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.