00:00:00VILLAR: Today is Wednesday, the 15th of November, 2017. We are in the home of William Olson and we will be recording his oral history for the Madison, Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Bill served in the United States Army in the 1st Infantry Division, Second Battalion, 16th Infantry during the Vietnam War. Bill served in Vietnam from June of 1967 through June of 1968. This interview is being conducted in the home of Bill Olsen. I'm Donald Villar and I'm the Special Projects Coordinator for the Jefferson County Veterans Service Office. And now I'll turn the microphone over to you, Bill, and you can share your life with us.
00:01:08OLSON: Good morning, Don. Happy to have you here. I appreciate all your time and work for all the vets in the county. My name is William Olson. I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on the 30th of January, 1947. I grew up in Chicago. Went to Catholic schools, Catholic high schools. Dad was a truck driver. And mom had worked in a factory for a while, but spent her lifetime working as a cook at the convent at St. David's Great School, where we went to school. She cooked for the nuns every day for over 20 years, besides her family of five. I had one brother and one sister. My brother I was two years younger, I was the oldest, and my sister was born ten years to the day after I was born. I grew up going to Catholic schools, Catholic high school. I worked jobs starting when I was 16, believe it or not I worked in a cigar store. To this day I don't understand why the place wasn't closed down because they sold tobacco products and I was sixteen or seventeen. But I got hired by the owner of the store and I worked there for about a year, year and a half. Then I was always looking to make some money and doing odd jobs. And I, my next job was a selling subscriptions to the Chicago Tribune newspaper. I would go door to door in other neighborhoods that I was not familiar with. Now when I think back now after all these years, the neighborhoods were not the greatest place for a young man to be walking around in. But I did that for a while and then I moved on I got a job a little later at Spiegel's warehouse. Spiegl's used to be a big business with uh-- Like a big box stores almost and uh-- I worked there for a while in the warehouse and uh after that i saw an article in a paper i was uh-- Seventeen eighteen years old around that time and there was an article into chicago sun times for uh-- Western electric to get a job there in the uh-- They advertised that if you got a job there and uh-- you happen to get drafted or went into service they would hold your job for you when you got back so i thought that was kind of a cool thing to do and i didn't know exactly what kind of job it was but uh-- I got hired and uh-- I did wiring and soldering for uh-- for a long time for months and uh uh-- You sat there and you did the soldering and there were a million different colored wires. And you had to solder certain wires together and uh-- It was like uh-- Trying to solder a bunch of different colors in a bowl of spaghetti after a while your eyeballs were spinning around in your head looking at all those different colored wires but anyway i did that for a while and uh my buddy uh-- Uh-- wanted me to go to junior college and I was not really a school person. I didn't like to study and after numerous times, he talked me into going to junior college, which we carpooled to go to school every day. And actually my grades were better in junior college than they were in high school. But after about three or four months, I dropped out of school and I told him, I said, I just don't enjoy going to school. I dropped out and sure enough several months later I got the letter from Uncle Sam telling me that I got drafted. Now I wasn't upset, I kind of figured I was going to wind up in the military, probably in Vietnam. My dad was in World War II for five years and all three of his brothers were in the army, the four of them, and I've got about I had about six or eight uncles who were in the service also. They had one served in the merchant marines, a few in the Navy, and a few in the army also, and a Marine also. But I felt it was, it was my duty as an American citizen to, to go where the government wanted me to go for our country. And after all the-- Patriotism in our family. I knew it was the right thing to do. And also my father-in-law was in the Navy also in World War II. So I got drafted January 9th of 1967, and I got sent to-- Fort Campbell, Kentucky. I did eight weeks there, basic training, and then they transferred us to Fort Polk, Louisiana, which was nicknamed Tigerland, which meant if you got to Fort polk, you were surely going to Vietnam. So I did my advanced training there for nine weeks, and I was waiting on graduation day. We got our orders and I looked at my orders and it said that I was going to-- Fort Lewis, Washington. Well, I was in shock because I figured I was going to Vietnam. Well, we went to Fort Lewis Washington and we were there about maybe two months and all it was was advanced training that we had already had at Fort Polk. They just wanted to over the same some of the same things we learned in Fort Polk. So my last couple days before we were to get on a troop ship at the port of Tacoma, Washington. We took a basketball out on the basketball court and I had the ball first and I proceeded to dribble the ball down the court and jumped up in the air to take the shot. And when I came down, there was a rock on the court. And when came down my left foot, my foot hit the rock that was on the court with all my weight. My foot turned sideways and it injured my ankle. So I was put in an ambulance and they took me to the hospital. They did x-rays. Nothing was broken, but I had a real bad sprain in my left leg, my left ankle. They put a full cast on my leg, from my foot to my knee, and two days later I walked up the gangplank on this huge naval ship, troop ship, and I went up the gang plank with crutches. That's how I got on the ship to take me to Vietnam. Got on the ship and-- We were on the ship for approximately 20 days with a stop in Guam for 6 hours where we went ashore and had some steaks on the beach by the local people and I had to be back on the ship at midnight. So I got back on the the ship early enough and we left Guam and started on about an 18-day trip on the ocean through the China Sea. Wound up in Vietnam, right off the coast of Vietnam, and of course we couldn't go close to shore because the boat was so big. There were 2,200 soldiers on the boat. There were 200 Marines and 2,000 Army personnel on that ship. I guess the Marines were on the ship to keep the Army guys safe. So, anyway-- While we were on the ship, getting ready to take these landing crafts to shore, we were not issued any M16s. No one had a weapon. We went ashore with no rifles and while we were going in to shore in the landing crafts, there was a body of a Vietnamese floating in the water with no head. And that was pretty horrific and it was a heck of a way to get welcomed to the shores of Vietnam. But our weapons were in crates in the bottom of the ship. So, had we met some enemy combatants-- We wouldn't have been able to defend ourselves, but we made it ashore and we got assigned to an area, our base camp was in Dian, spelled D-I-A-N, but they pronounced it Zeon. So we went to our basecamp and we were issued a lot of our supplies and things that we needed and we finally got our M16s. They kept us in the base camp for about two weeks. They were giving us classes on tunnels, underground tunnels that the Viet Cong dig. Gave us classes on booby traps. This was all stuff that we had had before, but since we were there in Vietnam, they wanted to go over some things. Pungy stakes, booby-traps, claymore mines. Just trying to stay alive in the jungle and things to watch out for. I met a buddy of mine, turned out to be a buddy, and he lived on the north side of Chicago. His name was Mel Velez, and I lived on south side of the Chicago. So we struck up a friendship in Basic, and it lasted for many many many years. I stood up for two of his weddings and he stood up for my wedding and we just had a great friendship. I met his parents and we used to go for dinner at his house later on years after we got out of the military but we became real friends and we wound up in the same platoon and we were on patrol one time and, uh-- He found a booby trap, so he was told to use a hand grenade, and everybody cleared the area and he got a hand-grenade and he pulled the pin and he tossed it over by the booby trap. Well, the grenade went off earlier than expected, faster than expected. And he got a leg wound from the explosion. So he was medevacked out and he did survive and he came back about two weeks or so later back to the unit and he was fine after that. But we did a lot of patrols and night ambushes, day ambushes. Search and destroy We cleared a lot of villages, rice paddies, day and night. The weather is just excruciating. Six months of monsoon rains and six months while yearly the humidity was just uh-- Terrible really bad really bad my mother had sent me a timex watch why she did that i don't know but i put the watch on and i wore it for less than three or four months humidity was so bad the face of the watch turned all brown and the large hand fell off of the or for the watch. That tells you about the humidity there. I never got hurt in the jungle in a year's time. We'd go in there for a few days and then we'd come out and go back to base camp for a couple days rest. And after six months After I'd been there six months of the year that I was there. We went into base camp for two days rest and It was lunchtime. So we sat around our bunk our our foxholes and I had a plate of spaghetti. I'll never forget it and I had no shirt on and I was sitting on the bunker and I head shower shoes on and everybody was taking it easy, you know and we were talking, and all of a sudden we hear this thumping sound, real loud, in the distance. You know, thump, thum, thup, thuump, and we didn't know it at the time because we had never been in a mortar attack. The Viet Cong had set up probably a couple hundred meters, and they always were dead on with their-- Just tell from all their experience on how far out to be. And those mortar rounds start landing in our perimeter. And our lieutenant yelled out, after the first one, he yelled out incoming, meaning we were under a mortar attack. Everybody started going for the foxholes. Well, I was the first in because I was closest to my foxhole. I dove in, and I had two other guys on top of me that came in after me. And I had my fatigue pants on and I had no shirt on. So after, I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes after the mortars stopped coming in, we had to get out of the foxhole because we were worried about a ground attack. You know, we had get our M16s. And I got out of foxhole, And the two guys that got in after me were badly wounded. And had I been a little bit slower, I would have been medevaced out of there. They call in a medevac chopper to take the wounded to the hospital. And after the chopper came in, I helped put the guys on the choppers, the medevacs, and got them there and the chopper took off for the hospital. A medic had run over by me. I didn't even realize it. I had all this blood all over my back and my chest and all over me, my arms. And he came up to me, he was worried about me and he said, are you okay? I said, I guess I am. I don't know, you know. Sometimes when you're in shock or even if you're hurt, you don't even realized it. But he started wiping all his blood off of me and I realized after a short time the blood was from the other two soldiers that came in the foxhole on top of me. They were bleeding and their blood was going all over me. So the medic cleaned me up and he found some shrapnel in my back, nothing to put me in a hospital. But he pulled out pieces with tweezers and cleaned me up and I just continued to-- do whatever I was doing. I was not incapacitated or had to be put in a care unit or hospital. So the whole year that I was there, that was