Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:29 | When he hears Aquarius by the 5th Dimension, Roye Wilson's mind is taken back to the year he spent in Vietnam. Despite being in a war, he did keep up with news from home and remembers where he was when he heard about the Apollo moon landing. He thinks about the war every day, but it does not haunt him, though he is saddened by the needless death.
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Growing up, his heroes were cowboys and soldiers. There was never a doubt to Roye Wilson that he would be a soldier and it was automatic that he would join ROTC when he got to college at Western Kentucky University.
When his National Guard unit was activated, Roye Wilson went with them to Fort Hood for training with the 1st Armored Division. They received all new gear and weapons, including brand new howitzers. It wasn't long before he was in Vietnam, marveling at the sights and sounds of the first firefight.
Roye Wilson had been on a small artillery fire base and when his battery moved to Phu Bai, it was a much larger base housing many units. Forward observer teams were sent out with both American and Vietnamese units and it was one of these operations that became known as the Battle of Hamburger Hill.
Members of Roye Wilson's artillery unit had been scattered around South Vietnam, but they all converged on Phu Bai when it was time to go home. They were spared the ill treatment by anti-war protestors and were greeted warmly by friends and family back in Kentucky. He stayed on for a thirty year career in the Guard and Reserve.
While he was in Vietnam, Roye Wilson was struck by just how different life was from modern America. There was no mechanization and the Vietnamese would go to great lengths to reuse any scrap of material and repurpose it for their own use. Very industrious culture.
Roye Wilson took two trips back to Vietnam, years after the war. In 1997, he went with a group of educators for a seminar in Ho Chi Minh City and was surprised to find an official from the old regime working at a university. In 2011, he visited Hue and Phu Bai, where he marveled at the amount of commerce and enterprise.
As the years went by after the war, Roye Wilson began to notice how many of his fellow Vietnam veterans were suffering from cancer. He had recovered from two different bouts with the disease himself, and the question was always there. Did this have anything to do with Agent Orange?
When someone at work made a comment that America had lost the Vietnam War, Roye Wilson was shocked. Our soldiers never lost a battle there. The politicians decided they would leave and they did. To him, it was an honorable enterprise and the only right course at the time and it is his belief that it contributed to the fall of Soviet communism.
The first time he left the base and traveled through the Vietnam countryside, he was struck by the exotic and beautiful scene. He wrote his wife and told her, "We need to travel and see the world."
