Ramirez, Rudy, oral Interview with Emily Freilich, Grand Terrace, CA, April 16, 2015. Digital recording.
Rudy Ramirez’s narrative gives a perspective on how veterans gather their war experiences, the impacts of war, the value of the military, and an understanding on how the past is always interacting with the present. His interview wove through his time in Vietnam, adjustment to life after, and stories of other veterans’ experiences. Now an artist in Colton California, he is involved with his community, especially through art and local schools.
Mr. Ramirez was a sergeant in the Marine Corps from July 29th 1963 to July 28th 1967. His unit arrived in Vietnam in late January 1966 and immediately landed in a firefight.
Mr. Ramirez many times said he avoided injury because he was lucky. One time he happened to be in the bunker when his unit was hit. Another time his unit was lucky the North Vietnamese never penetrated their barbed wire. He was lucky when he was on night patrol and heard North Vietnamese troops, but they did not bother the Americans. He says, “they probably thought we were crazy, so they didn’t mess with us.” His attitude of accepting life and understanding the randomness of who gets affected in war, and how, carried over into coping with the after-effects of the war experience. His advice for fellow veterans is to work through the past and keep living in the present.
He at first only talked about other veterans’ posttraumatic stress disorder, not his own possibly showing that he preferred not to dwell on the negative impacts of war on himself. Mr. Ramirez did talk about his PTSD later in the interview and has found several effective coping mechanisms. His art helps the most, as it is, “a stress release.” He always wanted to be an artist and went back to school with the GI Bill to major in art. He also talks to a VA counselor regularly. The counselor is a former sergeant in the Iraq war; it was important to Mr. Ramirez that his counselor understood what it was like to be in war. Both the counselor and Mr. Ramirez had similar war experiences even though their wars were separated by decades, showing that war at its core and the effects of trauma may be fundamentally the same no matter the time and reasons for war.
Though his war experience was difficult and he is dealing with lasting effects on himself and those around him, Mr. Ramirez appreciates his time in military for the values and skills he learned and the benefits of the GI Bill to further his education. The military legacy is strong in his family; his father and his father’s five cousins were all World War II veterans, so he always had a natural inclination to join the military. He thinks everyone should have to be in the military for two years to get the experience and the discipline. Though he does not wish people to have to go to war, he does think the war made veterans stronger and harder workers.
In talking about what younger generations need to know about the Vietnam War, he separates the military from the war, highlighting the disconnect between the way individuals view their actions and the general idea and controversies of the Vietnam War. He believed in his role in the war though he criticized the way it was run as a whole:
The military did a good job, although the media didn’t want to give them much credit, but we saw the results of a combat situation where they had more casualties than we did. You know. But it was all political, and here you had people in Washington D.C. trying to call the shots, a lot of those people weren’t even, didn’t have experience in the military. They had never been in a combat zone. I guess they tried to run the war through textbook, which you can’t do… We all say the military is called upon to clean up the mess that the politicians create when they can’t do it themselves. I’m being pretty nice about in the wording. But like any other veteran if they ask me to go back, I’d go back.
He genuinely believed in military action in Vietnam. He said there was a real threat of communist China taking over South Vietnam and taking all its food resources to fuel China’s own army. He fought for America’s freedom and values. He occasionally talked to war protestors and said they didn’t know what they were talking about because they had not been to Vietnam. He told one, “You’re entitled to your own opinion. Our actions gave you that right.”
Mr. Ramirez mixes war experience with his current education and value for education. It took him 9 years to get his undergraduate BA degree as he was working full time and raising a family while going to school, but he is proud of getting his degree and of the work he does now. He reminds us that war memories and current life inform and shape each other but that trauma in the past does not define the future.