Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Interview with Henry Kornegay

  • record image
2 / 2
Item
  • HK 1 Henry Kornegay Interview Chyan Gallardo – Interviewer Duration: 1:08:38 Start of Interview CG: This is Chyan Gallardo interviewing Henry Kornegay on Thursday May 28th, 2015 at WCU Library. Mr. Kornegay, are you aware that you’re being recorded and are you okay with that? HK: I am CG: Okay. CG: Thank you for agreeing to the interview. I’m planning on entering the military, the Coast Guard Academy, so what you have to say is interesting to me on many levels. Did you come for a military background? HK: Yes. My mom’s dad was in the Navy, and my dad’s dad was in the Army Air Corps, both in World War II. My uncle was in the Army during Desert Storm and my dad was in the Marine Corps in the early seventies, and some cousins in the military and that kind of thing. Ancestry was for the Confederacy and all that good stuff. So, yup, that’s what got me into it, I guess. CG: What are some of your childhood memories? HK: School wise or playing wise? CG: Either one. Both. HK: Well, I guess I was a pretty typical kid. We did a lot of…it was the kind of, you know, “Its nine o’clock, go outside and don’t come back until dark, and we’ll eat supper.” So, we stayed in the woods a lot, and found rusty tools and machetes, in old barns and carried them around and chopped our way through the woods. Built forts, rode bikes and wagons. Hunted, I guess, but didn’t really get serious about that until we were teenagers. Basic kid stuff. We didn’t really have Xbox or TV or anything like that so, most of our fun was outdoors. Never broke any bones, miraculously, but we had a lot of adventures, fished. CG: Did your childhood experiences in any way prepare you for the military? HK: Absolutely. So, we were going along in the car one day, and I asked my dad, I was about six years old, I was like, “Dad were you in the army?” He said, “No, I was in the Marine Corps.” So, I said, “What’s that?” He said, “We’re like the Army, kind of, but we jump out of helicopters and attack from the sea, and we’re tougher.” So, from then on out, I was interested in the Marine Corps. I learned to read and started doing that. One of the main games my neighbor, Seth, and I would play was recon. So, we’d get our mom to take us to Old Grouch Military Surplus in Clyde. You know where that is. And we’d spend our money on military gear and whatever, and prowl around the woods. I remember they were building a housing development near us. So, we would go over there and we would pretend that we were at war with North Korea. We would go on recon missions, and go and spy on the HK 2 construction workers, in like face paint, and leaves and sticks in our hair, and helmets, and hats, and whatever, and get as close as we could. And honestly, that really set the base for me on how to move through the woods without being seen, and the kind of patrolling tactics that I’ve learned from war movies. I know this kind of sounds cliché, but it’s exactly how we operated when we deployed in Afghanistan. And also what also helped was my dad’s business. He was an outfitter and guide, so, he took people backpacking and canoeing for a living. So, from that I learned how to treat bad water to drink, how to effectively pack a pack and waterproof all my gear, how to pack light and make the most of what I had. So, I was definitely born into the right family to prepare me for infantry life CG: Did you ever scare some of the construction workers when you would creep on them, spy on them? HK: No. Honestly, we never got seen by them. My mom got pretty nervous once we were about fifteen and still doing this. She was afraid somebody was going to call the law or shoot at us, because we had toy guns, and we’d break the orange tips off or paint over them or whatever and make it look as real as possible. We never got caught over there, but I remember we would get about ten feet from them, I mean we’d be like right there. We’d watch them for an hour, and then crawl back out of there, and they’d never see us. CG: What influenced you to join the Marines? HK: Dad. He planted that idea in my head when I was six. Like I said, I learned to read and read about it, and watched war videos and all. So, that was what got the ball rolling. The more I read about it, came to learn that there was nothing like the Marine Corps. So, I was hell bent on that path, and there was no turning back. CG: Did any friends from home join up with you? HK: Yeah, a boy named Roscoe Woodard. He joined about a year later. Cory Vickery, he’s dead now. He joined about six months after I did, I guess. Or no, maybe a year, I can’t remember, honestly. Roscoe Woodard, Cory Vickery, Jesse Hinkle, there’s a couple kids younger than me that I don’t remember their