April 2017
Episode 08 — The Work Being Done
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SUMMARY: Vietnam Veterans tell about the work they’re doing today in Vietnam.
TEASER — Bob Peragallo: The Que Son clinic had a death rate of child birth of 33%. And in the first year after our clinic was opened, the death rate of newborn babies dropped to 3%.
INTRO — Kent C. Williamson: What do you get when you take a van full of Vietnam Veterans and a van full of U.S. Medical Professionals and drive them out into the jungles of Vietnam? This isn’t a joke by the way. The answer is that the Vietnamese people living in those rural villages get access to healthcare that they may never otherwise receive. And that right there is a major part of the work of Vets With A Mission.
Welcome to the By War & By God Podcast, I’m your host Kent Williamson. This show is a companion series to the award-winning documentary film By War & By God. It’s a place where we can go deeper into the stories of the lives of these veterans than we’re able to in the film. This season we’ve been telling the remarkable accounts of people who’s lives were forever changed by the Vietnam war. If you’ve been following the podcast you’ve heard stories of heroism, and stories of tragedy… but you’re also going to hear some amazing stories of reconciliation, all of which is the result of this magnetic force that tugged and pulled and eventually drew these soldiers, medics, machine-gunners and crewman back to Vietnam for the purpose of serving some of the poorest of the poor in that beautiful country.
But before we jump into the show, let me tell you about Big Heaven Cafe. Big Heaven Cafe is the online store for Paladin Pictures. It’s the place to go to purchase your copy of the documentary By War & By God (along with Paladin’s other films), so please click your way to Big Heaven Cafe dot com. That’s Big Heaven Cafe dot com and use the coupon code “podcast” to save five bucks on By War & By God. And remember that 20% of all sales of By War & By God from Big Heaven Cafe go to the non-profit Vets With A Mission, the group we’re talking about in this podcast that since 1989 has taken nearly 1400 Vietnam Veterans back to Vietnam. Why do they go back? For healing and reconciliation… and all the things you’ll learn about in today’s episode and the next few shows..
Today, we’ll hear about The Work Being Done… But as you recall from last week, in the late eighties and early nineties, Americans weren’t going back to Vietnam. So for this group of Veterans who wanted to do something good there they had to find work that they could help with, so they made a couple of fact-finding trips back to Vietnam to meet people and line up projects. We’ll jump in right there…
Phil Carney: Well on the first trip they had made contact with a Catholic nun, Sister Jean Marie, who had run by herself a polio orphanage in Saigon.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Phil Carney…
Phil Carney: She had no support or help, but she gathered up all of the Polio orphans off of the streets, and did her best to care for them. And that was the initial contact Vets With A Mission had made on their first trip. So on the second trip that I was on there was a small project to build a pool, a swimming pool for some water therapy for her kids, as well as bring different supplies and so on. To help that pool, so the thrust of that trip was the polio orphanage in Saigon.
DROP IN — Kent C. Williamson: Polio or poliomyelitis is a highly infectious viral disease that storms the nervous system, and may result in total paralysis within hours. According to the World Health Organization polio has decreased globally from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988, to only 37 reported cases in 2016 due largely to vaccination efforts. Vietnam was certified as being polio-free in the year 2000 while the United States became free of the disease back in 1979.
Bob Peragallo: We built one of our early clinics in the Que Son Valley.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: The health center had a general care facility, it had a dental unit and it had a birthing unit. The Que Son clinic had a death rate of childbirth of 33%. And in the first year after our clinic was opened, the death rate of newborn babies dropped to 3%. And our investment in that commune was twelve thousand dollars for this health clinic. And so, a twelve thousand dollar investment in this rural area that served thirty three thousand people – that’s a lot of bang for your buck.
Mike Bernardo: The clinics that we work at…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Vets With A Mission Medical Director, Mike Bernardo.
Mike Bernardo: They’re usually well maintained brick or concrete, cement structures.
Kent C. Williamson: Describe the conditions…
Mike Bernardo: Fairly sterile – when I say sterile, I don’t mean sterile in terms of germs. Sterile in terms of the amount of things there to sort of soften the features of the rooms. Usually there’s a – maybe a chair or a couple of chairs, or just a wooden bench, or a wooden bed. So, fairly sparse. But not a lot of supplies, not a lot of medication – and certainly not – not of any medications. Most of them or very few. Some basic supplies, but not a lot – and not a lot of equipment.
Tom Love: The conditions in Vietnam are not unlike a lot of other conditions. You go to a village that’s sort of a shock at first, but after a period of time, you begin to realize that this is not unusual in terms of third world treatment, and what you see.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Tom Love…
Tom Love: We go out to the rural parts of the country, we’re not in the big cities. You really see the poor people, and the primitive situation they live in. Single room homes. They’re dirt floors, they have little or nothing – I mean little or nothing. You look around and they have nothing. They have a set of clothes that they’re wearing. Maybe the second set of clothes is on the line drying from the washing. Their kids are happy and joyous, with what little they have, and I think that really touches you. But I think overall it’s a struggle. And you see the wrinkles on their hands and their feet. You know that their back breaking jobs of planting rice, and they’re stooped over. We’ve observed them in the fields as we pass by in a bus. It’s – I think it really touches your heart that you’re really making a difference in their life.
Kent C. Williamson: What was the worst case that you saw over there?
BREAK: But first… Have you been to Vietnam on a trip like this? What was your experience like. Record your response on your phone and email it to me, or type it up and send it to me at Kent at By War And By God dot com; that’s Kent… K E N T at By War AND By God dot com. I’ll look forward to hearing about your visit. And we might put some of your stories into a future episode.
Now back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: Several of the people in today’s episode are NOT Vietnam veterans. Vets With A Mission doesn’t require you to be a Vet to join them on their trips. Some of the people your hearing today are medical professionals, CPA’s, and businessmen. People just like you who decided to go… to make a difference; who answered the call, so to speak. Alright, now let’s really get back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: What was the worst case that you saw over there?
Mike Bernardo: There was a young guy who was out working in his field, working in the field behind his house about seven years ago. Hit an unexploded land mine that exploded in his face.
Kent C. Williamson: Again, Mike Bernardo…
Mike Bernardo: So when we saw him, his face was disfigured and scarred. He actually was missing an eye, it was a very traumatic thing for him. And we were able to connect him up with surgeons in Hue, and they were able to fit him with a prosthetic eye, and to help correct some of his scars. So that was the most, I’d say the most meaningful encounter we had was with him. There were some other folks that we actually were able to help. One lady we were able to give her a glucometer. She was a diabetic, had no way to check her blood sugar, and we were able to get them a glucometer and supplies for her to monitor her sugar. Which was a great – a great thing that we do in the States that we take for granted all the time, that she had no ability to do.
Kent C. Williamson: Again, Tom Love…
Tom Love: When we take out a tooth that’s abscessed, infected, that somebody’s had pain and problems for maybe a year or two – that tooth is gone, that’s the end of the problem. And so I think we, in the dental field, feel a lot more – sense of accomplishment, because we’re able – actually able to finish off a process, and that’s a good feeling.
Tim Schwulst: I worked at the optometry unit. And gave – helped fit glasses after the optometrist looked at them.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Tim Schwulst…
Tim Schwulst: The only problem we had there was, we ran out of men’s glasses, and so we were trying to give women’s glasses to these Vietnamese men, and they were having kind of a problem with that. So we had a few tense moments there when that guy refused to put the pink glasses on.
Pat Cameron: I’ve had patients that I could do nothing for.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: Cataracts over there are horrible. We didn’t have the equipment or the staff to do anything and it was so – so sad that they came in and you – they think if I gave them something it was going to help them. Sometimes I just gave them something. Like the cataract people, I just give them a set of sunglasses. Give them something. Because sunglasses would at least help the brightness. Because obviously, lights a real sensitivity problem with them.
DROP IN — Kent C. Williamson: Speaking of cataracts… I made two trips to Vietnam while filming material that ended up in By War & By God. On my first trip, some friends in the United States had given me money to help the people there however I saw fit. One morning while I was filming the daily Vets With A Mission medical briefing the doctors mentioned seeing an elderly woman at the clinic the previous day who could benefit from cataract surgery. Vets With A Mission coordinates these procedures with hospitals and doctors in Vietnam and the cost there is only a few hundred dollars to fix both eyes. Following the discussion of the old woman’s cataracts one of the team members stepped up and volunteered to cover the cost of one eye… and then the room got quiet. At that point I turned my camera off and set it down. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the money my friends back home had given me and I laid it on the table. And THAT easily we helped a woman blind with cataracts be able to see again. I like to think of that grandmother staring at her grandkids as they play in the village. And all it took to make that happen was a few people who cared.