basically my only injury. I received a crazy coincidence that all those months in the jungle I never got hurt on a two day rest in the perimeter but it still was not a safe area no matter where you went in that country you could get killed very easily. I made it out after a year and got out of there June of 68 after a year. Was thankful, but the one thing I found out in the year there, after about a month in Vietnam, I realized that it was a total waste of human life and it didn't do anything good for our country. Vietnam is, it turned right around to a communist country right after we got out of there, but in my opinion, from the President on down, from Nixon and especially Johnson, President Johnson, he kept bombing and he kept putting more and more troops in there because of General Westmoreland kept asking for thousands and thousands more troops to be put in, and-- I know from personal experience, being in base camp several different times, the one time I was in there, I heard a conversation in the tent where they did all the numbers and things like that. And they never wanted the body count for American soldiers, they never want the body count higher than the bodycount of the Viet Cong. They would always raise the number. Of Viet Cong killed in instances in Vietnam because they knew it was going to get back to the states and people were going to be reading newspapers and hearing this on television. It was the first time a war was actually put on TV every day. The American public saw all this going on and that's why we had so many protests. Across the country and then when we got back, back to the states, you know, we were only doing what our country wanted us to do. The Vietnam vets as well as other vets, you now, they just wanted to do what they were, what the government wanted you to do for our country. We got back to states and a lot of guys I've heard too be from other veterans from getting on. We took a lot of crap at the airports. Comments made, you're walking by with your family or something that met you at the airport. And you have to listen to this vulgar, vile stuff being thrown at you. You want to start fighting, but you're better off just ignoring it, especially with your family being there. But I blame most of it on General Westmoreland, because he kept asking for more and more and more troops. And it just so happens the year that I was there, 1967 to 68, more vets were killed than any other year in Vietnam. But a lot of nice people passed away. In that country for no good reason, and I lost a lot of good friends, but my buddy Mel, that was with me over there, we had a real good friendship after we got out of Vietnam and I-- I wanted to be a cop when I was in high school. So I-- I took the police test and my buddy Mel was working, he was a lieutenant for Chicago Northwestern Railroad and he was talking to me while I was, I talked to him off and on and I was waiting to hear from the city of Chicago about taking the test and he talked to me one day and he said, why don't you come work with me at the railroad, he said I'm a lieutenant now and-- You can start out working security at the train station, but then there's a lot of room for advancement. So I said to him, you know what? I'll think about it, and I'll wait a couple weeks. And if the city of Chicago doesn't call me by then, I'll get a job with you at the railroad. And in the meantime, I'll to get the police test. I'll have to wait to get notified. So, uh. I waited a few weeks and believe it or not the second week I got a notice to take the Chicago Police Department test and I called Mel up and I told him and I took the test and I got hired. So I got hired and they gave me a date to start school, 14th September of 1970. And I started a police academy. It went for nine months and it was in an old school that the city had purchased. It was terrible. It was not heated real well. It was supposedly from the 1800s. I don't know how true that was, but looking at the building you'd never believe it was the police academy. So I did my training at the police academy for nine months and I was assigned to a district on the south side of Chicago. And I worked there for two and a half years at that station and my father-in-law, Bill Joyce, was a sergeant downtown Chicago, and I was dating his daughter Rosemary. Asked me if I wanted to come down there and work for him. And I said, well, what am I going to do downtown? He was in the traffic division. And I told him, I said I'm a young guy. I'm 23, 24 years old. I said. I don't want to be on a corner directing traffic. I want to get out there and fight crime. He said, Well, what you have to do is most likely, once in a while, you might have a corner to take care of for traffic. for the most part, you're going to be riding a three-wheeled Harley-David motorcycle." And I said, really? And he said, yeah. I said well, what am I going to do on the motorcycle? He said, you write tickets, about 30 tickets a day, parking tickets. And I said, all right, it'll give me some other experience on the police department. So I got transferred down there and worked for him for a couple years or so. And in the meantime, I got engaged to his daughter. And when I used to go to work in the morning at the station, the desk crew would be in there, and they'd see me come in. And I wasn't even married yet. And they'd say, oh, here comes the son-in-law. Here comes the son-in law, because my father-in law was a boss there. He was a sergeant. So I had to take a little ribbing because of that. But I didn't mind it. And I worked there for two or three years. And then-- They wanted to expand a foot patrol in downtown Chicago, so they took all the younger guys out of the motorcycle division, and they gave us foot routes in downtown Chicago. So that was pretty cool, because I walked around downtown, and whenever something broke out or something, the foot guys would usually be around. And as it turned out, I went downtown one day, I had to go to court in the Civic Center, which is a big office building and court rooms in the building and it's across the street from City Hall in Chicago. Well I was sitting there with two other cops that I knew and we were having coffee in the restaurant in the basement of the building. And while we were sitting there, the elderly woman at work, the register, she had the drawer open and a-- Some guy was in there, and he could see us sitting there, and yet he reached in the register, and he grabbed a bunch of bills, and he ran out of the building. Well, we started chasing him all around, up and down the city, on the sidewalks of downtown Chicago, trying to catch him. And he was pretty fast, and, you know, we had our gun belts on, and basically dress shoes, and leather jackets. It was wintertime. You know, you got all that weight, and we were still in pretty good shape. But this guy had gym shoes on, and he had a good lead on us. And lo and behold, some citizen, with all the hundreds of people walking back and forth, some citizen noticed we were chasing him. And he put a block, he blocked this guy with his body, and the guy fell down, and got up and started running. But by that time, we had closed the gap and we caught him. Well, as it turned out later on, we got notified that we got an award. There's an organization called Commerce and Industry in Chicago. And they called us all in for an award ceremony. And I got the Junior Commerce and industry award because it happened downtown. And, you know, I guess they wanted a little exposure on it. How good the area was for businesses and things. So they gave me and my partners awards for that. They got a nice plaque from them. But it's for all my arrest and other things that I did in the police department. For the first three months, I was on the job. They noticed it and they gave me the award for not only that arrest, but for three months, the first three months I was on the job, they noticed I was doing real well. I got that, I'm proud of it, it's up there underneath it. It's on my wall in my basement, I have quite a wall in my basement. I have my father-in-law downtown. When John Wayne came out with his movie, The Alamo, the premiere was in downtown Chicago. So I have father- in-law's picture with John Wayne up there and even me with celebrities. I get, uh-- Robert De Niro was making a movie in 1987 and he came to our police station and I got a picture with him and he signed the back of the picture but a lot of interesting things happened downtown Chicago. When the Kennedys, they had one of the Kennedy children, daughters of the family. President Kennedy's sister, she was in a home in St. Colettas in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and they were downtown, some of the president's relatives, I don't know, sisters or something, and they had this girl with them and she was, you know, she had medical problems that's why she was at St. Colettos for years. The Kennedys donated a lot of money to St. Colettus through the years. But, uh-- She somehow, she got separated from the family in downtown Chicago. So for a few hours, they had every cop in downtown Chicago looking for her and they finally found her and she was okay. But you never know what's going on in downtown Chicago, you can run across anything in the police department. And ran into a lot of things down here. And I retired from the department in 1997. I had 28 years. Actually, I had 27 years and a few months and they credit you with another full year for your pension. So I got credit for 28 years and I had a lot of bruises and cuts and uniform and my tie pulled off one time and broken watch and you know little bruises here and there and I only got shot at one time so it wasn't like Vietnam it was a lot easier but they never hit me. Thank God. But I think I-- I didn't mention my brother and my sister that much. I did say I had a brother and sister. My sister was a court reporter for Cook County. And my brother wound up getting on the police department in Chicago a couple years after I did. And he did 32 years when he retired. He was two years younger than me. And I was retired at 50 years of age. And I had 28 years. And I burned out with 28 years, and I was going to do 30. And I decided not to keep going. I knew I was going to have to work something else because I was only 50 years old. So my brother was happy, lives in Chicago yet. He had enough at thirty two years anyway I worked, uh-- I was still living in Chicago in 1997 and we moved to Wisconsin and we started a business in Watertown. Well, we didn't start a business, we bought a business in Watertown and it was a hotel and after a while I realized that we shouldn't have bought the hotel, but we were in partners with another family member and her husband and it didn't work out so well so two years later we sold it and it's a lot of work you have to be a special kind of person to run a hotel a lot a headaches but I don't want to dwell on that too much. It was it was a bad investment but we left there and I had my my two daughters, Elizabeth and Christine. And Christine, if it wasn't for Christine, we wouldn't have been able to run at Hotel. She's really on the ball as far as figures and. You wouldn't believe what she did there for us. And my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, she helped out, too. She was going to-- To St. Joe's Catholic School in Ford. And then my son, who was in his 20s, he got on the Chicago Fire Department. And he's still on the department. He's in his 13th year. And I'm proud of all three of them. They're all great kids and never been in any trouble and never fool around with drugs or alcohol. I'm real proud of them, and my wife also. She's a heck of a mother to my children and a heck a wife to me. She's turned out to be my caregiver, I guess. No, I don't guess, she is my caregiver. If she hears this, she might get mad, but I'm not gonna tell a fib. She's done everything for me and she goes out of her way. Quite a bit as well as--
00:36:22VILLAR: Phil, how many years are you being married now, your next anniversary?
00:36:26OLSON: May 6th of 2018 I'll be married 45 years to the same woman.
00:36:32VILLAR: Congratulations.
