We saw the astronauts get up, stick their heads up out of the capsule and wave.

 

Interview with Tom Herold [1/12/2003]

Hallie Herold
I am interviewing Tom Herold, a Vietnam Veteran, born February 9, 1946. His current address is Rt. 2, Box 113 Marlinton, WV 24954. Attending the interview are Hallie Herold and Tom Herold.

Hallie Herold
What war did you serve in?

Tom Herold
Vietnam

Hallie Herold
Were you drafted or did you enlist?

Tom Herold
I enlisted but I was also drafted. If you were in college at the time you had a deferment but they would still call you up for a physical so I went for physicals two different times and each time I was deferred because I was a student. When I was out of college I got drafted and I went to another physical. The third time was a charm and I would have been drafted and gone into the Army but I enlisted in the Navy rather than be drafted into the Army.

Hallie Herold
Were you scared to go and be in the Navy?

Tom Herold
No. I wasn't necessarily scared, apprehensive, wondering what was going to happen, where I was going to go, and things like that.

Hallie Herold
Where did you go?

Tom Herold
Well, I went to boot camp in the Great Lakes and that was in the winter time. That wasn't much fun. I got orders for Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and caught my first ship.

Hallie Herold
Did you travel around a lot or did you stay in one place?

Tom Herold

 Well, I traveled a lot, the first ship I was on was the USS Goldsboro. It was home ported in Pearl Harbor and when I got there I was in what they call intransit waiting for a ship. The Goldsboro was on a shakedown cruise and when it came back in I reported aboard and that was all new and being in the Navy was a different experience.

Hallie Herold
How old were you when you enlisted?

Tom Herold
Twenty one.

Hallie Herold
What did you do on the ship?

Tom Herold
As a new recruit they put you on the deckforce so they call you a deck ape. Your duties are chipping paint and painting and general maintenance on the ship. Later on I got in supply.

Hallie Herold
Were you a prisoner of war?

Tom Herold
No

Hallie Herold
Did you write letters or keep in touch with people?

Tom Herold
Yea I wrote letters home to my relatives. Getting mail was really important because when you went to sea for months at a time that was about the only thing you had to look forward to was getting mail.

Hallie Herold
Did you make any friends on the ship?

Tom Herold
Yea, you have to. The living conditions on the ship were really close, so you know, people have to really get along and yea I made lot of friends on the ship and some I still keep in contact with.

Hallie Herold
What did you do to entertain yourselves in the time you didn't have to paint or whatever?

Tom Herold
I read a lot, but you see you have to understand the duties of a ship like I was on. It was a guided missile destroyer and we primarily had two duties. Either we were off the coast of Vietnam and bombarding certain places and you always had a general quarter station where you went and my general quarter station was called directorfire. 

Directorfire is a coordination between the guns and a visual station. The director sat on top of the ship, it was like a little round capsule big enough for two men to sit in and in order to work in there you had to see in 3-d sort of, because you would sit for your watch or the time you were in your general quarters.

 It was sort of like a big pair of binoculars and you could see the coast and sometimes our Captain would get in real close to the coast and they would turn the guns over to manual and that's what we done manual direct fire and if they gave us a coordinate and we would actually shoot the guns at the target. We were looking at most of the targets, two or three miles inland and they had little spotter planes who would call in coordinates to the ship and the ship would fire. 

Sometimes we'd be on the firing line two or three days. Sometimes we'd be firing four or five hours without ever stopping. Every time they would fire the ship would vibrate, sort of like go back in the water so to speak. We'd do this and then we'd go back out to open sea and refuel, get more ammo and then go back to the firing line. Sometimes we would be within oh, 2,000 yards of the coast if the water was deep enough for the ship. This got really monotonous for the fact that no one really knew what was going on, as far as you know what we were shooting at. 

You know I had always thought that it was like shooting in the blind, like we didn't know where the enemy was, and the only thing you had to rely on was that the Captain would tell us. The other duty we would do would be as escorts for carriers. Whenever carriers were on duty stations they had three or four ships our size that would follow the carriers because the carriers were sending planes inland. Sometimes the pilots would come back and maybe have an accident and end up in the water and it was our duty to pick them up. Of course you have to understand how big these carriers are, compared to our ship, and our ship was a lot closer to the water so we could get to those people in the water very quickly. 