Mike Bernardo: When we go and do a medical team with the Vietnamese people, they’re very appreciative, very kind. They seem to be very gentle souls…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Mike Bernardo…
Mike Bernardo: They are definitely appreciative of the care that’s given. No matter what it is that we give. Even if we can only give them a few bags of medications. They’re very appreciative of anything that we do. So yeah that’s a big – that’s a big difference. And certainly in the States we have patients that are very grateful for what they get – what kind of care we give. But, it’s different, it’s different there – there’s a much higher level of gratitude. Gratitude is a major part I think of why people from the US want to go back, because that sense of appreciation that comes from the Vietnamese.
Chuck Ward: Vets With A Mission has had some great days in Vietnam, and we’ve had some bad days.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: And for me, the worst day was back around – it was the year 1999 or 2000. And we had a medical team that was going to two villages out in Khe Sanh Valley and it was always difficult to get permission to go to these villages. The government didn’t want you out there, but we’d gotten permission to go to these two villages. Primarily because someone on our team was a Vietnamese-American, who actually grew up in that village. So we were very excited about going there. About a month before the trip, I had written a letter and appeal for Vets With A Mission, that went to everyone on our mailing list. Well, one of the people on that mailing list was a social work professor from an upstate New York university. He happened to be in Da Nang, where we were, doing a social work project in conjunction with the government. Well, when he got that letter, he disagreed with it’s content. And the content was about a Vets With A Mission team that had gone to Khe Sanh the previous year. And the day before we got there, an individual had stepped on a land mine or had disturbed a grenade in the soil. Horribly wounded. When we got to visit this village in Khe Sanh, which was tribal people, ethnic minorities – this individual was dying. Well, we arrived in our vans. We always brought supplies and gifts for the chief and the people at this village. Well they came running to us and had us go to this hut. And we go in this hut and this guy is laying there, horribly wounded. So the Vets looking around saying, “Wow, this guy really needs to be medivaced, he needs a doctor, he needs to go to the hospital now.” And we, there was nothing we could do, except pray. So we did. We assembled around, we laid hands on him, preyed on this poor farmer, and then we left. So now, it’s a year later. And I mentioned sending out that appeal, and the social worker, professor got – well, when he found out we were in Da Nang, he was livid. He thought the letter was hocus-pocus. He didn’t agree with it. There’s no way something could happen that I put in that letter. And what happened in that letter is that I explained how a year later, we went back to that village. The village people came out running, so excited to see us. The chief came and said, “Come, come, come.” We went and met this young man, who had exploded that mine or that grenade. And he was absolutely well. He hadn’t even gone to a doctor. So for us it was a miracle. And the village chief even said it was a miracle. Well, this social worker in Da Nang disagreed. When he found out we had a medical team in Da Nang, he went that afternoon to the government and told them a pack of lies. That we were gonna distribute bibles when we saw the patients that we were gonna pray for every patient. We we gonna try to do miracles. And of course, that just freaked the government out. And they cancelled our visit to those two villages. And because of that social worker, two villages, approximately 1200 people received no healthcare, and they stopped our team from working for two days and we just sat around the hotel. And that’s one of my worst days in Vietnam with Vets With A Mission.
Kent C. Williamson: What are some of the most exciting things that you’ve seen Vets With A Mission be involved in over the years?
BREAK: But first… We’re giving away the soundtrack to the film By War & By God, so if you like the music you’re hearing, go to By War And By God dot com, click on the Soundtrack item on the menu and download all 8 tracks of Will Musser’s great score. It’s free! I’d be grateful if you did two things… first, tell a friend about us, and second, leave us review on iTunes. Your words will help others know that this show is worth listening to. Thank you!
All right, let’s get back to this episode…
Kent C. Williamson: What are some of the most exciting things that you’ve seen Vets With A Mission be involved in over the years?
Jim Proctor: We’ve built well over 25 medical clinics. The fact that now we’re going back and staffing those and training those. That’s exciting.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Jim Proctor…
Jim Proctor: Because the organization’s always been trusted by the Vietnamese Authorities, they’ve allowed certain latitudes and us to do certain things that maybe some other organizations haven’t. And one of them was printing Bibles. Vietnam has had a lot of people when it first started opening up in the late 80’s and 90’s that wanted to go in there and work on projects and do things. But it was for the splash in the pan, the effect. And sometimes those people would complete a project and then leave. I mean, there are stories of well-known evangelists, well non-profit type people that would go over there, and it was more of a PR-type thing. And they would do some work, but then they’d leave and everything would go back to normal. Vets With A Mission has always been low key. We don’t care if we get the big press and the big recognition. And we just do what we’re supposed to. And then over a period of – well into 5 to 10 year period, we had had that trust with the Vietnamese government – as much as communist government will trust people. Because the pendulum swings back and forth, as to whether – how much they trust you and what their comfort level is. So, we just always built up that track record that we did what we said we were gonna do. And sometimes to the surprise of them. Because they – our projects got done quicker, sometimes under budget. They were first class. I mean, some of our medical clinics have become prototypes for the country. So, from that respect, we had the credibility, and that has allowed us a certain flexibility. To do things like – even at one time, to print Bibles. Again, the pendulum swings. I think there has been times when they’ve been more open to allowing some evangelism or some evidence of Christianity. And there’s been other times where that’s just not an option, you just don’t even bring it up.
Dave Carlson: I had probably some of the most memorable experiences of my life.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Dave Carlson…
Dave Carlson: What I didn’t expect was to get the opportunity to actually see the results of some of the work we were doing. On that trip, was my first opportunity to see what Vets With A Mission was accomplishing with our vets. To me it was all about doing something in Vietnam for the Vietnamese. But there was one individual on our trip who had not had a night’s sleep in 30 years, since he left the war. He had some real serious issues. His whole goal in going on this trip was to be sure to visit the field where his best friend died. And I’m sure he had tremendous survivor guilt. Of course, a lot of these veterans went home believing they had destroyed a country, believing they had destroyed a people. And instead, when he landed in Saigon and spent the first couple of days there – something inside of him healed. He slept like a baby for the first time in 30 years. He came away, no longer really wanting to see where his friend was killed. He wanted to do something positive for the country, but he was relived of the guilt that he had been carrying for decades, that he had destroyed these people or destroyed this culture. And he hadn’t – they’re wonderful, they’re beautiful people, they’re loving, they’re fun, they’re full of joy. And he walked back into that and said, “Then it’s all okay.” And he could sleep. And I had never known the therapeutic value of going back to country. That these veterans were – have an opportunity to participate in. Since I wasn’t a vet, I really couldn’t understand that, but I got to see it first-hand.
CLOSE & CREDITS — Kent C. Williamson: Thank you for listening to this episode of the By War & By God Podcast from Paladin Pictures. A quick reminder to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode. Please tell your friends about us. You (and they) can learn more about By War & By God at By War And By God dot com. Don’t forget to use the coupon code “podcast” at Big Heaven Cafe dot com to save some cash on your copy of the film. You can also watch the By War & By God for free if you have an Amazon Prime account.
Find me on Facebook or Twitter. Just search for Kent C. Williamson and while you’re there search for By War & By God and like or follow us. Please email your thoughts about the show to Kent at By War And By God dot com. The film will screen on Friday, May 5th at the International Christian Film Festival in Orlando. So check it out if you can.
The By War & By God Podcast is written and produced by me Kent C. Williamson with Sound Design and Finishing by Ashby Wratchford. Our Audio Engineer in the studio is Steve Carpenter. Thanks also to my brother Brad Williamson who helped record the interviews in today’s episode.
The By War & By God soundtrack was composed by Will Musser and for a limited time you can download the soundtrack for free at By War And By God dot com.
Thank you to the entire Paladin Team which includes Leslie Wood, Steve Carpenter, Dan Fellows, Steve Lessick, and Ashby Wratchford.
This podcast is a production of Paladin Pictures. Yep, Paladin is a film production company that sees the value in audio podcasts. Why? Because like is the case with By War & By God… the podcast can go deeper into the story than the film ever can. Paladin Pictures is committed to the creation of redemptive entertainment and thought-provoking cultural critique. Learn more about us and our films at Paladin Pictures dot com. That’s Paladin P-A-L-A-D-I-N Pictures dot com.
By War & By God is produced at the Paladin studio in the amazingly wonderful, beautiful little town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
And of course, thank you to our Veterans… those who returned… and especially those who didn’t. Like my wife’s Uncle Floyd. Thank you!
