July 29, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the late 1960s, Karl Marlantes stood at a crossroads: remain at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, or go to Vietnam and serve alongside the boys he grew up with, many of whom had already shipped out. He chose to go. That decision shaped his life in ways he’s still reckoning with. In this unflinching interview, Marlantes shares why he left behind comfort and entered the jungles of Vietnam
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
a story from Carl Merlantis. Carl is the author of
the award winning books Matterhorn and What it Is Like
to Go to War. Paul is also a Vietnam War
veteran and the recipient of the Navy Cross, our nation's
second highest award for valor. But in nineteen sixty seven,
(00:32):
Call was far removed from the chaos of battle in
a position of privilege. Here's Call to tell the story
of why he chose to join the Marines and why
he later chose to go to Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It was a series called Landmark Books, and I can't remember,
we'll put it out one of the big publishers.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And it was like the story of Betsy Ross.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And the American Flag, the Story of Thomas Jefferson, and all.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Those sorts of things that were like written for like
about you know, ten year olds or twelve year olds.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I remember reading one called the Story of the
US Marines, and that just fascinated me, you know. But
more importantly it was this thing, I mean, like the
guys on the football team, the good athletes, the good runners,
when they left high school, they would go down to
some mysterious place called San Diego MCRD Marine Corps Recruiting Depot,
(01:25):
and they'd come back, first of all with sun tans,
which we never saw where we lived.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And they would, I swear to God, they looked like
they were four inches broader in the shoulder and two
inches taller.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
And they would literally swagger up down the main street
of our little town Seaside, Oregon, which was a logging town,
a little town of about twenty five hundred people. And
I'm fifteen, sixteen years old, and I'm just thinking to myself,
I don't know what that is, but I want some
of that. So I went to the Marine recruiter and yeah,
I'm talking to the Marine recruiter.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I'm eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And I asked, I say to him, I said, you know,
I've read, you know, books about the Marines, and I've
seen John Wayne the Sands of Ewo Jima, and I
know what the Marines do.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
They land on beaches and all that sort of stuff.
But I said, do they do anything else?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
And he looks at me, he says, oh, yeah, he says,
we guard all the embassies all over the world. I
went really meanli in Paris, and he said absolutely, and
I can swear to God this is what went through
my mind. I went, well, the odds are you won't
get Paris, but you'll surely get Madrid or Rome.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Sign me up.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So it's a combination of those things. And then there
was the draft. It was patriotism.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I mean, I grew up in a time when visually
everybody's dad and uncle was in what they called the service.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
We don't call it that anymore. We call it the
military today, and.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I think that that's an enormously important change in our language. Well,
that was when your dad was in the service, that
was when your uncle was in this service. And there
was that sense of you know, the draft was like
the income tax.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
No one likes to pay their taxes.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Nobody wanted to get drafted, but you sort of felt
like you owed your country.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You know. It's like, you know, the country won't.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Operate unless you pay your taxes. We don't you know,
the roads don't get fixed unless you pay your taxes.
The country isn't safe unless you When they drafted, you
go and do your bit. That was the feeling at
that time, and that was the late nineteen fifties, early
nineteen sixties so there was that, and there was the
fact that, you know, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
If I can do it.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It's sort of a young man, you know, challenge, could
I make it?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So I joined when I was eighteen in a.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Program called PLC, the Two Leaders Class. It was a
classic Marine Corps program. It was like they didn't give
you any money. You joined as an enlisted in the reserves,
and you went off to Quantico in the summertime, and
if you survived what was just the same as boot camp,
(04:06):
then you got to go to college, but they didn't
pay you, and you just went back in the summer again,
and at the end of that you got a commission
if you graduated from college. I went to Oxford on
a scholarship and nineteen sixty seven I thought that that
would be you know, some of the Marines wouldn't let
me do because the Marines were really short of junior officers,
(04:28):
and they were great. They said, go ahead, it's a
great honor.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I got a Rhodes and.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
After about six or eight weeks over there, having a
wonderful time, I just felt guilty because this little high
school I grew up when six boys died and about
seventy served in the Vietnam War, and the high school
(04:55):
was about, you know, four hundred kids, so two hundred boys.
