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San Mateo Middle College High School

Dr. Clay, student and son of Vietnam war pilot

Now a professor, Dr. Clay was on a school deferment during the draft years in the Vietnam era. Tall and thin his eyes are still full of life showing that the war probably didn’t affect him as much as it did others. He has an interesting outlook on the war in that his father was a pilot during the war and he was a student. He thinks that the war had more to do with factors other than what was told and gives a perspective of the war from a second person view.

“Have you ever seen the show Mash; where you see comedic horror kind of mixed? Because I knew some people who talked about- they were out at night and they were doing drugs…and they said they were watching a firefight, when everybody’s shooting at each other, and the tracers are going everywhere (he laughs and tosses his arms around to show the movement of the tracers). They were saying it was like a 4^th of July celebration. Everybody who was not in the immediate area was just sitting there having like a tailgate party- and you can’t stop it, you’re just watching. And I thought that was kind of an odd description of having a tailgate party and doing drugs while this is going on.

“I had another friend who was riding along in a jeep when the guy who took the front seat was killed- a sniper shot the guy. There were four people in the jeep and one was picked. They immediately jumped out of the jeep, the three of them that were left , and laid in a ditch, waiting. It was like a Russian roulette.

“[My father would see them] bring in pilots…and half of everybody who came there to fly was dead. You know it was like you’re sitting there watching people die. There was a guy hacked up to pieces with a machete, you know. That’s an interesting something that I thought about. My father was kind of appalled that women and children would go out and hack ‘em. [There would be ] wounded soldiers coming down in a parachute and the women and children of the village would go and chop them to pieces. And you say that’s horrible. When I was a boy, 18 and 19 years old, I didn’t quite understand it but looking back on it later in my life, I thought well, what would we have done if we were being napalmed and bombed and we saw our children and friends get blown up. ? What would we have done?

“I thought I didn’t want to go (he laughs). It didn’t sound safe to me. I wasn’t against the war, but I wasn’t too far into the fight against the war either. I didn’t feel the leaders of the protests were any better than the leaders they were protesting against. It’s easy to say, ‘Screw your war.’ It’s harder to put in place something that could replace that makes sense like an alternative.

“My life went pretty smoothly after the war in that it wasn’t affected too much by it. I think life became more precious for [ my father] and he immediately decided to change his life. You know you hear people that say they face death and decide that they are going to do what’s important to them? He divorced and remarried and became a Mormon. He did a one- eighty turn with his life and I would say he was happier in the second 20 years of his life than the first 20 years. He was in an area where half the men he flew with would die. It was a life changing time for him.

“War is insane (he pauses and looks to his side) and sane answers don’t fit.”