00:36:33OLSON: You're welcome Don, you're welcome. I don't know how she put up with me all those years, but maybe, I don' think she ever got a migraine though, but she shakes her head at me sometimes, so. But I'm kind of-- A loud person a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't think I was having a problem. I spent those 28 years on the police department. I never got suspended. I really never did anything wrong where I would get in trouble. I always tried to do the right thing on the Police Department and off the Police Department. You know, I would rather try to talk somebody I'd have gone to jail rather than-- Wind up fighting with them. But unfortunately, a lot of people didn't want to talk too much. They wanted to go to jail. But after so many years on the police department, I did have some anger issues. And I had been in Vietnam a while ago, maybe a year, maybe a little longer. My wife mentioned to me that maybe I had PTSD, and I said to her, I said, I do have anger issues. I never hit my wife, I never hurt my kids, but I was loud and boisterous, and a lot of times I had anger issues where I would blow up over the smallest. And I took it out on my wife and kids as far as being angry and loud. Disturbing the house and she mentioned the PTSD to me and I said to her I got a little irritated I didn't blow up but I said PTSD is a mental problem I said I'm not I'm not crazy I'm a not a crazy person so I denied it I said it I don't have PTSD and After a short time, I don't know if it was a few days or several days, and I agreed to go talk to a counselor. So I went to, I was not 100% disabled from the Veterans Administration. I was still going after I got out of, retired from the police department and had, and I was living in Wisconsin in Fort Atkinson. And I went to a counselor before I had full VA benefits. I went a counselor in Fort Atkinson and talked to him with my wife. And he talked to me for quite a while. And I can't remember if it was two visits or three visits. And he was a civilian, but he was the counselor. He had college and all that. He went to school for all of that. After he talked to me for a while he said what they used to call this in world war two was battle brain battle brain meaning you were in combat a lot it affected you somewhat After two or three times, I started going to-- The VA in Jamesville. There was a lady counselor there, but she was more or less a marriage counselor. So after, I don't know, four or five visits to her, or maybe half a dozen, with my wife. I didn't think I was getting. And not because it was a woman, it was just that she was more or less a marriage counselor and maybe that helped somewhat, but as far as Vietnam and that, I don't think she, not that she wasn't qualified, but I think just a marriage councilor, I didn't think a marriage counselor was gonna do it, so I told my wife, I said, I think I should go to the VA and talk to them. So, I went to the VA and-- Got a young lady which me and my wife met and she was very young I think she was in her 20s I believe maybe 30 and we had gone to her for I don't know 8 or 10 times maybe And, uh-- Even even talking to her I asked her one day, I said, are you married? And she said, no. She said, I've got a boyfriend and we've been going together for 10 years. And I said and I'm thinking to myself, I think I even mentioned it to her, like almost like a fatherly daughter conversation. I said to her one, day I said you've been gone with this guy for 10 year and you're still not married and you know. You're not a teenager anymore, you know, and I tried to be nice, but anyway, we lasted another, I don't know, two or three. She was very nice, very professional, and she made sense with a lot of things she was saying, but again, it was more like, I didn't think she was-- That educated on PTSD, not that I was an expert, but now I have a VA employee who's a counselor. He's an Afghanistan. Joe Lunsford, his name is, and I've been seeing him for a good year or better, and my wife has come with me, you know, numerous times also, and the three of us have had conversations. And I think I've gotten a little better. My wife says I try not to blow up, and sometimes I do, and then there's other days when recently I was a great husband for a week. I had no yelling and I'm trying to do better for my wife and kids and that's all I can do. You go up and down and hopefully I'll turn it around.
00:43:47VILLAR: I do want to ask you a few questions.
00:43:51OLSON: I might have skipped over something.
00:43:57VILLAR: Being in the military myself, I was in during the Korean era and from the time I entered service it always popped up in my mind, are you scared? Always in the back of my mind, anybody who ever told me, when you're deployed, even if it's Camp XYZ in Texas, you don't know what your next step is going to be, unless you have been qualified to go to a certain school, then overseas. But to me, anybody ever told they were never scared once they stepped on board that ship and you're heading to a different country. To me, that is a lie. I don't know of any, regardless of skin color, rank, religion, man or woman, don't tell me you're not scared because you are. Give me a little bit of your background, how your feelings were emotionally, how you felt about being drafted, what's the next step, how did you think, what were your feelings at the time?
00:45:15OLSON: I knew when I dropped out of college that the schools notify the government soon after you drop out, or if your grades are not real good to keep you in the school, and I was sure I was going to get drafted. My classification at the time was 1A, which means you're okay to send to Vietnam. So, uh-- Being that my family was so many military in my family, at least 10 or 12, from World War II to Korea, even my wife's father was in the Navy, and my brother joined the Marines after I got back from Vietnam. And thank God he didn't have to go there, but he served two years with the U.S. Marines. And, but I didn't, I kind of figured I was going to Vietnam. So I had no feelings back at that time about going. I wanted to do my duty. And my dad spent five years in the Philippines, New Guinea. Combat zone he was a medic and a cook and probably they gave you two or three jobs to do back in World War two maybe I don't know but I years later after I got when I was in Vietnam I and I after I get out I was really mad, I started getting mad about the government and like I said, General West Moreland and between LBJ, Johnson, President Johnson. I hold them accountable for all those extra troops they asked for and guys were dying and even eight nurses passed away in Vietnam from attacks.
00:47:34VILLAR: Wait, when you arrived in Vietnam, as soon as you put your foot on the ground over there, what did you think? That's the first thing that came to your mind, do you recall?
00:47:45OLSON: It wasn't anger, it wasn't-- Being afraid yet. It was, I can't describe the feeling. It was like a strange feeling, I guess. I don't know, to thinking about what was to come, you know. And I agree wholeheartedly with you about fear. I, there were times on night ambushes where I thought we were going to get overrun by the Viet Cong and we were being attacked. You know, numerous times. And most of the time at night. And you know when you can't see anything and it's pitch dark, you're going to have fear. You're going have fear and if it wasn't for you know I give anybody credit that was overseas no matter where you were at but especially in Vietnam those helicopter gunships and they would come to our aid so many times. And saved a lot of troops over there in Vietnam. In the daytime, the jets, jet airplanes, air strikes, you know, with napalm and bombs. But anybody, I was scared plenty of times. Plenty of times, I'm not ashamed to say it. And like you said, anybody that says, oh, I wasn't scared, they're just trying to make a name for themselves, like they were not human. You have to be not human not to be scared.
00:49:29VILLAR: In being in a combat zone too, Bill, how would you describe your relaxing times? How about the food? Is the food good?
00:49:40OLSON: Well, we ate a lot of--
00:49:41VILLAR: [Inaudible] sleeping conditions too.
00:49:45OLSON: In base camp there were tents and we slept on cots which are the most uncomfortable thing in the world to sleep but When we come in for a day or two rest, We sleep on cots, you know, and of course guys would have perimeter guard around the the base camp, you Know everybody would take turns and the food, ah Thanksgiving we got helicopters brought in turkey and you know dressing and stuff. Once in a while we'd get a hot meal. Most of the meals were a C ration inside of the cans, you know, but I didn't lose a lot of weight. I don't think I lost any weight to tell you the truth but I wasn't real heavy when I went in either. But getting back to that just for a minute that being afraid After Vietnam, I got in a police department a couple years later, and I worked in one of the worst areas in the city for 22 years out of 28, and that's where I got shot at one time in all those years. But one time, we even had sniper fire from a 16-story high rise, but it was at night and we were in an alley. Pull in the alley, because the call was shots fired. We pull in an alley with the blue and white squad car, and we stood behind this big wooden electrical pole. It was all wood. In Chicago, they have a lot of them. They're really thick and about maybe 20 inches round. You can see the muzzle flash and a guy shooting with a rifle. You'd never be able to tell what apartment he came in or went in because there's 16 floors and each floor is like almost a half a block or wider than a half of a block so you might have 10 apartments on each floor and you don't know if he went down the stairwell from this where he shot from the 16th floor at us and then by the time you get over you have to take an elevator up and sometimes they're so slow going up. And he could have went down a stairwell and went into another apartment. So you'd never find the guy unless you couldn't even shoot at him because you'd have to be an expert shooting at him. But there were times, some of the alleys in Chicago are not lit. There's no lights. I've chased guys down the alley who I knew had a gun. Chased them in the dark down the alleys, looking for them. And yeah, your adrenaline's going. You just start chasing them, and you get shot, you get shot, it's just, I had a buddy of mine who was one of my best friends, probably the only guy next to Don Mallard that I never had a real argument with, and I knew him for, let's see, 62, he passed away. I knew them over 35 years. Our families got together every 4th of July, he had three kids, I had three kids, we each had a swimming pool in our backyard and we go to each other's house for the holidays and they spend the weekend, 4th July at our house and then we stayed by their house and they had a 24 foot pool, we had an 18 foot pool. The kids would swim every summer in there and we just, we were at everybody, each other weddings and we just did a lot of things together. And I used, his dad had a remodeling company. He did kitchens, bathrooms, room additions, you name it, patios. And on my days off from the police department, I would work for them. And it was only three of us. And once in a while, another guy, he'd hire a friend and a family. So four of us, and we were all over Illinois. Evanston, Illinois, and Chicago, North Side, and-- They'd call me and ask me when my days off were, and I'd drive up north, Chicago, and they'd pay me $100 a day cash. And we actually worked six hours a day, that was it, because the boss is my buddy's dad who was a good family friend of me and my wife. He stopped every day at 12 noon for an hour to listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. And all work stopped. And then we'd have a coffee break later, but they paid me cash every day and it was just a joy. And then on Sundays, his dad owned a boat and we used to go out in Lake Michigan salmon fishing. Just the three of us, me and my buddy and his dad. And then through the years. He got, he had a lot of medical problems and he wouldn't stop smoking. And finally his wife woke up a couple of years ago and he was dead in the bathroom. He was on the bathroom floor, he died. But I just loved the guy. Guy would do anything for ya. But he kidded around with me, we used to kid around all the time. And one day he said to me, you know, you cops got it made. You eat a lot of donuts, and you don't do much else, you I said, Dave, you're an excellent carpenter. He's worked on every one of my houses. He put that bathroom in for us. Anyway, oh, and he helped build a deck that's out on the back of my house, yeah. There were six or seven of us, all the guys I knew came up from Chicago and then we built it. I couldn't get anybody to build that deck, but it's about 30 feet long and 12 feet wide. I mean, 30 feet wide and 12- He said to me one day, he said, you know, you cops don't do anything. I said, let me ask you a question Dave. I said, if you were on the police department, could you run down a dark alley chasing a guy that you know has a gun, an automatic? Would you chase him? He said, hell no, I wouldn't chase him. I said well, case closed buddy. I said because I've done it many times through gangways. One time we were in a-- A guy, another guy I was working with, one of my ex-partners, I only worked with him off and on but we got a call of a guy with a gun and they said two guys, two male blacks sitting on a porch. Go down to Stark Street and we pull up near the house, we see these two guys they're sitting on a concrete porch and when they see us pull up they start getting up and they start going around the house, around the front of the house. Toward the gangway in between the two buildings, the house and the building next door. And it was raining out. So we start following them and they start running. I grabbed the one guy, I caught up to him, he had a long trench coat on. I was thinking shotgun. Don't ask me how I was thinkin' that, but I was thinking shotgun, well I put my arms around him, around his arms, and my partner come up behind me and I said, he's got a shotgun. He had a chrome-plated shotgun underneath that trench coat. And my partner said, how did you, after we locked him up for the gun, my partner says, how'd you know he had a shotgun? I said I don't know. If you ran-- He either had drugs or he had a gun underneath that trench coat. I don't know if it was a pistol. I didn't know it was the shotgun, but it was a beautiful shotgun, and it turned out that his mother purchased the shotgun. There's a lot of stories, a lot stories. You can talk all day about stories.