EPISODE 08 – The Work Being Done
PLAYERS: Mike Bernardo, Pat Cameron, Dave Carlson, Phil Carney, Tom Love, Bob Peragallo, Jim Proctor, Tim Schwulst, Chuck Ward, and host Kent C. Williamson
LINKS:
Big Heaven Cafe – Save $5 on the DVD of By War & By God with the coupon code “Podcast”
By War & By God Soundtrack – Download the original soundtrack to the film for free!
Episode 07 — Going Back To Vietnam
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SUMMARY: Vietnam veterans sense a call to go back to Vietnam to do good and Vets With A Mission is born.
TEASER — Pat Cameron: From day one from when I walked off the place and just saw the people. Smelt the air; smelt what was in the air there. Smelt the… the country. It’s what — I just knew that it was different.
INTRO — Kent C. Williamson: When the Vietnam War ended and our Veterans came home to America, some of them swore they’d never return to Vietnam. For some the pain was just too much. For others they got out alive and they wouldn’t be caught dead back in Vietnam. But a few of these Veterans soon started experiencing a growing desire to go back. At first it was just a thought. A thought that grew into a calling. They had unfinished business in Vietnam, they felt their story there was not yet complete, they wanted desperately to write another chapter; to do something to help the people in the land in which they fought.
Welcome to the By War & By God Podcast, I’m your host Kent Williamson. This show is a companion series to the award-winning documentary film By War & By God. It’s a place where we can go deeper into the stories of the lives of these veterans than we’re able to in the film. This season we’ve been telling the remarkable accounts of people who’s lives were forever changed by the Vietnam war. You’ve heard stories of heroism, and stories of tragedy… but you’ll also hear some amazing stories of reconciliation, and you’ll learn about a magnetic force that tugged and pulled and eventually drew these soldiers, medics, machine-gunners and crewman back to Vietnam for the purpose of serving some of the poorest of the poor in that beautiful country.
But before we get into the show, I need to tell you about Big Heaven Cafe. Big Heaven Cafe is the place to go to purchase the documentary By War & By God (and a few other films), so if you need a copy please click your way to Big Heaven Cafe dot com. That’s Big Heaven Cafe dot com and use the coupon code “podcast” to save some money on the film. How much money? One-hundred-thirteen-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty Vietnamese Dong… or five U.S. bucks. And don’t forget that 20% of all sales of By War & By God from Big Heaven Cafe go to Vets With A Mission, the non-profit that since 1989 has taken nearly 1400 Vietnam Veterans back to Vietnam. Why do they go back? For healing and reconciliation… and all the cool work you’ll be hearing about over the next few shows.
In today’s episode, we’re Going Back To Vietnam. Let’s jump right in…
Kent C. Williamson: What made you decide that you wanted to go back?
Phil Carney: Well, I think like many Vietnam vets…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Phil Carney…
Phil Carney: …after the war I did the typical thing, kind of spent a decade self-medicating, and had a lot of issues. But I always had it in my heart. I just always felt like I left Vietnam with unresolved issues. And it was always kind of an unspoken desire and dream, especially after I became a Christian — “Wouldn’t it just be great to go back and do something?” And I had no idea what that meant. And of course in that era of time, it was not a possibility, it wasn’t even a reasonable rational thought. Nobody went back to Vietnam. But I had it in my heart. And so when somebody, when this missionary approached me in a church service and made known to me there was an organization that was being developed called Vets With A Mission. And they were going to be able to possibly, actually go back to Vietnam, and take some vets back to Vietnam and just see what they can do. It just so matched what was in my heart. And so I was just all in.
Bob Peragallo: My reaction to it all was both a very natural, physical draw but yet at the same time I knew and understand – understood – that my faith was involved in it.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: My faith could not sit on a church step. That my faith could not just be an inactive component of who I was. I believe decisions were made beyond myself that opened up opportunities for me to actively participate in returning to Vietnam. First out of curiosity, and that curiosity develops into purpose. And the first trip back was in 1988, and then the second trip was in January 1989 and from those two trips we felt that we needed to organize this and become a Humanitarian organization in Vietnam. And Vets With A Mission took off from then, and has been going up till today.
Kent C. Williamson: When did you first learn about Vets With A Mission?
BREAK: But first… Did you serve in Vietnam? Would you ever consider going back? I’d like to know, so please tell me why you would or why your wouldn’t. Record your response on your phone and email it to me, or if you prefer typing, go for it. You can send it to me at Kent at By War And By God dot com that’s Kent… K E N T at By War AND By God dot com. I’ll look forward to hearing why you would or wouldn’t go back to Vietnam. And we might put some of your stories into a future episode. Now back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: When did you first learn about Vets With A Mission? This is Roger Helle…
Roger Helle: I first learned about Vets With A Mission in 1988. I was invited to go Focus On The Family in California – Doctor James Dobson. And when we were there we were gonna tape a series of three programs dealing with how Vietnam affected people and then how that affected the family. And there were three veterans on the panel, myself, another gentleman, and Bill Kimball. And Doctor Dobson always takes people into a room and talks to them before he interviews them. And so he said to Bill, he said, “Bill, I understand you’ve just come back from a fact finding trip to Vietnam.” And he said, “Yeah,” and that was it. We went on and talked about other things. So afterwards I said to Bill and his wife Rosa, I said, “Can we take you guys out to dinner? And I want to hear more about what you did.” And so, that’s how I got introduced to Vets With A Mission. And that was in August 1988 – in January I was making my first trip and what I thought at that time, my only trip back to Vietnam.
Kent C. Williamson: And how many times have you been back since?
Roger Helle: I’ve made 17 trips back to Vietnam since I first went with Vets With A Mission in January of 1989.
Chuck Ward: In 1991, I’d gone to a conference for Vietnam Vets…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: I was at a message board. I’d left my business card there. Because I’ve had this, this yearning to go back to Vietnam. Didn’t know how to do it. And so, I put a little note on the message board for all the veterans at the conference with my business card. And it just simply said, “Interested in going back to Vietnam to do something good. Call me.” And all my business cards were gone in 2 or 3 days, but no one ever called. So I went one more time before leaving the conference to check that message board. There was no messages, but this really tall guy was there, and it was Roger Helle. And he looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, ”Well, I just came back from Vietnam 2 weeks ago.” And that’s how I met Vets With A Mission.
Roger Helle: The first trip we made back to Vietnam in January of 1989, there were 10 of us.
Kent C. Williamson: Again, Roger Helle…
Roger Helle: It was kind of an interesting trip, because the plane – they had us flying around in circles because they wouldn’t turn the runway lights on for some reason for security purposes. And so they had the plane land at the end of the runway and a truckload of soldiers armed with AK-47s came and walked through the plane upon landing before we were allowed to deplane just to let us know that we were not in Kansas anymore.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: Back in those days the – everything in Vietnam was minimal. Everybody was on the verge of disaster, everything was run down, the state of everything was just horrible.
Phil Carney: I was on the second trip that Vets With A Mission took back to Vietnam.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Phil Carney…
Phil Carney: There were 2 trips in ’89 and I was on the second trip late in the year. It was surreal. We couldn’t get Visas from the United States. Nobody was going to Vietnam, we couldn’t get Visas. So we actually got our Visas through Mexico. And we flew on Air France, it was the only airline that would fly, or that did fly into Vietnam – it was the only airline that flew. I remember landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, and all of the old hangars were still there from the war. But, there was no airport. When we got off of the plane there was a metal hut sitting at the end of the runway that had an electrical cord hanging from the ceiling and a light bulb. And there was a Vietnamese soldier sitting in that with an AK-47 and he had no idea what to do with us. We showed him our passports, and he didn’t know what to do with them. There was no stamp. There was nobody – especially Americans, coming to Vietnam. And so it was just strange. The most overwhelming, or not overwhelming, but just strange was how quiet it was, and how minimal the activity was. The airbase, there was nobody there. There were no people there. And driving in to Saigon there were no cars. There were just a few people on bicycles. You could literally walk for blocks and just see a few people. There was nothing in the stores. The country was absolutely devastated, and there was just nothing there. I remember nobody believed that we were Americans, they thought we were Russian. And when we would show them our passport and explain to them, and convince them that we were from America, the reception was just overwhelming, and they were so excited to see Americans. And so those are some of the stand outs that I remember initially – how quiet it was, there was no air traffic compared to the war – there were planes and helicopters flying non-stop. There were people everywhere. It was noisy, it was loud. There was stuff going on, and it was so quiet, and so few people out on the streets.