I probably saw four or five planes go in. Some of them we rescued the pilots of the plane, and sometime they were lost. We would stay on these duty stations with these carriers. One time we stayed for like 90 days which was a very long time. Most of the time they were two months and then we would leave station and go back to some port, usually in the Philippines. We'd hit Subic Bay and if there were any problems with the ship or if we needed more supplies that is where we'd get them. That was pretty much my duty, to keep supplies on the ship.

 I would make out requisitions for personal things for people. We had a little store on the ship that sold those personal things like shaving cream and cologne and all those sort of things. I would go on base to make sure all those things were delivered. We'd have to get enough stuff to last for another three months. Sometimes at sea we'd run out of things but that's just the way it was. 

As far a danger went, just being in the military is dangerous. There were a lot of deaths just because of carelessness or human error. You didn't necessarily have to be on a battlefield to get killed. I saw several people get killed on the ship I was on. What was your question again?

Hallie Herold
What did you do to entertain yourselves in your free time but I think you've covered that mostly. What other kind of things did you do on the ship?

Tom Herold
Sailors were involved in all aspects of the ship. You know as far as traditions go, the US Navy is not doubt the most traditional branch of the service, and they are the most disciplined. Every person, in their duties, has to be disciplined or things don't work out.

 For example everybody has to go through drills and everybody has to be on station for general quarters. I guess the thing I think about most is the fact when you say "what are the things that I did on the ship?" Well for example whenever we'd refuel, that meant our ship pulling up next to an oiler. 

Everybody had a specific duty to do, regardless of what your real job was on the ship. In those situations you did another job. When we'd refuel it was my job to stand on the focle with a pair of headphones on and talk to the ship that was refueling us. 

They would tell me whenever they would shoot a rope across from one ship to the other. It was really a very coordinated effort just to refuel at sea because the ships had to be going at a certain speed both of them together and they were pretty close to one another and they would shoot a line across from one ship to the other and bring over the hose to refuel. Diesel fuel is what they used. 

Another job on the ship would be pulling up to an ammo ship and transferring ammo which would be an all day job, you could imagine. On the ship we had 6 inch guns which doesn't sound very big, but they were big projectiles.

 We would spend the day moving projectiles from that ship to our ship, then down into the magazines. That's where the shells were stored and I remember those days how you would stand forever in line passing powder and shells and that was a job. 

Everybody stood watch on a ship, for example if you had what they called the night shift you would go topside and what they called look for boogies. You'd stand in a certain position for two hours and sometimes four hours, depending what schedule you were on. We would look for unidentified air craft or unidentified ocean craft.

 When I was in Vietnam I made 3 cruises and for a four year hitch three cruises is quite a bit. That means I served three hitches in Vietnam, not actually on land but at sea. The only time I went on land was when I was like a mail coordinator and they would pick us up. We had a boat on a the ship that would take us over and we would be in Denang.

Denang Harbor is a big harbor off the coast of Nam. We would go over and pick up mail, and things that we needed on the ship. Mostly the mail was the big thing and you weren't allowed topside whenever we were in port because the Vietcong would bomb and mortar us out in the harbor so there were only certain people that went above decks. That was to protect the crew. 

We would go over and get mail and bring it back. Our Captain would go over and have meetings and he would come back and then we would go back to sea on the firing line. I did it for so long and so much of it that it all sort of runs together so I don't remember any specific dates or times. We operated quite a bit around the DMZ and the DMZ was an invisible boundary line across Vietnam where it separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam.

 I remember once being on the line and we had these real powerful binoculars on the focel well actually it was on the second deck up under the pilot, under the quarter-deck. I remember looking through the binoculars on watch because somebody would always stand there and seeing this huge North Vietnamese flag.

 I was probably looking two miles inland but I could see this flag and it was bigger than a house flying in the air. still that just sticks in my mind to think that anybody could have a flag that big. Well I'm sort of jumping around from spot to spot because when you do three tours it's hard to keep everything straiqht, exactly times and dates. I guess the only real date that sticks in my mind, and this doesn't have a lot to do with the war, but it's really strange. 

The same time that the war was going on was when they had the Apollo Eleven, the moon shot, and they pulled us off the firing line and sent us in another direction. It was a relief in a way to get off the firing line but they sent us to and area in the Pacific ocean. Someplace I've got it written down, exactly what the coordinates were, because I used to liked to go up on the quarter deck and look at the maps to see exactly where we were and how many hours it would be to a certain spot _ Anyway we were sent to this spot and another ship came up beside us and it had a crane that lifted a piece of equipment over and it was attached to our fantail. 

