Student Reactions to the Vietnam War
Woody Taylor talks about some of the NC State students who later served in the military during the Vietnam War. During the early 1960s, when they attended college, there wasn't any opposition to the war.
Interview on 2012-09-24 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Some colleges in fact actually were talking about dropping ROTC or things like that, primarily more the northeastern colleges, but I can't-.
00:00:14.352
We had ROTC, we probably contributed as many officers as any ROTC detachment around, and there might have been some negative feelings
00:00:33.148
but I was not aware of them. We were aware that there was a war going on and we were aware that we would probably get to participate in that,
00:00:44.390
should we continue in ROTC, and I did. I spent three tours in Vietnam in the Air Force as a bombardier on B-52s.
00:00:54.999
Joe Carpenter, my roommate, went over there for company commander duty, and their lifespan was about seven months at the time but he made it through a year.
00:01:11.303
But Hugh Shelton spent time over there and there were a lot of NC State graduates who spent time over there. But I think we did it out of an obligation
00:01:23.825
of duty to our country rather than having negative feelings about it. I can't remember any talks of going to Canada or things like that.
00:01:38.334
Now maybe they went on after '63-'67, '68, when it really picked up, the opposition-
00:01:46.380
but we were in the early stages then and I just don't remember a lot about it.
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