00:57:55VILLAR: It sounds as though your combat experiences were sometimes worse than what you officially witnessed in the battlefields of Vietnam. During your Vietnam tour, I use that word lightly. Did you have any time for R&R? Would they send you to Japan or any other area for R& R?
00:58:27OLSON: They had, you had a choice and I kicked myself all these years later, every once in a while if the subject comes up, which it doesn't really come up anymore, but I had a chance to go to Australia and years later I used to think about blonde women with blue eyes. So where did Bill and his buddy from North Chicago, Mel, we decided we were going to Thailand for a week. And now it's right next door to Vietnam. It's a joining country. Why would I want to go there? But I did for a week. And we had a nice hotel and a swimming pool. We had a we had a nice time, relaxing and then after a week we had to go back. But we did some sightseeing and I bought some trinkets. I still have them here. I got one of those oriental dancing, whatever you call it. And I bought some brass, oriental figures. Sent some few things home. That circle up under my wall down here, it's got a picture of a soldier. It's all painted on a felt circle. And he's got his green army helmet and his shirt on and the name tag says Olsen, my last name, and I sent it to my family and on the soldier's face there's a big teardrop coming from on his eye that he's crying. But I sent that home 50 years ago and it's still hanging here.
01:00:12VILLAR: We will get into a pictorial coverage of all your memorabilia here at a later time though.
01:00:20OLSON: Do you have enough film?
01:00:23VILLAR: I can call Hollywood and see if they'll run us a few cameras.
01:00:27OLSON: This could be a--
01:00:29VILLAR: But now, going back to your experience here now, you have earned the, what, Purple Heart? .
01:00:35OLSON: Yeah, I've earned the Combat Infantry Badge, the National Defense Ribbon, the Vietnam Service Award Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Purple Heart.
01:00:55VILLAR: And you said earlier that you have a 100% disability with the Veterans Administration, is that right? You're here at our hospital in Madison, are you?
01:01:04OLSON: I have diabetes type two and I have peripheral neuropathy. I have damaged nerves through most of my body. I can't, it's sort of progressive. Well, it is progressive because I'm barely able to stand up even though I go up a few stairs, but I've fallen so many times. And now I, in the last few months, I cannot move my toes anymore.
01:01:30VILLAR: Are you carrying any shrapnel in your body?
01:01:32OLSON: It's funny that you should ask that because I mean, I wasn't all bloody and torn up, you know But I did have pieces in my back Yeah, and he pulled some out the medic pulled some up with tweezers and I never looked you know it's kind of hard to look in a mirror and He said well, I put pulled out quite a few and he said if there's any more in there It'll fall out through the years. I said and I thinking to myself If I go through an airport and the buzzers start ringing like crazy, but I don't think I had, by now, 50 years has got to be gone by now.
01:02:08VILLAR: How about exposure to Agent Orange?
01:02:10OLSON: Yeah, that's, you know, I went, it took me quite a while. I had, that was the neuropathy and the diabetes. Once I got, well, I was tripping and falling because parts of my feet are numb and I have foot drop in my right foot. I don't know about the left one, but the right one is the one that always trips me up because I don' feel it 100%. And if I'm going upstairs at the beginning, I would go up a flight of stairs and I'd keep tripping. I'd be tripping on that right foot because I wasn't feeling it and I wasn' lifting it high enough. So now when I go upstairs, as you've probably noticed, I lift my feet high and I never trip going upstairs. And I, well, once in a while I might catch my foot going downstairs, but I always, I have handrails on my stairways. But-- They hooked me up to machines and put wires in all over my chest and my arms and my legs to test my nerve condition and all of them were like, you know, a good percentage negative as far as damage. I mean, positive. It showed a lot of nerve damage in my arms, my legs and my chest. And once I got to diabetes, then it-- Diabetes is linked to peripheral neuropathy. I didn't know that at the time. But when I had the civilian doctor in Fort before I went to the VA for all my medical later on, he told me, you're pre-diabetic, pre-dietetic, and then finally when I started going to the VA, they said you are diabetic, you're type 2. Along with the neuropathy and all the medical reports. I even had a civilian neurologist. She was a neurologist, she's still working. She was supposed to retire. She'd been a neurologists for 35 years at St. She had an office in Madison and one in Fort Atkinson. But yeah, Agent Orange is what did it.
01:04:29VILLAR: How many years of active duty were you on, Bill? The day you were inducted to, the day you was discharged.
01:04:37OLSON: I was supposed to go from January of 1967 to January of 1969, but after Vietnam, I got back and I had time off at home, I don't know what it was, three weeks or a month or something like that, and I was in infantry all that time and I got my orders for the last five months of my two-year stint and they sent me to Fort Hood, Texas and they put me in an armor unit. But I had got promoted in Vietnam after six months I think, after I was there six months I got promoted to E-5 and my buddy Mel got promoted also, same time I did. So when they sent us both to Fort Hood, Texas, it was great because we got to ride around in a Jeep. We had our jeep and we had an armored personnel carrier if we wanted to. All Texas is wide open, a lot of land there you can roam around in. And I told them one time, I said, you know what? The best part of riding around in this jeep, in the armored personnel carrier, I say nobody's gonna shoot at you. You don't have to worry about getting shot. You ride around and tour Texas a little bit, on the base. And then the best part was. We didn't have to sleep in, well, we slept in the barracks, but me and him had our own room because we were two sergeants. We had our room. It was nice. We had beds in there, you know, no bunk beds, there was beds in here. And that was the best.
01:06:24VILLAR: So you were on active duty, per se?
01:06:28OLSON: Two years.
01:06:29VILLAR: Two years?
01:06:30OLSON: But I always tell everybody, yeah I was in for two years, 67, 69, rather than go, if I talk to a guy or a veteran or somewhere in Madison or wherever I'm at, or like you for instance, I tell you yeah I was in from 67, technically, officially from 67 to 69, but I was supposed to be into January 1st I guess or January 9th because that would have been exactly two years of 69.
01:06:58VILLAR: You.
01:06:59OLSON: But in December, in December of 68th, that would be, they let us out December 18th. If I would have did 12 more days, it would have been exactly two years I would've been in. But since the government let us out or the army let us out a week earlier so we could go be home for Christmas.
01:07:26VILLAR: That count as leave time to be home for Christmas? Still, it would not be counted as active duty?
01:07:33OLSON: I guess so.
01:07:34OLSON: You mean to January 1st?
01:07:38VILLAR: So then you had two years in the military.
01:07:41OLSON: I mean, if they gave us eight days off, you know what I mean? I had nothing to do with it. They said, everybody that came in January 9th, you're going home for Christmas. December 18th was my last day.
01:07:58VILLAR: When you were discharged, were you getting a medical discharge or a dishonorable with medical?
01:08:04OLSON: No, I got an honorable discharge. The honorable is right here. The honorable discharge
01:08:10VILLAR: I guess I should have asked this differently, an honorable discharge with medical problems.
01:08:19OLSON: No.
01:08:19VILLAR: No.
01:08:20OLSON: No.
01:08:20VILLAR: So in other words, at the time of your honorable discharge, the Army didn't look at you and say, well, you've got some problems.
