William Hinderer and Jeb Backe

[00:04] WILLIAM HINDERER: Well, thank you for having me. My name is Bill Hinderer. I'm age 78. This is May 29, 2023, and we're at Fort Williams park in the town of Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

[00:26] JEB BAKKE: And I'm Jeb, Jeb Bakke. I am 26 years old. Today's date is May 29, 2023. We are currently in Fort Williams State Park, Maine. I'm here with Bill. And, Bill, we were speaking a little bit before about your time in Vietnam, and I, you know, there's a lot of places to begin there. I guess I'm curious. Well, what got you in the jungles of Vietnam, Bill?

[00:58] WILLIAM HINDERER: My senior year of college was March, and I took a look around at some of the things that were going on in college and said, this isn't me. So I went to the recruiter in Camden, New Jersey, and walked in to recruit, and I saw there was this black guy who was big. He looked like the stereotype army sergeant, drill sergeant. And he had a uniform coat on with ribbons and patches on his arms. And I thought, this is what I want to look like. So I enlisted to go to officer school, infantry officer school. Now, this is a lot of fun. So the army, they send you off for various tests, want to see if you're actually stable enough to be in the army, but also they send you for tests. That's an IQ test. It's basically a written wechslere. I took the test, and I want to tell you, I'm a very poor student. If there was a bottom of the class, there was no one below me. So I got a call at home. First of all, my mother said, there's a sergeant. Just say Johnson. Sergeant Johnson's on the phone, and he wants you to come up to the recruiting office. So that, fine. I talked to him and found out when I was. He wanted to see me, which was as soon as possible. And my mother looked at me, and when I got off the phone, said, what's going on? Well, I'm enlisting in the army. And things got quiet. This was in 1967. Well, I got up, and Sergeant Johnson was all efflusive. He was glad to see me, shook my hand, and partially because I probably. I probably made his quota for the month. So he was going to stay recruiting sergeant instead of being sent back to Vietnam. But he said, you stay right here, and pointed to the desk. He went running to the other office and came back with the Navy recruiter, the Air Force recruiter, and the marine recruiter. And he opened the folder with my iq test and points at it and said, this is the highest score anybody ever got in Camden, New Jersey, which, which was pretty amazing considering that I barely graduated from college. So that was my introduction to the army. Wow. Now, I went through basic training and advanced infantry training, and then on the Fort Benning, Georgia, for officer school. This is in 1967, so people don't realize. My first airplane flight was from Philadelphia to Atlanta, Georgia. I was speaking to my interviewers here. When did you take your first airplane flight? And they can't remember. They were so small. My second airplane flight was to Vietnam, so I went through infantry officer school, got commissioned, and after I got commissioned, I married. I married my wife, and I had been, we've been boyfriend girlfriend all through college. We got engaged the last year, and we were married for five months when I got my orders for Vietnam. Now, this might sound like it was a terrible thing, but in a way, I was at Fort Meade, Maryland. Her marrying me in the army meant she could move away from a horribly abusive family and not have to go back. When I got my orders, she managed to move in with a friend of hers from graduate school at the University of Delaware. She was able to get a job teaching in Rising Sun, Maryland, so she didn't have to go back to her family. I did my time in Vietnam, which we'll get on to later, but there's one story I'd like to tell you, and that is I came back from Vietnam to Hawaii as a unit move. So I was reassigned. I didn't come back as an individual. When I got back to Hawaii, Schofield Barracks. After we got settled down, I went to the PX, and the PX there had about 50 payphones. Now for these days, people don't understand payphones and needing a pay phone, not having. But there was no, that was the only phone. There was a, they had a cashier. I cashed $25 worth of quarters, went and got the payphone and called my wife from Hawaii, putting quarters into the payphone because she was on the east coast of the United States to tell her I'd been reassigned and she could come. The army has accompanied tours and unaccompanied tours. This was an unaccompanied tour. She wasn't fully recognized, but we could rent. We rented an apartment and lived in Hawaii for six months. The big deal, and I'll tell you after about living in Hawaii, that was different from the rest of the United States. Well, first of all, she flew to Hawaii back in those days in a midweek flight from Hawaii. There'd be a few businessmen up in the front, first class, and a few surfer boys back in the back. And the rest of the flight would be all young women. They were wives and girlfriends who were flying to Hawaii to meet their husbands or boyfriends for R and R. Well, they were all chattering in the plane, and it started to go around that she wasn't going for seven days of R and R. She was going to get to stay. Her husband was assigned to Hawaii, and slowly, slowly, the conversation with her ceased. Well, they landed, and I had been waiting in the terminal and they land. When the announced that the plane landed, I went to go out onto the field. Well, everybody knows you just can't walk out on the field. Did not even in those days. And I went to go out on. And there's a big old hawaiian state policeman standing there and he told me, you can't go out. You can't go. And I said, please, please, my wife, she's coming in on that flight. And he looked at me and he said, are you a wolfhound? Well, the wolfhound is the name for one of the regiments in the 25th division. Their mascot is a russian wolfhound. And I said, yes. And he said, you can go out. So I walked out on to the Runway, and this just line of young women are. They're heading for the buses that are going to take them to the r and r center. And one woman broke loose, my wife. And she came running to me and I ran to her and we grabbed each other and kissed and swung around and around and around. Now, I don't know how many of you have ever seen the movie from here to eternity. It allegedly has the most romantic kissing scene in all of film where the. The star and the starlet are on the beach, laying in the beach in the surf in Honolulu, kissing. This was for real. This wasn't. This was not actors and actresses. This was for real. The most romantic scene ever. Well, we lived in an apartment in Hawaii, and to understand being in the military in those days, in the sixties, you have to understand the racial problems in the country at those days. I went to a college where it had no people of color in my class. Well, we had one. He was from Thailand, an international student. But I lived in a community that had no people of color. Diversity was. There were Protestants and Catholics on the same street. I went into the army, and it was every imaginable kind of guy. I was in an all male army, by the way, color religion. There were guys in there who, English was their second language. There were guys who came from such poverty that being in the army was a step up. They got three meals a day and a place to sleep that was warm and dry, and they got someone to watch over them. Most of the guys at that time, their first airplane flight was the flight that took them to Vietnam. It was just opened my eyes to the world that I had no connection with and why I say that. We rented an apartment. We were the only howies in our apartment. And for those of you who don't know, howies are the hawaiian term for white people because that was what we could afford. But I was a soldier. I was in Hawaii. I was part of the 25th division, Hawaii's own. And it was so different than on the mainland. People would come up and they'd shake your hand. And we had a. I had a neighbor who was a little old japanese man who had a piece of property that was, well, you couldn't build a house on in Portland. That's how small it was. And he had an orange tree on it. I'd never seen oranges on a tree. And he'd trim his lawn with scissors. It makes you think of the karate master in the karate kid. And he had been an interpreter in the 25th division when it was in second World War, to interpret more japanese prisoners. And it was so I didn't have any of the animosity directed towards me when I originally arrived and I arrived as a unit.

