Rodney Farmer and Pam Bessey

[00:08] RODNEY FARMER: Hi, I'm Rod Farmer. Rodney Farmer, and I'm from Missouri. And the show me state, it's what it gets, its reputation for being stubborn and giving up their own beliefs very slowly, if at all. But I grew up at a time in a family where all the men served in the military. It was just universal. And as I mentioned before, that knocked me off the train of thought. I don't know what that noise was.

[00:50] PAM BESSEY: So, just so can you say how old you are and, like, today's April 27, 2023, and you are how old?

[01:00] RODNEY FARMER: 75.

[01:00] PAM BESSEY: 75 years old. And we're in Farmington, Maine?

[01:04] RODNEY FARMER: Yes.

[01:06] PAM BESSEY: And how are you related to me?

[01:08] RODNEY FARMER: You're my stepdaughter.

[01:09] PAM BESSEY: Yes. And I'm Pam Bessey and I'm 57, and I am. He's my stepdad So thanks.

[01:19] RODNEY FARMER: You got a course?

[01:20] PAM BESSEY: Yeah. All right. So this is great that you've already, like, you're already sort of saying some things about, like, I'm so happy that we had a chance to kind of talk a little bit before we started here. And so can you kind of tell me you're from Missouri. Everybody, like, you were drafted, you were enlisted. What? Tell me a little bit about that.

[01:44] RODNEY FARMER: Well, the process would kick in automatically if you had not shown up to fill out that form. You're running from the law, man, and you can go to prison for it. Besides, most of the guys I knew, they respected people who were in the military, and I was very conservative in those days. But a few of the guys that I served with were from middle class homes, but most were not. Most were from lower class.

[02:27] PAM BESSEY: Would you say that you were from a middle class or a lower class?

[02:30] RODNEY FARMER: I'd say upper lower class. My father could only read and write on maybe third grade level. My mother might be five or 6th grade level. And they expected bad things to happen, and Vietnam would have been a terrible place to try to sneak out of. There was so many attempts to see where the enemy was at the. But it didn't change us as much as we thought we were. Some bad things came along and stayed with us. Racial divides were way hotter than I would have ever imagined. Sometimes on Friday night, if you were in Saigon, not out in the voisin place, but at the major city, they. They would treat everybody the same, but the guys would go to one corner of the bar and turn it into rock and roll, usually beaming out the servicemen. Yeah. And. But anyway, what else did you want me to.

[03:56] PAM BESSEY: No, no. This is. This is great. This is great. Um, so you, um. Let's see, what did you, how did you sort of imagine military life was going to be when you got that draft letter?

[04:09] RODNEY FARMER: John Wayne? I mean, I remember a drill instructor during basic saying, get your blanket, blanket out of. Out of your rear end. Um, like he had a good example. He said, you see, guys come to Vietnam and they have the genre model, and they just can't wait to stand up and shoot at something. They, they live very short lives. You got to keep yourself down and that sort of thing.

[04:39] PAM BESSEY: How did you feel like you, like, what were some, some sort of things that helped you survive that experience?

[04:50] RODNEY FARMER: Well, I think to a great extent, it actually was the military itself. It was the first big thing I'd ever participated in. And it was, I knew I wanted to be a social studies, history, whatever type. Humanities. Social behavioral sciences. And I thought one credential that would certainly help someone look better in that kind of environment would be the ex hippies. That's what they used to call them. And anyway, what else would.

[05:37] PAM BESSEY: So, no, no, that, this is great. This is great. So you imagined life was going to be sort of like John Wayne before you, like when you were getting in, but then sort of. How did. What was. Can you sort of tell me your experience as you were there? Were there some stories that sort of, you remember distinctly from.

[06:02] RODNEY FARMER: Actually, things are coming back very slowly.

[06:05] PAM BESSEY: That's okay. That's okay.

[06:13] RODNEY FARMER: Now I can't remember the name of the powder or the liquid that we sprayed with helicopters.

