completed in surgery.

It was the equivalent of a doctor draft, but for political purposes, the word draft was not being used.

- [Narrator] Many people had reasons for not waiting to be drafted and enlisted instead.

- I didn't really have the money for college.

Had a pretty good idea I was gonna end up in Vietnam and so I decided I would enlist, go in the Marine Corp, where I could get the best training to survive Vietnam.

- I had five uncles that served all in the Pacific.

They were all in the Navy and we grew up here, in a patriotic environment in Douglas, and it was your duty to go and serve your country, because that's was my dad's generation and my uncle's.

- There's this, and especially I think that's strongest in the Latino community, to prove that they're just as American that are telling them they're not American because they maybe speak Spanish at home or their families maybe only been here a generation or two and so they're out to prove their Americanness.

These are tough, hard nose kids, plays football, wrestle, and you know, they hunt, they're raised to be boy scouts and you know, this is part of their duty as what it was to be a man.

- [Narrator] Dick Barber was in the first class at Pueblo High School to attend the school for all four years.

His last year was one that impacted him forever.

- When I was a senior in high school, 13 people that were very close to me died.

My father died, my girlfriend's father died, my best friend's mother died, my boy scout master died, the next door neighbor was killed in an accident, one of my uncles died.

So these were not just people I casually knew, these were people that were really important in my life and it really had a real impact on how I felt about life and how I felt, not only about my own life, but about other people's lives.

Every male who was 18 had to go to their local draft board and sign up for the draft.

I went down faithfully to sign up.

There was a woman there, and she said, "I guess you're here to sign up" and I said, "I'm gonna sign up for the draft but I will tell you that I have just seen so many people die that I don't intend to kill anybody."

She said, "Are you a conscientious objector?"

I said, "I have no idea what a conscientious objector is, never heard the term before."

She said, "Well, a conscientious objector is a person who refuses to serve in the military."

I said, "That's me.

I am not gonna kill anybody.

You can do whatever you want to with me, but I am not gonna kill anybody."

- [Narrator] Dick spent the next few years in and out of college at the University of Arizona.

Following a required stent in ROTC, he was finally classified as a conscientious objector.

- And I found out later that I was one of, I think, two people that draft board number 42 gave that conscientious objector status to.

- [Narrator] Pilots in Vietnam came from a group of men who enlisted.

Competition to become a pilot, especially a fighter pilot, was at times fierce among those in flight school, many of whom shared a lifelong desire to fly.

- After I started flying at Phoenix College, I applied for the Air Force.

I wanted to be a pilot and ended up getting my wings then I was selected to go on to advanced jet training and that was done at Williams Air Force Base, flying the F86 and of course, wow, is that cool because not only was I flying F86's but I was doing it in my own home backyard.

So that was quite a great deal.

- There was no hesitation on my part.

Helicopter pilots had a disproportionally higher number of causalities than other job descriptions in that period, but I was anxious and willing to serve.

- [Narrator] For many entering the service, this would be the first trip of more than a few miles from their homes.

- From Phoenix I just went to Texas, Fort Blaze, Texas, where I was trained for jungle warfare.

- To be honest, I didn't speak English when I was in training.

- This is the best friend that you will ever have.

- I had a good friend of mine that Richard Calderone, he used to tell me everything about what was going on in the classes that we had during training.

He said just copy everything from the blackboard and then I explain to you what's going on.

- Then that colonel, the first thing he tell us is look around.

He says look who's behind you, next to you, in front of you, look around he says.

So we look around.

He says, some of you are not coming back.

You do come back you come in the bag.

- My Navy bootcamp was in San Diego and one day they were asking for volunteers to go over to MCRD, which was the Marine Recruit Depot because they needed corpsman over there.

I jumped on it.

So even though I was in the Navy, for four years, almost three years, I spent with the Marine Corp. - [Narrator] When training was completed, bases in South Vietnam were the next stop after a brief visit back home.

Some recruits were flown directly from the desert to the jungle in a matter of days.

- It was on fire.

One of the first things I remember flying into Da Nang airport was stepping off the plane it was smoke everywhere.

And it wasn't necessarily from explosions from combat and everything, later I find out that you're burning the latrines, and there was just smoke everywhere.

(rumbling) - Soon as you open up the doors you can feel the heat, the humidity and I got there in March of '69 and you just feel the humidity and the heat like that.

- It was a whole new world.

Very hot, very very hot.

Very muggy.

Didn't know whether to go here or there or... And it was just confusion.