Cal Dunham: The feelings I had going back to Vietnam ran a whole gamut.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Cal Dunham…
Cal Dunham: When I got off the airplane there were the military standing there with machine guns, rifles. And they were watching you as you got off the plane, processed through. And I must admit I remember quite vividly when I stepped through, there were three guys standing there, three Vietnamese army guys, standing there just giving me “the look”. And I looked at them, and I quite frankly thought, “I don’t know if we won or lost, but I could still kick your keister back to Hanoi.” And I had to say to myself, “Lord, this cannot be how I’m going to spend this summer in Vietnam. I’ve got to have something happen to me – that’s going to change me, so I don’t have those kind of feelings of hostility.” The first nights were very difficult because I could hear people outside my room, talking in Vietnamese. And it would bring back the memories that I remember – laying out in the jungle, in ambush in the middle of the night, hearing Vietnamese voices out in the jungle. I saw real quickly, that many of them were already past the war. I hadn’t progressed from it, but they had.
Kent C. Williamson: Let’s talk about going back. What was it like to return with Vets With A Mission?
BREAK: But first… We’re giving away the soundtrack to the film By War & By God, so if you like the music you’re hearing, go to By War And By God dot com, click on the Soundtrack item on the menu and download all 8 tracks of Will Musser’s great score. It’s free! I also want to say “thank you” for listening and I want to ask you to please tell a friend about us. Think about that person…. Who is it that needs to hear this podcast? Would you do me a favor and tell them? Thank you! And one more ask… would you please go to iTunes (or wherever you get your podcasts) and leave us a review. Your words will help others know that this show is worth listening to. All right, let’s get back to this episode…
Kent C. Williamson: Let’s talk about going back. What was it like to return with Vets With A Mission?
Pat Cameron: I had no idea what to expect when we went back.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: I think I was excited. I think maybe I thought it was a calling from my Lord and Savior. I didn’t know really what to expect. From day one from when I walked off the place and just saw the people. Smelt the air; smelt what was in the air there. Smelt the… the country. It’s what — I just knew that it was different. I knew it was Communist. I could just see the – I could tell by the guards and by the guys carrying the guns at the airport. And by the way they were controlling things that it wasn’t like any other country that I had gone in with a Visa. I’d just – and then as the – we got settled in, I was – I’m pretty adventurous person and I started – I went out on the streets and walked. I got to feeling that – I didn’t feel – I felt comfortable. I didn’t feel like there was any anger. I felt like it was kind of safe. Didn’t feel any of that when I was 19 – promise you.
Chuck Ward: It was the summer of ’92 when I made my first trip with Vets With A Mission to go back to Vietnam and it was not that big of a deal.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: I didn’t have any quote “issues” when I went back that time with Vets With A Mission. It was just – it was really a great trip and – a great trip. A lot of evidence of the war still. A lot of tanks and armored personnel carriers, and helicopters and things like that – all over the place. Lots of ordnance many, many craters. I mean, you could tell there was a war even though it was a little over 15 years since it was over. But it was the second trip to Vietnam, when I went back – 1994 – that surprised me very much. I really had issues with anger, survivor’s guilt. And that was a tough trip. And often I would get in these silly arguments with Vietnamese – were the goofiest things. I had sent a number of faxes to Bill Kimble, who was the president – founder of Vets With A Mission. He was in another city and I was kind of helping, leading a construction team. We communicated by fax in those days, no mobile phones. And at the end of the week, the hotel double charged me for the faxes. I mean, we’re talking about 25 or 50 cents here per fax. We’re not talking like $100. But, what I was dealing with, that pushed me over the edge, and I got into this huge argument with the Vietnamese on the other side of the registration desk at the hotel. It got so heated that I started to climb up on the desk, and one of the other team there from the Vets With A Mission, grabbed me by the back of the shirt, and pulled me down. And I blurted out, “You know, I think I shot your father.” I was so ticked off about that. That was a terrible thing to say. That was a terrible witness for Christ. But the survivors guilt, and the anger, the frustration I’d been holding in for a long time – over 20 years – finally came out that day.
DROP IN — Kent C. Williamson: Every Veteran has to deal with their Vietnam experience in their own way. Sometimes it comes out in anger, sometimes it comes out in fear. But two things these Vets have in common is that they’ve all been shaped by war… and by God. That’s why we named the film and this podcast By War & By God. Their faith has led them back to Vietnam and in the process they’ve found some sort of healing.
Kent C. Williamson: What brought about the change?
Steve Scott: I can tell you how I changed and when I changed, but I can’t tell you what causes that.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Steve Scott…
Steve Scott: I think that’s bigger than me and I don’t understand. I feel truly blessed for being called. And I’ve read all the biblical things that I can get my hands on, but mostly I remember reading somewhere that God calls everyone but not many answer. For some reason, I was receptive, I answered.
CLOSE & CREDITS — Kent C. Williamson: Thank you for listening to this episode of the By War & By God Podcast from Paladin Pictures. Just a reminder to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and please (did you hear that, I said “please”) please tell a friend about us. You can learn more about By War & By God at By War And By God dot com. A reminder to use the coupon code “podcast” at Big Heaven Cafe dot com to save some cash on your copy of the film By War & By God. You can also watch the film for free if you have an Amazon Prime account.
Find me on Facebook or Twitter. Just search for Kent C. Williamson and while you’re there search for By War & By God and like or follow us. Please email your thoughts about the show to Kent at By War And By God dot com.
The film will be at the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma on Saturday, April 22nd where it will screen at the historic Roxy Theatre. By War & By God will also screen on Friday, May 5th at the International Christian Film Festival in Orlando. So if check it out if you can.
The By War & By God Podcast is written and produced by me Kent C. Williamson with Sound Design and Finishing by Ashby Wratchford. Our Audio Engineer in the studio is Steve Carpenter. Thanks also to my brother Brad Williamson who helped record the interviews in today’s episode.
The By War & By God soundtrack was composed by Will Musser and for a limited time you can download the soundtrack for free at By War And By God dot com.
Thank you to the entire Paladin Team which includes Leslie Wood, Steve Carpenter, Dan Fellows, Steve Lessick, and Ashby Wratchford.
This podcast is a production of Paladin Pictures. Yep, Paladin is a film production company that sees the value in audio podcasts. Why? Because like is the case with By War & By God… the podcast can go deeper into the story than the film ever can. Paladin Pictures is committed to the creation of redemptive entertainment and thought-provoking cultural critique. Learn more about us and our films at Paladin Pictures dot com. That’s Paladin P-A-L-A-D-I-N Pictures dot com.
By War & By God is produced at the Paladin studio in the amazingly wonderful, beautiful little town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
And of course, thank you to our Veterans… those who returned… and especially those who didn’t. Like my wife’s Uncle Floyd. Thank you!
Next week on the By War & By God Podcast…
EPISODE 07 – GOING BACK TO VIETNAM
PLAYERS: Pat Cameron, Phil Carney, Cal Dunham, Roger Helle, Bob Peragallo, Steve Scott, Chuck Ward, and host Kent C. Williamson
LINKS:
Big Heaven Cafe – Save $5 on the DVD of By War & By God with the coupon code “Podcast”
By War & By God Soundtrack – Download the original soundtrack to the film for free!
Episode 06 — Dealing With Your Baggage
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS
SUMMARY: Vietnam veterans deal with their PTSD and speak of their desire to return to Vietnam.
TEASER — Pat Cameron: But the average 19-year-old, 18-year-old, kid that went over there didn’t come back the same… did not come back the same.
INTRO — Kent C. Williamson: For whatever reason, when I travel I prefer to handle my own baggage. Occasionally there’s an awkward moment in front of a hotel when the concierge calls the bellhop over to take my luggage and I have to politely wave them off while trying to grab all my bags, not leave any behind, and not knock anything over as I continue on my way. Often I’m overloaded with bags hanging from my shoulders and suitcases in tow, and if the family’s with me, pillows and stuffed animals jammed in my armpits. You know the guy I’m talking about. You’ve probably seen him yourself… well, that’s me. I long to be the guy with just a single bag and a wad of cash for tips, but most of the time, I’m not. I’ve got baggage, and lots of it. Of course, physical baggage, as messy as it can get, is often easier to carry than emotional baggage. When our veterans returned from Vietnam they often brought both. An over-stuffed duffle bag can be dumped onto the bed and sorted through or it can be tucked into a closet and forgotten about. But the emotional baggage that flew back from Vietnam with our veterans was a different story altogether.
