Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:02 | John Bates had just gotten to Vietnam and the truck taking him to join his unit took fire on the road. He really wished he had a weapon but they had not given him one yet. He was based in An Hoa and he had two jobs at first. One was real good and one was real bad.
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The Marines sent him home after he received three Purple Hearts in Vietnam. John Bates then served a few months at Camp Horno before they sent him home. He was not done with the Corps, though, and would return as an officer.
He really wanted to be a Marine but John Bates went off to college to prove to his folks that he was not college material, at least not yet. Sure enough, it wasn't long before he was standing on the yellow footprints in San Diego.
After basic training you go to infantry training and then you go to Vietnam. John Bates knew that when he joined the Marine Corps and was eager to get on with it. The first thing he remembers when he got to Vietnam was the relentless heat. It poured through the open door of the airliner and made you take notice.
Nothing can live through that. John Bates watched as a massive air strike hit the NVA position in front of him. What he didn't know is that they had a plan for that and one of them would send him to the rear with a hole through his chest.
John Bates was recuperating from a wound in Da Nang and he was tired of the place. He managed to scrounge some boots and some pants but he couldn't come up with a shirt. Undaunted, he set out to rejoin his unit.
John Bates had just recovered from a gunshot wound but the NVA wasn't done with him yet. When he was on a listening post, he saw them creeping toward his position and readied a hand grenade. Before he left Vietnam he would have two more Purple Hearts.
Looking back, John Bates recalls the leaders who inspired him and the hard lesson learned from the war in Vietnam. Basically, don't send us somewhere and then tie our hands.
Wounded three times as a PFC in Vietnam, John Bates came back to the Corps as an officer. He briefly talks about his time in Desert Storm, and remembers the chaos of the week following the attacks on 9/11.
