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Information on our veteran, Robert Haag

The True Greatest Generation

Mr. Robert Haag was born on September 27, 1949 in Lebanon Pennsylvania. At the age of 19 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, and he was put into the 1st Region Union 9th battalion. In December of 1968, Mr. Haag began his service in Vietnam. The Vietnam War began in 1959 and lasted until April 30, 1975. “ The Vietnam War was the prolonged struggle between nationalist forces attempting to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the US (with the aid of the South Vietnamese) attempting to prevent the spread of Communism” (Rosenburg). The United States joined this war to prevent the spread of Communism. In December of 1968, Mr. Haag began his dangerous service for his country. In the following years he battled Viet Cong soldiers and suffered through harsh war conditions. The soldiers in Vietnam battled snakes, leaches, and mosquitoes and other harsh dangers (Aggie). He also faced chemical warfare. Agent Orange, the herbicide used in Vietnam by the US, was very dangerous to all exposed to it (Cone). These many dangers took a large toll on American forces. “ One out of every ten Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty” (Burkett). There were about 300,000 wounded, and about 58,000 killed out of the 2.6 million that had served (Burkett). To make matters worse, the Viet Cong played psychological warfare on the American forces. “ Even women or children could build booby traps or help house and feed the Viet Cong” (Rosenburg). Even just finding the enemy in the dense jungle was difficult. Because of this, US troops suffered from low moral, became angry, and many used drugs (Rosenburg). This stress put a large toll on the troops, especially since the average age of the American troop was 19 years old (“Vietnam War Statistics). Even though Mr. Haag wasn’t deployed to Vietnam until 1968, which was towards the end of the war, he still experienced many hardships. He was located at Hill 61 and Hill 63, and he suffered nearly two years of dangerous combat. “The average infantryman saw about 240 days of combat in one year” (Burkett). He suffered through the Tet Offensive, which was a series of North Vietnamese attacks on South Vietnamese cities and towns. Although the US and South Vietnamese repelled the attacks, it showed the American public that the enemy was stronger than previously thought. This battle signified the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war (Rosenburg). The end of the war spelled defeat for America. After the United States left Vietnam in 1973, South Vietnam soon fell. In 1975, North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam and toppled South Vietnam’s government. The country was once again united as a communist country (Rosenburg). Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in the war. Although the United States was not successful in stopping communism in Vietnam, the men who fought there still sacrificed a lot, and fought valiantly for their country. About two-thirds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers, compared to the two-thirds of men in World War II who were drafted (Roush). For this reason the men who fought should also be considered one of America’s greatest generations. Even today these men face challenges from what they suffered through for America. “It has been estimated that 700,000 of the soldiers who served in Vietnam have since suffered from some form of stress disorder” (Simkin). In fact, nearly 100,000 of these soldiers have committed suicide since returning home from the war. This isn’t the only challenge that these men face though. Agent Orange, the herbicide used by US soldiers to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam, contained carcinogenic dioxins, which have caused cancer in many veterans who were exposed to it (Cone). “Vietnam veterans exposed to the Agent Orange are twice as likely to contract prostate cancer as unexposed people” (Cone). Other veterans also face psychological damage and emotional toll from their experiences in Vietnam. These brave men gave so much for their country, and for years the public shunned them for their role in the war. The only way to truly thank these veterans is to tell their story to others, so we hope that by giving you Mr. Haag’s story we have done him justice. After all, these men are still, to this day, fighting with the effects of their service to their country. **Mr. Haag's Interview Transcript** Ronald Haag Interview Transcript Recorded by James Huber and Benjamin Spitler Recorded on March 11, 2012

Huber: Today we are interviewing Mr. Ronald Haag, who was born on September 27 1949 and served in the Vietnam War in the Marine Corps. Mr. Haag’s highest rank was Lance Corporal. This interview is being recorded on March 11 in Lebanon PA. The interviewer is James Huber and Ben Spitler is taping. This interview is being conducted for the Veterans History Project for the Library of Congress.

Huber: What did you do before you left for Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: I actually worked part time at Rutz and then at the shoe factory. That’s what I did, and then I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Huber: How old were you when you enlisted?

Mr. Haag: Eighteen

Huber: Were you scared to fight?

Mr. Haag: Of course, everybody’s scared to fight.