- When I got in Vietnam I had that, like an eerie feeling, you know.

But it didn't look that bad cause it was day time.

In the night is when it was... You would think that there were falling stars but it was bullets everywhere.

(gun fires) - Got there late in the afternoon, got in the shower, got in bed and just wanted to sleep.

The air raid sirens went off and we were given instructions that if you hear the air raid sirens, you put your flack jacket on, you put your helmet on and you climb under your bunk.

Well, back then, most women put curlers in their hair every night, so here I was, laying in bed with curlers and then the siren goes off, the first thing I did was try to put the helmet on but of course it didn't fit very well.

I put the flack jacket on and I just got under the bunk and I fell asleep.

(rumbling) - [Narrator] For the pilots, the journey to Vietnam was quite different.

Some pilots were stationed at Air Force Bases in nearby countries and were put to work flying missions into Vietnam.

- My first duty assignment in Vietnam was actually in Thailand in the 1965 time period.

We two days, quote, get acclimated.

It was 105 degrees in April.

Every afternoon it would have a thunderstorm that would drop six inches of moisture.

The cobras were swimming around in the water underneath the buildings.

- A lot of people wanted to get to Vietnam because everybody figured it'll be over tomorrow.

This is gonna be over tomorrow.

The Yanks are coming.

We're fighting a bunch of third world country people.

Once we show them what we can do, it's gonna change the outcome.

So were we wrong.

- I wanted to go to Vietnam, I volunteered for it.

I remember when I left for the war and I was really really excited and I turned around and looked at my wife, and she was crying.

And I'm thinking to myself, my gosh, I'm gonna be a fighter pilot in a real war, a war for men with hair on their chest, and there's missiles and migs and our bases are rocketed, mortars at night, our base is under attack.

I mean, what's not to like about this?

This is everything I've dreamed about.

Many decades later, I understand clearly why she was concerned and she worried everyday the whole time I was over there.

(radio chatters) - [Narrator] Once there, everyone had a job to do.

For some, it was combat in close quarters, where you had to use all your senses just to stay alive.

(gun fires) - I saw a lot of combat.

Most of our combat that we engaged in was at night.

Most of the people booby traps we also engaged in was during the day time and we would do search and destroy missions and sweep for bunkers and that type of things on a little piece of land over there called Goi Noi Island.

There was just booby trap after booby trap after booby trap.

Cause I'm native American and I viewed the war a little differently, especially some of the components of combat over there.

One of my first things that I did, and I really couldn't explain it initially, but the first time that I had combat and there was a kill, I wanted to smell that person's hair.

I wanted to smell his clothing.

I wanted to see what my enemy looked like close up.

I wanted to be able to sense the enemy in my presence before he sensed me.

In Vietnam I felt comfortable.

Some of the guys thought that was kind of an odd, crazy thing but I always felt over there that I was somewhere protected because of my cultural beliefs.

- [Narrator] Thoughts, letters, and care packages from home helped Arizonans to adapt and survive.

Reminders of home and civilian life came in many forms.

- We were four brothers, all four of us served at same time.

My older brother, Henry, never made it to Vietnam.

All the other three of us did.

We were in the middle of the Mekong delta.

Our jobs were to supply feed and sleeping quarters and supply the ammos and everything for the different Navy outfits that were there and there was quite a few of them.

My wife, I asked her to send me some watermelon and melon seed because this is sandy soil, it's rich sandy soil from the bottom of the Mekong River.

And it's sitting up there on top on the hot sun, ideal for watermelon and melons.

So I was growing them and everybody was having fun.

- We used to get a lot of mail.

As a matter of fact, a package I used to get food from my mom.

My mom used to send me food from here, like canned tamales, canned enchiladas, and chile jalapenos and we just ate it all you know, all of us.

I'm Catholic and we used to have services out in the field.

In Vietnam we used to put ammo boxes and then the Chaplin he just put a table cloth and he put a cross and he did all the services and we just kneeling down or siting down out in the field and it was good for us, you know, cause we felt close to God.

He gave us communion and blessed us and everything.

I think we got it, maybe once a month.

As a matter of fact, I was in fire base Birmingham when an officer, I believe was a lieutenant, came to me and he says, specialist Tapia?

I say yes, you know you not a U.S. citizen.

I'm not a U.S. citizen, you know, he say you know you're not supposed to be here?

I said, what am I doing here?

I'm here.

I never had a chance to do it to Mexico, to be in the Armed Forces in Mexico but now that I'm here in the United States Armed Forces, I feel like I was proud, I'm proud of it.