names, and then a couple boys from Franklin went in with me. It’s kind of funny we were all in different units. Roscoe was in one eight. We were all in different units and had different jobs kind of, but at one point I think four or five of us were in the same place in Afghanistan, which is super rare. Jesse Hinkle was there, Roscoe was, Cory Vickery, myself, another boy named, Chris Clymer, he was from down near Lexington, North Carolina. We were all in the same place at the same time, a total coincidence. So, we all ended up making up some excuse to go to the main base a couple miles down the road. We all got together and cooked marshmallows over a fire on galvanized metal poles, and cooked some baked beans, I think. It was just one night, but it was pretty fun. It was a good time, but that’s a rare occurrence. CG: How would you describe your experiences at basic training, like boot camp? HK: I went to boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina, where they have the movie, Full Metal Jacket is based. You know that. Boot camp is by no means fun. They have thirteen weeks to do what people’s parents couldn’t do for them, discipline wise, in eighteen years. So, it’s pretty HK 3 rough, and it’s full throttle. You’ll hear documentaries talk about there’s no physical abuse and all that good stuff, but a drill instructor is going to do what they need to make Marines out of high school kids. It was great, and it was hard while we were doing it, but as you progress through the Marine Corps you come to realize that boot camp was the easy part. There, at least you’re guaranteed sleep and food, and you don’t have a whole lot of weight to carry around. So, it kind of progresses from boot camp is hard when you’re there, and infantry school is hard when you’re there, and then you get to the fleet, the operating fleeces of the Marine Corps, and then it’s full on, and you look back and realize that boot camp was easy compared to what was coming. CG: Was there a time in boot camp that you wanted to drop out, because it got so intense? HK: No. No, there were mornings I’d wake up and realize that I couldn’t leave, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was there. You can’t really drop out of boot camp. This is kind of a misconception that people have, I guess. Because you sign a contract with the government for four years, so, even if you get in a bad medical situation, sick, or broken leg, or whatever, they’ll still keep you on the island for a while, and you’ll pay service to the government and do things on the base, or whatnot. But generally, if people want to drop out, what they’ll do is recycle them. So, if I’m in my eighth week of boot camp and I just can’t handle it, they’ll put me back into a different platoon that’s in its third week of boot camp. And that happens for all kinds of stuff. If you don’t do well, you can make your stay a lot longer than anticipated. But I was there and I enjoyed it. It was what I wanted to be doing. I had no other thoughts. CG: I heard in the Sylva Herald about the trouble you were having with the equipment. How did this trouble affect your mission in Afghanistan? HK: The overall mission, not so much. Secure places, and kill all the Taliban and the remaining ones would flee, keep them out, or try to. The equipment problems I was having was with my primary weapon. It was a M-249, small automatic weapon, like a machinegun. The direct influence it had was, in a couple fire fights the weapon wouldn’t work. So, I had a seventeen pound club, and forty pounds of ammo that I couldn’t really do anything with. I couldn’t throw it out, I had to keep it with me. So, it led to extremely high blood pressure in those situations, I was pretty upset. And it happened a couple of times. I guess, people didn’t really think that I was not taking care of my weapon. The machineguns we had were pretty old. They been through six or seven combat deployments, hundreds of thousands of rounds shot through them. It’s just like a car, after so much wear and tear it’s going to wear out. That’s just the fact of the matter. And that’s what was happening. Parts were wearing out inside the machine gun. So, after a firefight, one of them, I picked up the rounds I’d ejected trying to get it to work, and took them to my platoon staff and showed them what the deal was. They gave me a weapon that a wounded Marine that had been sent home had left. They kept in their little armory, right there. So, I got my weapon replaced. Does that answer, I guess? The direct effect was I didn’t have weapon during fire fights, and that was [inaudible]. CG: What is your opinion on how that issue was resolved with your mom sending a letter to command? HK 4 HK: Awesome. I didn’t know it at the time. I think I wrote about it to dad in a letter. That was