i i was in the u s navy i was a junior officer during the vietnam war and i served on a ship that's called a destroyer it's essentially in the navy's it's a small combatant and i also that ship spent six months off the waters of the doing various tasks and then i returned for a year in a  planning and support capacity on the land in vietnam and it took up about three and a half years of my life so i also said told the coordinators i'm here representing my brother we're both actually  i competed for a spot in the navy officer candidate school and fortunately i was successful and went to navy o c s in the summer of one thousand nine hundred and sixty six to be honest i didn't want to be in the army of the marines my eyes precluded being a pilot so the navy seemed like a reasonable thing and i'd always liked the ocean i mean some of my  reasons for going in besides doing my military service were it appeared to be a more interesting branch of the service for me all right my last duty station was in  approximately three or four weeks later in san francisco at the naval station and then i took my time traveling across the country to get back to boston which is my hometown belmont's my hometown so that's how i got  k when i was on the ship we didn't really physically land in vietnam we were off the coast doing a variety of activities which i can get into later on if you would like but i did have a chance to they call the captain's gig it was actually a power boat and i walked around the dock that was it when i came back from my full year i spent the prince months in saigon saigon was had gone through what is referred to as the one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight tet offensive about six or seven months before i got there but that was over with and while there was always of threat that it might reoccurrence some fashion fortunately it didn't while i was there so it was it was a crowded city there were refugees there but the american military personnel were pretty well housed and well treated i was initially what's called an ensign in the navy that's the equivalent of a nd lieutenant in the army you may be more familiar with that type of or the marines and i was called the st i was the st lieutenant tennant and the gunner usually one of the gunnery liaison officers and one of our roles when we were off the coast of vietnam was to help pick up downed pilots who had we were shot down we actually didn't do it a helicopter did it that was on another destroyer destroyer but we were sort of a team if you wish and then we also had gunfire what i call gunfire support duties and that's where my job as the gun really a son officer came in no e mail no cell phone sometimes we felt like we were sending u basically through letters although in one instance we had a rest and recreation opportunity in hong kong and i actually called my parents from hong kong it was a big deal back then and i woke them up about three or four in the morning and i startled them i mean they weren't expecting that i couldn't tell them ahead of time but except for that one phone call we communicated via letters i actually got across a christmas card i like to boast about this from president johnson when he was in the white house and the reason i did that i knew that anybody in the in the military service that sent the white house a christmas card would get one back and i did it i still got it to come back comes in different forms on the ship the gunfire support mission which would qualify as combat and but we were more in an offhand rather than defensive capacity although i must say we were there with three or four other destroyers and at least two of those ships were hit by enemy gunfire and unfortunately one of the shipmates on the ship one of the ships was killed so yes i i was under that threat fortunately my ship was never hit it was  exclusively in an offensive capacity let me focus on what what happened when the ship was over in the vietnam area which was for six months and also what i did when i was there afterwards for a year the idea was to go someplace very exotic and very pleasant so i ship wound up visiting hong kong taiwan we visited the philippines a lot because the u s navy used to have a supply base there and then also japan but in the process of coming and going we stopped in hawaii we stopped in san diego we went through the panama canal which by the way if you ever have a chance to do that do it it's fascinating and in those places we basically hung out with our friends on the ship visited points of interest had something to drink and eat and then when i was there on the land i also went to hong kong and bangkok so i got to visit a lot of the cities over there and far east asia that's actually one of the perhaps the most positive things about the military is that you really do bond and i made a number of friendships with fellow officers for the most part on the ship some of them i've kept up but unfortunately most of them over a period of in my case close to fifty years you know sort of unfortunately go by the wayside but i do have a funny story that i would like to tell i was in charge of about thirty five young men who were the direct force on this destroyer that meant they had the dirtiest grammar the most grimy and years later when i got out of the navy i went through an m b a program at mit and during the st two years of the orientation i kept looking at this guy across the way boy i really recognized his face but i couldn't place him and i thought i had placed him but i placed him incorrectly and then once when we were standing next to each other and i don't know the nd day looked up at me and he said you know remember me do you when you get that sort of inquiry sort of say oh my lord what's coming you said my name is john so and so and i was in your division on the s new that was my ship and i went oh my lord you knew me back when i was a green ensign and we became good friends in business school unbeknownst to each other we didn't know we were blind of the business school are going to go but we ran into each other about oh about eight years after we were on the ship together as you may know from studying history during that period of time the vietnam war was a very unpopular war and a lot of the blame in my mind mistakenly was put on the shoulders of the privates the sergeants the lieutenants if you wish who were in the field so consequently you really didn't talk about it that much and i didn't talk about it never denied it you know i felt that my duty was fine and honorable but you don't brag about it either i mean for  today you know people are congratulated for the military service i even had a young man a sophomore i believe come up to me he sort of knew why i was here this happened about a half an hour ago and he said you a veteran i said yeah thank you for your service and that was really nice was really nice i really appreciated that so you there weren't any parades for us when we came back didn't bother me that much but in california in a place called menlo park california i was working as a management consultant and then in one thousand nine hundred and seventy five or back here in the boston area i actually got my naval commissioned before i was twenty two and i was off active duty before i was twenty five so i was in and out over a period of three and a half years and it was very early in the in the vietnam conflict all right in the service and you're doing things your concentration is more immediate to the people you're doing it with and what you're supposed to be doing i mean people look out for each other and that's a very good trait and there really isn't in my opinion there isn't a lot of time spent discussing the political correctness of the war and at that point in time six outside so i would say there wasn't a lot of discussion about the political aspects of the war but more what's our mission going to be and how we're going to get back from that one piece i wish more people your age had opportunities to serve their country not just in the military but in services like the peace corps the domestic peace corps  just volunteer your time because i found that even though my time in the military wasn't completely comfortable by any means i'm rather proud of the fact that i was able to really down eight about three and a half years of my life to a purpose other than my own advancement and i want to make sure that future generations realize that if the united states is going to go to war then they better be sure that it's a war that the country approves of and at the very least our representatives in congress are all in agreement that wasn't