This other ship had a dummy capsule, this was a capsule the same size as what the astronauts would corne back to earth in when they returned from the moon. I look back to it today that it was probably the most interesting thing that ever happened to me. At the time it was just another duty, you didn't pay that much attention to it, but anyway we would practice. This other ship would drop off the capsule in the water and the piece of equipment they gave us was used to pick up the capsule out of the water and put it on the deck.

 In other words they knew pretty much exactly where the capsule was going to hit the water. When it came back from the moon. The thing we were afraid of was it might, because of the weather conditions whenever the capsule came back from the moon, end up in a different spot and they had five other ships besides us in certain designations because the Russians at the time had several battle ships and destroyers in the same area because the Russians were thinking that they might be able to get out capsule. 

Well I never read about this anywhere since this has happened but we were scared that the Russians would get the capsule and our moon men and everybody was very very tense. The people who were in charge of this mission, I mean you know we just don't go to the moon everyday and then come back to earth. Someplace I have a whole lot of photographs of that, I should get those out and show them to you. 

Anyway after we practiced for probably five or six times of picking up the capsule the other ship would go out and drop the capsule. We'd corne back and get the capsule, put it on deck, then we'd drop the capsule, turn around go back pick it up, put it on the deck, and everybody had to know exactly what to do to get the capsule back on the deck. I didn't have anything to do with picking up the capsule, but I was on watch so I had a set of headphones on and I sort of felt important you know, 'hey I get to stand out here while they're doing this.' Unfortunately, when the day came when the capsule did come back and officer took my place and had the headset so I didn't get to talk to anybody.

 Needless to say the Russians would follow us everywhere we went. We could see them, they were so close to us that we could wave at them. And the Russians also it is terrible to say how much trash is in the ocean but anyway everything that came off of the ship went into the ocean, everything. And we threw all of our garbage in the ocean and the Russians would come behind us all these ships there were like five of them as escorts and they these net things that would reach down and pick up our garbage, so they would collect everything that we threw over board that they could get because the cold war was still going on and the cold war, you understand what the cold war was?

 But at the time it was pretty tense in some places from what I've read. It was fun though because guys would take glass bottles and they'd put Playboy Magazines in them and throw them out and we could watch with binoculars those soviet sailors would pick up those bottles and get those magazines. It was fun but it was also sort of scary in a way. I guess you could think of it that way because you know these people may have you know fired on us to get the capsule. Back to the end of the story.

 The day comes that capsule coming back, everybody is out and everybody's looking. The main carrier is out there that picked it up. I thing it was the Hornet but it was probably a quarter of a mile off our starboard bow and there was a ship to the port and then there was one that you could hardly see alt all. It was pretty far out, but we were all close enough it was like if this thing came back and it hits one of the ships what would we do then? 

A lot of people talked about that but anyway the day it came back the Captain was on the intercom talking and he was also talking to the carrier who was the main radio contact for this capsule coming back. We seen it come through our atmosphere like a big poof and then it opened up a parachute and parachuted down in the ocean and right when it hit here came Navy frogmen and climbed up on it and opened it up and we saw the astronauts get up, stick their heads up out of the capsule and wave. 

They toted over to the carrier and had a crane pick it up and put it on the carrier and we could watch. On the carrier they had a decontamination unit where they put the moonmen in it. That was sort of exciting. We ended up gong back to Pearl Harbor for a while after that and we escorted that aircraft carrier back. The moonmen made it back and they put them in this big plastic dome on the carrier and the carrier was in port, you could go up so far and look at them and see them in there. They were in there for a couple days, it seems like because I was pretty interested in that. 

I wish now that I would have taken more pictures than I did because we may never go back to the moon again. Back to the war, besides the things I've told you tons and tons of ammunition being shot at the vietnamese and God knows who we killed, But I don't even want to think about that. It was like killing ants with a sledge hammer. We were at a war at a distance because lets face it they didn't have a Navy. 

The North vietnamese had an Airforce, they had Soviet migs and we experienced some of that because you know like on watch you would watch for unidentified aircraft and I guess if they wanted to bomb us they could have but they never did. As far as you say did we receive awards and things, yeah we did sometimes. I always figured there was some old man with a rifle that probably went out an shot at us and hit the ship because they said they had areas on the side of the ship one night where somebody fired at us because we were so close to the beach and whenever you're fired upon you get accommodation medals and things like that. 