the only means of communication was just mail. I guess, a couple weeks later, we were on a patrol and the company gunnery sergeant came out and sat down, and told me I had a “convest” started on me. I didn’t know what that was. He said it was a congressional investigation. So, being the kid I was growing up, you know, just mischief. I was a Eddie Haskell, you know? When the parents were around, “Oh Miss Brown, you look so nice. I love your house.” But when the parents were away I was like, “Throw this rock through that window.” Anyway, he told me that, and I started racking my brain trying to figure out what I’d done on a congressional level. And then they just told me that somebody complained that I had complained. I got a new weapon. I don’t know what happened on the battalion level, honestly, but they definitely got investigated for issuing worn out gear to Marines. I’m glad it happened the way it did. I met Kay Hagan actually, when I lived in DC. I went down and saw her. She had these “Carolina Coffees,” that’s what she called them, like little meetings where North Carolinians up in DC would come and hang out for a couple of hours. They were all pretty well-to-do, and by no means was I, so it was funny going in there. But I met her, thanked her, and talked to her for a minute, and that was it. CG: What can you tell me about the invasion of Marjah? HK: What do you want to know about it? Do you got any specifics? CK: Anything, the thing that sticks out the most. HK: It was the largest military operation during the war. And I was told it was the largest helicopter born invasion since Vietnam. So, most kids, when they join the Marine Corps, they want to be a part of something like that. Like an invasion on a hostile force, with no other mission except to destroy everybody hostile, like enemy eradication basically. So, overall, I could not have been luckier to be on that mission. It’s what thousands of people join to be a part of. A lot of them are during peace time, they don’t get to do that. So, I was very lucky. I don’t know what to tell you about it. CG: What part did you play in it? HK: Well they launched six waves of helicopters to land in the middle of the city. I was on the third wave, we came in, they dropped us off, and they left. I remember seeing, coming in on the helo, these giant helicopters, CH-53, they won’t use them anymore. It looks like a dinosaur coming through the sky. Dude, it is huge. It came in, landed in about knee-deep mud, and a lot of weight. The helicopters took off, and I could see them going through the distance, going across the city, because they had to to leave. And I remember watching, and they were out of earshot, so, I couldn’t hear them anymore, and I remember seeing these two streams of red start arcing up towards the sky. And it took a second to realize what it was, but it was anti-aircraft fire. And it looked like something out of a Vietnam movie. And they were shooting at all the helicopters going out, and I was like, “Well, it’s real now.” That stands out, I remember that. And then, we just worked our way from that, the drop zone right there, worked our way west. We had, three-six was another battalion, they were on the north side of the city, I don’t know what they were HK 5 doing, but one-six was right there in the middle. That was us. Once we cleared a bunch of buildings and fought, it took about two days to fight and clear this first section, and then we ended up lining up, a full infantry company on-line, plus a platoon. So, it was four, or no, four platoons on-line, and they broke up the squads, whatever. The moral of the story is we formed a giant line and pretty much headed west. Along the way, if we found an IED we’d blow it in place, or dig it out and throw it in the river. Or if we got in a good firefight, we’d take care of whoever was shooting at us and just move on. So, it was like an east-to-west clear. That was awesome. It was a full-on assault. CG: What’s typical day and night like out in the field? HK: In the field on deployment? Well they’re the same. You train like you fight, so, you’re going to do what you do. What you do here is what you’re going to do there. So, a typical day or night? Well, they usually divide up a platoon into three squads, and divide up rotations. You’d have a patrolling rotation, a guard rotation, because you always have security out in case somebody tries to attack you, and then a rest rotation. And the rest rotation is like if a working party needs to be done, or somebody needs help on guard or patrol, that’s who they go to. Weapons maintenance time, time to eat, and stuff like that. So, let’s see here, a typical day in Afghanistan would be let’s say, from midnight until six in the morning you’re on watch. So, you’re in a little sandbag bunker, looking