01:08:26OLSON: No, no. Because after I got out of the service in 68, two years later, I was on the Chicago Police Department. 28 years Don, I could run like a deer when I started out. The first whatever, you know, of course, near the end, I was a little bit heavy and I couldn't run as fast as I used to. But I never had any, this all started like in 2005. And I was retired from the police department in 97. So you're talking about to eight years later, you know. And what I did was I failed to mention it. I had other, I had jobs when I get out. Some were seasonal. I worked at a fur trade company in Cambridge, North American fur, and I worked at Office Max in Janesville for nine months. And I was just trying to find a job where I made more money. And it didn't matter whether it was hard or not. And then Frank's County Market in Jefferson, across from Walmart, it's the whole building and strip mall there are all empty, all the stores. And after nine months, you know, I was, what was I? I was, see that was in 02. And this is 17, 15 years ago. I was 55, yeah. I was 55 years old and I got a job at Franks County Market and they made me assistant produce manager. And there was a young girl who was probably 30 years old. She was the produce manager, I just her assistant. Well, we used to get these pallets six foot high with 100 pound bags of potatoes and onions and all that other heavy stuff, cabbage and lettuce and all. I was throwing a hundred pound bag of onions over my shoulder, you know, a hundred pound bag. I used to do that for years. I use to pick them up at the railroad in Chicago and I'd buy them down there and I split them up with my wife's family and our family and we'd all have potatoes rather than go to the store and buy single bags and I used get a deal on it at the I worked down there for nine months and she was walking around with a clipboard and she was like doing ordering, whatever we needed. And not only was I taking all the spoiled vegetables, every morning I'd have to go around apples and peaches and whatever stuff, lettuce, whatever was bad I'd take it out. And we used to have somebody come in, they had horses, I'd give them a big box of apples that were a little bit rotten or something and they take it and feed the horses. Whatever vegetables were no good. But after a while I said, you know what, they started me at nine dollars an hour and I'm throwing a hundred pound bags over my shoulder and I said you know, what, this is not good. So being in the store every day along the vegetable area there, produce, a woman, an older woman started coming in, well she was younger than me but she was married and had kids and that And she said. She talked to me every time she came in and I said, you know what, I'm getting too old for this, this stuff. And she said, well, you know, I work at Premier Bank and are you looking for another job? And I said yeah, I've been bouncing around at different jobs. I'm looking for a better job. She knew that, and she would still come in off and on, off and on, and we'd talk about our families and stuff. And finally she'd come in one day and she said, are you still looking for that job, another job? I said, yeah. She said, stop over by, she was the supervisor at the drive-thru in Fort Atkinson. And she said stop by the drive through and I'll give you this application. They don't put it in the newspaper, it's by word of mouth all the time when they have an opening, unless it's for tellers, then they put it in the newspapers. This was for a courier job. So anyway, I stop by, make a long story short, I get the application from her, and I fill it out and I give it to her. I did it right there at the bank, and I gave it to here. The CEO of the bank, Dave Beanfang, she never met him because she was, you know, we had eight branches in Jefferson County. He couldn't ride around and meet everybody. She goes into the bank on her lunch and she asks one of the loan officers, where's Dave Beanfang's office? And they said it's two offices down. So she goes over there and she knocks on the door and she sticks her head in. She said, Dave, I'm Victoria so-and-so. You never met me, but I'm the supervisor at the North Drive. She said, he said, what can I do for you? She said. I got somebody for that courier job. I got the right guy for the courier. She says, he says, well, you know, I got two guys lined up, and I'm gonna pick one of those two guys. And she never met the CEO, right? Dave Beanpay? You know what she said to him? She said, if you hire anybody else but Bill Olson, you're making a mistake. She never met the Boss, and she told him that. They hired me. I did an interview with Jim Schaeffer's son, who was a loan officer, Steve Schaefer, and Rochelle Mitchell. I don't know if you know her, blonde, tall blonde, she's the marketing director for Premier Bank. Well, she turned out to be my boss, my immediate boss, and not bad to look at either, believe me when I tell you. Oops, that's on tape. I mean that was the prettiest boss I ever had in my life, you know what I mean? But anyway, it worked out really well. And I worked there for almost seven years. And what happened was two different instances, I'd have to go in and out of the bank. And I'd had to go to the eight branches with the car. And two different times, I fell in the main branch in Fort Atkinson. The stairs are, I don't know if it's granite stairs or marble or something, they're real hard stone stairs. When you come in the bank from the parking lot, you have to go up these stairs. And I tripped on the stairs because they were wet. I gashed my shins on my leg, had to go to the emergency room at Fort and one of the guys drove me, the loan officer drove me over there. I didn't get stitches but my leg was bleeding and they cleaned it up and they put gauze Taped it up and then I got back to the bank and they said, oh go home Bill, go home, don't worry about it. I said, no, I'm all right, I can drive. So I stayed, I didn't go home. But after the second fall in the bank, that's when the neuropathy started. And I said to myself, I said I can't do this because I was driving 33,000 miles a year for the bank. They bought a new car for me, a PT Cruiser. They had 11 miles on it. And I had exactly three years left to work, when I worked, because I worked to the last day of the year, December 31st of 09, and I had the car for exactly, I got the car in 06 and had it for three years. When I gave them the car back to the new guy, it had 99,800 miles on it. So for three year I put on almost 100,000 miles driving. And I gave, I appreciated them so much, other than the police department, it was the best job I ever had. And I gave them six months notice to get somebody else. So they, Big Boss thanked me so much for giving them six month instead of two weeks, you know. So we left on a great note and they treated me like gold for six years. Like gold, when I tell you. The first year I was there, Christmas came up. They asked anybody at all eight branches if you wanted to donate. To get Bill some gift cards or dinner cards, certificates and that stuff. I got $350 worth of certificates, Home Depot, Menards, dinner certificates at restaurants. And I went in there and I saw my boss, this was the first year, first year of Christmas. And I said, Rochelle, I said I'd. I really don't want the employees to do this. I said, some of them are making $8 an hour, and they got kids, you know? She said, you what? It's not a mandatory thing. We put out an email and ask the employees, if you want to give something, fine. If you don't, that's fine. I got $350 worth of stuff. That's my bonus. And they did that every year. I mean, I didn't get $350 every year, but Christmas time, I got something every time I worked there.
01:17:54VILLAR: Are you-- After you were discharged, did you tie in with any of our service organizations? Were you given any briefings before you were discharged about any benefits or what our service organizations could do, VFW, American Legion, etc.?
01:18:19OLSON: Yeah, the VFW helped me out a lot. I made contact with a lot. I was in Sam's Club with my wife a while back and there was a, I should, I should remember this. His last name was Khan, K-H-A-N, and he was a captain, I believe. I got his card here or I can't remember if he was a colonel or he might have been a colonel. We had a great friendship, but that's where I first met him. They had, it was Veterans Day, and we were in Sam's Club. Well, I guess, well, he belonged to the DAV, Disabled Vets. And this was the first Veterans Day that Sam's club agreed. They roped off a big area, and they had all these tables with white linen cloths. For vets, any vets. And they had these, the metal, what do you call them, stanchions, the medal posts, silver posts, with the cords, so they had it roped off. And me and my wife went in there and had something to eat. They had food there, they had all the heated stuff and all that food and stuff. Come on and have something to each, you know. So. He wanted me to join, he asked me if I wanted to join the Disabled American Vets. And I said, yeah, sure. Well, I didn't know it was $180. My wife wrote him a check. So I'm a life member. DAV, I'm a life number VFW. I'm the life member of Vietnam Veterans of America, member of the American Legion. I am a life member of Military Order Purple Heart. What else did I forget? That's five or six, I think. I can't think of another organization, can you?
01:20:40VILLAR: Would you encourage our returning veterans now, in this day and age, to become active in a service organization?
01:20:52OLSON: You know, I joined these organizations, Don, but because of my physical problems, I have offered, well, when I first joined the VFW, my legs weren't that bad. I volunteered for the color guard. I'm sorry, I offered when I was-- kind of physically, sort of. I mean, I wasn't that great to be able to physically do it, but I offered. And because I've stumbled too many times and fallen, but it's just gotten worse. But back then, it was bad, but, it wasn't as bad as it is now, since I got to 100% in that. But, I volunteered for that. And then the DAV, I volunteered there. Poppy program. I said I could sit by a store and then I could stand up for a while and sit down, stand up, you know, take a break, get in there. I said I can probably do that. And I told them, call me. I said, when's the poppy thing? He said, we'll call you. Well they never called me. And the only thing was bad about the DAV when I joined was, I mean not bad, I didn't realize it. When I joined, what they were using, they used a building in Beloit. I went to three meetings there with my wife, and it was okay, but I couldn't keep driving to Beloit from here every time there was a meeting, so I just transferred to Watertown, but I haven't been to a meeting there either. I don't know if they have one at DAV in Fort or not, but after a while. But the only thing is-- I hate to say this, but when I went to the VFW in Fort, now I know a few people that belong there, that go there. In fact, Steve does, he belongs there, Steve Ploon, my neighbor, and his wife does the breakfast there every Sunday. She helps out, she's in there. Her mother was in the auxiliary, her mother passed away for, I don't know, her mother was in it for, I don' know, 30 years or maybe longer. And then now Sue has been a member for a long time. She helps with the breakfast on Sundays. I went to three meetings there and back then you could smoke in there. They would have these closing doors in this little area and the first meeting I went to, this is how long ago it was, there was smoking allowed in there well they closed that room off and I had stopped smoking by that time. The smoke in here was like you were in a gas chamber. I couldn't stand it and I wasn't going to tell a World War II vet, hey, why don't you put that thing out there in the meeting? You know, I could have told the boss, the commander, how about just letting them stop smoking just for while the meeting's going on. I was dying in there. But that wasn't the main problem. And I really hate to say this, but I was shunned in there by some of the World War II vets, okay? And you know what? I love that they get called the greatest generation. I have no problem with that. I have not problem with it. If you wanna, if you're still a vet, whatever you are, and if you got that mentality that you're the greatest generations, that's fine with me. I don't care. You know, it doesn't matter to me. But at the time there were two or three Vietnam vets that belonged to it at that time. I don't know how many are in there now. They introduced me, and you know what, I don't need applause either. A few guys clapped. That's okay with me. I mean, ignore me if you want. And that's what they did. A lot of them did. And I hate to say that, because my dad and my uncles were in World War II. These guys sat at the bar, and they just went like this, and they're just-- And you know, I've talked to other vets in Madison, and if the subject came up, and they said, you know I stopped going. To my meetings, they tell me the same story, Don, and I hate to say that. I mean, if you wanna be the greatest generation, like I said, that's fine, but you know what? We're all vets, and I thought, you're my brother, they're my brothers, so after three meetings, you know, I get the same treatment, and I've had other guys say that, and I'd hate to that, you know? I've other vets tell me, you now, I stopped going to my meeting, too, because of the same thing. I don't know what it is with the Vietnam Vets, but-- That's the feeling I got, so I stopped going. Now, I didn't get that at the DAV, just the VFW.
01:26:05VILLAR: About the American Legion. Have you participated in any of their activities?
01:26:13OLSON: I've been down here a couple of times, but uh-- I'm not a drinker. And nothing against drinking. But I think a lot of guys go down there just to drink. And I know, a lot a guys like to drink, I'm not a big drinker, so I mean, I got a bar, but I don't drink. It's more of a social-- Yeah, yeah, and I, you know, I don' know, I don't know what it is.
