The images on this page are a personal project created to acknowledge my father Edward LaRose Sr. He is the person who first taught me how to use a film camera as a young man. When I wanted to take photos growing up, I often borrowed his cherished Minolta SRT 101. A pristine 35mm film camera he had purchased new in 1968 while an American soldier in Vietnam. He carried that camera all through the war documenting his experience there. When he returned to the states his camera went on a closet shelf and the photographs taken with it were put into storage. Those photographs sat unseen in a Kodak slide Carousel box for 50 years. Until, In 2018 when that box was given to me by my mother. I immediately began the work of scanning and restoring the images inside. During this process I learned that all I am I owe to my father. On fathers day of that same year, I gave him this collection of images in book form. My father in return gave me his camera.
The following is my father’s first hand account as told to me:
I was a 15 year old kid living in Waterbury Connecticut the first time I heard about the war in Vietnam. There was a guy from the neighborhood who had joined the Navy. He had been to Vietnam during his time in the military. When he came home he told people about it and word got around. I turned eighteen in 1966. I was just starting my life. I had a job working at a local grocery store. Your mother and I had been dating for a while now and we were engaged. She worked as a sewing machine operator at a garment factory. In the factory talk about Vietnam centered around the draft. Your mother worked with a lot of girls whose boyfriends or family members had been drafted into the army. Only those who were a college student or an apprentice in a trade would be granted a deferment. I was neither of those two things. Your mother and I both knew that there was a good chance my name would be called.
In 1967 228,000 men were drafted into the U.S. military. I was one of them. I can still remember standing alone on the front porch of my mothers home as I tore open the envelope. The words read “Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States, and to report at…” I stared at it for a while. My mom was the first person I told. She didn’t have any words to say about it. Perhaps like me, she had almost half expected it. When I told your mother and the rest of my family they all responded with the emotion of fear. They had been reading the paper and watching the news. They were scared that I might loose my life over there. I did my best to calm their fears. I told them not to worry. I excepted it. It was something that I and many other men just had to do.
I reported to the draft examination room and encountered a circus. Guys were coming in fall down drunk. They would drink all night to get their blood pressure up to fail the physical. The military knew what was going on and made the drunks stay over night to sober up. Some were so determined to fail they would sneak in booze. Other guys would try and say they were homosexual. They would wear a woman’s bra and panties under their clothes.
I was sent for basic training to Fort Dixon in New Jersey. Fortunately I was there with two friends from home. John O. Lewis and Francis “Franny’ Leblanc. John was a jokester. The guys sense of humor always had us on the verge of getting screamed at by the drill sergeant. We would all be standing in line. You could hear a pin drop. Then John would whisper some funny line or echo what had been said in a ridiculous voice. Next thing I know I’m struggling to not burst out in laughter. Oh man, he was hysterical. Franny was actually from the same neighborhood as your mother. We all grew up together. In fact his girlfriend and your mother would ride up together to visit Franny and I while we were stationed at Fort Dix.
There are two things you do in basic, you physically train and you work. For work every junior enlisted military personnel in basic was required to pull KP. KP or “Kitchen Police” as it was called consisted of preparing food for the army. Mountains of potatoes needed to be peeled. Piles of garlic and onions needed to be chopped. You had to do it all and then clean it up. There was no time limit to that work, you were there for how ever long it took. The first time I pulled KP it took 18 hours. Afterwards I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was pass out. As soon as I rested my head on my pillow an officer calls out to me. “Lets go.” he says “You got KP.” I told him I just left the kitchen moments ago. He didn’t care. It was four o’clock in the morning and raining outside as he walked me back to the kitchen. I walked in the front door and hung up my jacket. Then I immediately exited out the back and returned to my bunk. As I slept no one came looking for me. Later my sergeant said I should never had been called back to back like that.
In basic every soldier is given an aptitude test to find what they are good at. This is how they determine your military occupational status. I was good at working on machines and engines. Based on this I was given the M.O.S. of Precise Power. After basic I was sent to Fort Belvoir in Virginia to learn how to repair and maintain generators for missile sites.
Fort Belvoir is located just over twenty miles away from Washington DC. On the evening of April 4th 1968 they called all of us to assembly. They announced the tragic news. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed by an assassins bullet in Memphis. Protests were erupting in Washington, they feared a riot would take place. We were being sent in to try and keep peace. The room was silent. Most of the black soldiers began to cry. Soon they loaded us on to busses and we rode speechlessly into Washington. We arrived to the sounds of protestors screaming. People were throwing rocks and bottles. A few cars were on fire in the distance. They marched us into a make shift encampment where we were all dressed in riot gear. Next they sent us out into the streets to intimidate and show force. We stood there like a wall for a few hours until the threat of a full on riot was gone. Then we were loaded back on the busses in the darkness of night to return to Fort Belvoir.