[06:21] PAM BESSEY: Oh, Agent Orange.

[06:22] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, Agent Orange. I hadn't thought about that in eight years.

[06:27] PAM BESSEY: Would you see that? Would you see it being sprayed?

[06:30] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah. Yeah, it was. People imagine it's that orange color that, that's been painted by the army, but that wasn't it at all. That was the color of this flower like stuff. The american soldiers were up in the air, way up in the air. But years later, when I went to the VA for the first time, they gave me all sorts of blood tests and said, you got a lot of Agent Orange. And, and I've had a variety of illnesses, especially coming in here lately, sometimes two or three new ones at a time. And they overlap each other to the point to where it's kind of hard to ignore them.

[07:25] PAM BESSEY: So where did you serve when you.

[07:28] RODNEY FARMER: Were in 69 and 70?

[07:30] PAM BESSEY: And where were you when you were in the war?

[07:33] RODNEY FARMER: Long bend was where I was most of the time. It was a beautiful place and I liked the people.

[07:47] PAM BESSEY: What did you, what, what was your sort of role?

[07:51] RODNEY FARMER: Military operation. I was trained in artillery, and that's what I was supposed to do, but when I got there, my ears would bleed if I was too close to the guns. And they. The military in Vietnam just wasn't very sensitive.

[08:16] PAM BESSEY: And so you didn't. You. So if your ears were bleeding, did they give you another job?

[08:25] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, they gave. They put together some part time things.

[08:28] PAM BESSEY: And so what. What did you primarily do, like, on a daily basis?

[08:34] RODNEY FARMER: We would change sometimes from day to day, but we can't keep our supplies up, everything from ammunition to food, we. Anyway, so I was a 13 echo 20, and I don't even remember what the new one was, but I basically. I was a man Charlie sort of thing.

[09:02] PAM BESSEY: Can you tell me about the, like, I remember you telling me a story about, like, being the jeep on the jeeps. Like, you would ride on the jeeps a lot.

[09:14] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah. I was happy doing that. It was dangerous. It was stupid to let yourself get happy because that means you lost your focus on saving yourself and your friends.

[09:26] PAM BESSEY: But what were you doing in that job? Like, what was that?

[09:29] RODNEY FARMER: Driving and riding shotgun. And the guy that, who was our third man in the jeep, he was just a wild and crazy guy.

[09:46] PAM BESSEY: Can you tell me a story about him?

[09:49] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, that's a sad one, actually. I had this in print in a journal that specializes in Vietnam war literature. But anyway, he would get. We'd come in from a long haul, and it's getting dark, and the closer you get, the closer you want to get home. And anyway, the. The guy who ran all of the records and that sort of thing, that's what the guys really wanted to do. They wanted to drink beer and play with the record player.

[10:45] PAM BESSEY: Oh, right. When they got home, play the music. Were there some, like, songs that in particular that you, you remember?

[10:52] RODNEY FARMER: Well, the redneck guys were. That's what they called themselves, redneck guys and things like my friend did that I shared main responsibility for jeep with. He would like to try to drive as close as he could to the Vietnamese coming in from the fields. And one time he got too close, and the little girl went spinning on her bicycle. And this place was called Charcoal City. I don't know what the vietnamese name was, but they stored charcoal for vietnamese stoves. And was the little girl okay if she was okay? And my friend, I had insisted he had more rank than I had, and he had insisted that the girl was okay. I said, turned out he was right. The doctor, the american doctor dispensary that they ran there in Charcoal City, picked her up and took her home, and she was fine. And I checked on her a couple times later on.

[12:22] PAM BESSEY: Was that okay to go and check on her?

[12:25] RODNEY FARMER: Actually, it could have been the dangerous part, because they didn't say anything. A couple of the vietnamese NVA types were there to kill us, and it was like we were there to kill them.