Huber: What kind of training did you have to go through to get to Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: We went to Paris Island to boot camp and then from there when you graduated there then you went to North Carolina and you learned your MOS you went to school for. Mine was a combat engineer. I mainly worked with explosives. I was a mine sweeper. I cleared the roads so convoys could go and down the roads. You learned to build bridges. I built one bridge. You learned all that in North Carolina. Then you went to leave for thirty days from there. You went to California and you had combat training and that was up and down hills. You did that for three weeks. Then you had more training for your MOS, which was combat engineer. Then you went over. You stopped for a week in Okinawa and then from Okinawa you went to Dinang.

Huber: How long do you think that your training altogether took from basic training to specialized training?

Mr. Haag: Nineteen weeks.

Huber: How did you get to Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: Plane. Went from California to Okinawa from Okinawa to Dinang. It took 22 hours.

Huber: Where were you stationed in Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: When we arrived, we were in Dinang and that’s where everybody landed and then from there you stayed there for a week until you got your orders of where you were going and I was in Central Vietnam, Northern Part, Tan Key, Hill 63 which was fubey and but it was mostly the northern and central parts of Vietnam.

Huber: What were some of the conditions you faced?

Mr. Haag: One of the worst I could remember was when the monsoon was. It rained and rained and rained. Every day it rained. It was hard to keep everything dry including your feet. It was not good, but you learned to live with it and deal with it the best you could. That was the worst and then you had the heat of course which was terrible, unbearable. And when you mine swept you had your flak jacket on, your helmet, you’re your, it was terrible hot. You sweated just from standing there. It was pretty bad. That was the worst part.

Huber: Describe a typical day in Vietnam.

Mr. Haag: We would get up. We would eat sea rations for breakfast. Then you would go and would mine sweep every morning. That was one of the jobs we had. You mine swept every day. The bad part is that we had to mine sweep six miles every day in the morning and you had to mine sweep it and you could not let anybody pass by. You had what you call to rear guard it and no matter what it was nobody could come in past you while you were mine sweeping and a lot of times you would mine sweep that six miles and the Vietnamese would be behind you planting mines again so it was more or less went up and just you had to just watch so that nobody would be behind you. After that was done you would go back to the camp, just hung out until evening and sometimes you would mine sweep again and if it was not your turn then you would probably go on patrol that evening you just hung out in the tent and waited until it was dark then go on patrol and that would take you til about two o’clock in the morning then you would go back to sleep.

Huber: What are some of the things you would do at camp in your free time?

Haag: Just talk amongst us and have guard duty of course and you had to go on guard duty. You had four hours on and four hours off. Then you went back to your bunk and just talked and hung out until you had something else to do.

Huber: Explain what your duties were as Lance Corporal.

Haag: It all depends on who went on patrol and who was mine sweeping. Sometimes, ugh, I won’t say I was the one who was in charge of it. We all just sort of worked together so all these Lance Corporal and Corporal. We all knew what we had to do and we did it in the course of a day.

Huber: So you patrolled basically everyday?

Haag: No, we would, I would say we did it three times a week, and we got a turn and there would be usually nine guys, and we would just take turns every third night I would have to patrol.

Huber: What were these patrols like?

Haag: Very scary and very dark. That’s two things I would describe it as how scary it is and how dark dark it was. You had a lot of booby traps, and you had to feel them. You couldn’t see them at night. You couldn’t use a flash light because you encountered a lot of sniper fire when you were mine sweeping especially and then at night on patrol you always had the possibility of being attacked and walking into an ambush. It was very scary and at the same time it was very interesting. You can adapt to anything you need to in life.

Huber: What were some of the scariest moments of your service?

Haag: Mine sweeping. Today they have vehicles that would mine sweep and back then you had a mine detector it was one foot by one foot and you would hold it and you went back and forth and when you found a mine you would mark it and then get away because one person is allowed to be near it. Then you would call the probe man. The probe man came usually with his bayonet. He dug in the ground and if you found a mine, he would get away and mark it. Then someone would blow it up. The mine sweeping and the probing were really bad. They were the scariest.

Huber: Were you in any major battles?

Haag: No major battles. I think that if you get shot at, that’s when it’s a major battle. That’s how I look at it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be at hamburger hill no, but it’s just not a fun thing to do.

Huber: Did you have any friends that went into the service with you?