out with your night vision, making sure nobody’s sneaking up to throw grenades in the compound, or whatever. And then, at six that ends, and you probably have an hour before patrol starts, so, you get your patrol briefing from your squad leader. Or when I was a squad leader, I’d give the patrol briefing, and task out everybody to what we were going to be doing, what they needed to carry, how long we thought we’d be out, and the mission statement. If it was an ambush, we’d be going out to set up an ambush and try to kill IED placers, or Taliban fighters that were walking around with their guns. Or we might be going out to collect census on a village, find out who lives there and what they do during the day, and what they think about us being there. So, you step out on a five or six hour patrol, and that was give or take. You might plan for a three hour patrol, but you might get out there, hit an IED, be there for four hours, and then hit an ambush on the way back, and be there for a six hour fight. The company might task you out, so you might be out for I don’t know, you might be out there for another day and a half. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. Then, if you make it back in time, let’s say all goes well on the patrol, you make it back, and then you go into your rest, six hours. So, from noon to 1800 in the evening, six o’clock in the evening, clean your weapon, clean your gear, try to eat something, sleep a little bit if you can. Or like I said, if there’s a working party, fill sand bags or whatever you’re going to do that. And then at 1800, you go back on post, on watch, and then the cycle repeats. That’s once you get settled into your patrol base and operating in a certain area. But it really depends on what you’re doing, you know? If you’re doing something like the Marjah invasion, there’s no schedule, you’re just on the go until you stop somewhere. Then, you set up your guard or whatever, and did what you could. So, it just depends on what you’re doing, honestly. You might be going full throttle for a couple days. You might be in the same place for a week, or six months. It just depends. I guess the cycle would be patrol, and clean weapons, and stand guard, and eat and sleep when you could. HK 6 CG: When you could sleep, what were the sleeping conditions like? HK: Well, on the ground. Usually we’d carry a poncho with us. That was one of the main things to always have in your pack. A poncho so, you know, you got shelter from the rain, and they weren’t breathable so when it was cold you could wrap up in it and you’d sweat real good and warm up for a while, if you were sleeping in your poncho. Or you could use it as a stretcher. If somebody got wounded, you’re not going to carry a stretcher around. It’s just big and bulky, so you throw somebody on a poncho, grab the corners and carry them. So, yeah, sleeping conditions would just be on the ground, generally. You could dig a little hole if you wanted to, and it depends on if you were expected to get mortared. If mortar shells dropped on you, you’d dig a hole so you’d have a little bit more protection. But it usually didn’t get too cold. Well, depending on what month it was, I guess. Winter was cold enough. Sleep on the ground. You didn’t shower really. I guess we went about five and a half months without a shower. The good thing is it’s dry over there, it’s dry heat. Here, if you stay in the same clothes for six months, they’d rot off you. They’d get wet with your sweat every day, and they’d end up ripping and tearing, and that’d be it. The dry heat, you sweat, but it dries your clothes out so, you’d wear the same clothes for six months. Then, if you took a shower you had to put the same dirty clothes back on so there’s no point. You also wouldn’t want to bathe with soap or wear deodorant or anything, because you can smell that. In thick areas, where you couldn’t see more than ten feet, the sense of smell is actually very useful. You could smell people coming, and if I’m out there wearing Kilo Axe or whatever, they’re going to smell me from a hundred yards off. So, you don’t want that. You just be dirty. CG: What memory or memories from your time in the military stand out the most? HK: There’s a lot of them. I don’t know. I guess the Marjah invasion capitalized it. But also, memories, in the plural sense, on the second point I was a squad leader, so, I was in charge of usually about twelve guys in my squad, twelve Marines and a Navy corpsman, who we considered him a Marine too. That whole deployment stands out I guess, because I learned a lot about leadership, and how to work people, motivate them. I just learned, I learned a lot, I guess. It was definitely the best job in the Marine Corps, to be a squad leader. A company commander is in charge of one hundred and