I was proud then and I'm still proud of it.

- [Narrator] Pride and patriotism went a long way, but in the end for those in combat, it was one person against another.

- I think the first time that I shot one it was...

I felt something that I didn't like.

You know, what am I doing kind of a thing, you know?

But it was him or me, there was no time to think about it.

No hesitation at all.

- I feel fortunate that I didn't get put in with the infantry, okay, because the infantry had it very bad.

They were out there actually trying to make contact with the enemy and we didn't feel artillery would shoot support.

You would just shoot these rounds into different areas that they would go and find where there's suspected activity and that's what our job was.

It was like being a fireman.

You were on call 24/7, three hundred and six-- You know, that's all they did was shoot and gun and maintain the gun.

(booming) I got back in March of 1970.

I was 19 years old, trying to go to these college bars, and the bouncer tell me I couldn't go in there and drink and I should tell them off.

After I was out here in the civilian world for about six months, I just, I don't know I just one day I just in Tempe, Arizona, and I said screw it, I can't find no good job or anything like that, I went down and saw the Army recruiter and a month later I was back in Vietnam in September of 1970.

I was completely out of the military.

I didn't have to go back.

I went and reenlisted, actually, to go back to Vietnam.

But I got stationed, this time, with A battery third of the 18 field artillery, which was an 8 inch howitzer.

It shot an artillery shell that weighed 190 pounds, shot her for about 12 miles.

But it was basically about the same thing, you know.

But when I got back there the second time, one day I questioned myself.

I said to myself, what the heck are you doing back here again, you know?

But then I said to myself, well it's too late now, you're here again so you might as well just make the best of it.

(radio chatters) (booms) - [Narrator] Keith Connolly also served two tours in Vietnam.

His return to combat was required for him to be trained in a newer fighter jet.

- I flew the F4 then Phantom, from a place called Cameron Bay.

Well the F4 missions were, believe it or not, very very similar to a lot of the targeting that we did in the F100.

Matter of fact, we hit many of the same targets in 1969 that I had been hitting in 1965.

The Viet Cong were using those areas just like they were in the earlier days.

We were then not allowed to go into North Vietnam but we were going into Laos.

Laos was kind of interesting because we weren't supposed to be there.

You couldn't tell people that we were there.

In 1969 things had changed, okay.

One, it was no longer a quote adventure.

So when I went back in 1969, it was the beginning of what I call, the disillusionment of Vietnam.

Meaning, my wife as an example, was then staying in a home that we rented in Phoenix, Arizona because our family was there.

And when our neighbors found out that I was in Vietnam as a pilot, they wouldn't talk to her.

They shunned her.

So that was the start of that sort of activity, if you will.

(dramatic music) - [Man] Antiwar demonstrators protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

- [Narrator] By the later 1960's, the antiwar movement was expanding throughout the United States.

Protestors objected to the war for religious, moral, political, and personal reasons.

In each community across the country, the tone and vehemence of protest reflected local values, especially here in Arizona.

- Really wasn't much of one.

If it was, it was primarily here, at the University of Arizona.

You weren't gonna be an antiwar protestor in Marence, Arizona or in Aho.

You would have been seen too much out of the step with the community standards.

But here in at the University of Arizona there was some.

At ASU, they'd walk around in their uniforms and there was never any problems.

But you know it was mixed with race relations so it blended in many ways with the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movement, but in the smaller communities it wasn't very present.

- [Narrator] After training in the F100 fighter at Luke Air Force Base, Bob Breault fell in love with Arizona, which is where he returned after serving one short tour of duty in a very unsuccessful program.

That mission was designed to draw the fire of enemy surface to air missiles, and it commenced with seven planes and 12 pilots.

45 days later, all the planes were shot down and half the pilots killed or captured.

- I was only there flying for about 45 days cause of no more planes.

I had so few hours, I only had 400 hours in a plane, so they were scratching their heads, what do we do with this guy.

I was a regular commission officer, moving up very fast, promoted (mumbles) grade, I was flight lead instructor pilot.

All this kind of stuff below the grade.

So I was headed to a successful Air Force career, and then I give it up and I applied to student observatory but they already had registrations closed.

They said there was a new Optical Science Center they just opened and they had passed my application to them and they said they would accept me.

I drive up to it and the steam shovel is in a hole, digging a hole for the Optical Science Center, but there was no building.

Probably one of the sickest moments I ever had as a married man.