I mean, it was pretty amazing, and I just felt guilty.
I wasn't pulling my oar. I wasn't contributing like they were.
They were putting themselves out there, and I was hiding back.
And I was always raised never to do that. I mean,
that's just something that you don't do. You know, if
(05:17):
your friends are risking themselves, then you go out there
with it with them. And I was choosing not to
do that. I was letting them take the risk. And
I felt like I used the word I was hiding
behind the privilege.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Most of the guys I went to high school with
they didn't even go to college.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's why such a large percentage I'm served in Vietnam,
because in those days, the draft was very unfair. You
could get out of service if you got a doctor
to say that you had a bad knee, or if
you you know, you could say that you were gay,
or you could say you know, any number of things.
And the other, the one was the legitimate one, which
(05:54):
is for a long times called the two S deferment.
If you were in college they wouldn't draft you, which
is horribly skewed towards the wealthier part of the country.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
But it didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I mean, it was a war that was just not
making sense, that just was looking you know, what's the
word problematical, unethical. I mean, we were getting into, you know,
trying to measure the war by how many people we killed.
That's not a moral situation. Killing people in the military
is a consequence of trying to get something else done.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That's the objective.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And if people get killed on the way, that is warfare.
But an objective of just killing people is in my opinion, immral.
And we no, we didn't have an objective other than
you know, well save the South Vietnamese government, but that
was looking a little dicey because it was clearly a
corrupt government. On the other hand, I mean I could
see that the North was a totalitarian government that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Didn't look good.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It was just a mess, and it was a moral mess.
And so you know, you'd say, well, then you shouldn't go.
But I had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution
of the United States, and I took my oath seriously.
I mean, I swore to God that I would uphold
the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of
(07:16):
the United States says that the President of the United
States is the commander in chief of the military. Civilian
control of the military is absolutely essential. And if the
military decides that it doesn't want to do what the
civilians ask it to do, you got.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
A Banana republic.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And so you can't have a military where individual people say,
I don't think I'm going to I don't agree with
the president. To uphold the Constitution of the United States,
you either have to resign or do what you're told.
But now, all of a sudden, we're fighting a war,
which you know, the civilians in control decided to put
(07:58):
us into. Well, now I've got two moral issues, both
of which I agree with, which is that the war
is wrong. But I'm already in the military, and I
swore an oath to do what the constitution had set up.
That was my moral dilemma, and I was very acutely
conscious of it. My girlfriend at the time said she'd
(08:23):
go to Sweden with me. She didn't want to go
to Algeria. Algeria was taking deserters and I wouldn't have
been a draft dodge, right, I'd have been a deserter.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
That's a one step above that.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I have to admit that that's a little bit
scary too, So you know, that would have hindered me
a bit. My friend was just deciding to turn his
draft card as a protest, and we spent this really
long night. Just like I tell people, I said, I
have the feeling that we were sort of hovering over
a single candle. I know that's not true, but the
(08:56):
feeling of it was the two of us, just the
two of us in this single life, in this dark room,
us trying to decide what to do. We're twenty three
years old, or no, I was, I was twenty two then,
I think, and we're trying to decide what to do
in a terrible dilemma. And believe me, a Rhodes scholarship,
(09:18):
there's nothing that you'd throw away. We didn't throw them away.
We gave them up with a great deal of reluctance.
But we made the decision that I'd send my letter
into the Marine Corps, I'd go to Vietnam. And he
turned his draft card in and got out of England
and got to Canada.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So he took off.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think a couple of days after that decision, and
I was, you know, Marin was back in America in
the Marine Corps on active duty.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I admire him greatly.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Everybody else just sort of hid behind the privilege. A
lot of people asked me, how do you feel about
the guys that went to Canada. I'm going like they
at least acted most of them with honor. So I
think that the issue was being true to your moral position.
But it wasn't easy, and I think, you know, people
would like to think that those kinds of decisions are easy.