Haag: Yes. Greg Bowler. He has creative design now. We went in together.

Huber: Did you sustain any injuries while in Vietnam?

Haag: Not from bullets. I was exposed to agent orange. I am now 100% disabled. It blew my heart. That’s the only injury I had.

Huber: What were the men like that you served with?

Haag: The greatest bunch of guys you’d ever want to meet. That’s how you really know who your friends are when you go out like that. You get to know them and they actually become like a family. It’s just unbelievable. I stay in contact with some of them today yet.

Huber: How did you contact your friends and family in Vietnam?

Haag: I was very poor at that. I didn’t write a whole lot. I just didn’t write. I don’t know why. I don’t have a reason why I didn’t. But I never did. I just didn’t.

Huber: What were the South Vietnamese villagers like?

Haag: Very friendly and very deceiving. A lot of them especially, the children. They were really nice, ugh, they were really fun. Villagers, some of them were really friendly and others would have like a dress code. The women who wore white, they would not talk to you at all. I don’t know if there was two categories of Vietnamese, but they would not talk to you at all. I would say they were like the rich people and they would not talk to you. I would say they were silent. That would be a good word. They didn’t say hi to you, they didn’t do nothing. The poor people were sort of like the United States. The poor would talk to you and the rest would shun you.

Huber: What about the North Vietnamese villagers?

Haag: They were very crude. Their lifestyle was very crude. It was amazing and people I could stand here and talk to you all day about it. Until you see it you have no idea, but they were very crude with their weaponry, they were very smart at getting you to do something you didn’t want to do. It seemed like every time they talked to you they were planning an attack somewhere and trying to get some information out of you.

Huber: Did you form any friendships with any villagers?

Haag: No. When you’re in a war zone, you don’t make any friends with any of the villagers. You just don’t do that.

Huber: Where were you when the war ended?

Haag: At home in Lebanon.

Huber: How did you leave Vietnam?

Haag: Airplane.

Huber: How did you readjust to civilian life?

Haag: Your mind could block out a lot of things. That’s what most people did that I talked to. My friends they just came back cause it wasn’t like a homecoming in World War 2 or Iraq and you just sort of got off the plane and nobody was at the airport and you just sort of went home and forgot about where you were that year.

Huber: Do you feel that people in America were thankful for what you did when you returned?

Haag: Not at all. Not the Vietnam War. It was a bad war for everybody. It was a bad war for us because we couldn’t win it. We weren’t allowed to win it. The people hated it. It was not a good feeling to come home to be honest with you because you knew what was going to happen from the people that you talked to. And it was too. You got to the airport and you were called a baby killer, you were called a woman killer. You were called a lot of things, but a man. I think it was very unfair to a lot of people who died over there, because there was a cause. People don’t agree with it, but people don’t agree with any war there is. It’s just one of the things you do.

Huber: What were some of the lasting physical effects of serving in Vietnam?

Haag: I guess the biggest thing I had a problem with was trust. Because you couldn’t, you didn’t trust nothing over there and when you come home I guess it just stayed with you for a long time. Now in today’s world today I don’t really have any physical effects. I have a lot of bad memories. Other than that it’s not too bad.

Huber: You said you were in contact with agent orange. What were some of the effects that it had on you?

Haag: One thing is diabetes. The biggest thing is that it killed the bottom chamber of my heart. I’ve got documents, and documents, and documents on what a. My heart doctor, he helped quite a bit at getting me, after proving that ugh, this only came to law in the past two years and nothing was done until the government acknowledged that they denied it for many many years. Just in the last two years like in September and ugh, they finally passed a law that it did affect your heart, coronary artery disease. When I first had a problem, Dr. Griffin said that this came from a chemical. He said that we’ve exposed the answer of it. It was exposed to agent orange. And he said that could be it. Then he wrote a letter down to Philly to the Veteran’s Administration and he wrote three letters in all. And Congressman Holden he also wrote a letter to him and he helped me a lot and when that came into law, I got compensated, but all the money in the world can’t heal your heart. It’s just one of those things, and that’s what agent orange does. It does parkinson’s disease and my daughter had a chance of getting birth defects from it. So there were a lot of things that they didn’t acknowledge. And it is getting better.

Huber: Were any of the men you served with also in contact to agent orange?

Haag: Yes. Quite a few. One in particular is James Hullen, he’s from North Carolina, he has heart problems just as I do.