thirty Marines, but if you’re a squad[Inaudible] and you got twelve marines under you and you’re right there with them, then your decisions impacted their lives the most. So, if you screw up, they’re in more danger. It’s like the most responsibility directly for people’s lives, but it’s the most payoff because you’re right there doing it with them. And that was awesome. We learned a lot about that. I guess most of us got thrown into squad leader positions pretty early, all things considered, so, it was a real crash course, and learning on the job on deployment. That whole deployment stands out to me, because I can base everything off that, you know what I mean? When I first went into the Marine Corps, I couldn’t tell my friend what to do, but through that you could put me in charge of 45 adults and they’re going to do what I ask them to. Not that I’m Hitler or anything like that, it’s just that I learned how to work a crew, I guess. And how people respond to different things, how to exploit that for their benefit and the mission’s benefit. CG: How has your time in the military influenced you? HK 7 HK: Well, it set the basis for my life. I went out of high school, and with the Marine Corps infantry, and then plus the Marjah invasion, and being in charge of a squad in combat and all that, I’d say that’s something about point-three of the population of America gets to do. So, that really set me up for success, because I can take any job now and just do it. It taught me a lot about people, not to judge people. I still do, but I try not to. I don’t know how it influenced me really, because it was all I wanted to do and all I ever thought about. It’s just me. That’s it. CG: How often do you keep in touch with the people that you served with? HK: I try to pretty often. Most of us live in different states, so, usually when I see them, when I lived in DC I had a lot more free time, so I could go to Long Island and New York and see guys who lived there. I could go anywhere within a thousand mile radius. If I could drive there, I’d do it. So that was pretty easy to keep up with people, but people get jobs, get married, have kids, so it gets kind of hard. A lot of people do it by Facebook. I don’t have one at the moment, but they say it’s a really good way to just keep connected. You don’t have to do the driving part. Sometimes I won’t hear from somebody for six months, but when you do it’s like you ain’t missed a day. You just roll right into conversation with them. Usually weddings and funerals are where you see them. If you have a wedding or funeral, you probably, you’d be lucky to get 20, 30 guys together, and that’s how it is. CG: You ever tried Facetiming? HK: No. Is that where you have a screen on the phone and talk? CG: Yeah. HK: I still go the flip phones, so I can’t Facetime on it. My girlfriend wants me to get Skype, but I like telephone, it works. CG: Do you belong to any veteran groups? HK: No. No, I don’t, honestly. I know you’ve got the VA’s, but the VA’s just a hospital situation, but they’ve got the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and things like that, but no, I’m not really affiliated with any of them much. I don’t know. It’s not that I have anything against them. Never was drawn to them or anything like that. I just don’t, I guess. If I see an old Marine with a tattoo or a hat on, I’m going to say something to him, and shake his hand before I talk about the Marine Corps and whatnot, but that’s it. CG: That leads into my next question. Do you ever speak to veterans of other wars? HK: Yeah. I do. Especially in DC, because all the monuments, and it’s the capital, so everybody goes there. They just had Rolling Thunder, that giant bike rally, that’s a lot of veterans. Mostly Vietnam guys, their motorcycles. So, yeah, I like talking to older fellas that were in other wars. That’s fun. We all have admiration for each other and it’s mutual. It’s pretty humbling, I guess. I like talking to them, because it is kind of a different war, but we still got so much in common, you know? A lot of people think technology is taking over warfare, but by no means is that the case. It’s still rockets, and mortars, and machine guns, and rifles, and pistols, and knives, and hand grenades. They’re the basis of fighting, so we can all relate. Sleep in the mud, all that good HK 8 stuff. It’s fun to talk to old Marines, even like World War Two and Korea guys, or Vietnam, because they will get fired up. It’s cool. It’s awesome. CG: What type of stories do you share? HK: About any of them, honestly. A lot of guys don’t like to be asked about deployment, or did you kill people, or, “I bet you saw some crazy stuff.” You know, those questions are, I don’t know what they are. I guess, some people are curious and some people are just inconsiderate. But