(10:11):
I just felt, ultimately, I just couldn't stay there hiding
and looked myself in the mirror.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to Carlmerolantees for sharing this remarkable
story service versus the military, the difference between the two,
honoring your moral code, and how two young men took
very different positions and in the end, well Carl had
respect for both of them. Carl's story here on our
(10:42):
American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
a story from Carl Merlantis. Carl is the author of
the award winning books Matterhorn and What it Is Like
to Go to War. Paul is also a Vietnam War
veteran and the recipient of the Navy Cross, our nation's
second highest award for valor. But in nineteen sixty seven,
(00:32):
Call was far removed from the chaos of battle in
a position of privilege. Here's Call to tell the story
of why he chose to join the Marines and why
he later chose to go to Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
It was a series called Landmark Books, and I can't remember,
we'll put it out one of the big publishers.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And it was like the story of Betsy Ross.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And the American Flag, the Story of Thomas Jefferson, and all.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Those sorts of things that were like written for like
about you know, ten year olds or twelve year olds.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I remember reading one called the Story of the
US Marines, and that just fascinated me, you know. But
more importantly it was this thing, I mean, like the
guys on the football team, the good athletes, the good runners,
when they left high school, they would go down to
some mysterious place called San Diego MCRD Marine Corps Recruiting Depot,
(01:25):
and they'd come back, first of all with sun tans,
which we never saw where we lived.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And they would, I swear to God, they looked like
they were four inches broader in the shoulder and two
inches taller.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
And they would literally swagger up down the main street
of our little town Seaside, Oregon, which was a logging town,
a little town of about twenty five hundred people. And
I'm fifteen, sixteen years old, and I'm just thinking to myself,
I don't know what that is, but I want some
of that. So I went to the Marine recruiter and yeah,
I'm talking to the Marine recruiter.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I'm eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And I asked, I say to him, I said, you know,
I've read, you know, books about the Marines, and I've
seen John Wayne the Sands of Ewo Jima, and I
know what the Marines do.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
They land on beaches and all that sort of stuff.
But I said, do they do anything else?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
And he looks at me, he says, oh, yeah, he says,
we guard all the embassies all over the world. I
went really meanli in Paris, and he said absolutely, and
I can swear to God this is what went through
my mind. I went, well, the odds are you won't
get Paris, but you'll surely get Madrid or Rome.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Sign me up.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So it's a combination of those things. And then there
was the draft. It was patriotism.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I mean, I grew up in a time when visually
everybody's dad and uncle was in what they called the service.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
We don't call it that anymore. We call it the
military today, and.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I think that that's an enormously important change in our language. Well,
that was when your dad was in the service, that
was when your uncle was in this service. And there
was that sense of you know, the draft was like
the income tax.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
No one likes to pay their taxes.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Nobody wanted to get drafted, but you sort of felt
like you owed your country.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
You know. It's like, you know, the country won't.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Operate unless you pay your taxes. We don't you know,
the roads don't get fixed unless you pay your taxes.
The country isn't safe unless you When they drafted, you
go and do your bit. That was the feeling at
that time, and that was the late nineteen fifties, early
nineteen sixties so there was that, and there was the
fact that, you know, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
If I can do it.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
It's sort of a young man, you know, challenge, could
I make it?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So I joined when I was eighteen in a.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Program called PLC, the Two Leaders Class. It was a
classic Marine Corps program. It was like they didn't give
you any money. You joined as an enlisted in the reserves,
and you went off to Quantico in the summertime, and
if you survived what was just the same as boot camp,
(04:06):
then you got to go to college, but they didn't
pay you, and you just went back in the summer again,
and at the end of that you got a commission
if you graduated from college. I went to Oxford on
a scholarship and nineteen sixty seven I thought that that
would be you know, some of the Marines wouldn't let
me do because the Marines were really short of junior officers,
(04:28):
and they were great. They said, go ahead, it's a
great honor.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I got a Rhodes and.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
After about six or eight weeks over there, having a
wonderful time, I just felt guilty because this little high
school I grew up when six boys died and about
seventy served in the Vietnam War, and the high school
(04:55):
was about, you know, four hundred kids, so two hundred boys.
I mean, it was pretty amazing, and I just felt guilty.
I wasn't pulling my oar. I wasn't contributing like they were.