01:26:44VILLAR: It kind of ties in with our discussion here about your overseas activity, your coming back to the states here. All of us veterans, I'm speaking on behalf of all of us now, meet people every day or maybe once a week or whatever the case may be, especially young people who might even Say it to you right there. At the cashier stand at the festival, I am going to join the United States Army. I signed up and I'll be going in June. Do you have any advice? What would you tell them?
01:27:25OLSON: And I think, you know, it's unfortunate that we've got all this turmoil in the world with other countries and some of them want to really destroy us and they hate us and everything. But I said it a long time ago, I've talked to different people. I think even a two-year-- Like I had, I mean, not necessarily going to a combat zone. But I think I always said two years it would be really great for a lot of these kids. But you know where it starts? It starts with the family and your upbringing. I had respect as well as my brother and sister. We had respect for adults, for relatives, friends, neighbors. Catholic schooling, that did Catholics the best schooling, but we respected people, we stayed out of trouble, didn't fool around with drugs, didn't fool around booze. Your upbringing has a lot to do with it and But I'll tell you when you go into service Even if you didn't have a great upbringing, like I know some of the guys probably didn't, you could tell by sometimes the way guys act, but you know what? You learn respect, you learn responsibility. There's so many other-- Authority, respect for authority, for rank, respect for rank. There's so many things you can learn in two years' time, and hopefully you won't have to go to combat.
01:29:15VILLAR: Would you encourage young people, well, I'm getting behind here. You really encourage young people today to serve in the military for a period which would enhance their life as far as discipline and recognition and respect, as you said. Would you encourage young young people after high school or college to serve our military?
01:29:50OLSON: Yes, I would. A lot of people, you know, they're career-oriented and not necessarily with the military. They might go in another direction. Like my daughter, my youngest daughter is an electrical engineer. She wanted engineering from the time she was in high school. Not that she would go into service, but I mean, she had her career already planned out for her. But somebody that, you how many times have you heard people say, well, you know what, depending on what year or generation it was. A lot of people, you know, they get out of school, high school or something, and they're not college material maybe, and you know they're looking for a job and they don't really know. I've heard it many times. People have talked to me and they've gone into the military because a lot of them made careers out of it and then others learned a trade like airplane mechanic or something while they were in the military and they went on to look at all these pilots. For the big airlines, a lot of them are military, you know. So I would encourage them, sure I would.
01:30:58VILLAR: Now, you said your daughter?
01:31:01OLSON: No, she was an electrical engineer, so I'm saying she wanted to be an engineer from high school. She wanted to do that. So that's what she pursued. She had her goal set on that from a young age on. Somebody had asked me a while ago, a few times, different people had asked if I retired from the military. And I said, you know what, because in fact I talked to a guy at Yvonne's office, he had 22 years in the military, I don't remember his name. But, uh. He said, I said to him, well, you know what, my aunt and uncle, the two of them, my mother's oldest brother, he was in the Air Force for 25 years. I said, you what, everybody is different for sure, for anything, and you have to want to stay in the military. I mean, yeah, Vietnam was not a happy year for me, but you know, the other times, I mean even in Vietnam I met guys you know you meet real nice guys and stuff and unfortunately some don't make it out but I thought it was great the two years it not that I needed military in my life but you know I put up with it and I did my thing and I did what I was supposed to but you got to be a special kind of person to spend 20 years plus in the military. That's what I think.
01:32:28VILLAR: Participation in wars over the years, and from what you were just talking about, young people becoming active in our military. Would you say that our camaraderie and patriotism since the Revolutionary War has increased to today? I ask that because I know so many of our active duty personnel today are going back for deployment, going back for deployment. Going back for deployment, which we didn't see in World War II in Korea and Vietnam. It was a war, we went in, did our job and got out. There was no feeling of, shall we say, proudness. I'm proud that I served because, and you can leave that part blank, but how would you look at us today as compared to the time you were in during Vietnam?
01:33:33OLSON: I can't tell you how much it's decreased, but I think-- I think it's decreased, decreased in the country. I think there's a lot, you know, you don't see a lot of flag, you see some flag wavers, I say flag wavers, I mean patriotic citizens and that, that are really into it and you know I, many times I've had people pay for my breakfast in Janesville, never met them, never talked to them. Waitress came up to me and I said, can I have my bill? And I was in there by myself, I had my hat on. And she says, your bill's taken care of. I said you didn't pay for it, did you? Because I know waitresses, they don't make a lot of money. They make their money on tips, you know. And she said, no, I didn't paid for it. I said well, would you tell me who it was so I could thank them very much? And she say they're already gone. They didn't wanna talk, you now.
01:34:37VILLAR: I can relate to that. That shocks me. Even people in these stores, when I've been to the checkout counter, the person behind me said, let me pay for that.
01:34:48OLSON: I go Qwik Trip all the time in Fort Atkinson, I get my gas, I got a quick trip card and I go in there for the cappuccino because it's the best and I get milk and eggs, eggs are 99 cents sometimes, sometimes butter's two bucks or so. So all the times I go, I'm in there not every day but quite a bit and three times I've been in there, one time I bought, they got a meat refrigerator in there now. And I bought some of the meat in there, it's pretty good. It might not be the cheapest, but it was really good. So I saw hamburgers, they're really nice looking and everything, so sometimes I buy them and I do them on the grill, but. Three or four times I've been in there and the one time I bought groceries I spent about $7 or something, $8, whatever it was. And the girl at the register says, your bill is $4 and something and I said, I think you made a mistake. She said, no, a customer gave me $4. And said, next vet that comes in, use this toward his bill. And that's happened to me three times in there.
01:35:59VILLAR: I can relate to that. I'm going to ask you, do you know who that is, that's doing that?
01:36:04OLSON: You.
01:36:05VILLAR: No, I'm gonna accuse you. Keep this on the record, Alan. I've been in there numerous times. I do a lot of business there. I drink their water, I buy their pizzas, I've buy their donuts and stuff in the morning on my way to Madison or whatever.
01:36:25VILLAR: Me and my wife have eaten at quite a few of them.
01:36:27VILLAR: I cannot count the times I've gone up there and said, how much? Oh, it's paid for. Who pays for it? Well, we can't tell you that. He comes in once a month and he adds to the kitty over there for any veteran. Who is it? I have no idea. Are you going to find out? I've talked to Ryan, I've talk to every member of the employment staff there and nobody will tell me who's doing it.
01:36:48OLSON: Well, I gave him five bucks one day.
01:36:51VILLAR: They wouldn't take my money.
01:36:51OLSON: And I'm going to do it once in a while. Oh they won't?
01:36:53VILLAR: They wouldn't take my money
01:36:55OLSON: Oh it's got to be a civilian? Well I'll go in there without my hat on.
01:36:59VILLAR: No, some veteran is doing this.
01:37:00OLSON: Well I won't go in there with my hand in it. They won't know.
01:37:03OLSON: A lot of, I go in there so often for my cappuccino, there's a half a dozen employees that know who I am. Even if I went in and went out of hat, they'd know.
01:37:13VILLAR: Oh yeah, now Ryan, he was the manager, I haven't seen him recently, he knows me too without my cap.
01:37:22OLSON: But they wouldn't take your money, huh?
01:37:24VILLAR: They didn't take my money, you couldn't tell me who was doing it.
01:37:27OLSON: Well, I noticed a lot of companies, Lowe's gives veterans 10% off, Home Depot does. Is that all the time? I've even, I usually, well I usually take the discount anyway, but if I get like I had my bathroom done upstairs, a new floor and a new sink and that, so I bought all my stuff. In fact, I bought my lawnmower at Home Depot, Cub Cadet lawnmower, I bought that and I got 10%, you know, you spend $2,000 and 10% is pretty good.
01:38:07VILLAR: For future reference and education, our veterans are allowed discounts at many places, but you have to ask.
01:38:19OLSON: You know where, you know who does that? Culver's. But you know what? If you go up to the drive-thru, now I've done it a few times before I knew there was a discount. If you pull up to the speaker, they don't tell you. And you can go in there, which I've done both. I've walked into place and ordered, and even the culver's out by my daughter. I went in there one time. I've been in there twice in Oconomowoc because my daughter lives there with my granddaughter and my son-in-law. The one girl was ringing it up and then an older woman walked up to her and she said give him the military discount because she wasn't going to she didn't give it to me and I didn't ask you know but the same thing if you go through the drive-thru in Fort Atkinson if you tell a guy or girl that you're a veteran they'll give get a discount.
01:39:15VILLAR: Do you have a membership in this Honorary Rewards Program for Veterans? There is a national program that the program is offered to counties and they share what we call the Honorary rewards program for veterans.
01:39:32OLSON: Is it called That's For Us or something like that?
01:39:35VILLAR: That's a different program. It's very similar, except this honor reward program does not cost a veteran anything. It is our responsibility, the CVSOs, to contact businesses and ask them to register with this organization in Des Moines, Iowa. They will send the recipient a questionnaire saying what kind of discount we will allow. Well, I have contacted 16 businesses in Fort Atkinson, and they have sent in that information. But our veterans, when you come up to our office, we will mail you an application, and it will be sent via the Internet to this organization in Des Moines. They will send you an ID card, I'll show you mine after we finish our recording here, And then that way, the organization, they have a little sticker that they put their window. So if you're in Illinois, if you are in Chicago, you see that sticker on the window of a business, you show them your ID card and you get a substantial discount, or a free gift or a free coffee or free steak dinner or whatever the case may be. This is something we started about a year and a half ago.
01:40:53OLSON: Do you have the list, too, with the application? Yes, that's right.