[14:30] JEB BAKKE: And what does that mean, to arrive as a unit?

[14:35] WILLIAM HINDERER: I came with a hundred other guys. We said we went to Schofield Barracks, had a company, and went right to work. It wasn't like I came off a plane and wandered. The only person in uniform wandering through an airport and having people just turn their backs on you, or if that was. Or just say something nasty to you. So that was my introduction back into. To the world, as we called it, was very good. Now, we, when we. When I got out of the service and we moved back to the east coast and we bought a Volkswagen bus. This is in 1970, and this is what everybody was doing in 1970. You buy a Volkswagen bus and you go and move to the country and you're going to live off the land. And we bought an old farmhouse. And I soon learned that a home grown tomato cost about $2. And old farmhouses really need a lot of work. And if you don't have carpenter skills, boy, it's a tough life. So we eventually moved to Peaks Island, Maine, where we found home, where we live now. We lived there for 35 years and have been married for 55 years.

[16:24] JEB BAKKE: Where was that? Where? That farmhouse.

[16:26] WILLIAM HINDERER: It was in a place called Nottingham, New Hampshire, which is halfway between Portsmouth and Manchester, New Hampshire. It was real countryside then. And not only real countryside. If you were going to pick a place to farm to grow your own crops, man, that wasn't it. There was more rock than dirt.

[16:52] JEB BAKKE: How long do you guys last?

