Infantrymen ride into action atop an M48 in 1968. A combined Infantry and Cavalry mission was halted when the North Vietnamese opened up with 75mm recoilless, 50 caliber and AK-47 rifles, hitting one Armored Personnel Carrier twice, blowing off its tracks, and disabling a tank. The action took place about 2,000 meters from Landing Zone Ross, north of Chu Lai. (John Olsen/Stars and Stripes)
When Jack Danner hit the beach in a landing craft on his first day as an American soldier in Vietnam in 1965, he expected to see bullets flying.
“As we pulled into Vietnam everybody was given their magazine with live ammunition. ... You realize this is the real banana,” he recalled in 2003 video interview.
On the beach he found not the enemy, but the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, Army Gen. William Westmoreland, said Danner, a former first lieutenant who served with Company A, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment.
Danner’s recollections are among 27,000 Vietnam veterans’ recordings, videos, photographs, drawings, letters and other documents stored by the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project in a collection that’s still growing, even as America prepares to mark the 50th anniversary on April 30 of the war’s end.
The project began in 2000 as a grassroots effort to collect and make accessible the firsthand narratives of U.S. military veterans, according to project spokesman Travis Bickford.
“The backbone of our collection is oral history,” he told Stars and Stripes by phone Wednesday. “Future generations can hear directly from those who served in their own words.”
Veterans of World War I through recent conflicts and peacekeeping missions are included in the project, according to the Library of Congress website. Their recollections are available at the library in Washington, D.C., or at its website.
Curated collections include “In Country: Stories from the Vietnam War,” which presents stories from 16 veterans.
“Each of the 2.7 million Americans who served ‘in country’ during the Vietnam War had a unique experience, shaped by a vast array of factors — perhaps especially the place or places in which they served,” the library states on its website.
The Vietnam collection includes stories from veterans dispatched to locations ranging from Saigon to Khe Sanh, from the waters off the coast of Vietnam to the skies above it.
“Personal Snapshots: Picturing the Vietnam War,” features candid, amateur photographs taken by soldiers, sailors and Marines.
Soldiers carry their wounded to a Huey helicopter in 1968. The helicopter was sent to pick up the wounded from a combined Infantry and Cavalry mission that was halted when the North Vietnamese opened up with 75mm recoilless, 50 caliber and AK-47 rifles. (John Olsen/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers watch as the gunner fires at NVA enemy positions from his M113 Armored Personnel Carrier in 1968. The action took place about 2000 meters from Landing Zone Ross, north of Chu Lai. (John Olsen/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers walk back after a combined Infantry and Cavalry mission was halted by when the North Vietnamese opened up with 75mm recoilless, 50 caliber and AK-47 rifles. The action took place about 2,000 meters from Landing Zone Ross, north of Chu Lai in 1968. (John Olsen/Stars and Stripes)
The 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division on the day they took the mountain, west of A Shau Valley, called Dong Ap Bia, or Hamburger Hill in 1969. A wounded soldier is put on a stretcher and carried to a Huey to be evacuated off of the mountain. (Jim Clare/Stars and Stripes)
It includes hundreds of photographs, letters and tape recordings sent home by Marine Lance Cpl. Mark Ryan Black who was stationed in Quang Tri province, Vietnam, with a combined action company. Black was killed by enemy fire during an attack on his compound on Aug. 14, 1967.
In “Vietnam War: Looking Back,” veteran Tom Hagel explained: “When we think of wars — whether it’s Vietnam or any other war — we think of it as a unitary subject … but there are millions of Vietnam Wars.”
Typically, each video recording of a veteran was collected by a volunteer and lasts at least 30 minutes. The project also collects things such as old photographs and diaries, Bickford said.
The late Vietnam War correspondent Joseph Galloway, who co-wrote the book, “We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young” with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, conducted some of the veteran interviews in the collection, Bickford said.
The sort of people who listen to the recordings are researchers, students, film makers and authors or family members “who want to hear their loved one’s voice again,” said Bickford, an Army veteran who served in Germany and Iraq.
Documentary makers from the History Channel and the National Geographic have accessed the collection, he said.
Filmmaker Ken Burns, who made the 10-part 2017 television series “The Vietnam War” has also researched the collection, he said.
Interviews from the collection have been quoted in hundreds of books, Bickford added.
Technology means there’s a lot of firsthand recordings from the front lines of recent conflicts, but that wasn’t necessarily happening during the Vietnam War, he said.
“That’s what makes this project important,” he said. “Collecting all these stories from the past.”
A tank loader throws spent shell casings out of his M48 tank in 1968. A combined Infantry and Cavalry mission was halted when the North Vietnamese opened up with 75mm recoilless, 50 caliber and AK-47 rifles, hitting one Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) twice, blowing off its tracks, and disabling a tank. The action took place about 2,000 meters from Landing Zone Ross, north of Chu Lai. (John Olsen/Stars and Stripes)