[12:49] PAM BESSEY: But you wanted to check on her.

[12:50] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, I did. And supposedly the doctor I talked to at another time, the MD, he said he appreciated what we had done because he said they will go home to their home villages and hopefully have better relationships with their Americans. That I can. I still remember the holes that we had. B 52s that were dropping at large scale bombs during the war, or much of it. So anyway, then another time. Actually, during most modern wars, more men are killed by people operating rockets than they are some unneeded things. And I had a poem published several months ago, maybe over a month, six months ago, that made me feel good, because I don't feel as threatened by it now.

[14:10] PAM BESSEY: Is there anything that you miss about being in the service?

[14:16] RODNEY FARMER: About being where?

[14:17] PAM BESSEY: Being in the service?

[14:19] RODNEY FARMER: Oh, no, I still. The service is a service, and a particular war is a particular war. And I'm not a pacifist at all. I'm bothered today by people who treat all servicemen the same and women.

[14:40] PAM BESSEY: Well, what was that experience like coming back?

[14:45] RODNEY FARMER: Mine wasn't too bad. Some guys I knew who had spit on them and all sorts of trash thrown at them at the airport and all sorts of things. The worst I think I had was I turned my back on them. I wasn't doing it on purpose. It wasn't a political move. I had something blown into my eye, and I assume that's what that was. Agent Orange for the second time in those 14 months.

[15:30] PAM BESSEY: Is there? So when you first got back, what were some things that were difficult for you to deal with? When you first got back, was there anything that was really kind of challenging for you?

[15:47] RODNEY FARMER: Adapting to the bureaucracy, whether it's a military operation or a hospital operation or whatever, when people create almost a false culture and they feed it, so to speak, instant get out of hand, it can be very wasteful.

[16:14] PAM BESSEY: So did you ever learn something about a fellow service member that might have surprised you, or you had the guy that was sort of the. The risk taker? Were there other people that you remember from your experience?

[16:37] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, one guy was on his second tour. He volunteered for both years, and he was crazy. That's what everybody said. He didn't have friends. And this attention we're paying to people who use shovels and bombs, et cetera, that threat was lessened there because they were just regular guys. But anyway.

[17:16] PAM BESSEY: No, that's. How do you think that whole experience being in the military affected you as, like, you got out of the service and then, you know, how do you feel that that affected you? And what was the. Sort of the transition or what was the next steps for you?

[17:40] RODNEY FARMER: Well, when I came back, I started my masters, my ma in history, and I was busy doing that stuff because I knew what I wanted to do. I didn't know exactly what. Humanities, social sciences, history. You can get at the same big questions through many different routes. But no, I wanted the idea of reading and writing for the rest of my life. Washington was very positive. Maybe it saved my life. I don't know.

[18:22] PAM BESSEY: That love of our knowing that you were going to be able to study and. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[18:34] RODNEY FARMER: Well, I'm a poet. I have three small books published.

[18:44] PAM BESSEY: Do you feel that being that your experience when you were in Vietnam, do you think that? Have you written several? Like, there was one poem that you wrote about the bicycle girl, or were there other experiences that you've written about?

[19:02] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, I don't remember them in quite the detail, but in some ways, getting the shock of being told I could die at a much earlier age due to cancer had a sobering effect. But one thing that sort of helped me was that my father had been in world war two, and as he was getting out of the service, they told him he would be dead by the time he was 30 because there were all sorts of poisonous gases and bugs that carry some kind of blood in our veins and.

[19:55] PAM BESSEY: But he lived for a long time.

[19:58] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah.

[20:05] PAM BESSEY: Let's see, what else were you did? Were you able to sort of choose which branch of service that you were?

[20:23] RODNEY FARMER: I was in the army.

[20:24] PAM BESSEY: Okay. But you didn't have it, so you were drafted into the army.

[20:29] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, and we had this when I came into Vietnam. They were in the process of Vietnamization or nixonization. They had different political terms for it, but the idea was eventually to shrink it down. The good guys.