[16:56] WILLIAM HINDERER: About six years. So my daughter was born there and she liked. It was great for her because she had sheep and ducks and geese, and she, I think, looks back fondly on that. I was too much a suburban. One of the things about living the rural lifestyle, you need two cars and you are on the road a lot. And it is the most energy intensive lifestyle because you have to drive 25 miles to go to the grocery store, and that's just the start of it. So. Yeah, but I go back to Vietnam. So as a lieutenant, that's a platoon leader in charge of approximately 35 men. It varies because there's always somebody who has gone on r and r or has emergency leave or goes to the hospital. I was 23 and my average soldier was 19. Back in those days, when you went to officer school, they always told you, well, old sarge will be there. Well, by the time I arrived in 68, old Sarge had already done two tours, and my platoon sergeant was 20 years old. He'd been in the military less time than I had. He just lasted long enough to be promoted. And I found out that my officers school training actually worked. We patrolled and we patrolled and patrolled. And what that means is simply the platoon. And that would be 30 guys because five Huey helicopters each could carry six soldiers. So a patrol was always 30, and we were most of the time out on our own. I went one time, ten days without seeing my company, without seeing a senior, an officer, my company commander, or the battalion commander. And all the time communicating by radio. And this is something, when you patrol, you are quiet just because you just don't want to make any noise. You know, making a little noise, the Viet Cong might hear you. So you're sneaking through the jungle and literally through the jungle. One of the cardinal rules is never walk on a trail. So I was very good with the map and the compass because I was petrified. I wouldn't know where I was. So I constantly was checking the map, the compass, because when you get in trouble, the answer to your trouble is artillery, and you have to know where you are to call artillery. The army, the officers school training had some. I can try to tell you this they had. We had the. One of the first computerized classrooms at Fort Benning. One of the communications officer was, he was teaching a class on communications, and he'd set up a computerized classroom. Now, this is 67, so the art this is. Everybody wasn't given a laptop. No, these computers were actually built into the desks, and they were used. He would teach a certain part of the lesson, and you had to answer questions that came up on the screen, and he could then look at his screen and find out what percent of the class got the answer or answers right. And if enough, say 90%, then you move on. But if it was below that, he'd have to swing back and teach that segment again. But this was, man, this is 50 years ago, the army had computerized. Now, of course, everybody's got a laptop, and that's how you go to class. And the second thing was the army had this in the 9th week of officer school, they have a thing called the leadership reaction course. And this is a test to see how good each individual is as a leader, because that's what officer school is all about. And the 9th week was, if you failed the test, well, you went back to being a regular soldier. And if you passed, you went on. They divide the whole group that was running through this in the teams of six that didn't know each other, and you were assigned a problem, and there'd be six problems. Each person got a chance to be the leader. And being the army, the first rule was everybody had to get over with their weapon and get back. And it also always involved crossing a body of water, which was a big old swimming pool. And it discovered a tremendous area because these different groups were going through all the time. And you were given this. You had 1 minute to organize your group to complete the task, assigned and get back. Each group had a psychologist going with them who not only rated you on accomplishing the task, but watched your leadership style. And when you got done, you went and you had a conference with this psychologist who would go through sheets and tell you exactly what you did, what you saw and what he saw, and make recommendations on what in your style of leadership should keep and what you should work on. Well, some years later, my wife got involved in feminism, and she was in this group that was teaching women leadership. Well, the woman who was running the group was talking about the leadership program, and I said, oh, yeah, at Fort Benning, you should see we have a had the leadership reaction course. Boy, that was really great. You should. And of course, very, very liberal university woman looked at me as if to say, you've just rolled in. Pig, pig, poop. The army couldn't possibly have something so advanced as what we're teaching women right now. So it was interesting. One of the things I found out in the army is, in my own words, I'm not quite sure what psychologists or psychiatrists call I'm a rescuer, which is part of why our marriage has worked out. I mean, I rescued her from a horrible situation. But, boy, when you're in combat, that's in the. Somebody's wounded and, you know, and everybody looks. Looks at you like, what are you going to do, lieutenant? You're the one that has to crawl out there and pull them back. And the officer school had a class literally titled, what are you going to, lieutenant? Do, lieutenant? And in those days, there are no videos. It was film. So they'd run a film with the soldier actors with some bad situation. They'd stop the film in the middle, and the instructor would say, roster number 25, what are you going to do now, lieutenant? And you had a cup step up and give an answer. They didn't necessarily say, well, that's the right answer that you had. You had to learn to do immediately. You can't wait now, that was. That's one of the lessons of the army. You have to do something. You just can't. You can't sit there and be a target. You have to do something. Whether it's pull back, that is retreat or attack, you just. You have to do something.

[27:33] JEB BAKKE: Can you think of a moment when you were out there and you were a lieutenant and there were instances where everyone was looking at you in that kind of situation.

[27:44] WILLIAM HINDERER: There was one situation. Now, you go on a patrol, it just goes on, and they're tired. It's hot, and we're carrying sea rations for food, so that's canned food, so that's really heavy. And about the fourth day, and one of the machine gunners, he'd had it. He was just too tired and too worn, and he threw his machine gun down. So I'm not carrying this fucking thing anymore. Well, everybody in the platoon looked at me, what are you going to do now, lieutenant? What could I do? Walked over and picked it up and said, I'll carry it for a while. You take my rifle. Well, after about an hour, he'd recovered, and he realized also he has carried an m 16, but he only had m 60 magazine ammunition. So he came up and took his machine gun back and gave me the m 16.

[28:45] JEB BAKKE: Realized he'd be toast if something happened?

[28:47] WILLIAM HINDERER: Yeah. Yeah. So that's. That's something. There are other things.

[29:02] JEB BAKKE: Well, I can't help but notice your shirt.