So now I'm don't wanna around in a uniform, you know, played it low key and you're a regular kid in class.

And if they knew what you did, then you may get some caustic words.

They had protests and there weren't any campus police around to chase them away or anything like that.

- We stay here too much longer, we wouldn't have much left of this platoon, let alone the company.

- [Narrator] With vivid and often gruesome images of the war on the nightly news, and antiwar movement had plenty to fuel their protests.

The Tet Offensive was a turning point in the war and not only militarily.

On January 31, 1968, over 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops simultaneously launched attacks against U.S.

Forces and its allies across South Vietnam.

- Now I was airborne on the first mission of the morning on Tet.

So we got airborne about first light and we're heading for North Vietnam, we're looking down over South Vietnam and every city is under attack.

Fire fights going on, smoke plumes.

So it was a really, really desperately difficult time.

The Tet Offensive lasted for the better part of a month.

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong did not win one battle.

Did not win won battle.

We decimated them.

And of course, what that did was, it raised the suspicions of the American people that this war is not worth it.

In other words, basically we've been told that there's light at the end of the tunnel, we're making progress, and now the whole nation is under attack and it really really played into the hands of the antiwar movement over there.

We saw that there wasn't light at the end of the tunnel.

And so the military victories and the battles that we fought were meaningless.

We won the battles, we lost the war.

And the Tet was the start of it and then it got worse after Tet, of course.

- [Narrator] And there were many battles to come.

- You were pitted against some of the finest light infantry in the world.

Men who were disciplined, who had good fire support control, who were the enemy.

They were very dedicated to killing you and to evading observation from you.

So you learned how to hunt the ultimate game, which was man.

We would launch before the sun would come up and we would put the sun behind us in a position that we could watch the last little wisps of campfires as the enemy was having breakfast and closing down their encampments from the night before for their daytime hide.

We'd catch that last little bit of smoke and we would go to that campfire and under a bush you would find a foot sticking out and you would engage that enemy and you'd get out of the area as quickly as you could after the engagement.

Then you would return to try to find his friends taking care of him, administering first aid, or evacuating the casualty or the body, whatever it may be, then you would engage them and you'd leave again.

Then you would come back.

You got very proficient at the art of understanding the direction of movement from the footprints on the trail.

If you had rain the day before and you had water standing in the footprint on the trail, you could not only tell the direction of movement, but you could determine how heavily a man was loaded and what direction he was moving in.

And then you tried to follow that to a location where they were in a hide for the day and develop a situation.

Just like hunting.

(booms) - We had these incoming bombs hitting everywhere and I started running towards the bunker, you know, and when I went like this I could see the fragments of the bomb flying past me like this, like that, everywhere hitting the ground.

As I got hit with one of them right here in my leg.

My leg went flying out that way and I fell on the ground and I could still see the pieces flying everywhere and then I was looking like this and I see one of my buddies there, he got his in the stomach.

He was holding like this his belly and he would go like this and blood was pouring out.

Then when I turned around like this, I seen one of the guys got hit here in the shoulder and the whole shoulder blade went out like this.

I went into the bunker, I got the M60 machine gun there and I was (makes mouth noise) firing everywhere like this, just wiping everything out.

Then, the medics came out, hold the fire, hold the fire!

They came to me and I was still firing the M60 and he said oh gee whiz, this guy is in shock, you know.

Let's get him out.

They grabbed me and pulled me out.

I looked down and I see just a big pool of blood and then they got me ane they cut the pants out of here they packed my wound with a lot of cotton and then the wrapped it and wrapped it and wrapped it and they call in the helicopters.

- [Narrator] In the Army, the first line of care for the wounded were medics.

For the Marines, it was Navy corpsman.

- Navy corpsman are only kept in the bush six months because of the life expectancy is not real high.

Being a corpsman was purely volunteer at that point.

So our numbers were not great.

Usually a squad would leave the compound, you know, daybreak, and anywhere from 12 to 15 men in a squad and you would be out there most of the day.

There were only two corpsmen in my platoon.

In other words, if I went out on a daytime patrol and we got back in that night I would have to go out with another squad on an ambush and I was usually in the middle of the squad, depending on whatever number it was, I was in the middle, because if we ever got hit, and somebody got hit hard somewhere, well I could go either direction to get to him.

Too many times I had to crawl on my belly and get to Marines.

First of all, I wanted to see what kind of wound they had.

I've stuck my fingers and thumbs in holes to stop the bleeding.

Some of the worst were amputations.