[20:49] PAM BESSEY: And who were the good guys?

[20:51] RODNEY FARMER: They were everybody who wasn't a communist.

[20:53] PAM BESSEY: Oh, okay.

[20:55] RODNEY FARMER: You know the double standard. Buddhist monks could be attacked anytime anybody wanted to, which is the reason the government never trusted Viet Cong or the Americans.

[21:18] PAM BESSEY: Let's see. I'm trying to think of some other questions. Were you able to stay in touch with your family? Did you, like, write a lot of letters home and.

[21:29] RODNEY FARMER: Not a lot, but some.

[21:32] PAM BESSEY: Did they write to you?

[21:34] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, my mother always did. And another thing on my mind was keeping my brother out of the service. When I first landed in Vietnam, it was obvious how dysfunctional we were. It was such. At least that's how I saw it. And.

[21:57] PAM BESSEY: Can you sort of talk a little bit more about the dysfunction?

[22:01] RODNEY FARMER: Well, a lot of guys were dealing with drugs.

[22:06] PAM BESSEY: And how did that make you feel?

[22:09] RODNEY FARMER: Well, it depended on who it was. Like one of our main truck drivers used opium and they were very serious about it. And I remember talking to my friend, you know, the police come after them. What do you think? And he said, they'll kill us if the Viet Cong doesn't. So. But anyway. But I hope it eventually becomes as beautiful it was at once. And then another thing that triggered was most of my work was in american history, american political history, democracy. History, democracy. Nothing big, just some articles published over the years. And.

[23:08] PAM BESSEY: Were you ever able to go back to Vietnam?

[23:11] RODNEY FARMER: No, I didn't want to go back.

[23:12] PAM BESSEY: No? No, I didn't know.

[23:13] RODNEY FARMER: I figured I had enough of that stuff in my body. I don't need to trigger anymore.

[23:19] PAM BESSEY: I didn't know if you had traveled back there.

[23:22] RODNEY FARMER: We had our r and rs recreation.

[23:28] PAM BESSEY: Where did you go when you had your r and rs?

[23:31] RODNEY FARMER: First one was right there in Vietnam, right on the Pacific Ocean. And it was beautiful. It was the first time I walked through sand on a beach. I'm not sure sometimes just how much I've forgotten and etcetera. I did find an old letter recently which I had mailed back, and this friend was very upset that I wasn't more upset. You know, he wanted to shoot civilians.

[24:19] PAM BESSEY: And what was he upset about?

[24:24] RODNEY FARMER: Some people are just hate being told what to do, even if it's going to save somebody's life. But then, anyway, I went to Taiwan. Taiwan's a lot in the news.

[24:42] PAM BESSEY: Was that for r and R, you went to Taiwan?

[24:44] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah, for the first week. Long one. And it's chinese civilization. Everybody thinks it's a separate country. And politically it's being separate, being made into two separate states. But the people who are chinese and want their nation put back together have a hard time understand why we have nuclear weapons near their home ground if things get nasty. And then after that, I went to Thailand. These little adventures were really great for me because the whole time I was in the military, you were closely guarded. You never knew when they were going to do something that would make life a lot dangerous.

[25:48] PAM BESSEY: So when you would be on r and R, there would be turn in.

[25:52] RODNEY FARMER: Your rifle while you get on a.

[25:54] PAM BESSEY: Plane, but you were on your own, when you were on r and R?

[25:58] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah. They gave you a small amount of money and just trying to think. The combat pay, that's what they called it, and I had some of that. It was enough to buy a car when I came back.

[26:23] PAM BESSEY: So you would sort of save it up when you were on r and R, you wouldn't use too much money? Just sort of.

[26:28] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah.

[26:31] PAM BESSEY: Was that the first thing you bought when you, when you got home? Oh, about when you were, when you were finished your service?