Welcome to the By War & By God Podcast, I’m your host Kent Williamson. This show is a companion series to the award-winning documentary film By War & By God. It’s a place where we can go deeper into the stories of the lives of these veterans than we’re able to in the film. This season we’ve been telling the remarkable accounts of people who’s lives were forever changed by the Vietnam war. You’ve heard stories of heroism, and stories of tragedy… but you’ll also hear some amazing stories of reconciliation, and you’ll learn about a magnetic force that tugged and pulled and eventually drew these soldiers, medics, machine-gunners and crewman back to Vietnam for the purpose of serving some of the poorest of the poor in that beautiful country.
But before we get into the show, I need to tell you about Big Heaven Cafe. Big Heaven Cafe is the place to go to purchase the documentary By War & By God, so if you need a copy please click your way to Big Heaven Cafe dot com. That’s Big Heaven Cafe dot com and use the coupon code “podcast” to save one-hundred-thirteen-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty Vietnamese Dong… or five U.S. bucks on the film. And don’t forget that 20% of all sales of By War & By God from Big Heaven Cafe go to Vets With A Mission, the non-profit that since 1989 has taken nearly 1400 Vietnam Veterans back to Vietnam. Why do they go back? For healing and reconciliation.
In today’s episode, Dealing With Your Baggage, we’ll learn a little bit about a thing called PTSD. We’ll learn that trying to take the war out of the man is not an easy task. And today we’ll hear about the first hints of desire these men had of returning to the land called Vietnam. Alright… here it is…
Chuck Ward: When I finally had to face the demons of my Vietnam experiences that weren’t that bad…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: So just imagine the poor Marines and soldiers, 13 and 12 months of being on the ground and involved in activity and firefights and ambushes, you know, every two or three days. And just imagine how it impacted them, if it impacted me this way. The survivors guilt was a big motivator, a big influence, in my life. Because of the five of us on our high school bowling team one never went to Vietnam, four went to Vietnam, and I was the only one that came back alive. The other three were all killed in Vietnam. That bothered me a lot. You know, ‘Why me?’
Kent C. Williamson: What were the kind of injuries that you saw people coming back with?
Pat Cameron: Lost arms and legs…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: Most body injuries in the chest, they died. But, you know, quite a few amputees. And quite a few people that went crazy. They went absolutely in the loo-loo bins. And those were the ones they put on the street first… the ones that looked like they were healthy physically, but they weren’t healthy mentally. I don’t think I was healthy mentally. I mean to this day I take depression medicine. I’ve been taking depression medicine ever since, you know, for years… For almost 20 years now, I’ve been on depression medicine, you know. I just think war is hell. It’s just not good. You can’t put people in a battle. Now there are some gung-ho guys that wanted to go back more than once, and people that went back three and four times. I don’t know if it was just a rush for them, or what. But the average 19-year-old, 18-year-old kid that went over there didn’t come back the same. Did not come back the same. But I saw a lot of fear involved in people that came over, especially when they first get there. The first time you land in a foreign country, and you ain’t even been to a foreign country in your life… you’re 19 years old, and now you go in a foreign country and you don’t even speak the language, and then you got people shooting at you… How do you prepare for that?
Kent C. Williamson: Now they talk a lot about PTSD. Was that even on the radar back then? Was there any discussion about coming back and processing what you’d been through?
Cal Dunham: No. No, there was nothing like that…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Cal Dunham…
Cal Dunham: …at least to my knowledge. That’s not to say it wasn’t there, but I was young and I thought, “I’ll just suck it up, and I’ll get through this.” So I just tried to do it on my own. I didn’t really recognize it for what it really was
Kent C. Williamson: And how did that go? How did the “sucking it up” part work for you?
Cal Dunham: I could suck it up for a while, and then after Fran and I got married, just a few short months later we could be sitting in the apartment and I’d just start to cry, and I’d just say “Fran, I’m going out for a drive” and I’d go someplace and then I just… I wasn’t a heavy drinker but I’d just go to a bar and have some beers, or I’d go someplace and just park because I didn’t want her just seeing me sitting there and seeing me being melancholy and crying. So, you always kept a good face. You just buried it and kept a good face.
DROP IN — Kent C. Williamson: Post combat effects had been seen in other wars, but the term PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder came about in the 1970’s as a result of the Vietnam War. The term was officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Bob Peragallo: PTSD is like good wine: the older it gets the better it gets.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: One of the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder is you don’t think you have it, and that should be at the top of the list.
DROP IN — Kent C. Williamson: In 1983, at the request of Congress, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs conducted a study into the prevalence of PTSD and other post-war psychological problems that our Vietnam Veterans were experiencing. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study consisted of hundreds of questions that sounded like these:
Questioner: Question H48D: Did you fire a weapon in a combat situation?
Question G48. Did anyone in your family or household ever spank or hit you hard enough that you had marks or bruises, had to stay in bed…
Question C3: How many times (if ever) have you been divorced?
Question R477. Have you thought that you lied pretty often since you have been an adult?
Question R426. When you were growing up, did you ever have any contact with the police or legal authorities for something they thought you had done, not including trouble with parking tickets?
Question K31. Did you have any problems at that time that you felt you couldn’t discuss with any friend or relative?
Question R452. Have you ever had sex with as many as ten different people within a single year (including your wife)? Homosexual or Heterosexual?
Question U2: Other than for weddings or funerals, have you attended services at a church or other place of worship since you were 18 years old?
Kent C. Williamson: The study found that over half of the of the U.S. participants in the Vietnam War experienced PTSD or partial PTSD symptoms. That’s over 1.7 million of our veterans.
Kent C. Williamson: How were you treated back home?
BREAK: But first… Did you serve in Vietnam? Did you suffer from PTSD? Or perhaps you had a family member who served and you’d like to ask them what there experience was like. Please record it on your phone and email it to me, or if you prefer typing, go for it. You can send it to me at Kent at By War AND By God dot com that’s Kent… that’s K E N T at By War AND By God dot com. I’ll look forward to learning about your experiences and we might just put a few of your stories into a future episode.
Now back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: How were you treated back home?
Pat Cameron: I’ll be honest with you, as a corpsman I got more respect in the Marine Corps than I did anybody.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron.
Pat Cameron: The Marine Corps thought of us as salvation, especially the ones who had been over there and gotten back. I mean, once they knew that I had been over there it was just like… I wasn’t like an idol… but I was treated with the utmost respect and got many Thank You’s from the service side. I never did get any accolades from the public, from people. Never. Not even my family. My own family, you know, they just… But then again, I didn’t sit down with them and talk about some of the stuff I went through, Kent, I just wanted to keep it inside. But I kept it inside of me for 30 years. That couldn’t have helped me, I don’t think.
Bob Peragallo: There was no gratitude, no “Thank you for your service”, none of that. There was nothing, absolutely nothing.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: In fact, most people burned their uniforms when they got discharged. I never was that radical. I still was very proud of what I did in my service, but I sure was confused about it. All of a sudden I was the bad guy when I came home. I was as bad as the, in some cases worse than the enemy that we were fighting. So, you had to stuff it, you had to put it in a bag and stick it in a locker somewhere and lock it up, and not let any of that come out.
Kent C. Williamson: How did you deal with your Vietnam experiences?
Bob Peragallo: I try to describe it like an electrical panel that’s wired for 200 Amps, and Vietnam was 1,000 Amps, and it blew the circuits out, and so the only way that you were going to get through the emotional connection to your Vietnam experiences… you couldn’t reset the breakers. You kind of left them unsaid. You couldn’t process certain things, you couldn’t become close, you isolated yourself, you wouldn’t talk about Vietnam. What we now know, after all of these years is that the worst thing you can do for post-traumatic stress disorder is not talk about it. I was married probably, I’d say 8 to 10 years before I really told her my Vietnam experience.
Pat Cameron: I had one guy that I lost when I was over there, that was going to be leaving the next day to go home. So he didn’t make it.
Kent C. Williamson: Again, Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: How do you process that at 19?
Kent C. Williamson: How did you process it?
