Vietnam Voices: 'By the grace of God, you're not on the Vietnam War Memorial'
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2015
- Vietnam War veteran Bob Sorensen talks about his experiences. Sorensen is a Billings, Montana native. He graduated with honors from West High. He studied at Cornell University. His family moved to the San Francisco area before moving back to Billings. He was trained as an Army medic, but was reassigned to an artillery unit.
Thank you Bob Sorensen for your bravery and service to our country
Every one of these videos is a National treasure.
I didn't catch what rank he said he was but he comes off as a very level headed non-commissioned officer. He gave a very professional & detailed description of what his responsibilities were. I give him my utmost respect for what he did over there. Because of men like him I can still wake up in a free land.
People like him are the real heros of society......I salute u sir ..thank you for ur service!!!
My favorite of these interviews so far. I watched/ listened to this man several times. He seems to see/understand everything from multiple angles. Intense, very intelligent, honest. Just a great interview, thank you.
Thank you for your service Bob. Your sincerity is so evident and profound. May you and your family have peace in life's journey... God bless.
Very interesting interview he's well spoken and very insightful. I found this to be very informative.
2
Mr Sorensen thank you very much for your experience and service to our nation during those crazy years. I was ten years after you, not even close to what you went through. Daryl thank you for a great interview.
Very competent, thoughtful narrative of his experiences in Vietnam.
I admire the fact that these interviewees often have a lot of notes so that they dont miss any points they want to make
From San Jose , California Thank you for your service Sir .
This country is made up of all kinds of people from all around the world. San Jose is for sure one of the most diverse areas even for the Bay Area. Yet, we recognize these men often did what they believed was right, served our country, and deserve respect and recognition.
All of these men have my love and absolute , humble respect. Thank you
LIGHT MY FIRE......says it all........very cool character.......Thank You Mr. Sorensen for your Service and Dedication to our Country during a very difficult time.........WELCOME HOME SIR.......JOB VERY WELL DONE.....GOD BLESS ALL YOU VIETNAM COMBAT VETERANS .
Lovely gentle man, welcome home and glad you made it back. I hope you had a happier life after the war and I’m glad you have friends that stood by you. Greetings from Ireland 🇮🇪
It's great to see history no matter what flag it stands for sends a universal message of the human experience. These videos have a powerful message and I'm glad you could be a p❤rt of it. 😁
Though I think the whole war was a sham and waste of precious lives, it in no way diminishes the bravery and effort of those who ended up fighting there. I don't think I could have done what these vets did. Glad you guys made it home alive to tell your stories, and of the ones who didn't.
Welcome home my brother, God bless you, you served with honor Sir...72 yo Navy Veteran
Thank you sir for your service!! SALUTE!
Thank you for your Service and communication. Excellent. Gerald.
Thank you sir, for sharing your story. Welcome home to all Vietnam War Veterans. : )
Firstly, thank you so very much for your service, which was a considered sacrfice by you to us. I'm also very despondent that your service interrupted your education at Cornell, which, I believe, would have resulted in an MD Degree. Well Done and Welcome Back.
Top interview; insightful!
First of all i thank you for your service....most of all I fell like there are some deep down problems you refuse to let come out...i wish you the best..
I like this Interviewer.......very patient .
THANK YOU BOB !
Thanks for your service !
Well spoken 🇺🇸
Great interview!
Thanks all you men and women who served. Have met some veterans.🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦very brave people .
Well done and I must say you are still very sharp, you should have been in an intelligence unit.
Thank You Sir🇺🇸
I was assigned to 1st 14th Artillery 198th Light Infantry Brigade. I was then attached to A company 1st 46th Infantry as a Forward Observer. My first day in the field was spent in Laos doing bomb damage assessment on the Ho Chi MInh trail. Totally out of range of our artillery. After 7 months in the field with the Infantry unit I was moved to B battery 1/14 Artillery as a Fire Direction Officer.
Best interviewer I've heard with veterans
Thank you sir. I grew up with Antone (Tony) Schnobrich, at Clyde Park. There is a memorial to him in front of our High School at Clyde Park. Now Shields Valley High school.
Very well interviewed.
Dude is very cerebral. He has a monotone voice but he’s articulate and appears well-adjusted. TY for your service.
You were blessed by your age, maturity level, and college experience. Wasn't anything like that for me. I think I was probably still 13 yrs old in my head and not a happy camper. Absolutely hated the military and stayed an extra 4 mths in Nam when my division was sent home just to get out when I landed in California. ✌️ The protesters had it right for the most part though the lack of support for vets sucked. Didn't have to be one or the other.
Thank you sir
Thank you for your service
Cery composed thoughtful
Very interesting
God bless you sir...