After I finished my M.O.S. training I was placed in a hold over company to await my post. After two months of waiting, my M.O.S. had still not been called. In the mean time I was working kitchen patrol all day every day. I decided that I would put in as many request to transfer as I could. I wanted out of Fort Belvoir. I 1409’ed for anything and everything related to my M.O.S. The first company that responded was in Vietnam.
Before being deployed I was allowed to return home for thirty days. I Married your mother on June 13th in a small simple ceremony. Grandma Ramieri gave your mother some money and sent her to the dress shop where aunt Anna worked downtown to buy a white dress. I wore my soldiers uniform. Then your mother and I drove to Rhode Island to spend a few days alone. When July rolled around it was time for me to leave. Everyone was very emotional. Your mother and my family drove me to JFK international airport in New York. We said our goodbyes and my sister Barbra put a chain with saint Christopher on my neck. Saint Christopher was the saint of protection. From New York I flew to San Fransisco California. There were a few other soldiers who were also on the flight. The stewardesses seeing us in our military uniforms kept giving us free drinks. By the time the plane landed we were so drunk I am not sure how we found our way to the base. We didn’t leave right away. For two days they had us spread out on bunks in a giant airplane hanger. There were thousands of soldiers waiting. Eventually they shipped each and every one of us off to the war.
The first time I set my eyes on Vietnam I was taken aback by the landscape. I saw the large open blue sky full of clouds. I saw the the lush green forrest canopy. It was hard to believe that a war could be going on in such a beautiful place. My first night in Vietnam was an experience. Living back east I had never seen a night sky like the one I saw in Vietnam that night. You could look up and see thousands upon thousands of stars. It was as if it went on forever.
They didn’t have any missile sites were I was stationed in Nam so they put my mechanical skills to use maintaining and repairing chainsaws. The chainsaws were crucial because they were needed to clear the trees for helicopter landing zones. This work kept me extremely busy. Chainsaws would return broken or filled with pieces of shrapnel. It was my job to keep them running.
About once a week or more the entire division would be called into formation and given an area of the jungle to sweep. Usually we would cover 10 square miles or so. The bugs were brutal. The mosquitos were like dive bombers. In places the ground would be crawling with bamboo viper snakes. On one patrol I was bitten in the arm by a scorpion. The peoples liberation forces of south Vietnam, better known as the Vietcong were out there shooting at us. When they weren’t shooting directly at you, they were shooting over your head or making noise to prevent anyone from sleeping. They also dug tunnels underground and hid in them. They were extremely skilled in guerrilla warfare. We had to be careful to leave nothing behind in the field that could be used against us. For this reason we had to haul our trash. We couldn’t discard C ration cans on the ground after a meal. The vietcong would use those same cans to make bombs.
The year I arrived in Vietnam was also the year of the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese Regular Army and the Vietcong launched a major offensive attack on South Vietnam. This attack took place from January to September 1968. It began on the Vietnamese new year celebration known as Tet. They blasted and attacked the US embassy in Saigon. They captured entire villages and cities killing all the political leaders and teachers. The U.S. Military was fighting to push the North Vietnamese Regular Army and the Vietcong out of the south. They threw everything they had at us. When our planes dropped bombs it was unreal. You would first see the explosion, then you would hear the sound. When the planes dropped napalm it would burn everything it touched to the ground.
One of the first guys I met out there was also the guy with the biggest personality. Frank McKenzie, or “Red” as we called him. He was self described as “One big, bad, and willfully destructive mother.” Red had seen a lot of combat during his time over there. He fought in places like Dak To, Kontum, Bon Song, and Ban Me Thout. As Red told it, one day he was leading his company on a sweep. He was upfront with a military dog when they were attacked from the back of the line.The enemy let them walk right by and then ambushed them. He was one of the only survivors. Red always carried around the same deck of cards. He called it his “dead man’s hand.” He had a superstitious belief that he needed to always have it with him. He was very eccentric. He would ask you: “Who’s your best friend?”. If you gave the wrong answer… pow!… he would punch you in the mouth. He would say “Your mother is your best friend!” One day Red got real drunk and stole a jeep. He took off driving toward North Vietnam. He never returned to base. I heard he had been caught by the military police and thrown into Long Binh Jail, or as we called it LBJ.