I’ll share any story, really. What do you want to hear? CG: Any kind of story you feel like sharing. HK: Well, you’ve heard about Marjah, the invasion, and fire fights, and all that good stuff. One story I remember from Afghanistan, on the second deployment, and we’re operating near the Helmand River. So, the way Afghanistan is set up in the South, it’s all desert, the rivers run through it, and about a mile surrounding the river is green, everything else is rock and sand. So, on the second deployment we were in the Green Zone, we called it. So it’s thick, corn fifteen feet high, it’s hard to see, wearing green camouflage instead of desert, and there’s one area they’d been operating out of. These mercenaries would come in, Turkish mercenaries, and then Saudi Arabians, Jordanians, all kinds of mercenaries. Anyways, they’d come in and they were operating out of this place pretty far up the river that no American base is really near. And every time you went up there you got into a fight, so we went out and set up some ambushes on them. We got up there one night, real thick. It’s kind of like woods, like here, deciduous, pretty much. And I’ve got my squad set up in an L-shaped ambush, and they’re all on the prone, lying on the ground facing out. It’s two o’clock in the morning, a storms coming in, you could see the lightening coming. I’ll try to make this appropriate. I’m sitting there with my thermal imaging system. I don’t remember what they’re called. Anyways, it shows heat, heat signature, you know? So, I’m looking out into the night, trying to find enemy fighters coming in to do whatever they were going to do. I see something walking up this dyke along the edge of a poppy field, along the irrigation ditch. It was walking along, and there’s big dogs over there. Afghan dogs are like no other. Not like the pure breed Afghan hound, these are 200 pound mutts. They all look like Cujo, and they all have the same attitude, They are scary dogs. Anyways, I see what I think is a dog coming up the way, and it stops and it goes to the bathroom. I’ve got a cat at the house, and I was like, “That’s not a dog,” because it shook its tail. So I pull out my night vision goggles, put them on, and I realized it was a big cat, like a big cat, four feet at the shoulder. It’s walking through here, and it’s getting close to my other line on my ambush. I’ve got four or five Marines down there in the bushes, facing that way. So, the cat walks down to that line and walks down the line and goes out of sight from me, and I don’t hear anything. What I’m thinking of is all these Vietnam books I read when I was a kid, hearing about tigers eating marines in Vietnam, getting attacked by tigers. I was like, “I got to go down there and check.” So, I crawl down there, and I get down there and one of the marines is standing up, and he’s not supposed to be standing up. So, I tap him on the boot, and he gets back down. I said, “I take it you saw that cat.” He was like, “Yeah, it walked right in front of me. It never saw us.” It scared him, scared him bad. You know how cats are, tear somebody apart. So the storm came in, we ended up leaving. No enemy fighters came through. A couple of weeks later, we got to call out on the satellite phone, I asked HK 9 mom to Google what kind of wild life is in Afghanistan. She did, and it turned out to be a spotted leopard. I think their endangered. That was pretty cool. First time I’ll ever see a big cat, [inaudible]. SO that was cool. CG: Any other stories you want to share? HK: Let’s see here. Any particular genre you got in mind? CG: Entertaining ones that are kind of interesting, or funny. HK: I’m full of these things. Had a lot of weird stuff happen, because when you’re in that place, and it’s real rural, Marjah was a city, but it wasn’t like Kandahar or Kabul. It wasn’t built up like Asheville. So, most of these people survive on fifty dollars a year. They are poor. The houses been there, made of mud, probably been there for over a hundred years. I’d say some of them been there for five hundred years. So it looks kind of like a biblical setting. So, there’s obviously been people there for a long time, and there’s cemeteries everywhere. So, we’d often have to post up ambushes, sometimes in a cemetery, or next to one, and had some pretty unexplainable noises and things happen like that. So that was kind of creepy. CG: Any real scary moments from something like that? HK: There was a couple times I was creeped out. The time I remember being shocked to the heart, scared out of my mind for about five seconds was when we got strafed by an American fighter jet. A Harrier, one of those AV-8B Harriers. They’re like a fighter jet, but it can take off vertically and then go. Somebody got their coordinates mixed-up up the line, and it strafed us with