[29:04] WILLIAM HINDERER: Yes. So the shirt, I'd say it has a purple heart on the front, and on the back it has written, real men wear purple. I was wounded twice without a drop of blood with hot shrapnel and just seared. And the medic was pretty funny. He said, no blood, no heart. In other words, if there's no blood, there's no purple heart. He just laughed. And then he wrote up the tag. Worse than that, I had. I don't know whether you call it heat exhaustion, some sort. We were on an operation. Just. My temperature spiked to 107, so I had to be evacuated. Now, I don't know what you know about medicine, but if your temperature goes above 107, you have brain damage. I mean, it's sort of like the bends. If it goes above, just all the gases come out of your. Out of your blood system all at once. So sorry. Can I ask a quick question? Since I know that this is something that you wanted to cover? Can you talk a little bit about the mailman? Oh, I have to tell you about the mailman. So back in. Back in those days, all communication was by mail. And it took anywhere from two to three weeks for a letter to go back and forth. Well, there'd be times when I'd be out on an operation for five days and you couldn't write a letter. And my wife, she would be waiting at the mailbox because when she got home from teaching school was just about time. The mailman would arrive and there'd be days when there wouldn't be a letter from me. I don't go two days, three days. And he'd say, don't worry, don't worry. He'd had a hundred reasons why the mail was held up. Don't worry. You'll get three letters tomorrow. And he'd been in World War two, so he was sort of a rock for her. So there's a couple things. So she is as much a veteran as I am. We don't have a tv. One of the reasons was she was watching the news one night on tv, and I. They had a movie section on the news of a battle along route four in Vietnam. That was my unit, and that was it. And I can't watch it anymore. One of the things that happened, I went to the hospital. When you go. When you go into combat, you sign a release. If you're. If you're wounded lightly or, you know, go to the hospital. But do you want us to notify and. And everybody signs? No, they don't want their. Their family to know if they got a nick or something small. Well, she got a call from the Red Cross, and her husband was in the hospital. That's all they could tell her. And I never wrote home about it. I mean, that's, you know, I let me out. And it wasn't until about 25 years later that she asked me about it. Told me what? Well, you know, and I said, well, you weren't supposed to be notified about that. But the Red Cross couldn't give her any other information, and she never got a letter that said I was in the hospital. Now, there's two things. The questions that someone should never ask somebody that's been in combat, and the first one is, did you ever kill anybody? And there seems to be two groups now, one group, let's just say high school age, and they're really interested about what went on, and they're not old enough to understand, and you try to answer them as best you can. But there's. The other group is my peers, men who are my age who didn't go to, who were never in the service. And there's come in two types. One is, oh, you killed somebody. Well, we never killed anybody. We're much better than you. And the worst are the ones who are just. It's almost sexual. The what? They're going to get out of the answer if you tell, oh, yeah, I killed somebody. And this is. And then they want to know, well, how'd you do it? You know, it's. It's. They're. They're reliving, um, rambo in. Okay. The second thing I like. I just like to say is, if you've never been in combat, I. Please don't tell me there's no such a thing as an atheist in a foxhole, because when you're. When you're fighting, you're not thinking about. So help me, if you're thinking about God or going to heaven or something, you can't be a good soldier. So there's no such thing when somebody tells you that they're a fool because they don't want to listen to your story. And your story about being in combat is being tired and dirty and scared and still doing what you have to do. I'll give you one final little thing. The issue of courage comes up. People want to know about being in combat. The perfect answer as to what is courage was Cs Lewis. CS Lewis, the writer, and he once wrote that courage isn't a virtue in itself, but it's the sum of all virtues at the testing point and there. So if people wonder about courage, fearlessness is somebody who doesn't know, doesn't have the slightest idea. Bravery is something you do without thinking. Courage is what you do knowing I the possible consequences of what you're doing in a. In a bad situation, somebody, you know, use the analogy of running into a burning house. Somebody can just go charging in and not think about, oh, what am I going? And somebody else can go in and think, well, there might be somebody upstairs. I better check upstairs first in the bedrooms and then check in the kitchen. And that's. So that's. There's a big difference there. So I'd like to thank you for having this time and I'll end up with a little thing. One of my stories, I'm a storyteller starts it was the best of times, it was the worst of times it was the best of times because we were young Fitzhe intelligent and courageous it was the worst of times because only the young could do what we were asked to do and fit why you'd be fit if every day you put on your web gear and a 75 pound pack and walk for miles and miles in jungle, swamp and rice paddy and intelligent why, there's a certain darwinian imperative that ensures that a soldier in combat is intelligent and courageous. Well, I just quoted CS Lewis for you, so thank you.

[38:47] JEB BAKKE: Thank you, Bill.

[38:48] WILLIAM HINDERER: Yeah.