A Vietnam War veteran shares his experience 41 years later.

When 19 year old Joseph Garcia decided to join the Navy, he felt that it would change his life for the better. Feeling down and out of luck in East Los Angeles in 1968, he said, “Vietnam was the talk of the town.”

Born on January 27, 1950 in Hanford, California, in Spanish Joseph’s mother Alice described him as, “Muy travieso,” meaning a very mischievous kid.

In 1960, at the age of 10, his family moved to City Terrace, an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County, California.

At the age of 16 he joined the local ‘Pomeroy Boys’ gang, where he first got involved with drugs and petty crime. He was a high school dropout, and his life was headed for the worse. His personal life was getting to him. When asked why he made the final decision to enlist, he said, “No money, no job, I hated my mom, didn’t have a dad, no clothes, no shoes, and my teeth were rotting.” To him, Vietnam was a good way out. It was a way to escape his poverty, and keep out of jail.

In February, 1968 all of Joseph’s friends were getting drafted to serve in the already unpopular Vietnam War. It was his time to decide to enlist. But his decision did not involve the input of his family, only his own.

On the same day in August, 1960, after telling his mother about his decision, his good friend, Big John, drove him down to a Naval recruitment center in Los Angeles. The original recruitment plan consisted of him and some of the Pomeroy Boys enlisting altogether. But this buddy plan never came to fruition, and it turned out to be a one man plan.

Approximately two to three weeks later after taking the test at the recruitment center, he found out that he was being accepted to serve in a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion. After feeling that he would never be anybody or amount to anything in his life, he said, “I was excited about just being accepted.”

Naval Station San Diego is the largest naval base on the west coast of the United States. There he spent 10 weeks in boot camp and survival training.

After a short break, sometime in early 1969, it was time for him to go to Vietnam. His mother Alice and Uncle Felix drove him down to Edwards Air Force Base, located on the borders of Kern and Los Angeles counties. But Joseph and many others of his fellow soldiers were just barely heading to Vietnam, and he himself would not return until almost two years later.

The 18 hour flight from Edwards AFB to Da Nang, Vietnam in June was one of the most exciting moments in Joseph’s life. He was so excited about just being on an airplane that he said, “I didn’t think about the future or the past.”

In Vietnam, Joseph was enlisted to serve in the U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, a group also known as the Seabees. This type of military unit was in charge of the construction of roads, bases, and airstrips. In Vietnam Joseph’s MCB 11 was the third phase in fighting for the Navy, meaning that if the fighting got too tough for the first two phases, he would have to fight. Luckily for him the opportunity never arose.

Joseph remembers landing in Da Nang around 9 a.m. As soon as they landed and got off the plane, they were mortar attacked by Viet Cong soldiers. While remembering the first time he heard an incoming attack, he said, “I knew it was death.” Luckily for him, death did not know him. They were immediately ordered to head to an underground bunker that could only fit about 20 people, yet about 300 people tried to push and squeeze in. Surprisingly, his only major injury was during this first mortar attack escape when he fell on his stomach and another soldier stepped on his hand.

He was also impressed with the United States’ military prowess. When talking about surviving an attack, he said, “Your whole life depended on communication.” As anyone serving in the military past or present knows, once that communication is broken, the ability to plan and attack is gone.

Another vivid memory of Joseph’s experience in the Vietnam War was the harsh racism of the Vietnamese towards him and other non-white Americans that served in the war. According to the Veterans Hour, of the 2.59 million male and female personnel that served in the Vietnam War, 170,000 of them were Hispanic, like Joseph. Vietnamese perception of Americans was a white male whose only intention was to cause great fear or harm. Joseph remembers the Vietnamese trying to run them over and spit at them. He said, “To them an American was somebody white.” The Vietnamese had no idea of American diversity.

The National Archives of the United States says that, of the 1.1 million people that died in the Vietnam War, 58,193 of them were serving Americans. Joseph himself remembers killing only about 7 “underground” Vietnamese civilian soldiers during his entire war experience.

But death still affected him greatly, especially the deaths of American soldiers. He remembers the one time he saw a hangar full of American soldiers in coffins. His comment to the horrible sight was, “There’s something about that courage.”

The war ended with a treaty and disengagement of the U.S. in 1973. Joseph was able to leave in August, 1970, as he said, “On a hot summer day.”

Joseph feels lucky to have gotten out alive and be given the opportunity to move on with his life. He got married, had children, and even became a grandfather. Even though the thought that he survived the war never crossed his mind until many years later, today he thanks God for letting him live through Vietnam. But for the soldiers that did not make it through, he said, “It was all under the American flag.”

Almost 41 years later, the experiences Joseph took from his service in Vietnam still affected him for many years afterward, causing him to turn to drugs and alcohol. Today he is now clean and sober, and has been an Alcoholics Anonymous member since 2004. He lives in Long Beach with his wife Merlyn, and he works at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Hospital as a housekeeper where he helps sick and disabled fellow war veterans.

Joseph Garcia has had a tough life. He believes his life was a series of bad decisions, but now some good ones too. Today he lives day by day thanking God and he has developed a strong relationship with his mother Alice and family. His story is one of sadness, and in the end acceptance for his life’s decisions, which includes moving on with his life after war, like so many other veterans have before and after him must do.

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