Huber: Did you earn any medals from your service?

Haag: Yes I did. I have them written down. I didn’t get mine yet. I got National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with one star, Cross the Galant Treatment Palm, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Combat Action medal, and I was a marksman. At boot camp you had to qualify to be one.

Huber: How did Vietnam and it’s experiences change your life?

Haag: In a lot of ways. I was a rowdy kid. I was getting in a lot of trouble and ugh, when I went over there, I guess the only thing it did was to teach you to be a man real quick. You learn to care for other people, especially your friends you’re with everyday. You have to watch out for them as they watch out for you, and I guess you learn to appreciate your life you have in the United States, that’s the biggest thing. When you see the poverty. I’ll show you some pictures I have of ugh, on the minesweeping and the guard they had a garbage truck, and they dumped it and I don’t know how many kids there were, but I never counted, but there were probably 50 kids picking through the garbage to get the food. That sticks with me for so long. I always told my kids I’d like to take them over there just to show them what poverty is, cause TV doesn’t justify it at all.

Huber: Any lessons learned in particular?

Haag: Just how good we have it here. And I used to be when I was your age, I would hear kids say you could do whatever you wanted to do. Well, by God you can do whatever you wanna do if you put your mind to doing it.

Huber: How long were you in Vietnam?

Haag: Eleven months and twenty-four days.

Huber: How was your family effected by you serving in Vietnam?

Haag: I don’t I didn’t have a family as you know a family so, so just ugh, my mother of course didn’t like it. Nobody likes their kid going to war. Other than that it was ugh, I guess everybody gets a turn pretty much.

Huber: Do they approve of you being willing to serve for your country now?

Haag: My family? Oh yes. They know how I feel. And my daughter I can think, but thinking through my stuff I found. I had to take a picture for her for church and ugh, she was in the guards. It’s just one of them things that I feel every. You should experience something like that in life. Get away from your family for a while. You know? Be supportive of your kid going somewhere, but they would approve of it.

Huber: Do you think the war was won or lost?

Haag: Ugh, boy that’s tough. I like to think that it was won, but it was not won. By far it was not won. Being honest I don’t think it was lost because they are better off now than they were before and that’s the biggest thing. No matter which war. Whatever war we went in I mean. After the war we went back over and we built and ugh they had jobs, they had a little bit of money, they had food. So yeah, I think it improved it.

Huber: Do you think going to Vietnam was a good idea?

Haag: I try and justify it in my mind that it was, because it did help the people and that’s the biggest thing in today’s world, to help people that need it. Even with Bin Laden we went over there and call it what you did, but if you listen to the news ugh. All the people he murdered and killed. I was watching TV and it showed a woman who was afraid of being shot by her own government. So yes I,I,I,I. And that was pretty much the same as in Vietnam. They would just be murdering people and people and people. I think it has to be stopped. I don’t think we should be over there for ten fifteen years, but I think we should intervene at some point to help the people.

Huber: At the time you enlisted, do you think it was a good idea?

Haag: I enlisted to go into Vietnam to go. That’s why I went over cause I wanted to help somebody. And ugh so yes I thought it was a good idea.

Huber: Any other reasons for enlisting in Vietnam?

Haag: From little on up I wanted to be in the Marine Corps. And I didn’t want to go in no other branch of the service. But, one was to get out and see the world. That was one. I did want to go to Vietnam. And ugh, the experience I had was tremendous. I would do it all over again.

Huber: Explain your feelings the day you returned from Vietnam.

Haag: A lot of anger. A lot of anger at the people of the United States. A lot of anger because we couldn’t win the war and we could have won it. The biggest thing was the way the people treated you when you came home. That really made you angry, ugh that you went over there and did what you had to do and there was 200 thousand men and women lost over there and they did not acknowledge who they were. It was just a bad time. I think that for not only myself, but for everybody that was in the service and came home from Vietnam. I think it was a bad, a really bad experience.

Huber: Do you feel the public’s opinion has changed at all over the years?

Haag: Yes I do. Probably more so today than I’ll say twenty years ago. I think now it was I think now they are giving the respect due to the men that died over there. I don’t really need any respect, what I did I did I it was my own choice, but I think that the respect for the men that died in any war, but Vietnam especially because it wasn’t acknowledged ever. I think they really deserved, I think they are getting the respect deserved to them.