Types of that I gotta put a tourniquet on em and I remember one kid from Texas, both his legs were pulverized.

I got tourniquets on him and we made a makeshift stretcher out of a poncho and we called in a Medevac.

The other Marines helped me lift him on to the poncho.

We picked up his body, he was still quite alive, and when we picked up his torso, some other Marines lifted up both his legs to get him on the poncho with him, and you just hope the Medevac gets there as quickly as possible.

I saw too many of those.

(rumbling) - A Huey can hold six or eight casualties.

The most that we ever had come in on a Huey was 24 casualties, three of whom were hanging from the struts.

With any wounds that had occurred out in the mud and the crud of where the fighting was going on, were assumed to be contaminated wounds.

And as such, the guidelines were you don't close any of those at the primary care.

You clean them very thoroughly, you remove any dead tissue, and you pack them open and they all went on antibiotics and if they were looking good, three days later you returned them to the operating room, clean the wounds again thoroughly, and then you could close them.

If they were basically just a couple of small wounds on a person who was active duty and everything was looking good, they could be held, what was called medical hold, for 10 to 14 days or even shorter if appropriate and went back to battle.

I remember the time that I had been operating on and off and constantly.

I kept going and I kept going and kept going.

When they got to the point where they saw me get down on my hands and knees and bang my head on the floor trying to wake myself back up, one of the guys said, "Get outta here and go back and get some rest."

Which I did.

The issue of those that die in your hands, you do your best as far as you can if you think there's salvageability but there's a point at which it's too much and it overcomes you and you just have to go on to the next issue, but it hurts.

- [Narrator] Navy nurse Ann Gartner was stationed on the USS Sanctuary, anchored off the coast.

- Emergency Medevac asap!

Chopper over!

- [Narrator] Out of necessity, her patients arrived aboard a helicopter too.

- Depending on how much action was occurring in the battlefields, we would get soldiers still with their weapons, with hand grenades, all kinds of weaponry that a Sargent at arm had to go through and check the patient before they could start doing the triage.

A lot of land mine injuries, so you know, amputated legs, a lot of shrapnel, gun shot wounds, blast injuries, so it was pretty extensive.

And some of the nurses just did not do well.

So we were fortunate that we had a chief nurse that if you were having problems then they would put you on a ward that maybe wasn't as ghastly as, let's say, ICU or some of the surgical units.

One of the assignments that I had was in the international ward, where we took care of a lot of the Vietnamese children, especially ones that had need for plastic surgery or broken bones or various things like that.

That was our international ward.

I worked there for a number of months.

Junior nurses would usually get the pm and the night shift and the more senior would be during the day, but we rotated enough that we got a pretty good experience at different times of the day.

We received patients from the fields all times of the day.

I don't know if you're ever really prepared for what you see over there.

Some of the injuries were pretty devastating and you know, you learned you had to let it go and take care of the patients, cause that's what we were there for.

Is to take care of the patients.

- [Narrator] Some of the people who most needed medical care were given virtually none.

POWs, prisoners of war.

On his 43rd mission, Bob Barnett was shot down by a surface to air missile over North Vietnam.

He eluded capture for several days, until a dog alerted the enemy to his hiding place.

- They threw me in the back of a truck and took me into the Hanoi Hilton and I stayed in there for six days and kept awake and then they put me in ropes and interrogated me.

Then they put me into solitary confinement.

I was there for about a month and then I went to the zoo and that's where I spent the next three years.

We'd get up and this cell mate and I.

The cell was maybe, I don't know, 10 feet by 10 feet and we had two bed boards and we would just walk around in circles for hours.

We probably walked from Los Angeles to New York and back.

They'd catch ya communicating, they'd make you be on your knees and hold your hands up for a couple of days at a time.

Stuff like that.

I was so sneaky they never caught me and I think I communicated almost every day.

I always was optimistic.

I operated under the idea that if I could just get to the next three months.

Cause I'm gonna be out of here in three months.

(solemn music) If I'd really known that I was gonna be there that long from day one it would have been a lot harder I think and it as hard as it was.

It was very hard.

I was in the third group that came out on March 14, 1973.

My wife waited and we went on with our life.

She did a really good job.

My daughter was six when I left and 13 when I came back.

- [Narrator] After his return Colonel Barnett would become the head of Air Force ROTC at the University of Arizona.

The US involvement in Vietnam began and ended in an advisory role.

Those receiving the advice were soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

South Vietnamese fighting to keep their country democratic against the Communist North Vietnamese aggressors.