[26:41] RODNEY FARMER: Oh, I was just happy to have my freedom, really. Nothing special about it. I had to help put up some claymore mines a few times as the kind where you put them in front of you. Curve.

[27:05] PAM BESSEY: Was there any specific food that you really enjoyed when you were there or hated when you were there?

[27:11] RODNEY FARMER: Oh, spring rolls. Chinese food. Taiwan is basically chinese in its culture, and so they are very good people to get these kinds of foods. So is there anything else you want to ask me or.

[27:41] PAM BESSEY: Well, I'm just thinking, is there anything else, any more stories you want to say about your experience? We were talking a little bit about the, before we started, just about sort of the. You had talked about the, like, the different ranks and trying to, like some of the. Oh, we were kind of talking about the African Americans and how they weren't treated so great. I. And that they had the. When they were using the. You were. You were talking about how they would work out, but they always had the, like the not great equipment.

[28:27] RODNEY FARMER: Oh, yeah.

[28:29] PAM BESSEY: Do you want to talk at all about that?

[28:31] RODNEY FARMER: It wasn't a big deal.

[28:32] PAM BESSEY: Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Is there any other experiences that you.

[28:39] RODNEY FARMER: Well, I'd never been in a helicopter before, and I did some courier work for a while there. I was sort of a man variety. I could almost always be found in my own little corner of the hooch, and I liked being able to see the world from the viewpoint of a helicopter. It was probably the best thing that happened to me there.

[29:16] PAM BESSEY: Would you be in the helicopters a lot? Were you in the helicopter a lot? Would you fly a lot?

[29:26] RODNEY FARMER: Not every day, once, twice a week, something like that, yeah. Well, I know when I got back, somebody rushed me to pick up a package and take it to a particular address and one of these little small fire support bases, and they didn't like all of the attention that the helicopter pilots got, but I appreciated them and they saved a lot of lives.

[30:11] PAM BESSEY: Absolutely.

[30:13] RODNEY FARMER: But I do like the chinese civilization and its offspring, the Vietnam civilization. Yeah.

[30:28] PAM BESSEY: I feel like you've shared a lot. I feel like, you've done a really great job with this, and I really appreciate sharing with me and sharing with Chapin. Did Steve ever serve in the military?

[30:44] RODNEY FARMER: Did my brother? Yeah, he went in to army revenue reserve. In fact, I maybe overreacted. I got there and I said, this place is bizarre. And I sort of almost begged him to, don't go into the regular army. Go into the army reserves. Far less likely to be shot there.

[31:23] PAM BESSEY: What was the age difference between you and your brother?

[31:27] RODNEY FARMER: I was four years old.

[31:30] PAM BESSEY: So how old was he when you were writing to him and saying, go to the reserves? Not.

[31:39] RODNEY FARMER: Well. After we both got out, he had the GI bill, which was a very good program. Truman and Roosevelt put together a very, very lucrative. For people like myself, from working class background, that was very, very helpful. It paid for, paid me right up to my last mountain to graduate school.

[32:06] PAM BESSEY: How did your dad feel about, you know, you serving and Steve serving?

[32:13] RODNEY FARMER: He was. He was 19th century. I mean, country called. You have no right to judge it. You have to trust them and that sort of thing.

[32:26] PAM BESSEY: So he was very supportive of you going and serving?

[32:31] RODNEY FARMER: Yeah. Yeah. And my brother was a little mad because he didn't get a. The reserves. They didn't get the GI bill. And that was a lot of thousands of dollars. Anything else?

[32:54] PAM BESSEY: I feel like this has been really an interesting interview, and I appreciate you sharing. I always like hearing stories, and you always tell great stories, and I thank a lot for doing this and sitting down with me today.

[33:13] RODNEY FARMER: Enjoyed it.

[33:14] PAM BESSEY: I appreciate it. Thanks.

[33:17] RODNEY FARMER: You have another person coming in here.