Good to hear about Cornell times and how the period was then and when drafted he still felt duty. If at all meaningful when at uni many of us saw the cold war and the civil war of ulster ending and we had ideas of joining the army wither away. Many of us were so disappointed.
Your story is so interesting. I spent two tours over there in I corps. I too read a lot of history of vietnam. Take care.
What a hero 👏🙌
Awesome
Welcome home Bob
Thank you for your service
💞✌️🙏
I read a lot of comments on these videos that criticize the interviewer, personally I think he does a good job. People don't realise just how difficult and skilled a job interviewing actually is, it's why prime time national TV anchors and interviewers command such high salaries. This dude isn't perfect but he's not bad. I did a bit of interviewing but I was awful I found it really hard, I thought I'd be good because I'm a decent actor but it's radically different.
Regarding books, Francois Bizot's The Gate and Michael Herr's Dispatches are two of the best. Bizot covers imprisonment under Duch and the Khmer Rouge. I attended part of Duch's trial years ago . He sat motionless and only received 19 years for the estimated tens of thousands of deaths he orchestrated. His sentence was later revised upward.
Montana must be a good place to live all the guys being interviewed either moved back there or never left.
Spent the war in the math classroom. That’s an example of the college grads getting deferred and the high school grads going to the war.
Thank you Gentlemen.
"A Bright and shining lie" terrific book.
When he mentioned the change of assignment from Combat Medic over to Artillery was the work of God. God does work in mysterious ways. He was being protected.
Wow what a story
Great interviews. Personally, I miss questions regarding the view of the veterans towards war. Their ideology.
War sucks, not romantic, not like the movies. Pure hell at times. To kill another man that was there serving his country his believes don't make it any easier at all. He had a family just like me.
Hero
Ithaca is indeed beautiful, I lived there for a few years…. Its still as liberal as its ever ben…. Great story.. thank you sir….
Great interviews. I just wish the interviewer would better gather his questions.
Can we have an interview with Rex?
I wish Bob would give examples of what an artillery Fire direction technician did on the job. I'm assuming that it involved converting coordinates of target to elevation and azimuth of the guns , allowing for the gun type (he mentions two, he 175mm and the 8inch howitzer), charge used and the atmospheric and wind data of the day. That's a guess of course.
Bob looks like joker from full metal jacket lol
Thank you for your services Bob 😄
I need you to interview my uncle's
Hope
I want a more vivid description of battle scenes and the feel of what it was like to be there
You can always enlist.
@@knunyabeasewhacks8744 zing
Most of these men do not want to relive it. Stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial and use your imagination.
Watch platoon
They were no absolute front lines in Vietnam. Anybody could be killed no matter where you were. The NVA conducted their war, but the VC were everywhere sneaking around. The VC were in among us. Give them an opportunity they'd butcher you. Some were kids, begging for food one minute, chucking a hand grenade the next. Everything was important to watch. Always tense. Always ready to raise rifles or dive under a rock. You were alert or you were gonna be hurt but a random shot could take you out anyway. Da Nang, class of 67.
Thank you welcome home
Toooo many questions I have,,,,1) I saw a doco about the Malaysian emergency (1948-60) last night. Search and Destroy, isolated villages, jungle patrols, defoliant. Obviously on a different scale, but I wonder, were Americans aware of it at the time? 2) Why was the Korean War seen as just and Vietnam not? 3) Speaking of ‘Light My Fire’ and The Doors, I listened to an interview with Iggy Pop, who was also inspired by Jim Morrison. Iggy was born ‘47 and had to face the draft. He made sure he was deemed unfit. What does Bob think about Iggy now and then?
53:20 good intentions.
William F Buckley.
He asked why is the country with good intentions reviled instead of the ones without and who never does anything to help another country.
Wish I would have listened to Bill Buckley more.
Should have made those protesting, of the right age of course, go in with those on the bus for induction. My father spent the first two years of my life in Vietnam, didn't agree with the war entirely, felt we could have defeated the enemy and in much less time with far fewer casualties but served his country while killing no women and kids and came home. Why does it seem that the 60s started a downward trend of our country and many of those living here?
Is Lt. Kelly on the Virtual Wall?
The war was won.
Chinese General wrote a book about it.
Anyone know the title?
It’s like BILLINGS sent every male they had wearing a hat to Vietnam...
I had to request gaunt to Viet Nam and to make sure by Reinlisting! Reason all my friends and others were going ! This was my war because a lot of guys I knew were in WW2 and Korea! My home town Vicksburg MS was a military town! Was in Military Region 1 in support of 101st Airborne! Retired Army
Ask him why he chose to give up his deferment?
Gave up your college deferment. Clever.