They were putting themselves out there, and I was hiding back.
And I was always raised never to do that. I mean,
that's just something that you don't do. You know, if
(05:17):
your friends are risking themselves, then you go out there
with it with them. And I was choosing not to
do that. I was letting them take the risk. And
I felt like I used the word I was hiding
behind the privilege.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Most of the guys I went to high school with
they didn't even go to college.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's why such a large percentage I'm served in Vietnam,
because in those days, the draft was very unfair. You
could get out of service if you got a doctor
to say that you had a bad knee, or if
you you know, you could say that you were gay,
or you could say you know, any number of things.
And the other, the one was the legitimate one, which
(05:54):
is for a long times called the two S deferment.
If you were in college they wouldn't draft you, which
is horribly skewed towards the wealthier part of the country.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
But it didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I mean, it was a war that was just not
making sense, that just was looking you know, what's the
word problematical, unethical. I mean, we were getting into, you know,
trying to measure the war by how many people we killed.
That's not a moral situation. Killing people in the military
is a consequence of trying to get something else done.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That's the objective.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And if people get killed on the way, that is warfare.
But an objective of just killing people is in my opinion, immral.
And we no, we didn't have an objective other than
you know, well save the South Vietnamese government, but that
was looking a little dicey because it was clearly a
corrupt government. On the other hand, I mean I could
see that the North was a totalitarian government that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Didn't look good.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It was just a mess, and it was a moral mess.
And so you know, you'd say, well, then you shouldn't go.
But I had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution
of the United States, and I took my oath seriously.
I mean, I swore to God that I would uphold
the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of
(07:16):
the United States says that the President of the United
States is the commander in chief of the military. Civilian
control of the military is absolutely essential. And if the
military decides that it doesn't want to do what the
civilians ask it to do, you got.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
A Banana republic.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And so you can't have a military where individual people say,
I don't think I'm going to I don't agree with
the president. To uphold the Constitution of the United States,
you either have to resign or do what you're told.
But now, all of a sudden, we're fighting a war,
which you know, the civilians in control decided to put
(07:58):
us into. Well, now I've got two moral issues, both
of which I agree with, which is that the war
is wrong. But I'm already in the military, and I
swore an oath to do what the constitution had set up.
That was my moral dilemma, and I was very acutely
conscious of it. My girlfriend at the time said she'd
(08:23):
go to Sweden with me. She didn't want to go
to Algeria. Algeria was taking deserters and I wouldn't have
been a draft dodge, right, I'd have been a deserter.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
That's a one step above that.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I have to admit that that's a little bit
scary too, So you know, that would have hindered me
a bit. My friend was just deciding to turn his
draft card as a protest, and we spent this really
long night. Just like I tell people, I said, I
have the feeling that we were sort of hovering over
a single candle. I know that's not true, but the
(08:56):
feeling of it was the two of us, just the
two of us in this single life, in this dark room,
us trying to decide what to do. We're twenty three
years old, or no, I was, I was twenty two then,
I think, and we're trying to decide what to do
in a terrible dilemma. And believe me, a Rhodes scholarship,
(09:18):
there's nothing that you'd throw away. We didn't throw them away.
We gave them up with a great deal of reluctance.
But we made the decision that I'd send my letter
into the Marine Corps, I'd go to Vietnam. And he
turned his draft card in and got out of England
and got to Canada.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
So he took off.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think a couple of days after that decision, and
I was, you know, Marin was back in America in
the Marine Corps on active duty.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I admire him greatly.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Everybody else just sort of hid behind the privilege. A
lot of people asked me, how do you feel about
the guys that went to Canada. I'm going like they
at least acted most of them with honor. So I
think that the issue was being true to your moral position.
But it wasn't easy, and I think, you know, people
would like to think that those kinds of decisions are easy.
(10:11):
I just felt, ultimately, I just couldn't stay there hiding
and looked myself in the mirror.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to Carlmerolantees for sharing this remarkable
story service versus the military, the difference between the two,
honoring your moral code, and how two young men took
very different positions and in the end, well Carl had
respect for both of them. Carl's story here on our
(10:42):
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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