Pat Cameron: Oh, I don’t know, maybe about a half a fifth of liquor and sitting around with your comrades. We didn’t sit around and talk about somebody dying. We might for a minute, you know say we really hated that Jim didn’t make it. But if you processed it too much… the longer you were there the less you processed it. When you first get there you worked in fear; when you’d been there a while you worked through it; then when you get close to coming home you worried about dying. And I will live with it until I die. That’s just going to be the way it is
Roger Helle: When I was Medevaced out of Vietnam the plane took off, and sometimes the Communists would sit at the end of the runway and take shots at the planes that were taking off, and so what the plane had to do was they had to just get as high up as they could, as fast as they could.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Roger Helle…
Roger Helle: …and the plane banged over Da Nang Bay, and you know Vietnam was an incredibly beautiful country, and I’m looking at the emerald green waters of Da Nang Bay and the sandy China Beach and the mountains right there around Da Nang Bay, and as beautiful as it was at that point if I never ever went back to Vietnam again, if I never saw Vietnam again, that would be too soon. And for the next few years, four to be exact, I was kind of in an emotional, psychological wilderness of not understanding PTSD, not understanding survivors guilt, trying to wear a mask that I was okay, you know. I was proud of serving my country and being a Marine, so I wore that mask for about 4 ½ years. But unfortunately, my life began to unravel and you know the very thing that I said that I would never be growing up in a dysfunctional family – I had become an alcoholic, a workaholic, and my marriage was on the rocks. And then Jesus Christ came into my wife and I’s lives and God took away all the pain and memories of Vietnam, the nightmares. And the funny thing was, several months later something began stirring in my heart about Vietnam and I said to my wife “You know I’d like to go back to Vietnam now as a Christian; not as a Marine, not as a warrior, but as a Christian.” Well, that was several months later – April 1975 – Vietnam fell, and so from ‘75 to ‘88 I would ask missionaries that were in Asia, parts of Asia, what was going on in Vietnam. And nothing was happening in Vietnam, it was closed off to the outside world.
Bob Peregallo: I had a lot of guilt.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peregallo.
Bob Peregallo: It was a false guilt, but it was guilt of what I did in Vietnam. Everybody told me how wrong it was, that I was wrong. And these horrible accusations, you know what they are, they said all those things. So, I went into church and I heard the message of forgiveness and I responded and it was the beginning of me getting my head back together and breaking free from the whole Vietnam experience, and becoming a normal human being again, which took some time. It wasn’t an easy transition. It took some time.
Kent C. Williamson: So when did you start thinking about going back to Vietnam?
BREAK: But first… Two quick items. We’re giving away the soundtrack to the film By War & By God, so if you like the music, go to By War And By God dot com, click on the Soundtrack item on the menu and download all 8 tracks of this great score. The music was composed by Will Musser and we want you to have it for free. So go download it. Next… I want to say “thank you” for listening. You are the reason we create this show and I want to ask you to please tell a friend about us. There’s probably at least one person in your circle of influence who would like to hear this podcast, so please tell them about it. And if you can, go to iTunes (or wherever you get your podcasts) and leave us a review. Your words will help others know that this show is worth listening to. Okay, so that was three things, not two things. All right, let’s get back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: So, when did you start thinking about going back to Vietnam?
Bob Peragallo: I wanted to be a missionary, so the first church I ever pioneered, the first thing we were going to do was send out missionaries and we sent a missionary couple to Honduras. This is back in the early ‘80s, about 1980, and the Sandinista war was going on in Central America. But I remember, like, I felt so fulfilled that I was doing something beyond just being “the church guy”. We were working in this orphanage and at night, I would… all of a sudden I would look up and over the other side of the mountain I’d see tracers, and I could hear gunships. And it just blew my mind, like ‘Wow, we’re this close to the war’. You know, we all heard about it and we were cautioned about traveling down the Pan-American highway, and here I am in 1980, and I’m looking at tracers going through the air, and it brought me right back to Vietnam, and in that process that’s where I first figured ‘You know, it would really be nice if we could do this in Vietnam.’ When I was in Vietnam I tried to imagine what it would be like if people weren’t trying to kill you. I just would always tell myself, “Man, I’d like to come back to this place sometime. This has got to be a beautiful place.” It’s just that it was ugly by war.
Kent C. Williamson: When you first thought of going back to Vietnam, what went through your head? This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: I think the first thing that went through my head was the fact of “Why in the hell am I even thinking about going back there?” That was the first thing I said, “What am I looking for? Why do I want to go back?”
Kent C. Williamson: So tell me about the first inklings of desire that you had to return to Vietnam. This is Cal Dunham…
Cal Dunham: Every now and then I would see something on TV with World War II vets, or Korean vets. They’d be interviewing them and so on, and they would talk about that they were going back to some kind of a reunion at a particular place in Europe or wherever it might have been, and I just started thinking about, you know, ‘I wonder how that would be for me if I did anything like that.’
Bob Peragallo: It was just like a tremendous magnet that wanted to pull me back to Vietnam. I couldn’t shake it, I couldn’t resist it.
Kent C. Williamson: Again, Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: My wife and family members and people that I knew, they had mixed feelings about going back to Vietnam, but I was just compelled. There was just something in me that was driving me from deep inside to return to that place, knowing that there was an uncertain outcome – how we would be treated, how it would work. It was just an uncontrollable impulse to return to the scene of the crime.
Phil Carney: To me, Vietnam personally felt unfinished.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Phil Carney…
Phil Carney: I never knew how to really articulate it. I never said it to anybody out loud, but it just always felt like there was something unresolved and unfinished. I never felt like there was an apology owed. I never felt like… I never regretted going. I never really felt guilty about being a Vietnam veteran, but there was just something in my own soul that felt unfinished about my Vietnam experience. I just always felt in my heart if I ever could go back to Vietnam it would be meaningful and important, and I didn’t know what that was. It just felt unfinished to me
CLOSE & CREDITS — Kent C. Williamson: Thank you for listening to this episode of the By War & By God Podcast from Paladin Pictures. Don’t forget to subscribe so you won’t miss an episode and please tell a friend about us. You can learn more about By War & By God at our website… By War And By God dot com. A reminder to use the coupon code “podcast” at Big Heaven Cafe to save some money on your copy of the film By War & By God. Also if you have an Amazon Prime account you can watch the film for free.
You can find me on Facebook or Twitter. Search for Kent C. Williamson and while you’re there search for By War & By God and like or follow us. Please email me your thoughts about the show or your own experiences. You can send them to Kent at By War And By God dot com.
The film will be at the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma on Saturday, April 22nd where it will screen at the historic Roxy Theatre. By War & By God will also screen on Friday, May 5th at the International Christian Film Festival in Orlando. So if you’re in either of those parts of the country, please go see it!
The By War & By God Podcast is written and produced by me Kent C. Williamson with Sound Design and Finishing by Ashby Wratchford. Our Audio Engineer in the studio is Steve Carpenter. Thanks also to my brother Brad Williamson who helped record the original interviews for the film.
Leslie Wood was the voice of the questions from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study in today’s episode. Special thanks to Greg Allen Morgoglione for his help and suggestions to make this show better. Thanks Greg! The By War & By God soundtrack was composed by Will Musser and don’t forget, for a limited time you can download the entire soundtrack for free at By War And By God dot com.
Thank you to the entire Paladin Team which includes Leslie Wood, Steve Carpenter, Dan Fellows, Steve Lessick, and Ashby Wratchford.
This podcast is a production of Paladin Pictures. Yep, Paladin is a film production company that sees the value in audio podcasts. Why? Because like is the case with By War & By God… the podcast can go deeper into the story than the film ever can. Paladin Pictures is committed to the creation of redemptive entertainment and thought-provoking cultural critique. Learn more about us and our films at Paladin Pictures dot com. That’s Paladin P-A-L-A-D-I-N Pictures dot com.
By War & By God is produced at the Paladin studio in the amazingly wonderful, beautiful little town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
And of course, thank you to our Veterans… those who returned… and especially those who didn’t. Like my wife’s Uncle Floyd. Thank you!
EPISODE 06 – DEALING WITH YOUR BAGGAGE
PLAYERS: Pat Cameron, Phil Carney, Cal Dunham, Roger Helle, Bob Peragallo, Chuck Ward, and host Kent C. Williamson
LINKS:
Big Heaven Cafe – Save $5 on the DVD of By War & By God with the coupon code “Podcast”
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Findings from the National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study
By War & By God Soundtrack – Download the original soundtrack to the film for free!
Episode 05 — You Can’t Go Home Again
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS
SUMMARY: Several Vietnam veterans return from the war only to learn that you can’t go home again.
TEASER — Bob Peragallo: You left the battlefield and you were home within a matter of 3 or 4 days and there was no counseling, there was no debriefing, there was absolutely nothing.