01:40:58VILLAR: I'll give you that next time you're in the office. But again, I'm learning, too, that I myself, when I go into any business, any place where I'm going to buy something, I'll ask, how much do you allow for a veterans' discount? And 90% of the time you get a good response. It's the 10%ers you don't hear anything from. Alright, I've gotten off the trail here. Okay, let's wrap this one up and go. What what are your feelings are you do you feel good about sharing your life? With others via this oral history program. What's happening, this will be submitted to our veterans museum here in Madison. It will be placed on two databases, one national, one international, and professors and teachers and students can go into these databases listen to your history, your military history. This is not shared with the John Q. Public. It is also shared with any of your friends or relatives. They can go into the museum at any time and request to listen to this recording, look at any pictures or any paraphernalia that you want to commit at any time and put in the archives at our museum. In general, how do you feel about this oral history program?
01:42:47OLSON: I think it's great. I think its a great program. I'm-- I think I've done pretty well in my lifetime except for my anger issues through the years that I've even talked on talk radio to a friend of mine who has a show and told him over the air that I have had, because there was a dental clinic in Fort Atkinson that had a day for veterans to come in for free. And they do it every year. It's EBY Dental Clinic at 1100 Madison in Fort Atkinson. Every veterans, around Veterans Day, they do free dental care for veterans. And I put it on the radio five days in a row. They had it on to Jamesville Station 107.3, but I put in on the Radio at 1310 AM for five days, four or five days. And telling veterans anywhere, any veterans from anywhere to go in there. And I dropped in there after it was over, I didn't need any dental care. But I put on the radio 35 vets went in there and a lot of, I went in there after to thank the office there at the dental clinic for what they did. And it turns out that Dr. Eby Her father was in Korea, so she's very patriotic and she wanted to do something for vets. So I guess they do it every year. They did it last year, and I was unaware of it last year, but I checked in and they had 35 vets that went in there. And a lot of them got other appointments to come back for more dental work or something, you know, more appointments they needed for whatever dental work they needed. So they did. They did pretty well. And they had flags out there and they had a big, like a ceremony out there. My wife went by and saw it. I didn't realize that, that they were gonna have a big deal out there, but they did. Unfortunately i i think uh-- We have a reunion with my company, the guys that went over to get her every year. But it's all over the United States, and I don't get to all of them. I've been to, I think, five or six or maybe more. And I've held three reunions myself in Fort Atkinson. No, one in Fort Adkinson and two in Watertown. When I had the hotel, I had banquet rooms. We had two reunions, two years in a row at the Heritage Inn in Watertown. Unfortunately, I met a guy at I met a guy working a Qwik Trip yesterday, and he sees me all the time. We talk, and his father-in-law just passed away, a Vietnam vet from Agent Orange, 70 years old, my age. The kid almost started crying when he was talking to me, and I said, you know what, your father- in-law did the honorable thing and served this country. It's too bad that things happen like Agent Orange and other things that-- You know, are not good for anybody, but I gave them my condolences. There's a lot of guys, even from my own company, they have medical problems for years. Since our first reunion, I've talked to guys in my own unit and other citizens, other vets in stores. When I'm walking around, I see them walking with a cane or something and I walk with a can and I ask them what their problem was, if they had any medical problems and they tell me, you know, neuropathy and all this other stuff, heart stuff and heart problems and cancers and different things. A lot of the guys in my own unit will not go to the VA because they say, basically, I don't want to go there and ask for a handout. And I tell them, it's not a handout, you did what you were supposed to do. And did I tell you about the guy in Ace Hardware? I go to Ace Hardware in Fort Atkinson. I spend several hundred dollars every year in there. I know it's a little more expensive than going to Menards, but Menards is, the gas money to get to Menard's in Johnson Creek would be, it wouldn't be worth it. And if it's something small, I go the Ace. So I go Ace in there a month or two ago, and there's two gentlemen in front of me. So I'm the third guy in line, and I got a few things. And I know almost all of the employees there, but there's one guy that works there. I think he only works there one day a week. I don't want to mention his name, but I'm standing in line waiting to check out, and he comes up beside of me, and he's got his Ace shirt on, and I see his name on there. I don' want to mentioned his name. And he starts talking to me about Vietnam War. I got my Vietnam Vets hat on. And he's telling me, You were over there, huh? I said, yeah. I was waiting for him to start getting smart or something with me, and you know, I can't fight anymore. I'm a disabled vet, I'm already disabled. My wife beats me up. No, she doesn't, I am kidding. Anyway, no, she does not beat me up, she's a wonderful lady. But anyway, he starts asking me, he says, you know he says I was drafted too, We should, but-- I didn't go. I said, oh really? I said well, you know, everybody makes choices in their lifetime. I said I made mine and you made yours. He said you know what he told me? He said I went to college and I was two credits away from getting a degree and when I got drafted I went down there and I told him I was a conscientious objector. I said really? He says yeah. He said, you know what they did? They put me in prison for three years. And they fined me ten thousand dollars and i'm thinking to myself And I'm thinking to myself, well, you know, if you're in college, you're supposed to get a deferment from going in the service. He tells me he's two credits away from getting getting a degree, meaning he's still in college. Right. Well, I didn't want to go into detail with him. But if you are only two credits away from get a degree and they can pull you out of college, you know. But I didn' want to get in a big conversation with this guy because you know what? Don't come up to a Vietnam vet and start telling them you're a conscientious objector and da-da-da. You made that, I told them, you made that decision and you gotta live with it. I said, I'm done. I'm gone talking, you know. So I paid my thing, I got out of it. The next day I go in there, I went back to Ace the next day, and I know the owner, Jim Goyer. His dad started that 25 years ago or whatever. His dad had it for years and years and his dad died and he took it. I walk in there and I told the girl, I said, is Jim here today? And she said, yeah, he's in his office. So I walked back to his office and he's coming out of the office. And I said Jim, how you doing? He said, okay Bill, how are you? I said okay. I said uh, you got a few minutes? I could talk to you? He said yeah, come on in my office. So I go sit in the office with him. I shouldn't even say his name because now he gave the hardware store away. But anyway, I didn't tell you who the guy was that was in there, but anyway. He said, have a seat. So I sit down, you know, I was in here yesterday. He says, oh, yeah. I said yeah, I had to buy a few things. He said I said you know what, Jim? I said I spent several hundred dollars in here, and I don't want any special treatment. I get to sales sometimes in here and I buy something that I need. He said yeah I know I see you all the time. I said yes. He said well you know I was here yesterday and I'm in line waiting to check out. And one of your employees came up to me and he started talking to me about Vietnam and that he was a conscientious objector and da-da-da, and they put him in prison and they fined him $10,000. And he started telling me all about, you know, the war and I said, I said to him, I said you know what? It's probably a good, first of all, it's probably a good thing that your employee didn't catch, talk to the wrong Vietnam vet. He might've got cold cocked. But I told this man, you know what, you made your choice and I made mine. I said, and I don't want to talk anymore about it. I said but for this employee while he's working to come up to a customer and start telling him political stuff and about the war and everything, I said that is not a good thing. And I told him who the guy was and I said I do not want you to fire this guy. I think you know that you're gonna have to talk to him. And tell him to keep his political thoughts and whatever war thoughts he has to himself because I didn't appreciate it. I said, I'll be back to spend my money in ACE Hardware, but you got to talk to that guy and tell them not to be talking to people about what he likes about the war and all this other crap, you know. So I was kind of ticked, but you didn't ruffle my feathers. I just told him, you made your choice, and I made mine. I'm done fighting.
01:53:19VILLAR: Did Jim come back to you?
01:53:21OLSON: I haven't seen him. I go in there when I need something. Sometimes he's in there, I run into him. Usually he's on a Saturday or something.
01:53:37VILLAR: At this point then Bill, anything else that you'd like to add that you feel we haven't covered?
01:53:44OLSON: I just, I think I want it on the record, the VA has been very good to me. I've been in the VA in Tampa, Florida. Thank you. It's a beautiful building there. And they took me in, this was years ago, the building was fairly new when I went in there. I was in Florida in Fort Myers at my son's condo and I went over to Tampa and it was a really nice place and they took care of me right away. And uh-- But uh-- You know, Vietnam vets, just like World War II and World War I, vets are dying off at a high rate. Unfortunately, suicides too, a lot of suicides. But it took me a while, you know, I was a certain percentage disabled and then, you know, from other things and tests and all this other stuff, it wound up at 100 percent. But, for these vets that-- That have medical problems, or even PTSD, you guys, you gotta go in, and it might take a while and you get frustrated. If it wasn't for my wife, I probably wouldn't have, I don't know how much percent I'd have if it wasn't for my wife, because I was, I got inundated with so much paperwork. There's a lot of paperwork. You know, and some, you know, I put up as a cop for 28 years, I put with a lot, I had a lot of patience, and things before I had to wind up locking somebody up only because they wanted to get locked up because of their actions. But I never wanted to lock anybody up. It was more work for me. For me and my wife, I had these problems and I started getting, and I don't mind filling out applications. Our 44 years of marriage, I think I've filled everything out that we've ever gotten because I don t mind doing it. Of course my hands shake a little bit now, but I don' t mind it. It but the thing is I always wanted to give up, many times, several times, I don't know how many times. I was going to throw all paperwork in the garbage and just, I didn't need that aggravation. And she just kept pushing me and pushing me. And now here I am, a hundred percent, because of her, because my wife. And my kids.
01:56:17VILLAR: I can attest to that. I think if it wasn't for our wives, we wouldn't appreciate what they did for us.
01:56:27OLSON: I still hear it from my youngest daughter, too, especially. She says, dad, you gotta do this, or you gotta that. And my wife says, you know, whenever. So now, I mean, for a long time now, I mean I've come to the realization that, you know a long ago, I can't. If you're not gonna go for medical help, I talked to a guy that has an office in the VA, I don't even remember his name, but he's on the ground floor, and he's one of the bosses there. And his dad was in the big red one. Just like I was, and he died. I said, how's your dad now? He said, he's dead. I see he would not, his son worked for the VA and he would not go for medical care. 70 years old too, another guy, 70 years.