its twenty five millimeter cannon. And that was the loudest, ear-splitting, earth-splitting sound I’ll ever hear in my life. So that’s what made me jump about ten feet. One time, it was about two or three in the morning. We were in a new place, real open. I was awake, I was in the compound, but I was in charge of the marines on guard, so if they needed something I’d go out there and check it out. This intercom came over, not ours, and someone Afghan started screaming into this intercom, two o’clock in the morning, and it sounded like a Nazi witch doctor, screaming scripture in German. It was the creepiest, like sharp syllables, high pitched. It was creepy. I was ready for suicide bombers to start running over the burm. I went out there and woke up the interpreter and he said he was praying. That was pretty weird sounding. I wish I had some more stories in mind. Those are a couple that stand out, I guess. I mean, firefight stories are generally the same. You’re either going along and get ambushed, or you see somebody before they see you and you ambush them. The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy. The Marine Corps prides itself on using its own air support, so we’d use air support if we could, talking to helicopter pilots and fighter pilots. That’s fun. That was one of my favorite things to do was talk to pilots. You know, they’re up there with their, I don’t know how many million-dollar-aircraft, and they got a map on their leg, and you got a map in your hand, and you’re telling them where you are what you need them to do. Where you need their gun runs, where the enemy is, and stuff like that. So, that’s awesome to coordinate with them. Because usually that’s something that a designated officer would do, HK 10 that went to school for it, but I got to learn how to do it as a grimy enlisted man. That was awesome, to be able to do that. CG: How does the war in Afghanistan compare to other wars, in your opinion? HK: It’s the same and it’s different. World War One, they had those large set piece battles in giant fields where fifty thousand people would die in a day. Then, World War Two, all the amphibious landings and jungle warfare and all that. I’m talking about the Pacific. The Atlantic had the Germans, and they had a bit going on there too. So, through the years death tolls diminished by war. I don’t know how many people died in World War One. World War Two was 400,000. Korea, I don’t know honestly. Vietnam was almost 60,000 people. It just kind of dwindled down, I guess reverse exponentially. These two wars combined I think it’s around 7,000 people. So, the death tolls have come down. They’re the same, and they’re different. Nobody’s going to give me a good argument for how they had it tougher, or whatever. All the grunts, everybody eventually does the same thing. I’ve had old veterans do that. Tell me, “Oh, the Marine Corps is not the same, and ya’ll aren’t as tough as we were.” But that’s a lie, because we didn’t take over Marjah by throwing out flowers. And then, the major battle in Iraq was Fallujah, and the marines there did the same thing. Started on one end of the city and pushed to the other. That’s major street fighting and door-to-door warfare. So, in a sense nothing has changed. Now we’ve got a little bit more technology and stuff like that. I tell you what, it can get super complicated. Warfare is like a science. Combat is a science. You can factor in so many little things that can help you succeed, or fail in combat it’s ridiculous, as far as the psychology of what to do. I know I’m kind of going off here. It’s the same, but different. It’s the same in the sense that a lot of the fighting is still the same. Like I said, your small units and small weapons are going to be what determines everything, unless you drop a nuclear bomb on somebody. The settings kind of change, and the ideas of it. World War Two was to stop Japan. They wanted to take over the world. They had that set in their mind that they were the supreme race and that’s what they were going to do, and Hitler had the same idea. World War Two was to stop that, and then nowadays it’s fighting an idea, and it’s a lot less clean cut. Back then it was the marines invading Japanese islands and taking them over. Now, it’s like Iraq, in 2005, the whole world was pretty much like, “If you want to kill Americans, come to Iraq.” So, people flocked from Europe and all those other bordering Arab countries to come fight us, and Afghanistan turned into that too. Mercenaries and stuff like that. So that’s a little different. It’s a lot more complicated. But at the same time, don’t exclude it, because in the early 1900s, they had tons of small wars down in Nicaragua and Central America, and places in South America. Before World War One, there were wars just like Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency, but just as deadly. There might be a huge war looming in the future. Nobody ever knows what is going to happen, especially with warfare. You just don’t know. CG: Especially if the other countries figure out how to make a nuclear bomb. HK: Right? Yeah, are you thinking of Iran and North Korea? Yeah, it’s a little nerve racking, I guess. