War tales

War tales: Veterans History Project collects veterans' stories in their own words
Coloradans share their memories for America's largest oral-history event.

Denver lawyer Hugh Bingham and insurance claim manager Gary Smith have known each other for 30 years, but never talked about Bingham's service during the Vietnam War — until Smith asked Bingham if he'd like to be interviewed for what has become this nation's largest oral-history event.
Bingham, who has a leonine thatch of silver hair and a genial disposition that suits his avocation of portraying Mark Twain, agreed.
When he sat down with Smith, a volunteer interviewer for the Veterans History Project, last month to talk about his three tours of duty aboard the minesweeper USS Lucid, Bingham joined 78,000 other U.S. military veterans interviewed since the autumn of 2000.
"Did it take long for you to find your sea legs?" Smith asked as Bingham recounted the Lucid's trip from Long Beach, Calif., to the South China Sea.
"A minesweeper is a round-bottomed boat, so it took a few days, but it was the captain and the commanding officer who really had problems with that," Bingham replied.
"It became a running joke among the sailors: 'It's gettin' kinda dodgy out there! Guess we won't see the captain till tomorrow!' "
"It's a wildly popular project," said Robert Patrick, who directs the Veterans History Project for the U.S. Library of Congress, where the interviews and related materials will be stored.
So far, the project includes interviews with 300 World War I veterans, and hundreds of thousands from veterans of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, and approximately 4,000 from Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. Veteran participation is voluntary.
The interviewers, also volunteers, range from Veterans Administration Hospital and retirement-home staff to college and high-school students and Eagle Scout candidates.
Colorado interviewers include students at Community College of Aurora, where U.S. Rep Ed Perlmutter D-Colorado, launched the 7th Congressional District's Veterans Oral History Project in 2007.
Because of the time commitment — few interview sessions are less than three hours long — most volunteer interviewers are long past their bright college days.
Among Denver's most active Denver interviewers is Nancy Ford, a Denver film and video producer who learned about the Veterans History Project as it was being organized in 2000. She first coordinated interviews through a senior volunteer program, and then took over directing the project herself.
"We have heard such amazing stories," Ford said. She keeps an album of photographs, letters and other ephemera copied from documents collected during the 120 interviews she's supervised.
"Here's Tech Sergeant Sueno Ito, who was an interpreter at the Japanese war crimes trial for Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the main general under Hirohito in World War II. Here's John Yee, another World War II veteran, who was in the Flying Tigers. Here's Jess Gomez, who was a left waist gunner in World War II veteran, and a prisoner of war for 14 months."
Not all the stories are dramatic, Ford said, "but every story is important in creating a portrait of that time in the veterans' lives."
Bingham's three tours of duty were remarkably peril-free for him, personally; the Lucid lost only one sailor in that period. Bingham's job included inspecting Vietnamese boats for hidden contraband weapons.
"I did not intercept any ships with weapons on board, I'm pleased to say," he said.
"Compared to sitting in a trench, it wasn't frightening, but sure, there was a fear point. Gunplay is not something you want when you're aboard a small junk that's bobbing around like a cork."
From his perch on the Lucid, Bingham watched destroyers launch rounds of phosphorus that exploded on the beach. He saw the arc of tracers as helicopters fired at hillside snipers' nests.
And Bingham witnessed the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Less than a year after he enlisted in Officer Candidate School, the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were assassinated, and protests overshadowed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
"We could tell that things were ramping down" in 1969, Bingham said. That was the same year he decided not to extend his tour of duty.
"So I went from Vietnam to civilian life. I spent that winter in Aspen instead of in Vietnam."
"What did you take away from the war?" Smith asked him.
"I'd have a hard time boiling it down," Bingham said.
"I'd tell you to read the final chapter of  Dispatches. When you're a young man, without a family, and out adventuring, you're taking everything in. The good as well as the bad. There's a camaraderie, and an opportunity to see things you'd never see anywhere else."

Claire Martin
The Denver Post