01:57:15VILLAR: I don't understand why veterans withhold from that. Not long ago, I heard a speaker use the word benefit and he added to his dimension there that I dont like to use the term or the word benefit for our military. When you are attended by our Veterans Administration hospitals, that is a privilege you have earned. A benefit is something you get to pay back. But a privilege is not. You are privileged, the government is privileged, to take care of you. That's what it is. So I got to thinking about that. I think it's true. A benefit is something that you are given. It's kind of like you're paying back somebody for that benefit, where a privilege is something you have earned. And we have, as veterans, we have earned that privilege for the VA to take care of us.
01:58:23OLSON: Benefit is almost like saying, well, we'll loan you this amount of money, but you got to pay its back.
01:58:28VILLAR: Exactly, exactly. It's a privilege to have these people serve us as veterans and take care of our health. I think that was a good logical reasoning there.
01:58:43OLSON: A couple of things I just want to say, it's not going to take me long. First of all, I want to thank my parents and my father-in-law and mother-in law, Bill and Rose Joyce. My parents, Willard and Sarah Olson, for the upbringing that I got that made me the person that I am and my in-laws, Bill and Rose Joyce, who carried on after I married my wife and before I married my wife and were exceptionally good to us. They gave us the property that my house is on in Wisconsin and did so many things. I could write a book and my parents also. And the other thing I want to, I don't know how I admitted this, but It's not in line with the story. It's already passed. But my time in Vietnam I had a guy in my squad named Gary Gaskin. Gary was from Watkins Glen New York. There's a racetrack in Watkins Glen New york and his house was so close to the racetracks you could hear the roar of the engines on race day. And November 1st of 67 Gary got killed. In my squad. He was 30 feet away from me when he got killed. Small arms fire. Since then, the Veterans Administration has had the Veterans Memorial Fund had had a program called In Touch years ago. Most of parents and not all family members of Vietnam vets that got killed, some relatives are still alive. Parents are mostly all gone. Now but uh-- It was a program where you uh-- Notified the memorial fund they would get you tell them who you want to get in touch with and i told him i want to touch with gary gaskin's parents in new york and uh-- They got a hold of some of the relatives the parents were dead already deceased because i always said i wanted to go to his grave site and pay my respects. It took me so many years, because I always worked part-time jobs, besides my full-time police job, and I had three kids, and I worked all these jobs, and, you know, I had vacations, but I never had time to go to Upper New York. But anyway, the In Touch program that they had, they notify Gary's relatives or parents, if they're still alive, and they say that Bill Olson would like to speak to you or contact you, And they returned, and they called back the. Veterans Memorial and they said, yeah we'd like to speak to him because he was with Gary when Gary got killed. So we had a telephone conversation back and forth for quite a while and then my daughter came home from college during spring break in 2007 and she was burnt out because she's the engineer and she went for five years to be an engineer which she graduated with honors and But anyway, I said You want to take a trip to New York? And she said, how are we going to do that? I said, I'll drive. So I took my two daughters and my wife, drove up to Upper New York. And, um, met gary's uh-- Eighty-year-old brother and his wife and uh-- Met the the niece who never met gerry she wasn't born yet and uh they showed me a bunch of pictures went to their house to show a bunch of pictures when gary was a young kid and everything We had coffee and cake and the next morning I met them at the restaurant for breakfast. I bought them all breakfast and we followed them to the cemetery. He's in Woodlawn National Cemetery in New York and half of it is for military and half of the cemetery is for, Mark Twain is buried in the other part of the cemetary And Gary's buried with other veterans with the white crosses and the other part. Took pictures and brought a bouquet from the florist for his grave site and paid my respects. But Gary had told his brother, his two older brothers are in their 80s now, they're still alive. And he told his bother, the one that I met, I didn't meet the other brother, he lived somewhere else up there. He told his Brother Jerry that he didn't think he was gonna make 21. He was 19 when he got drafted like me. His 20th birthday was October 28th. He turned 67, October 28 of 67, he turned 20 years old, and three days later he got killed. But what a, you know, when you spent six, the first six months over there with the same guys, I mean the whole year, if they don't get killed naturally, you know but you know he was in my squad. You know, he's closer to me than, the guys in my squat were closer, we were closer together than the whole company. You know what I mean? You're with them. The two days you rest in your tent, you're at a cot next to his, you talk about. And he had a, he liked to work on cars. He had an old Camaro or something in his garage in New York. It was, it needed a lot of work. And he would work on it all the time. And then his two older brothers were way older than him. So he got drafted, they didn't. And every time he worked on his car in the garage there, this neighborhood kid down the street, who was like 14 or 15, he would come down there and he'd say, Gary, you working on your car? Man, that's gonna be a nice car. Well, when Gary got killed, they called the kid and they said, you can have the car. They gave him the car Yeah, I can't believe that I missed mentioning Gary because I told his family, I have had Gary in my heart since he got killed November 1st of 67.
02:05:44VILLAR: Uh, I do, uh--
02:05:47OLSON: Oh, oh, the last thing. I'm sorry, Don. I'm sorry.
02:05:49VILLAR: No, no, no. Continue please.
02:05:51OLSON: I want to thank Don Miller for everything he does for vets and you cannot talk to him without him mentioning just another subject or topic about vets that he is doing. I don't know, he doesn't have a secretary, I don' think, and I don't know how the man does it, but he makes sure that he takes care of as many vets as he can and I also I want to thank Yvonne Dusterhoff, the greatest service officer in the United States. I don't think there's anybody that could beat her. You are her family. She is your family. She will do what it takes, however, whatever she has to do that's legal, to help Vets anywhere.
02:06:44VILLAR: How can you say that? She wouldn't give me a secretary. She just gave me a file cabinet. That's all I got.
02:06:50OLSON: She is a one-woman wrecking crew. She will do what it takes. She is wonderful woman, and I owe her tons. The last time I met her, I see her off and on, not on business, but when I stopped by the office, and the last time I was in her office with my wife. I, we stood up to leave and I said, Yvonne, can I give you a hug? I said my wife is standing right here. I said please let me give you hug. So I got a great big hug and she's a wonderful lady. I am Bill. And I hope anybody that listens to my story gets something out of it. I am so lucky. To be here and have a great wife and a great family. I got three wonderful kids. My son Bill is a Chicago firefighter for 13 years. My daughter Elizabeth, my youngest, is an electrical engineer. And my daughter Christine runs an insurance company near Chicago. And just three great kids. And I knew when I was going to marry my wife, I knew that she would be. an outstanding mother and she was and she still is and now I'm going to have my third grandchild in April, my daughter, youngest daughter Elizabeth. I have two beautiful granddaughters Mary Rose and Therese Christine and my son-in-law Stuart Sigmund and my beautiful daughter Elizabeth and I couldn't ask for anything better. And God has blessed me with getting back from Vietnam and police department. And if I didn't make it back, this family wouldn't be what it is today. And I wouldn't where I am today. And I'm very thankful for that, all the time I'm thankful. That's about it. I could keep going on when things pop into my head, but now that I'm 70, soon to be 71, January 30th, I'm starting to have a little memory lapse, I think. Certain things you never forget. And I had bad and good experiences and. I've enjoyed all the good ones.
02:09:37VILLAR: You're welcome. I appreciate your time. You're welcomed, sir. For sharing your life with all the veterans around the United States of America and beyond.
02:09:45OLSON: You owe me two dollars and fifty cents for the coffee cake and a half a pound of coffee.
02:09:52VILLAR: We'll see you. Thank you, Bill.
02:09:55OLSON: Thank you Museum, whoever is in charge and for all your work too, I appreciate it.
02:10:02VILLAR: Well, of course, Ellen Brooks, she is in charge of the oral history program here at our--
02:10:10OLSON: Yes, I forgot to thank Miss Brooks. I appreciate the, I never thought I'd be recording my story here and I hope I did a pretty good job on it. I do want to add--
02:10:26VILLAR: This, that briefly a few days ago in speaking with some of our deputies over here at the courthouse in Jefferson, there was one that every time I see him coming or going, he'll say to me, Don, thank you for your service. And the other day I had to stop and say to him. Let me thank you for your service." He said, yeah, but you had to face the enemy, you had to go out in the battlefield, I mean, you're exposed to all kinds of atrocities. I said, well, now let's look at it from the other side. I should be thanking you as well for your service because those who are law enforcement, I use the word law enforcement. Are faced with far more complicated than we who are in combat. We can see the enemy. You can't always see him. As you were explaining earlier, you go down a blind alley and he's fighting at use. You don't know where he's from. Whereas in combat, as you well know, you can detect what area that enemy is in. We have all kinds of support behind us too. Whereas Law enforcement doesn't have the type of support that we have in the military, but you are exposed to more dangerous types of aggression. You've got dope peddlers to handle, you've got family squabbles to handle. You've all kinds of, what do you say crudely, murders you're up against. You have more problems to solve than we do, I think, on the battlefield. Because on the battlefield, we're taking one direction. We have--
02:12:22OLSON: But Vietnam, most of the time you didn't see the enemy.
02:12:28VILLAR: Well, that's true, today too, as in Afghanistan, we know who the enemy is, they all wear different types of clothing, they wear the same thing in Vietnam, the enemy wore a uniform.
02:12:38OLSON: Same thing in Vietnam? During the day, the guy's out there farming, and at night he's got his black pajamas on.
02:12:45VILLAR: And he's out there shooting at you. When I compare this to law enforcement too, and I wrote this on the record that we should be as thankful to law-enforcement people as they are to us, gracious to us. Because you people, you had 28 years, Bill, as a law enforcement officer in the city of Chicago, one of the highest crime cities in the United States of America today. It's over 500 murders this year. Yeah, it's sickening when you look at the record. But I do want to go on record as saying we are as thankful to you for you people who serve in law enforcement as you are as gracious and thankful to us for our military service.
02:13:29OLSON: I tell those sheriffs that to the deputies, thanks for your service. I even tell the girls in the kitchen, they say thank you for your services. I said, you're doing a hell of a job here. Thanks for your serve.
