November 12, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the late 1960s, Karl Marlantes was presented with a choice. Serve in a war that he saw as unjust, desert to Algeria or Sweden, or stay at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and hide behind that privilege as his high school friends fought and died in the jungle of Vietnam. Marlantes chose to serve. But why?
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Episode Transcript
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. Prl 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 valley. 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. And
it was like the story of Betsy Ross and the
American Flag, the Story of Thomas Jefferson, and all those
sorts of things that were like written for like about
you know, ten year olds or twelve year olds. And
I remember reading one called the Story of the US Marines,
(01:05):
and that just fascinated me. 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, and they'd come back,
(01:28):
first of all with sun tans, which we never saw
where we lived. And they would, I swear to God,
they looked like they were four inches broader in the
shoulder and two inches taller. And they would literally swagger
up and down the main street of our little town Seaside, Oregon,
which was a logging town, a little town about twenty
five hundred people. And I'm fifteen, sixteen years old, and
(01:48):
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.
I'm eighteen, 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. They land on
beaches and all that sort of stuff. But I said,
(02:10):
do they do anything else? And he looks at me
and he says, oh, yeah, he says, we guard all
the embassies all over the world. I went really mean,
like 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. Sign me up.
(02:34):
So it's a combination of those things. And then there
was the draft. It was patriotism. I mean, I grew
up in a time when visually everybody's dad and uncle
was in what they called the service. We don't call
it that anymore. We call it the military today, and
I think that that's an enormously important change in our language. Well,
(02:57):
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. No one likes to pay their taxes.
Nobody wanted to get drafted, but you sort of felt
like you owed your country. You know. It's like, you know,
the country won't operate unless you pay your taxes. We
(03:18):
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 if
I can do it. It's sort of a young man, you know, challenge,
(03:40):
can I make it? So I joined when I was
eighteen in a 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
(04:00):
in the summertime, and if you survived what was just
the same as boot camp, 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 in nineteen
sixty seven I thought that that would be you know,
(04:23):
some of the Marines wouldn't let me do because the
Marines were really short of junior officers, and they were great.
They said, go ahead, it's a great honor. I got
a Rhodes and after about six or eight weeks over there,
having a wonderful time, I just felt guilty because this
(04:45):
little high school I grew up when six boys died
and about seventy served in the Vietnam War, and the
high school was about, you know, four hundred kids, so
two hundred boys. I mean, it was 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
(05:09):
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 your friends
are risking themselves, then you go out there with them.
And I was choosing not to do that. I was
letting them take the risk. And and I felt like
I used the word I was hiding behind the privilege.
(05:30):
Most of the guys I went to high school with
they didn't even go to college. That's why such a
large percentage of 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,
(05:50):
you know, any number of things. And the other, the
one was the legitimate one, which 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. But it didn't make
sense to me. I mean, it was a war that
was just not making sense, that just was looking you know,
(06:13):
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. That's the objective. And if people get
killed on the way, that is warfare. But an objective
(06:35):
of just killing people is in my opinion, imral. And
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 didn't look good. It
was just a mess, and it was a moral mess.
(06:57):
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
the United States says that the President of the United
(07:20):
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 a Banana republic.
And so you can't have a military where individual people say,
(07:40):
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
us into. Well, now I've got two moral issues, both
(08:03):
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
go to Sweden with me. She didn't want to go
(08:24):
to Algeria. Algeria was taking deserters and I wouldn't have
been a draft dodge, right, I'd have been a deserter.
That's a one step above that. So I have to
admit that that's a little bit scary too, So I
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
(08:46):
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 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
(09:06):
or no, 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, there's nothing that you'd
throw away. We didn't throw them away. We gave them
up with a great reluctance. But we made the decision
(09:26):
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. So
he took off I think a couple of days after
that decision, and I was, you know, marine was back
in America in the Marine Corps on active duty. I
(09:47):
admire him greatly. 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,
(10:07):
you know, people would like to think that those kinds
of decisions are easy. 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 Carmeorlntes 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. Prl 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 valley. 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. And
it was like the story of Betsy Ross and the
American Flag, the Story of Thomas Jefferson, and all those
sorts of things that were like written for like about
you know, ten year olds or twelve year olds. And
I remember reading one called the Story of the US Marines,
(01:05):
and that just fascinated me. 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, and they'd come back,
(01:28):
first of all with sun tans, which we never saw
where we lived. And they would, I swear to God,
they looked like they were four inches broader in the
shoulder and two inches taller. And they would literally swagger
up and down the main street of our little town Seaside, Oregon,
which was a logging town, a little town about twenty
five hundred people. And I'm fifteen, sixteen years old, and
(01:48):
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.
I'm eighteen, 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. They land on
beaches and all that sort of stuff. But I said,
(02:10):
do they do anything else? And he looks at me
and he says, oh, yeah, he says, we guard all
the embassies all over the world. I went really mean,
like 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. Sign me up.
(02:34):
So it's a combination of those things. And then there
was the draft. It was patriotism. I mean, I grew
up in a time when visually everybody's dad and uncle
was in what they called the service. We don't call
it that anymore. We call it the military today, and
I think that that's an enormously important change in our language. Well,
(02:57):
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. No one likes to pay their taxes.
Nobody wanted to get drafted, but you sort of felt
like you owed your country. You know. It's like, you know,
the country won't operate unless you pay your taxes. We
(03:18):
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 if
I can do it. It's sort of a young man, you know, challenge,
(03:40):
can I make it? So I joined when I was
eighteen in a 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
(04:00):
in the summertime, and if you survived what was just
the same as boot camp, 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 in nineteen
sixty seven I thought that that would be you know,
(04:23):
some of the Marines wouldn't let me do because the
Marines were really short of junior officers, and they were great.
They said, go ahead, it's a great honor. I got
a Rhodes and after about six or eight weeks over there,
having a wonderful time, I just felt guilty because this
(04:45):
little high school I grew up when six boys died
and about seventy served in the Vietnam War, and the
high school was about, you know, four hundred kids, so
two hundred boys. I mean, it was 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
(05:09):
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 your friends
are risking themselves, then you go out there with them.
And I was choosing not to do that. I was
letting them take the risk. And and I felt like
I used the word I was hiding behind the privilege.
(05:30):
Most of the guys I went to high school with
they didn't even go to college. That's why such a
large percentage of 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,
(05:50):
you know, any number of things. And the other, the
one was the legitimate one, which 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. But it didn't make
sense to me. I mean, it was a war that
was just not making sense, that just was looking you know,
(06:13):
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. That's the objective. And if people get
killed on the way, that is warfare. But an objective
(06:35):
of just killing people is in my opinion, imral. And
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 didn't look good. It
was just a mess, and it was a moral mess.
(06:57):
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
the United States says that the President of the United
(07:20):
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 a Banana republic.
And so you can't have a military where individual people say,
(07:40):
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
us into. Well, now I've got two moral issues, both
(08:03):
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
go to Sweden with me. She didn't want to go
(08:24):
to Algeria. Algeria was taking deserters and I wouldn't have
been a draft dodge, right, I'd have been a deserter.
That's a one step above that. So I have to
admit that that's a little bit scary too, So I
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
(08:46):
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 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
(09:06):
or no, 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, there's nothing that you'd
throw away. We didn't throw them away. We gave them
up with a great reluctance. But we made the decision
(09:26):
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. So
he took off I think a couple of days after
that decision, and I was, you know, marine was back
in America in the Marine Corps on active duty. I
(09:47):
admire him greatly. 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,
(10:07):
you know, people would like to think that those kinds
of decisions are easy. 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 Carmeorlntes 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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