James: If you could go back in time, would you enlist again?

Mr. Haag: Yes I would and I think, don’t take this wrong, don’t hate me for saying this, but I think the draft should still be intact. I think even if there was no war, I think the men of today and women should go into the service, just to get away from their parents and there’s so many joyful things out there to do and see, completely different from what you see here. That alone, it should be reward enough for you to enlist. You get your schooling for nothing, and there’s a lot of benefits to it.

James: Any regrets?

Mr. Haag: None at all, none whatsoever.

James: Is there anything that you would have done differently while in Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: As being a Lance Corporal, there’s nothing I could have done to change the outcome, but I think the aid and helping the people by giving them food and jobs was rewarding enough so, I think that would be my biggest thing. If anything I would have tried to get them more food and clothing.

James: Do you feel that the war could have been won?

Mr. Haag: Without a doubt. We are a powerful country. I think the outcome of the war was the way it should have ended, as far as helping the people get away from a dictatorship, but, I’ll just say and I’ll go back to that again, that the people needed the help. They needed so much, they had nothing. And they were very smart, they killed a lot of people with weaponry that was 40 years older than our stuff. So they were very crude and very smart in fighting the war with nothing.

James: Do you agree with the government’s actions during the war?

Mr. Haag: No, I don’t. I think they should have won the war really. They should have left the men, politics in a war just don’t work. In any war you ever go in you have people that are gonna die and people that are going to live. You can’t get away from it. It’s ugly, war’s ugly, but sometimes it’s needed, and sometimes its needed to be won, and if it’s not won you did, all that money and time spent over there is wasted.

James: How did the war change your view on life and how it should be lived?

Mr. Haag: Oh my gosh, so many ways. Respect, respect, when you come back you respect everything, you respect animals, I mean it’s, you learn how a person in the US really isn’t poor, compared to what you see. That’s the biggest thing for me, is the poverty level of other countries, and in the US it’s getting like that also. There’s a lot of homeless people, and you can be, I think every day how blessed I am to have this, and it’s amazing, until you see it. Like I told you this before, to see it on tv does not justify it at all. Poverty is so bad, that you can’t help but feel good about your life when you come back, you can’t help but feel good. What else did I learn? That’s the biggest thing. That and respect, you learn to respect everything you do, you respect it. And don’t take nothing for granted, because it could leave tomorrow.

Mr. Haag: I didn’t take a lot of pictures, actually my camera got blown up, but I’ll just show you the bridge we built. This is Vietnam money. Here are the kids. This picture will stick with me forever and a day. I can see them gathering around there. They would actually take a sea glass can and take their finger around it, to get the morsels that were in it.

James: Now what is this picture here?

Mr. Haag: This is a garbage truck, and these are Vietnamese children getting food, is what they’re doing. They would take their finger around a can, and then lick their finger, just for food. And this is when we were going out on a minesweeping, here we are minesweeping. This is a guard sack, where we would stand guard when we came back from minesweeping or going on patrol, there we’re minesweeping. That’s Hall, from North Carolina, he was a good friend of mine.

James: Do you still keep in touch with him?

Mr. Haag: Yes. We seen him I think last year. He was up in Lancaster for a wedding and he stopped over. My wife and I go down to him and they come up to us. We took a tour of an Amish farm out south of Lebanon one time, and he took us to a, Richie Rich, that castle, I can’t, Biltmore, the Biltmore, he took us down there. This is the village of Tamkey, that we minesweeped through. And there were all the villagers coming out, and yelling at us. This is just some scenics over the rice patties. It’s a neat area, it really is neat. And this is a building, this bridge we built. This was a day after we completed it, they blew it up again, so. And that’s a little guy, farming with a water buffalo. That was neat to see. This was our barracks, where we stayed when we were back. This is a wooden cot. This guy here everyday, that’s at Tamkey, everytime we would come through when we were done minesweeping he’d have icicles in a cooler on the back of his bicycle and 50 cent a piece they were! I still remember that, but he would always be there, everyday, everyday.

James: Was he one of the nicer villagers?

Mr. Haag: He was a good little kid, he was just a lot of fun. He was trying to make a buck, I mean he had no money. I have no idea where he would get the ice creams at, cause there was surely no, they had no refrigerators, they had nothing but a grass hut. So I don’t know where, but it was always full, it was just a little Styrofoam cooler.