I had another friend from Kentucky by the name of Clark D. Hilton. He had just become a new father. He was ecstatic because his wife had given birth to twins. When I congratulated him, he smiled and laughed. “Well Ed…” He said in his southern drawl “when y’all get home, you come look me up and I’ll teach you how to make them twins.” It made me laugh at the time. I laughed again when you and your twin sister were born 7 years later.
In addition to Red and Clark, there was Fortman, King, Moose, Gary and Dennis. Fortman kind of took me under his wing when I first arrived and helped teach me what I needed to know. Other guys like Moose, told me what camera I should buy and taught me how to use it. We played cards. We listened to music.
I carried my camera with me all the time. I wish I took more pictures. Most of the shots I took downtown were of the local people. The markets were busy and crowded, with food and vegetables laid out all over the ground. On one occasion we were riding back to base in the back of a military vehicle. The sun was going down and one of the soldiers was high as a kite. He pulled a flute out of his jacket and began to play. A couple of the other guys joined in harmonizing and singing. We were in the middle of a war and finding ways to make the best of it.
I believe having your mother to come home to saved my life. If I didn’t have her I know I would have volunteered for a lot more. I would have been bolder. Knowing I had to get home to her made me hold back. I wrote to your mother everyday. We were constantly writing to one another. That was our only way of communicating. It took about a week or two for the mail to travel from Vietnam to the states. Your mother would be worried sick about me until a letter came. So much could happen in the span of a week. Most soldiers counted down the days and hours until they would be going home. When your time was short, and you were about to leave Vietnam, you counted every minute.
Leaving Vietnam was not easy for me. It was hard coming back home knowing the war was still going on. Your job would be waiting for you, but it wasn’t like you could just step back into your old life. While you had been off at war everyone else had advanced in their careers. Every one else had moved on. Your uncle Billy helped get me a plumbing apprenticeship. Your mother and I settled in to our life together. We knew how lucky we were to have one another. We took all of the letters we had written to each other and piled them up in a metal barrel in your grandmothers backyard. Then we set them on fire. It was our way of moving forward. We didn’t need anyone else to read what we had shared. Those letters were just for us.
When I got home I learned that my good friend Franny from basic training had been killed by enemy fire in 68. His family still honors him every year by putting his picture in the paper. I’m no hero. I m just one of over two million men who were drafted. I’m lucky I made it home. Over fifty eight thousand soldiers did not.
Edward James LaRose Sr.
2018
I was a 15 year old kid living in Waterbury Connecticut the first time I heard about the war in Vietnam. There was a guy from the neighborhood who had joined the Navy. He had been to Vietnam during his time in the military. When he came home he told people about it and word got around. I turned eighteen in 1966. I was just starting my life. I had a job working at a local grocery store. Your mother and I had been dating for a while now and we were engaged. She worked as a sewing machine operator at a garment factory. In the factory talk about Vietnam centered around the draft. Your mother worked with a lot of girls whose boyfriends or family members had been drafted into the army. Only those who were a college student or an apprentice in a trade would be granted a deferment. I was neither of those two things. Your mother and I both knew that there was a good chance my name would be called.
In 1967 228,000 men were drafted into the U.S. military. I was one of them. I can still remember standing alone on the front porch of my mothers home as I tore open the envelope. The words read “Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States, and to report at…” I stared at it for a while. My mom was the first person I told. She didn’t have any words to say about it. Perhaps like me, she had almost half expected it. When I told your mother and the rest of my family they all responded with the emotion of fear. They had been reading the paper and watching the news. They were scared that I might loose my life over there. I did my best to calm their fears. I told them not to worry. I excepted it. It was something that I and many other men just had to do.
I reported to the draft examination room and encountered a circus. Guys were coming in fall down drunk. They would drink all night to get their blood pressure up to fail the physical. The military knew what was going on and made the drunks stay over night to sober up. Some were so determined to fail they would sneak in booze. Other guys would try and say they were homosexual. They would wear a woman’s bra and panties under their clothes.