INTRO — Kent C. Williamson: There’s one thing that every war has in common. Eventually, they all come to an end… eventually. In April of 1975, after twenty years of fighting, and over a decade of American involvement, that day came for the war in Vietnam. It happened when Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell. As it all was coming to a close, the grounds of the U.S. Embassy were packed with people hoping to escape the country. For 24 hours helicopter after helicopter briefly landed on rooftops, they were loaded with those fortunate enough to get visas, and lifted again into the sky where they flew to the air craft carriers waiting in the South China Sea. Tamarind trees were cut down in the Embassy’s parking lot to make room for a landing zone for more helicopters. There is some powerful footage of the evacuation online. We’ll include links to some in our show notes. At 4:58 in the morning of April 30th, Graham Martin, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam climbed aboard a helicopter known as Lady Ace 09 and evacuated the embassy. By 7:53 that morning the last of the Marines lifted off the ground leaving behind many South Vietnamese who weren’t fortunate enough to catch a flight out. At 11:30am tanks of the Peoples Army of Vietnam crushed the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. A flag for the National Liberation Front was raised above the building and the Vietnam War was over. Or was it?
Welcome to the By War & By God Podcast, I’m your host Kent Williamson. This show is a companion series to the award-winning documentary film By War & By God. It’s a place where we can go deeper into the stories of the lives of these veterans than we’re able to in the film. Over this season were telling the remarkable accounts of people who’s lives were forever changed by the Vietnam war. You’ll hear stories of heroism, and stories of tragedy… but you’ll also hear some amazing stories of reconciliation, and you’ll learn about a magnetic force that tugged and pulled and eventually drew these soldiers, medics, machine-gunners and crewman back to Vietnam for the purpose of serving some of the poorest of the poor in that beautiful country.
But before we start, I need to tell you about Big Heaven Cafe. Big Heaven Cafe is where you go to purchase the documentary By War & By God, so if you need a copy for yourself, your dad, a friend, a veteran you know, or your local library, please click your way to Big Heaven Cafe dot com. That’s Big Heaven Cafe dot com and use the coupon code “podcast” to save one-hundred-thirteen-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty Vietnamese Dong… or five U.S. bucks on the film. Oh, and 20% of all sales of By War & By God from Big Heaven Cafe go to Vets With A Mission, the non-profit that since 1989 has taken nearly 1400 Vietnam Veterans back to Vietnam. That’s a lot of Veterans. Why do they go back? For healing and reconciliation.
In today’s episode, You Can’t Go Home Again, we’ll learn that you can remove the man from the war, but that it’s much more difficult to remove the war from the man. The home you left behind to go fight the war is not the same when you return… and neither are you. Alright… here we go…
Kent C. Williamson: Tell me about coming home from the war…
Chuck Ward: Coming back so quickly from Vietnam, so many had no time to decompress, no time to share. On Saturday you could leave Vietnam, and on Monday or Tuesday you could be ushered out of the Army or the Marines, and no one seemed to really care.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: It’s a difficult thing coming back from war, whether you did just a little bit or you were there for two or three tours. And when you come home it’s different, and you’re different. Many Vietnam vets, particularly the soldiers and Marines, didn’t have a good experience when they came back – usually to California… San Diego… San Francisco, usually. In the latter part of the war the military were telling Veterans they might want to not wear their uniform when they process out. It was just crazy.
Bob Peragallo: When I came back to the states I was on a Medevac flight and I was Medevaced to the Oakland Naval Hospital and I was an outpatient there.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: I was a walking casualty, is what I guess the term was. You left the battlefield and you were home within a matter of three or four days, and there was no counseling, there was no debriefing, there was absolutely nothing. All of a sudden, you’re back to being a civilian, everybody thinks the Vietnam War sucks and the transfer of that came across as you suck. When I got home, obviously my parents were very emotional. It was the first time I’d ever seen my father cry. They welcomed me, but they never really asked me any questions; they never spoke about anything; they never asked me what happened, what was it like. It was like ‘You’re home, and we’re real glad, but we don’t want to know anything.’
Kent C. Williamson: Tell me about leaving Vietnam after the war…
Cal Dunham: We called it ‘Going back to the world’, is what we called it when we were leaving…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Cal Dunham…
Cal Dunham: So you go through this out processing and then you got on a plane. It was just almost deadly silence on the plane, and then the captain came on and said ‘Okay, we’re taxiing. We’re going to take off now’, and it was just dead silence, and then as soon as we lifted off the ground and we knew we were at an elevation where nothing could happen everybody just broke into cheers and grabbed the stewardesses and hugged them and everybody was just ecstatic that we were now headed home. It was a great feeling, it was a real euphoria because ‘Okay I made it! Now I’m on my way home’.
Pat Cameron: Well first of all, I was glad to get on the plane to go back…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: …and when I got off the plane there really wasn’t anybody there to greet us at all. And then I went straight from there to the Balboa Naval Hospital and that’s where I was going to spend the remainder of my duty time from serving over in Nam. Shortly after I checked in Balboa Naval Hospital I went home for a leave. I got about 2-1/2 or 3 weeks to take off after serving over there, and to be really honest with you I just… I didn’t talk about it much.
Kent C. Williamson: So what was coming home like? How, how were you received?
BREAK: But first… As a storyteller, I love telling stories; whether on film or in audio form like this podcast. But the telling of stories doesn’t work without an audience like you. So I want to say “thank you” for listening. You are the reason we create this show. As listeners of this show I want to ask you for two favors. First, will you please tell a friend about us? There’s probably at least one person in your circle of influence who would like to hear this podcast, so please tell them about it. I would appreciate it. Second, would you consider going to iTunes (or wherever you get your podcasts) to rate us and give us a review. Your review will help others know that this show is worth listening to. I can’t thank you enough for listening, but let me say it once more… thank you!
Kent C. Williamson: So what was coming home like? How, how were you received? This is Cal Dunham…
Cal Dunham: Coming home was absolutely awesome, you know. You finally had this sense, ‘I’m free’. I had a 30-day leave, so I went… When I got home – my dad was a principal in an elementary school – so I got a taxi cab that took me to my dad’s school where he was principal and I just walked in, and there he was. They didn’t know exactly when I would be home because I hadn’t called. They just knew that I should be home around a certain date. So, I saw my dad for the first time in a year and we hugged and then I took his vehicle and went up to another school where my mom was teaching. And those first days were just like a euphoria, you know, you were there and you had a sense of “I made it back”. It was joyous, it was a wonderful thing – well-received by my family and my closer friends that knew me. We just had a great time being able to be together again.
Kent C. Williamson: Did your friends understand what you had been through?
Cal Dunham: I don’t think so, not really. They were just glad I was home, that I was safe, but they really didn’t understand what I had just been through, nor was I sharing any of that. You really just didn’t talk about it much. I mean, especially in those first months and so on you would… maybe you would tell a light story of something that happened to you but, for me, I never really talked about it. They would say “Well, we’re glad you’re home”. You know, they were already in their lives and you had to kind of start over again. You had to kind of get settled in and figure out what you were going to do.
Kent C. Williamson: So, what kind of challenges did that present?
Cal Dunham: I still had some time left in the Army so I knew I had to go, I went over to… Well, I was on my way to Fort Hood, Texas. That was where my reassignment was. I was driving, when I was on my way to Texas, I got a call the day I left that my dad had just died suddenly of a heart attack… That just… in some way just pushed me over the edge in some way for quite some time… I was really struggling at that point because I had just seen so much of it, and to have my own dad just die… That was pretty tough.
Kent C. Williamson: So how did you process that?
Cal Dunham: In my mind I made up all kinds of stories for a while that he wasn’t really dead. You know, your mind can do strange things to you. But I just had to process it.
Chuck Ward: I had one experience that told me what things were like back in the States…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward…
Chuck Ward: When a carrier comes back to its place – in our case it was Alameda, which is San Francisco, California – all the enlisted men and the officers go up on the flight deck and they line the flight deck… They go all the way around the flight deck, and you’re in your dress uniform… whites in summer, blues if it’s winter. And as we were sailing under the Oakland Bay Bridge I looked up, and you could see people up on top of the bridge… lots of people… and you could tell they had signs – you couldn’t read them yet, but you knew they had signs. But as you got closer you begin to hear that these were not people that were welcoming you home. It was antiwar protesters, and then as you even got closer you could see some of the signs… huge signs, small signs, some of them said really terrible things… You know, you’ve heard, things like ‘baby killer’, that sort of thing. But the thing that happened… it was terrible… as our carrier went under the Oakland Bay Bridge soon things began to hit us and it turned out to be feces and urine, and they were dumping buckets of it on us. I mean, you talk about angry… Those people on the bridge that day were very fortunate that the sailors on that flight deck couldn’t get to them because it would have been awful. You know, how in the world do you treat people that way? It was disgusting.