James: Going to the money, this is 1000. What do you think this would equal in America?

Mr. Haag: I have no idea, I don’t remember. I don’t remember at all. I didn’t even know I had this, I was digging through some stuff and I found it there, so I have no idea what it is. 1000.

Ben: Do you know who that is on there?

Mr. Haag: No I don’t.

Ben: Ok.

Mr. Haag: Maut Ling Dong. A dong I think was a dollar, but I don’t remember, I don’t know what this was. It can’t be a whole lot.

James: Was it a challenge speaking to the villagers with the language barrier?

Mr. Haag: It was hard. A lot of times you would have to more or less explain like if you wanted to know uh, how much were the popsicles, it would take you just about time enough that you could eat it that it would still be hard but uh… It was hard to do, just like if you talked to a Hispanic now, you know, you could get by but it would take some time. It was interesting. I don’t have anything else. I don’t have my medals, I don’t know where they are at. They’re up in a box somewhere. This is all just stuff from Agent Orange. I don’t know if you’re interested in that stuff. This tells you there’s skin cancer. There’s so much stuff. This is all stuff that’s wrong with my heart. Agent Orange was really an ugly chemical, that nobody really knew about. Nobody really knew the side effects. This is when I first arrived there, in Denang. I would have been leaving and going to the outfit I was with. My mom got that blew up. That was my granddaughter. And we had gotten an award, I don’t know when this was, we got this from the House of Representatives, actually at Cornwall School, they had a thing out there for us. It was one of the first time Vietnam veterans were honored for anything. It took a couple years.

James: What was the main use of Agent Orange?

Mr. Haag: Agent Orange, the big thing for that was to kill the foliage in the jungle. It was so thick you had to go through with a machete, and they would spray that before you went in, and in hours it would be dead, it wasn’t days it was hours. I mean, it was a very strong chemical. Don’t know what was in it, some kind of dioxin or peptist but it killed everything around it.

James: On average how miles would you have to walk each day in Vietnam?

Mr. Haag: Well, now we had a truck we would get out to it but when we mineswept, it was 6 to 7 miles out and then 6 to 7 miles back. You know, so you would probably do, and I wasn’t persay always a minesweeper, I was maybe a minesweeper today, tomorrow I might be the probe man that looks for the mine, and sometimes the third day you would just be sitting on the truck waiting to find a mine and then you would go and blow it up. So at that point you were riding pretty much the whole time, or walking the whole time. But if you were a minesweeper or a prober you walked a ton. And you were by yourself, you could never let 3 or 4 guys out there, because sometimes they had a hand detonator, and then they would be hiding over in the rice patties somewhere where they could detonate it. So if you had 3 or 4 guys there of course they would all get blown up instead of just one. So you always were by yourself, and that’s what was so scary, and sniper fire was not uncommon at all to get. You were getting sniped at, pretty much every day somebody got shot at over there by them. Your minesweeper, your prober, the guys that worked on the electric lines, they always were in jeopardy of getting sniper fire from somebody. And realistically after a week or two it’s just like you guys going to school every day, you just go do it and come back and go home and do whatever. You do get used to it, you do adapt, you still get scared, I’m not saying that, but you just adapt to it and do what you have to do.

James: Well it has been an honor interviewing you Mr. Haag. Thank you for your service to America.

Mr. Haag: Thank you, I appreciate it.

