Lee Layton
Profilers:
The Financial Front in Vietnam
PART 1:
I was raised in a Chicago suburb. Used to work out in Wyoming during the summers for my uncle. And I liked fishing out there so I went to college at the University of Wyoming. I mean that’s crazy. I had to take the first two years of ROTC, because it was what they called a land grant college. Near the end of the two years I applied for an ROTC scholarship which was going to pay a lot of money for my last two years, and I ended up – I was awarded it and because I got that, I had to spend four years in the army. So that’s how I got to the army.
Was the Vietnam War the type of conflict you imagined being involved in when you joined ROTC?
I was hoping it would have been over by then uh – but it just uh – even from the beginning it didn’t kind of seem to make sense.
Did you have any moral objections to the war?
I thought about it, but it was like I’d made an agreement for the scholarship. And so it was like, I kind of gave my word. I did have the husband of one of my sisters was a conscientious objector. I didn’t- I don’t know at the time, I didn’t think much of them. But in hindsight, some of them could’ve been right.
I thought about it, but it was like I’d made an agreement for the scholarship. And so it was like, I kind of gave my word. I did have the husband of one of my sisters was a conscientious objector. I didn’t- I don’t know at the time, I didn’t think much of them. But in hindsight, some of them could’ve been right.
What was the opinion of those around you towards the war? Was it similar to yours?
In college there wasn’t a lot of opinions, one way or another. The people in ROTC were mainly for it because they felt they needed to support the country. Then, Wyoming was a fairly rural area. At the time, the University of Wyoming was the only four-year school in the entire state, and it’s a big – it’s a big state. I don’t remember any protests ever there, however while I – while I was in Vietnam, my parents used to go to the Methodist Church in a suburb of Chicago. And the minister gave an anti-Vietnam war speech in his message one weekend. And that caused my parents to stop going there because they thought it was disrespectful of all the troops that were there.
During the war, what was your official title and what were some of your responsibilities?.
I was a captain in the finance core called a – a lot of times a dispersing officer. I handled a lot of money. One of the jobs, I had a safe that would maybe have two or three hundred thousand dollars in it, which was a lot of money back in 1971. I had – I always had anywhere from eight to fifteen troops under my command. And one of my – one of my big objectives was to try and keep them safe too, because even though I would – my eyesight was like 2400, I had to wear thick glasses. So if I ever lost my glasses, I’d have trouble seeing who was who. It was supposedly a non-combat area, but you never knew who was who. I think – I think I said something in the video I sent you about the explosion one night that blew up where I was staying. And stuff happened all the time because we had to go from areas where you kind of lived in hotels that had been converted to barracks. You weren’t always on a base that was protected. Bases that were protected had a lot of Vietnamese working on them as civilians, so you never knew what was – what was what.
Could you describe the environment of being in a non-combat area?
The first place that I lived had – had been an old hotel converted to a place for officers. And it was on a muddy street. People right across from us lived in huts that they built out of beer cans and pop cans that they cut and flattened and nailed. And uh it was a pretty poor area. And the – again there – the bases where I was – parts of them got attacked at times. A lot of people lived right around the different bases like ??? air base and they lived in pretty poor conditions. But it always kind of amazed me – you’d see a lot of women going to work in the mornings riding like two or three on a motor scooter going someplace, and they were always dressed so nice, even though they didn’t live in very – very good conditions. Of course there were nice areas, where maybe the rich people lived but that was a small part of the population. Most of the Vietnamese – I’d say 90%, only wanted to have food and shelter and have families and just be safe.
Did you ever interact with any of the local Vietnamese people?
After we had the explosion in our BOQ and a couple were killed, right next to us was a brothel. And I went in one afternoon and the lady started to say “Hey what can we do for you?” smiling, trying to grab my arms and stuff, so they could get paid for what they did. But I – I said I just wanted to talk and I started to come over maybe once a week, every ten days and I’d have a beer or something. But I offered them money, if they would ever warn us about another attack on our BOQ, because it turned out, they knew the night it was going to get bombed because none of them were at work in the building. They had all – the people around – the Vietnamese around it knew what was coming, and they weren’t there. So nothing ever came of it – but I was just trying to do that, and sometimes there were, I guess you’d call them street vendors pushing carts with bread and again they’re just trying to make a living.
Could you speak more about the bombing of your BOQ?