Tweeted
#VietnamVoices interviews Billings native, Honor Student who got a scholarship from @Cornell where @SandorKatz
Teaches on food preservation, fermentation, and more
ruclips.net/video/GKyNPgstfw0/видео.html
I lost touch with friends who attended Cornell: Steve Ellis, Elaine Sill & Ken Sill - I think they got married. Wonderful, loving people.
55:06 Learning about LZ XRAY really helped me understand how the entire war was fought. Lieutenant General Harold Moore was interviewed in 2005 and animated diagrams of the battlefield operations are available. Interview: www.c-span.org/video/?301573-1/harold-moore-oral-history-interview-part-1 Diagrams: lzxray.com/lz-xray-day-1/
what happens in these protests is the protest to the wrong people....you can not change anything by protesting to the individual only the authority which I feel is the path of cowards.....to kill the snake you need to cut off the head....poor men were doing as they were forced to do under duress of law I am sure none of them wanted to be there and the ones that did were miss informed. I was given a 1Y and at the time was sad but after hearing what was going on there I was happy.
Why didn't he re-enroll back into Cornell?
It’s pretty evident why he wouldn’t return to Cornell after serving.
It seems like everyone is borne over at that city!!!!
You did choose to be in the military when you gave up your deferment.
Happens all the time. I was trained as a 93F Ballistic meteorologist . When I arrived at my duty station I was told they didn't need anymore 93Fs. I became a battery clerk. Easiest job in the Army.
Thats it
I would argue the gulf of tonkin resolution was a worthless piece of paper and should have been challenged in a court of law those orders to deploy to Vietnam were unlawful and every one that followed them are war criminals
That or any other incident. So, we wouldn't have gone to war otherwise?
have no idea why they protested to the soldiers when the solder had nothing to do with the war....when your government tells you that you will become a soldier or you will go to prison you pretty much have no choice....browbeating the individual is wasted time....you must go to the source and protest....seems stupid.
The protest were against the war. Very few were against the soldiers.
There was NO SAFE PLACE in Nam !
I’ve watched a few of these interviews and I really enjoy them but it always seems to me that the interviewer is never prepared,like he’s making up the questions as he goes,which I think is quite disrespectful to the person getting interviewed and to the goal of this series! Or maybe it’s just me that thinks that?could people reply to this comment to give their views on it
He IS making up questions as the interview progresses. It's the interviewers that stick to their prewritten questions that is disrespectful. The vet starts flying down memory lane, let him go!
Emma Nichol, you know nothing
Also, I've watched many of these Vietnam interviews, best interviews are when little is asked and the Veteran speaks freely and long about his memories and experiences in Vietnam without interruption. But that also depends on the Veteran's abilities of gifted speaking.
These stories have to be allowed to have their own flow and it would be disrespectful if he was too regimented with a certain line of questions. Interviewer does a great job. There's a lot of detail and emotion these gentlemen have to recall. You really only want to hear their stories at their pace, not a proding and probing journalist with an agenda.
@@jefferyallan9015 amen
They used you
Couldn’t get into the interview due to him constantly making the snaking noise
Pardon this comment but I could not stand the interviewer's stumbling, stuttering method. I would have to politely ask for someone else to take his part if it was me.
Rebels are always in your face.😠
No wife? Kids?
The man is right. He went to a country very far away to kill people there. It was not his fight. He had no legitimate right or reason to be there. Vietnam did nothing to America. You dodged a bullet. That's what all Vietnam vets should realize...and move on. And especially don't criticize or berate those wise enough to resist the war.
shame on the usa for the vietnam war,,, at long last justice, GOT KICK OUT LIKE,,,
@dee jay lol...
Had to bail on this one can’t stand the lip smacking. Annoying as hell.
What's it like to be perfect?
This guy is totally brainwashed. He keeps mentioning the loss of 58,000 Americans in Vietnam, most of whom were there because they chose to be there. Yet, he never once refers to the four million Vietnamese citizens who were killed by his fellow countrymen. Vietnamese people were OK to kill, they didn't matter as they weren't considered to be human beings by their American oppressors. This latter point was made in the following video, where the guy interviewed stated very clearly, that " he didn't want to kill people" and wanted a job, not in the infantry,but in back up services. Also, he states that he believed the Vietnamese people weren't ready for " American democracy " ! Such bullshit ! The guy is full of it.
Great to be in the good ole USA. No country survives w/o an Army. You don't have to fight for your freedom now, but you might someday. What will be your excuse when that day comes? This man did what his country asked. Agree or disagree he served. Try disagreeing in a communist country and see how that works for you. You owe your freedom to guys like this man. Welcome home soldier.
@@richardlong8014well said
You have a lot of nerve , !!!......The only thing this man is full of is............."being a real American who served his country , an honorable man !!!!...............however you have the freedom to say what you want because of men like him !!!!