I was never really into winning medals or anything but they gave everybody on the ship one because you were part of the war and it seemed like Navy officers like this a lot more than some of the enlisted men. Captains like to think that they're more a part of the war than they actually were. You know we lost that war, there's not many military people who will say that but we did. We lost that war and I spent 4 years of my life and I had a chance not to go when I was San Francisco. 

We were in transit, I was there getting my paperwork to go over seas and they were having some kind of a festival in Ashberry, it's where kids could trade in their war weapons for toys that were non-aggressive toys and it was a flower power, flower children and all those hippie things. you see in the news and I remember walking around with my hair peeled off and everybody was long haired but no one ever said anything to me. 

I don't know there was probably other military people there but I was by myself and the weirdest thing happened. When I was in college I had met a girl who was from Washington DC and just out of the blue there she was. She came over and asked me and said the typical 'Do I know you?' and I said yeah I know you and her name was Wendy, a nice hippie name. Anyway she invited me back to where she was living and she asked me if I would like to get out of the military because she hated the military and I said no. I had signed up for it and her friends came over and said that they could take me to Canada today if I wanted to go.

 Well it's not a new story, the story's been out there with hundreds and hundreds of different people and she would have taken me to Canada but I signed up for it and I think a lot about what my life would have been like if I would have gone. I didn't have any commits., it wasn't like I had a wife or children or anything at home. I didn't have to go back to the ship. 

I could have gone to Canada and been AWOL and I don't remember how many years it was before they pardoned all the Vietnam people who went to Canada and lived but there was a lot of people. I think it was Ford who was President when they pardoned them but anyway I didn't go and that is the end of that but I had the opportunity and didn't take it. I think how about what's going on and I have two boys who are of draft age. Billy's 19 and Sam's 21 and if they start to draft again I don't know. I want to say come on boys I'm gonna take you to Canada. No I don't think I'll do that, they can make up their own mind. Every young man has to have his war. OK do you have any more questions?

Hallie Herold
Do you remember the day that your service ended?

Tom Herold
Yes, I do very much.

Hallie Herold
Do you remember the date?

Tom Herold
Well, at the time they had some type of a back to school deferment and you could get out 6 months early and I was all excited about it and I come to find out that I didn't get it and I've always wondered why. I remember I can see my military ID card. I can see it in my mind and I can see the date on it July the 19th 1972. 

I didn't get out 6 months early like a lot of people did, got out on July the 1st 1972. I went to TOY and was setting in the barracks, my paperwork and a big smile on my face and went over to the all these initialed things. I can't remember but wherever you went to get mustered out and the guy took my paperwork and looked at it and pulled my file out and looked at my file and he said 'sailor you owe us seventeen days' so I still owed them days because I had gotten into trouble and put in the brig you know what the brig is? It's sort of like going to jail and when you go in the brig you have to pay the Navy back those days that you were in the brig and that was the end of that. 

I ended up getting out of the Navy on July the 16th 1972 and I went over to my friend Hovey's place. He lived in Orange County California. He was married and I slept on his floor for about two days and his wife saw enough of me and told me to go, so I went out and stuck my thumb out and hitchhiked to Alaska. That's another story anyway, ask me another question.

Hallie Herold
Did you join a Veteran's organization.

Tom Herold
Have I? Yes.

Hallie Herold
What organization?

Tom Herold
Well actually I never paid money or anything, so maybe I didn't, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, you ever heard of that?

Hallie Herold
Yeah.

Tom Herold
They send me a magazine and they send me an ID card and said I'm a member so I don't quite understand why they keep sending me this because I never paid them money to join. The VFW were mostly made up of World War II Vets., it seems and even Korean Vets. You don't see many Korea Vets. but I don't know maybe today there is more Vietnam Vets. The Vietnam war left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. It was the first time the United states ever lost a war and you just wanted to forget it. 

World War II Vets and Korean Vets, they were proud to come home and America was proud of them. They had parades and they clapped them on the back and they said 'here boy have another beer'. Vietnam Vets didn't get that, not at all, because I remember coming in on leave one time and being in Chicago and this girl and this boy came up to me and said 'You killed any babies lately?' I just looked at them and said 'no I don't kill babies.' but it didn't dawn on me until they walked away. As far as organizations go, no I'm not too excited about going to anybody, going somewhere and talking about my war experiences.

Hallie Herold
What did you go on to do as a career after the war?

Tom Herold
I became a teacher.

Hallie Herold
OK Thank you for your time.