It was probably about – I don’t know, two or three in the morning. I had – I was – I was rooming with another guy, he was a lieutenant. And after – we had to go to dinner at another BOQ. it was about six blocks away, it was a twelve story building – had officers club on top and you could see they showed movies – didn’t have a screen but they showed it on a wall painted white. And the reason they had the restaurant and bar and movies up there was because people couldn’t throw hand grenades that high, so it was relatively safe. Ours was – where I lived it was only a three-story building. But anyway, I got back, said “Hi” to the duty officer. We – we all took turns rotating of being the duty officer which meant from like about – it was either eight or ten o’clock till six in the morning, we were in charge of the place and provided the security – walked around and did stuff. So I said “Hi” to the duty officer, went up, went to bed. It was – it was really always hot and humid there, so just laid on top of the bed, didn’t use sheets of blankets. And two or three in the morning, all of a sudden, the door to our room blew off the hinges and slammed against the opposite wall and the room was filled with smoke and we heard yelling and screaming. And it uh – took me a little bit – had to lace my combat boots, but my hands were shaking so bad, I had trouble getting the laces into the holes. And my roommate jumped up and he had an M16 rifle and he said (while I was finishing – finishing my boots), “I’m going to go down” and see if he can help. But I had to point out to him that he’d forgotten to put the ammunition magazine in his rifle, so I mean we were just both nervous, scared. And my room was the farthest one from the lobby on the third floor at the end of a long hallway. So I was one of the last ones coming down as I – as I’m going downstairs there were cables and wires hanging, water dripping, dust all over the place. And as I got down in the lobby, that was where the bomb had been. Vietnamese contractors during the day had worked on the electrical system but they must – they were Viet Cong because they planted a bomb 35 pounds of C4 explosives and had a timer set. And as I got down into the lobby, it was really destroyed there – the walls were blown out and uh they were – they were loading the partial remains of a soldier onto a stretcher and they asked me to help carry it out. And so got outside and MP’s were there and everything and it uh – one of the things I learned later was earlier that day, somebody had found another bomb outside the – right by the entrance to where we were, there was a big cage around the front entrance and somehow, they had planted some explosives that were supposed to be triggered after the bomb went off and people were evacuating the building. It was what they call a secondary. They had found those and disarmed them, but nobody ever thought to search the building and look for it, so that was kind of it.
Did you grow close to your fellow troops?
I always tried to be friendly and supportive, and not one of these that – oh how can – that nitpick. One night when I was – when I was on duty officer where the – in the barracks, where the troops were living (because I was a duty officer there occasionally), I went upstairs and was going through, and uh, a bunch of them were smoking pot. And now I’m a captain, I’m walking through and they start trying to hide it and they’re looking trouble, and I said “Oh, that sounds like a good dessert, I’ll have to come back later and try some.” So I just left. It wasn’t – they were just trying to survive and get by too. I mean it was – I never – if there had been hard drugs, I would have said something and I never noticed affecting anybody’s – anybody’s performance. Another – another time we were doing some rifle arms training that was required every once in a while and that was when one of my soldiers – I still remember his name. It was George Papadopoulos, he was a Greek descendant and his – he was firing the M60 machine gun and one round did not ignite and he ejected it which he – which they’ve been trained not to do. As he ejected out, it exploded in his face, and I mean bloody and stuff, and we were able to get him evacuated and he ended up being able to return to the States. He didn’t lose his – his eyes, but i went and saw him in the hospital just before they were going to take him back and he was – he was surprised – he was in a good mood cause he was getting to go home. That was – that was what mattered. I was pretty friendly with – with the sergeants I had. Sometimes we go out after work and drink a lot of beers and stuff and talk about things. The worst relationship I had was with my boss that was a lieutenant colonel who’s very strict. He had our group of officers – there was ten of us together one time lecturing us on the domino theory and one of the lieutenants was really pushing back at him and saying “Well why are you worried about the domino theory, about the countries falling to the communists. We’ve got the Pacific Ocean between us and them.” I mean it was – and I chimed in – this colonel was a real dipstick. Couple of the times when I was the officer at night watching all the stuff in a different place, MP’s would find his jeep somewhere in downtown Saigon, kind of abandoned and they would bring it back cause he had gotten drunk and lost it. I chained it to a flagpole and the next morning when we get up and do our revelry and all our stuff to start the day, he came looking for his jeep. And he got mad that I had chained it to the flagpole and I just said, “Sir, I wanted to make sure nobody else took it.” And uh I mean it was just – it was just stuff like that, I was trying to keep things a little bit light if it’s possible with the environment there. I mean sometimes, wherever you were, you could see explosions, the ground would shake from them, just because of everything that was going on there.
PART 2:
You mentioned the Domino Theory. Did you have any significant opinions on it?