I was sent for basic training to Fort Dixon in New Jersey. Fortunately I was there with two friends from home. John O. Lewis and Francis “Franny’ Leblanc. John was a jokester. The guys sense of humor always had us on the verge of getting screamed at by the drill sergeant. We would all be standing in line. You could hear a pin drop. Then John would whisper some funny line or echo what had been said in a ridiculous voice. Next thing I know I’m struggling to not burst out in laughter. Oh man, he was hysterical. Franny was actually from the same neighborhood as your mother. We all grew up together. In fact his girlfriend and your mother would ride up together to visit Franny and I while we were stationed at Fort Dix.
There are two things you do in basic, you physically train and you work. For work every junior enlisted military personnel in basic was required to pull KP. KP or “Kitchen Police” as it was called consisted of preparing food for the army. Mountains of potatoes needed to be peeled. Piles of garlic and onions needed to be chopped. You had to do it all and then clean it up. There was no time limit to that work, you were there for how ever long it took. The first time I pulled KP it took 18 hours. Afterwards I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was pass out. As soon as I rested my head on my pillow an officer calls out to me. “Lets go.” he says “You got KP.” I told him I just left the kitchen moments ago. He didn’t care. It was four o’clock in the morning and raining outside as he walked me back to the kitchen. I walked in the front door and hung up my jacket. Then I immediately exited out the back and returned to my bunk. As I slept no one came looking for me. Later my sergeant said I should never had been called back to back like that.
In basic every soldier is given an aptitude test to find what they are good at. This is how they determine your military occupational status. I was good at working on machines and engines. Based on this I was given the M.O.S. of Precise Power. After basic I was sent to Fort Belvoir in Virginia to learn how to repair and maintain generators for missile sites.
Fort Belvoir is located just over twenty miles away from Washington DC. On the evening of April 4th 1968 they called all of us to assembly. They announced the tragic news. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed by an assassins bullet in Memphis. Protests were erupting in Washington, they feared a riot would take place. We were being sent in to try and keep peace. The room was silent. Most of the black soldiers began to cry. Soon they loaded us on to busses and we rode speechlessly into Washington. We arrived to the sounds of protestors screaming. People were throwing rocks and bottles. A few cars were on fire in the distance. They marched us into a make shift encampment where we were all dressed in riot gear. Next they sent us out into the streets to intimidate and show force. We stood there like a wall for a few hours until the threat of a full on riot was gone. Then we were loaded back on the busses in the darkness of night to return to Fort Belvoir.
After I finished my M.O.S. training I was placed in a hold over company to await my post. After two months of waiting, my M.O.S. had still not been called. In the mean time I was working kitchen patrol all day every day. I decided that I would put in as many request to transfer as I could. I wanted out of Fort Belvoir. I 1409’ed for anything and everything related to my M.O.S. The first company that responded was in Vietnam.
Before being deployed I was allowed to return home for thirty days. I Married your mother on June 13th in a small simple ceremony. Grandma Ramieri gave your mother some money and sent her to the dress shop where aunt Anna worked downtown to buy a white dress. I wore my soldiers uniform. Then your mother and I drove to Rhode Island to spend a few days alone. When July rolled around it was time for me to leave. Everyone was very emotional. Your mother and my family drove me to JFK international airport in New York. We said our goodbyes and my sister Barbra put a chain with saint Christopher on my neck. Saint Christopher was the saint of protection. From New York I flew to San Fransisco California. There were a few other soldiers who were also on the flight. The stewardesses seeing us in our military uniforms kept giving us free drinks. By the time the plane landed we were so drunk I am not sure how we found our way to the base. We didn’t leave right away. For two days they had us spread out on bunks in a giant airplane hanger. There were thousands of soldiers waiting. Eventually they shipped each and every one of us off to the war.
The first time I set my eyes on Vietnam I was taken aback by the landscape. I saw the large open blue sky full of clouds. I saw the the lush green forrest canopy. It was hard to believe that a war could be going on in such a beautiful place. My first night in Vietnam was an experience. Living back east I had never seen a night sky like the one I saw in Vietnam that night. You could look up and see thousands upon thousands of stars. It was as if it went on forever.
They didn’t have any missile sites were I was stationed in Nam so they put my mechanical skills to use maintaining and repairing chainsaws. The chainsaws were crucial because they were needed to clear the trees for helicopter landing zones. This work kept me extremely busy. Chainsaws would return broken or filled with pieces of shrapnel. It was my job to keep them running.