**Mr. Haag's Biographical Narrative**
Ronald Haag was born on September 27, 1949, in the small town of Lebanon, PA. Growin up in Lebanon, he worked part time at the Richland Shoe Factory. As a child, Mr. Haag always dreamed of joining the Marine Corps and making a difference in the world. His opportunity would come to achieve this dream in the Vietnam War. At the young age of 18, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, willing to serve in Vietnam for his country. Mr. Haag says that he enlisted because “he wanted to see the world and to help the people that badly needed it.” He spent 19 rough weeks training for the war, including basic training in Paris Island, and training for his MOS in North Carolina. While at North Carolina, Mr. Haag trained and learned the skills required to be a combat engineer, which was his role while serving. After these rough weeks of training, he was given a small time of about a month to relax in California before being deployed. In December of 1968, he was sent to Vietnam, to fight the communistic Northern Vietnamese, and to provide help to the Southern Vietnamese that were being attacked by the communists. He arrived in Dinang, where all US troops were first sent, and was then sent to Tamkey and Hill 63, where he would be stationed for the war. One of the hardest parts of adjusting to life in Vietnam was the extreme weather. He faced conditions including monsoons, extreme heat, and thick jungle foliage. Many insects, including mosquitoes, were also a problem. Mr Haag’s duty in Vietnam was as a minesweeper. This wasn’t the only job he did however. Mr. Haag had many other important roles, including patrolling around the camp and helping to build bridges that would be used for transportation of US equipment and troops. Although he never experienced a major battle, every day he dealt with the threat of death and attack, and he described war as “just being shot at.” He would minesweep roughly twelve miles a day, using a 1x1 mine detector, and was always in danger of death, either from exploding mines or sniper fire. The worst part of minesweeping for him was the fact that you had to do it alone, as many times a Viet Cong fighter would be hiding nearby. If more than one man was near a mine, the mine would be blown up, but if just one person was there, the mine wouldn’t be blown up, in hopes that it would be missed by the minesweepers and later hit by more men. This added a very scary element to minesweeping. He also had guard duty or patrol duty roughly three times a week. The scariest part of his service was the patrols and minesweeping. He described it as “very scary and very dark.” Sniper fire was also an ever present issue. Almost everyday someone would get shot at. Although troops were given free time back at camp to relax, there wasn't much to do. So Mr. Haag spent his free time talking to fellow men in his camp, learning about their lives and who they were. This talking led to friendships that Mr. Haag still has to this day, and he describes the fellow men in his camp as "the best group of guys you could hope to be around." After over a year of serving in Vietnam, in July of 1970, he finally returned home to Lebanon. His rank at the time of arriving home was Lance Corporal, and he received multiple awards for his service, including the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with one star, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Combat Action Medal, the Cross the Galant Treatment Palm, and the Marksman Medal. Although many southern Viatnamese had been saved by US involvement, and many lives had been changed, in many ways the war had not been won. Communism was not stopped, but slightly slowed down, and many US troops had been killed or wounded in the war. Media coverage also exploited the evils of the war, and many Americans back home saw the US troops as being cruel and unreasonable. This is far from the truth though. Many of the villagers were grateful for what US troops did for them, and even though contact with villagers was limited, many of the poor villagers would talk to the troops. Mr. Haag remembers one small boy in particular, who would sell ice pops to the troops as they were returning through the village from minesweeping for 50 cents. Although US troops were very good to villagers, this was not the way it was seen back home. Possibly for this reason, unlike other wars, his arrival home was not met with gratitude. In fact, nearly all Americans despised veterans at the time, calling them "baby killers and murderers." For everything that Mr. Haag gave for his country, he was ridiculed, and forced to live as if it had never happened. Troops in Vietnam were forced to return home, and readjust to civilian life, acting as if nothing had ever happened, and burying the events of the war for years. He recalls experiencing much anger upon his arrival, anger at the government for not winning the war, and anger at US citizens for not respecting what happened in Vietnam. Even though Mr. Haag experienced very intense and scary conditions in Vietnam, and nasty backlash upon returning home, he is glad that he served his country. He is glad to have helped the people, and to have made a difference. Although he no longer faces criticism, he is forced to live with the effects of the war. Even though he was never injured from bullets or anything else in service, he does still face dangers from the war to this day. Exposure to Agent Orange, the chemical used by the US troops to defoliate the thick jungles, has made him fully disabled, and he has had to battle many health issues from this exposure, including diabetes and a failing heart. Not until recently has the government passed a law recognizing the effects of Agent Orange, and what it did to many of the men who served in Vietnam. Although the public originally disagreed with soldiers in Vietnam, Mr. Haag feels that he is now receiving the respect that veterans from Vietnam deserve. In the last twenty years, he feels that the public opinion of the war has changed from anger at soldiers to gratitude towards soldiers. Although Mr. Haag had to go through a lot in his year of service, he is glad that he enlisted to go into Vietnam, and says that he would do it again if he could go back in time. He is currently retired, and living in Lebanon. He still keeps in contact with some of his friends from the service. To this day, Mr. Haag stands as a reminder of what it takes for this country to be free, and that true Americans stand up for what is right and are always willing to serve their country, no matter what the consequences are.