I didn’t think it was logical, because with the military we had and the defense forces – let me take a step back. In the beginning, it made some sense. I’m talking about before I ever went to Vietnam and stuff. Sometimes theories sound great till you actually get involved in it and with the distance from the US and then you go to Hawaii, Wake Island, Japan, Vietnam – that’s a horrendous distance and they didn’t have weapons that could reach the US. I mean it just – it didn’t – it wasn’t common sense that, that could happen. If things started to act up like that, we would have been able – we would have had the weapons and the people to go at the Asian side at that point. Not to get in the middle of a stupid war.
Could you speak more on the slaughtering of 25 Vietnamese troops?
That was the same time that uh Private Papadopoulos got injured. We had – trying to describe this – if you could. Did you see in the video how I tried to lay out what the firing range looked like? Big berms of dirt, probably 15 feet high, that had been plowed there and it looked like uh – well if you can imagine a zipper and enlarged it a 100,000 times. You’ve got big mounds of dirt like this. Three – four on each side. Then you’ve got a big mound in the center and these are on each side. All of a sudden, when we were starting to put our stuff away and load back into the big deuce and a half truck, the automatic fire broke out and we heard screaming and yelling and uh it wasn’t the type of fire you would have during training. And we were out in kind of the boonies with just a lot of forest and brush around us. It wasn’t on any kind of base. And a couple of the troops that are – were really energetic guys said, “Sir, let’s go see – we better go see what’s going on.” But at that point, all of our ammo was almost gone, they had – I think they had maybe one clip each left the – the two that said something. But I never thought of myself as a real big military mind. But I knew that if they went up over a big hill and you’ve got somebody down below, they’re going to see you before you can see them. If you imagine your head coming up to be able to see your head’s got to come over and they’re going to be able to see you and that – the fact that we were just about out of ammunition and by then the screaming had stopped. It only lasted ten, fifteen seconds. And that was when I found later they’d all – they’d all been killed. And that was again the hard part. Viet Cong soldiers joining the South Vietnamese Army and everybody thinking they’re the good guys.
Could you explain in more detail about your job as a finance officer, and how money was moved around in Vietnam?
First – when – while you were over there you could set up your monthly pay whatever it was so much of it to go home and so much of it in cash that you would get. And I would – I would set up different – they had – I didn’t actually go out in the field to pay the troops but the officers that did, I got them the money. And we have a sheet that we would know who was getting how much and we’d put it into little packets and they would take it out into the field to give them – uh well I’m going to – cash. It had to be military payment certificates, because when you came into Vietnam, you had to go to a finance office and later on I was in charge of one of those. Where you take out all your US green paper money and you get these military payment certificates, because US green in Vietnam was used a lot on the black market. It was worth a lot to the Vietnamese. So anyway, I would – I would give the officers, they would take them out in the field. Unfortunately, one of the officers in a helicopter ride got shot down. I also part of the time, as officers were coming into the country or leaving the – not officers, everybody coming in, they would come to us and change their US green to MPC or turn in their MPC to get US green because they were leaving. When he mentioned the troopers that were killed, I got a – I would get a special report. It usually – it came – it was hand carried by somebody. They – when somebody was killed and they knew it happened, things actually moved pretty quickly. I would get – I would get a notice and I would be able to get to the records. They were all paper records at that time. And take care of setting up from the date the person was killed to update the records and send them on. The hardest one was one time a soldier was killed and his wife was on her way to Hawaii to meet him for R&R, and she was flying when he got killed. And I found – I found that out and I don’t remember exactly what I did but I started the step to get somebody to meet her at the plane in Hawaii that came in because my wife flew there, I met her there too. I mean it was just uh. One of the jobs where I was at what they called Camp Alpha, where people coming in and out of the – all the troops coming in and out of the country – could be army, airforce, whatever. We would change the money back and forth. I usually ended up with anywhere from two to three hundred thousand in US green paper money and we weren’t supposed to store that much. So there was a main vault, I was about fifteen miles away across Saigon. I would call the military police to get an escort because we would use the big – we’d go in a big bus that used to transport troops. It was just like a school bus with a chain link over the windows. And most of the time, the MP said they didn’t have anybody available. The orders were go anyway, because by using the phone system – a lot of the people running the phone system were Vietnamese and you didn’t know if they were friend or foe and that they might leak information. Like if somebody gets an advanced thing on an armored car delivery. So anyway, we would just load up and I’d take three of the troops – three or four of the troops, we’d be armed. I’d have one sitting up front watching the driver with a weapon and we’d scatter ourselves on the – on the bus so we weren’t all together. Never – never really had a problem. One time as we were coming to an intersection, there had been a little accident between a couple cars or these things that the scooters. And one of – one of the people that apparently on one of the vehicles – it wasn’t police – was trying to get us to stop, and he ordered the driver to push through and he kind of brushed one of the vehicles aside because I didn’t know if it was a trap to get us to stop. So we kept going.