Some of the former ARVN soldiers would eventually become Arizonans.

The US men and women who had fought along side the ARVN eventually made it home too.

Most tours of duty lasted one year.

Some more, some less.

The welcome they received was nothing like the victory parades held for the returning World War II veterans.

- One of the days that we got resupplied, I got an officer, he come up and says that I had a few days left.

So, you know, I said my goodbyes, my hugs, and my tears and adios.

Got to the airport, I kissed the ground.

The airport I kissed the ground.

There was nobody waiting for me.

I took a taxi home.

I wasn't expected.

My mom she was the only one home.

She couldn't believe it, she couldn't believe it.

- I don't think I could sleep at all for eight days.

Eight days straight, did not get any sleep at all.

I was different from when I left to go to Vietnam when I came back.

I could not go anywhere, I could not be with people.

I was not social and I just went hide.

Finally I started to go to church.

When I started to go to church, I start kind of socializing with people, getting better and better and better.

- Oh, when I came back it was so hard to get a job here once you tell them you were a Vietnam veteran.

And actually I was afraid to say that because they didn't want to give you a job.

- I had two tours in the 105 and one in '65 for four months and then went back in '69 and flew another eight months.

When I came back from the '65 tour and from the '69 tour, I had people walk up to me and spit on me in the airport.

All that kind of stuff, you know.

I just rather not talk about it because it just so frustrated me and so upset me.

- It really never struck me until coming back.

I was trying to find the gate that I was going out of and there were protestors in the airport and I was spat on.

So after that, I went into the ladies room and I took bars off and I took my cover off and I just looked like I had a black coat on.

- [Narrator] The scars and the memories from the Vietnam War changed America and Arizona.

The divides in our society laid bare by the war changed communities through the country and most important, it profoundly changed the people who had proudly served in the Vietnam War.

The roots of these memories and experiences are even now still coming to light.

- All stories matter.

Whether they seem small or large, we don't need to understand who the heroes were, we need to understand who all these people were and sort of create a composite to try to better understand what it's like to go to war, and then what it's like as our society to deal with people who come back from war.

When you go to war you carry that war with you for the rest of your life.

So you're forever a soldier, whether you go back and become an engineer, a medical doctor, whatever it may be.

You're a forever soldier.

- I been diagnosed with PTSD.

I'm certainly not ashamed of it.

I write short stories about my experience.

I choose not to write about the most tragic events.

I remember them very well, just as thought they happened yesterday.

I don't want to forget.

But not a day goes by that I don't think about something that happened over there.

I am a patriot and I'm proud of my military service, just like so many of us are.

I'm glad that there are people around that are finally looking at us Vietnam veterans in a different light and even though it was an unpopular time, hundreds of thousands of us served.

- Hey, we're the best America had to offer, it's just they didn't stand behind us and if I could have changed anything, I would a became more knowledgeable when I came home and I didn't.

I let it fester and fester and fester.

Unfortunately, my kids and my grandkids paid the price for it.

I'd loved to have changed that.

- I have no regrets about the stand that I took.

I would do it again.

I think you have to decide what your convictions are.

You know, have 13 people die in six months.

Those 13 people were important enough for me to say I value your life and I'm not gonna take anybody else's because I value your life.

- I never did anything over there that I'm ashamed of.

I have had people ask me, young kids ask me, did you ever kill anybody.

And my answer to them was, I never killed anyone that wasn't trying desperately to kill me.

I didn't violate any rules.

I didn't bomb any villages.

I didn't do anything that I was ever ever ashamed of at all.

So I don't have anything, but I believed in what I was doing.

And I believed in what we were dong was worthwhile.

Gradually, over time, I realized what a mistake the war was and realized that we should not have gotten ourselves into what was essentially was a civil war in Vietnam over there.

We ended up losing and the reason we ended up losing was because the American public figured out that it wasn't worthwhile sending their kids and grandkids into a war that was endless over there, with really no end in sight.

- When you go to war you know, you see life in a totally different perspective.

There's never been a good war.

Never will be a good war.

There are no winners in a war.

You don't win a war.

You might end it but there are never really any winners.

I can tell you there wasn't anybody that shirked their duty.

They fought just as hard as they could, given the set of circumstances as long as we were told to do the mission.

So, it was frustrating that we were there, that we fought, and we didn't get a clear victory.

- I would say it certainly impacted me forever.

Every day I do something to serve Uncle Sam and I'm proud to do it and that's in memory of the guys who didn't make it.

(instrumental music)