kate
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Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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 Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 6:17 am Post subject: |
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thanks for the link Terry, heart-warming indeed, well worth the listen.
here's a transcription, as my thanks
red text = voice overs from SVPT ads
blue text= voice overs at the reunion
NPR’s Day to Day - Monday, February 21, 2005
NPR
| Quote: | This is Day to Day,
I’m Madeline Brand
Remember this?
>I served with John Kerry, John Kerry cannot be trusted.
>Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is responsible for the content of this advertisement
Madeline Brand
Television ads from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth blasted the Vietnam War record of democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in the months before the election. The commercials were widely credited with helping to sink Kerry’s candidacy. In January the group held a reunion at Disney World in Florida
Los Angeles based writer Jim Ruland attended that event with one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth… his father. He returned with a story that’s not as political as you might expect.
Jim Ruland
I’ve always been curious about the time my father spent in Vietnam. After all, I was born while he was in country. When he returned, his buddies took to calling me Rook, after my father’s call-sign…. and the name stuck
But like most Vietnam Veterans, my father seldom talked about his tour of duty, and I had given up trying to pry any details out of him.
But that all changed when he got involved with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
>They are teachers, farmers, businessmen, ministers, and community leaders, and of course, fathers and grandfathers.
It’s difficult for me to describe the way I felt the first time I saw my father in one of their commercials. It’s the one where the camera dollies past a room full of pissed-off Vets who look like they are trying to peer into the consciences of the voters
>Because to them honesty and character still matter
My father and I have very different political views. But one thing we have in common is the Navy. He served for 20 years as a Naval Officer. I enlisted after high school and did a short stretch as a deck hand. Still my service hadn’t brought me any closer to understanding what he went through. So when he invited me to the Swiftees’ Last Hurrah at Walt Disney World, I jumped at the chance
>Well we were just going to take a ride on the boat….
One of the first things we did together in Orlando was to board the Friendship Launch, the boat that ferries families from the Swan & Dolphin Hotel complex to Epcot and MGM Studios.
The boats are slow moving barges, a far cry from the vessel my father was in charge of in Vietnam. The Swift Boat’s official designation was PCF- Patrol Craft Fast. They were 50 feet long, had a five man crew, and even when loaded down with weapons and ammunition were capable of making 30 knots
>
Still a hell of a faster than anything on the South China Sea.
…..and they were made out of aluminum
Made out of aluminum, the shrapnel effect of which was admired by all of us, because you know, you were much much much safer out on deck than you were being inside the cabin, because little teeny 4 inch long slivers of, like needle like things would come at you
The only really safe place on the boat was to lie down between the two main engines.
But that’s where, whenever we had a Vietnamese military advisor, that was always where he went, so it was already taken.
>
My father was stationed in Coastal Division 15 in Qui Nhon. He was the Officer-in-Charge of PCF 65, and completed over 100 patrols which usually lasted 24 hours.
But is wasn’t all nerve fraying combat, especially in a quonset hut that served as the Officer’s Club. There the chief diversion was poker
>
The poker game went non stop. People would come and go off patrols at all times of day and night, and so forth, the game- never- stopped. And there’s usually 3 or 4 people waiting to get in at any given moment. So, it was the only constant thing in your life.
>
My father’s stories brought me back to the monotony of Navy life and all the foolish things my shipmates and I would do, both on board the ship, and on the beach. But I was lucky, I got out of the Navy before the first Gulf war, and never dealt with the kind of danger my father faced every time he went out on patrol.
But at the Mission Accomplished banquet that evening no one was telling war stories.
Old friendships were rekindled and new ones formed on the strength of the bond they shared as Veterans.
The first thing two Swiftees do when they meet is ask each other--when were you there, and where were you stationed. I got a chance to talk to some of my fathers’ friends, people he knew in Coronado, California where the Swiftees did their training, and in Vietnam at Coastal Division 15
>
I was blessed by going through Swift Boat training with your Dad in 1967, before we flew over together to Vietnam in 1968
>
One thing that struck me about these men was their honesty and humility.
No one could pay anyone a compliment. Officers deflected praise to their crews.. the Sailors gave all the credit to their Skippers
These are men who slap each other on the back, and still treat their superior officers with enormous respect. The notion of putting yourself above your shipmates is unthinkable to these men.
Here’s Admiral Schachte again talking with Commander Grant Hibbard, who was Schachte’s’ s division officer at CosDiv 14 at Cam Rahn Bay
>
We couldn’t of had better boss
….. I’ll bet
and all the guys in the division will say that
….. yeah
and you know that too Skipper
>
After the banquet my father and I went to the many bars and were joined by another Swiftee. They didn’t know each other, but it only took a few seconds for them to become friends. When this man discovered that I too had been in the Navy, he came to attention, thanked me for my service, and saluted me.
I was stunned. I’ve always thought of my enlistment as a kind of prison sentence, a hardship that had to be endured to pay for college. That is, I had never though of my service, as service.
The next day my father and I sat by the pool at the beach club which includes a man-made white sand beach, palm trees from who knows where, and fake rocks with speakers in them that emit hits from the ‘80s.
I asked him what he though about the banquet
>
Last night, you know, when it was time to leave, it was kind of like watching people at the high school prom, nobody wanted to go out the door because they knew it would never be the same again, that they wouldn’t see a lot of these people again.
But it was even more dramatic than that to me because, at the high school prom the whole world is out there before you, and at this point, you know, the third act is.. is closing down, so … a lot of emotion there
>
I didn’t go to Disney world to engage in political debates or witness history.
But after listening to my fathers’ stories and watching him interact with his old friends and shipmates, it was as if a previously unbridgeable gulf in our relationship had been spanned. For once in our lives he was willing to talk, and I was willing to listen
It opened up a chapter in the story of my father’s life that I thought would forever remain a mystery. Equally mysterious, the experience forever changed the way I think of my own service.
Most importantly it’s given my father and all his fellow Swiftees something that has proved poignantly elusive for all those who served in Vietnam …. a Victory
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