How did R&R work? Did you go anywhere else besides Hawaii?
No, just – just to Hawaii. And it was for I think basically seven days. Got a hotel room, was a couple blocks off the beach. It was – I think my wife had talked about meeting or going to see the memorial for the Pearl Harbor stuff but I didn’t want to go to any place to have anything to do with the military. Just wanted to stay away from it. But the people in Hawaii when we went out to eat any place, they were always super friendly, very very nice. So it was just a nice week that went by too quickly. But it was still – it was a – I don’t remember how many hours it was to get from Vietnam to Hawaii. I want to say twelve, fourteen. Did get to land on Wake Island, which like from World War 2.
PART 3:
What was it like returning home? How were you, as well as other Vietnam War veterans, treated?
When I landed in – I don’t remember the air base. It was in California near Oakland and I had to walk out to catch a shuttle to the civilian airport. There were people shouting and throwing stuff and spitting and doing all that. It was pretty – pretty bad. But when I got on the plane, I mean I was exhausted. It was a 747, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those or you know. But it had – in the center it had four seats. Anyway, I got on and the plane was not too full and one of the stewardess came up to me and said, “If you want to, you can sit here in the row of four and you can just lay down and sleep.” I mean the plane crew was very very very nice. So uh yea it uh. The only bad experience I really had was in California, at that point.
Have you stayed in contact with anyone from the war?
I had for a while, but back then we didn’t have the cell phones and the social media and things like that and people went on. Oh what was going back – what was interesting one time in Vietnam. Well I was in Wyoming. I was at the University of Wyoming. I was in a fraternity, I actually met two of my fraternity brothers while I was there. And we spent a couple hours together and stuff and it was – it was nice for some reason that’s bringing back another memory of back then no cell phones and stuff. Usually my wife and I were just sending letters, but I found out there was a USO place where you could go and make phone calls. And so I went, I was able to call a couple times. Lines could be really long, you could talk for a maximum of five minutes and stuff. But that was a – of course calling from there to the US meant I was getting her up at three or four in the morning, and she had our young daughter at the time, but still so anyway.
Compared to immediately after the war to now, how have your feelings towards the war changed and/or evolved?
I still think it was a stupid war. Bad waste of life. I – well you had asked immediately after the war on the previous question. Remember I’d mentioned I had worked for my uncle in Wyoming during some summers. As I was getting out of the army in the Washington DC area, I called him because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I just kind of wanted to get away. So I ended up going to run a gas station in Red Desert, Wyoming for a year just to get away, but it was from there I decided to go to graduate school and all that stuff. So uh – yea my feelings are still – it was a horrible war on all sorts of sites. The people – maybe I already said this – that the people that lived there didn’t care who was in power. It made – it wasn’t important to them, it’s like the – I can’t remember – the chain of desires. You know you start out with all you want are the basics: food, water, that stuff. That’s where most of the people, the poor people living in Vietnam were. That’s all they cared about and after I got back for a number of decades at times, I would wake up in the night, I guess yelling and cussing and stuff. And it was usually – it usually took thirty, forty years to get rid of the memories and stuff, and some medicine. But now – now I know now I’m just kind of have let everything go.
Would you consider yourself having/had PTSD?
I don’t know, I wondered myself. But I – I already get a is it a 20% VA disability because of exposure to Agent Orange for diabetes. Stuff like that but uh yea I think for a lot of people, it was hard to think you would have had something like PTSD. I don’t – I don’t think they called it that back then. So many many troops over there that went through much worse than I did. You know sometimes it you know – why should I be feeling that way when some of these are out in the boondocks getting ambushed and blown up and losing limbs and losing their life. I mean, I don’t know if that makes sense. In 1990, I ended up going and seeing a clinical psychologist because I was having some issues at work and it ended up – they diagnosed me with clinical depression and panic attacks. But I’ve been on medicine ever since then and different medicines. And right now, whatever I’m taking is doing really good.
Have you visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.?
No, but I – they have a traveling version of it that was in North Carolina. I don’t know when that I went and saw. And there’s also – there’s a name on there that I know that was in the – he was in the same high school I went to. First name was Bruce, can’t think of his last name right now, but he was I think three years older than me. He was killed in Vietnam.
What are your feelings towards the Vietnam War Memorial?
I think it’s a good thing. I uh – it’s sad that we have to have memorials to wars and tragic events like that. But I think it’s a good thing to do especially for the, the relatives, the family, the friends of those. It’s a way to kind of remember them and feel good that other people remember them. So I’m – no matter who did it I’m positive about it.