About once a week or more the entire division would be called into formation and given an area of the jungle to sweep. Usually we would cover 10 square miles or so. The bugs were brutal. The mosquitos were like dive bombers. In places the ground would be crawling with bamboo viper snakes. On one patrol I was bitten in the arm by a scorpion. The peoples liberation forces of south Vietnam, better known as the Vietcong were out there shooting at us. When they weren’t shooting directly at you, they were shooting over your head or making noise to prevent anyone from sleeping. They also dug tunnels underground and hid in them. They were extremely skilled in guerrilla warfare. We had to be careful to leave nothing behind in the field that could be used against us. For this reason we had to haul our trash. We couldn’t discard C ration cans on the ground after a meal. The vietcong would use those same cans to make bombs.
The year I arrived in Vietnam was also the year of the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese Regular Army and the Vietcong launched a major offensive attack on South Vietnam. This attack took place from January to September 1968. It began on the Vietnamese new year celebration known as Tet. They blasted and attacked the US embassy in Saigon. They captured entire villages and cities killing all the political leaders and teachers. The U.S. Military was fighting to push the North Vietnamese Regular Army and the Vietcong out of the south. They threw everything they had at us. When our planes dropped bombs it was unreal. You would first see the explosion, then you would hear the sound. When the planes dropped napalm it would burn everything it touched to the ground.
One of the first guys I met out there was also the guy with the biggest personality. Frank McKenzie, or “Red” as we called him. He was self described as “One big, bad, and willfully destructive mother.” Red had seen a lot of combat during his time over there. He fought in places like Dak To, Kontum, Bon Song, and Ban Me Thout. As Red told it, one day he was leading his company on a sweep. He was upfront with a military dog when they were attacked from the back of the line.The enemy let them walk right by and then ambushed them. He was one of the only survivors. Red always carried around the same deck of cards. He called it his “dead man’s hand.” He had a superstitious belief that he needed to always have it with him. He was very eccentric. He would ask you: “Who’s your best friend?”. If you gave the wrong answer… pow!… he would punch you in the mouth. He would say “Your mother is your best friend!” One day Red got real drunk and stole a jeep. He took off driving toward North Vietnam. He never returned to base. I heard he had been caught by the military police and thrown into Long Binh Jail, or as we called it LBJ.
I had another friend from Kentucky by the name of Clark D. Hilton. He had just become a new father. He was ecstatic because his wife had given birth to twins. When I congratulated him, he smiled and laughed. “Well Ed…” He said in his southern drawl “when y’all get home, you come look me up and I’ll teach you how to make them twins.” It made me laugh at the time. I laughed again when you and your twin sister were born 7 years later.
In addition to Red and Clark, there was Fortman, King, Moose, Gary and Dennis. Fortman kind of took me under his wing when I first arrived and helped teach me what I needed to know. Other guys like Moose, told me what camera I should buy and taught me how to use it. We played cards. We listened to music.
I carried my camera with me all the time. I wish I took more pictures. Most of the shots I took downtown were of the local people. The markets were busy and crowded, with food and vegetables laid out all over the ground. On one occasion we were riding back to base in the back of a military vehicle. The sun was going down and one of the soldiers was high as a kite. He pulled a flute out of his jacket and began to play. A couple of the other guys joined in harmonizing and singing. We were in the middle of a war and finding ways to make the best of it.
I believe having your mother to come home to saved my life. If I didn’t have her I know I would have volunteered for a lot more. I would have been bolder. Knowing I had to get home to her made me hold back. I wrote to your mother everyday. We were constantly writing to one another. That was our only way of communicating. It took about a week or two for the mail to travel from Vietnam to the states. Your mother would be worried sick about me until a letter came. So much could happen in the span of a week. Most soldiers counted down the days and hours until they would be going home. When your time was short, and you were about to leave Vietnam, you counted every minute.
Leaving Vietnam was not easy for me. It was hard coming back home knowing the war was still going on. Your job would be waiting for you, but it wasn’t like you could just step back into your old life. While you had been off at war everyone else had advanced in their careers. Every one else had moved on. Your uncle Billy helped get me a plumbing apprenticeship. Your mother and I settled in to our life together. We knew how lucky we were to have one another. We took all of the letters we had written to each other and piled them up in a metal barrel in your grandmothers backyard. Then we set them on fire. It was our way of moving forward. We didn’t need anyone else to read what we had shared. Those letters were just for us.
When I got home I learned that my good friend Franny from basic training had been killed by enemy fire in 68. His family still honors him every year by putting his picture in the paper. I’m no hero. I m just one of over two million men who were drafted. I’m lucky I made it home. Over fifty eight thousand soldiers did not.
Edward James LaRose Sr.
2018