Kent C. Williamson: So what was it like when you got back? This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: I still had a year and a half to do in the Marine Corps – over a year and a half – so I was stationed at the Concord Naval Weapons Station, which was a West Coast ammunition depot for the Vietnam War. I was assigned as a security guard. We had a lot going on because we had all the Berkeley demonstrators that were protesting the war ammunition depot. So, I went from one war against the Viet Cong into a war against war protesters. And these were not nice, loving, hippie people. These people were pretty vicious, and it was confrontations on every weekend when they would come down to protest.
Archival Footage — News Report: On October 15, 1965 at the Berkeley campus of the University of California the Vietnam Day Committee held a mass rally to protest the United States war against Viet Nam. In the evening 14,000 students and people from the community marched from the campus toward the Oakland Army base.
Cal Dunham: This is kind of a funny… well, not so funny story.
Kent Williamson: Again, Cal Dunham.
Cal Dunham: There was a guy sitting in front of me in a line of traffic, and he had long hair, and looked like what back then we called a hippie, and I made some kind of rude comment about him probably being one of those protesters that hates guys like me and so on. And Fran just looked at me and said “Cal, that guy up in that car ahead of us is my stepbrother”. And I said “You’re kidding me.” And she said “No, that’s my stepbrother”. And I said, ”Don’t you ever introduce me to him.” I was really rude. He hadn’t done anything to me but you really stereotype people, so you just kind of stayed away from people that you thought might be real negative towards you.
Kent C. Williamson: What did you do after dealing with the protests?
BREAK: But first… Did you serve in Vietnam? If so, I’d like to hear what it was like for you to return home. Or perhaps you had a family member who served and you’d like to ask them what it was like to come home. Please record it on your phone and email it to me, or if you prefer typing, go for it. Either way, send it to me at Kent at By War And By God dot com that’s Kent… K E N T at By War And By God dot com. I’ll look forward to learning about your experiences and we might just put some of your stories into a future episode.
Okay, I want to interrupt things for a moment to point out the set dressing… do you hear that?… This is part of the soundtrack of the film By War & By God. It was composed by Will Musser and guess what? We’re giving it away. Will Musser has created music for several of my films, but he’s probably most known for his work on the God’s Not Dead films. Another one of his soundtracks hits theaters this weekend in a film called The Case For Christ. Anyway, I love his music, he’s a very talented artist and I want you to experience the soundtrack for free. So make a mental note to go to By War And By God dot com to download it.
Now back to the show…
Kent C. Williamson: What did you do after dealing with the protests?
Bob Peragallo: I became the senior NCO of a burial detail, and we were doing three or four military funerals every day.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Bob Peragallo…
Bob Peragallo: This would’ve been 1968, which was the highest casualty rate of the Viet Nam war – the Tet offensive. I did that for six months, and you just try to imagine what that is like, folding the flag of this mother’s son and handing it to her. Let me tell you, it was just a gut wrenching experience, and the only way we could actually get through it after a while was we started drinking pretty heavy. All of us were emotional basket cases, cause we were some of the first returning vets from the Vietnamese War. My experience coming home while still in the military just soured me, and there was no way I was going to stay in the military. So, I took my discharge and just had a really messed up life for the next two or three years – just drinking, carousing, fighting, whatever… just an angry, angry person.
Kent C. Williamson: What did you do after you got out of the service?
Pat Cameron: My father and I… I used to play with race cars a lot – drag racing. And he gave me the funds to start building another race car in California…
Kent C. Williamson: This is Pat Cameron…
Pat Cameron: …and I dominated my time and most of my mental state to going back to racing cars. I don’t know if I just wanted to go fast, and… I didn’t fear death, I will tell you that. Death was something that I had seen so much of that I just decided if I didn’t get a calling then I wasn’t going to get no calling. So, I ended up driving race cars up to 250 miles an hour; everything from funny cars to IMSA racing where I ran all over the world. I traveled a lot, and I did that for two years and it was a joy after I got out of the service.
Chuck Ward: In my life, I really put my wife through a lot. There’s no question it led to the divorce in my first marriage.
Kent C. Williamson: This is Chuck Ward.
Chuck Ward: If I knew then what I know now perhaps that marriage could have been saved, but there wasn’t any chance really. So then, you take those issues from one relationship to another. You think you’ve dealt with it. I just kind of… just tried to forget my bad memories, and bad things that happened.
Kent C. Williamson: Chuck eventually remarried…
Chuck Ward: I wanted to have that special bond that men in the military have – particularly in war – in my marriage, which was unfair. I did things that were irrational because it was about Viet Nam and not about living in Murray, Kentucky. And I didn’t treat my wife very well, and we didn’t have the intimacy on the emotional level that we should have had. I just had this box… this fence around me. And she finally had enough, and she wanted out of the marriage, and that made me deal upfront with Vietnam. So, my wife and I separated. I even had to do a very humbling thing. I had a full-time job at a University and I had to get a part-time job so I could pay for the counseling to try to help myself and save my marriage. That was really humbling because I delivered newspapers on weekends, and sometimes I delivered those newspapers to people that I worked with at the University. It was embarrassing, and it was humbling. But I had to do it, or there wasn’t going to be a marriage anymore and… God’s grace, and compassion, and mercy, and Joette’s faith… we weathered the storm, and we got back together and we’ve never looked back.
CLOSE & CREDITS — Kent C. Williamson: I’ll end today’s episode with a quote from the great American novelist John Steinbeck. In his book Travels With Charley he goes back to visit the town of his youth and upon reflection he says, “Tom Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”
Thank you for listening to this episode of the By War & By God Podcast from Paladin Pictures. Don’t forget to subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. Learn more about By War & By God at our website… By War And By God dot com. The name for this week’s episode “You Can’t Go Home Again” was taken from Thomas Wolfe’s book by the same name and was suggested by Molly McGarity Fulton. Thank you Molly! I asked my Facebook friends for suggestions naming this episode and received a bunch of really great ideas. Thanks to all of you who voted and suggested titles.
A reminder to use the coupon code “podcast” at Big Heaven Cafe dot com to save over one-hundred-and-thirteen-thousand Vietnamese Dong on your copy of the film By War & By God. Also if you have an Amazon Prime account you can watch the film for free. That’s right… for free.
Find me on Facebook or Twitter. Just search for Kent C. Williamson and while you’re there search for By War & By God and like or follow us. Please email me your thoughts about the show or your own experiences. Send them to Kent at By War And By God dot com.
By the way, the film has a couple of upcoming festival appearances. It will be at the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma on Saturday, April 22nd where it will screen at the historic Roxy Theatre. By War & By God will also screen on Friday, May 5th at the International Christian Film Festival in Orlando. So if you’re in either of those parts of the country, please go see it!
The By War & By God Podcast is written and produced by me, Kent C. Williamson with Sound Design and Finishing by Ashby Wratchford. Our Audio Engineer in the studio is Steve Carpenter, but this week I need to say thanks to three of the Veterans from the show, Pat Cameron, Cal Dunham, and Bob Peragallo who all acted as their own audio engineers as they recorded their end of the phone interviews for this week’s show. Thanks also to my brother Brad Williamson who helped record the Chuck Ward interview you heard in this episode back when we shot it for the film.
Special thanks to Greg Allen Morgoglione for his continued help with suggestions for sound effects, show notes, etc. Thanks Greg! The By War & By God soundtrack was composed by Will Musser and don’t forget, for a limited time you can download the entire soundtrack for free at By War And By God dot com.
The War Protest News Clip in today’s show originally was heard in the documentary film Hot Damn!
Thank you to the entire Paladin Team which includes Leslie Wood, Steve Carpenter, Dan Fellows, Steve Lessick, and Ashby Wratchford.
This podcast is a production of Paladin Pictures. Yep, Paladin is a film production company that sees the value in audio podcasts. Why? Because like is the case with By War & By God… the podcast can go deeper into the story than the film ever can. Paladin Pictures is committed to the creation of redemptive entertainment and thought-provoking cultural critique. Learn more about us and our films at Paladin Pictures dot com. That’s Paladin P-A-L-A-D-I-N Pictures dot com.
By War & By God is produced at the Paladin studio in the amazingly wonderful, beautiful little town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
And of course, thank you to our Veterans… those who returned… and especially those who didn’t. Like my wife’s Uncle Floyd. Thank you!
EPISODE 05 – YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
PLAYERS: Pat Cameron, Cal Dunham, Bob Peragallo, Chuck Ward, and host Kent C. Williamson
LINKS:
Fall of Saigon 1975 – Sandy Gall Reporting from Saigon
Big Heaven Cafe – Save $5 on the DVD of By War & By God with the coupon code “Podcast”
By War & By God Soundtrack – Download the original soundtrack to the film for free!