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I hope nuclear war never happens, because it’ll put us back in the Stone Age. HK 11 CG: Like Mad Max. HK: Right? Yeah, that’s it, but I think conventionally, as in army against army, nobody’s going to beat us. And that’s not me just being an arrogant American. History’s proved. During Korea, ten Chinese divisions surrounded one Marine Corps division, and when the Marine Corps division broke out of there, after about a month and a half, two months of fighting, they left seven of those divisions pretty much destroyed. So, if 14,000 marines can handle their-selves against 140,000 Chinese, then I know we can do it again. That’s good stuff. CG: What’s your opinion on the new terrorist group? I can’t think of what they’re called. HK: A new terrorist group? Hezbollah? ISIS? Boko Huran? CG: ISIS. HK: ISIS? It seems like they’ve calmed down a little bit. I know they just recently released a lot of those Nigerian girls they captured, so, I was glad to hear that. Well, I think they released about 200 of them, and 700 of them got found and rescued. But they’re some mean people. Even those people they rescued. You know, they captured I don’t know how many Africans, a lot of them women, and held them captive for six months. I heard on NPR that most of those captives are so brainwashed, Stockholm syndrome, or whatever you want to call it, that they cannot be convinced that ISIS is wrong and the rest of the world is okay. They’re some mean people and they’re doing a lot to support their cause. They’re recruiting young Americans. People are going to them. CG: Especially with technology nowadays, they’re emailing and getting… HK: Right? Using social media to do it? I tell you what, it’s hard to fight people like that, because, and I hear this a lot from people in America, they say we should just nuke them, or bomb them all, or whatever. But you can’t do that with the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or any of those terrorist organizations, because if you go in with the mindset of just, you can’t go kill them all in one fell swoop. That’s like bombing. That would be like bombing Cullowhee to kill all the poachers. Five percent of the population is doing the wrong thing. You know what I mean? You can’t just go and nuke them all or kill them all. That’s just not how it works. CG: And they’re all spread out, too. They’re not just in one place. HK: Exactly. That’s the best comparison I can give you. It’s like carpet bombing Caney Fork to kill five bear poachers. That’s the comparison I can tell you. Don’t listen to people that say that. They’re not grasping the picture, I guess. And you’re right, they’re spread out. In Europe, and almost every country, I guess, or most of them. It’s hard to deal with, isn’t it? It’s hard to do anything about that. CG: I got into a long conversation last night with my dad about nuclear war. That threat, it could happen, but you never know when. HK: Right. Hopefully, it doesn’t. There’s nothing much we can do. Is your dad in the military? CG: No, he’s a police officer. HK 12 HK: Okay. For the county or the city? CG: Well, he’s gone from state, to county, to city. HK: Oh, he’s a state trooper? I got a lot of respect for your dad. I like state troopers. They’re like the marines of law enforcement. When a trooper walks up, you better step straight. That’s awesome. CG: He had to go through a lot to… HK: I bet. They say North Carolina is one of the toughest trooper schools, if not the toughest trooper organization in America. That’s awesome. CG: What kind of reception did you get when you came home? HK: Good, we flew into Bangor, Maine, and they had a lot of old veterans to say hello us, and all that good stuff. So, that was nice. You know, you’re just running through an airport, so there’s not much to it, but it was good. People now are very receptive of veterans, and there’s a lot of opportunity for veterans. I think twenty-two veterans kill themselves each day, I think that’s the general statistic. I don’t know why, honestly. I know everybody has their own issues and their own mindset, but I think veterans have more than an opportunity than a lot of people out there, so they ought to go at it. But to answer your question, it was good. Nobody criticized us for anything we did. I know Vietnam vets had a hard time when they came home, something I can’t imagine. Nobody does that now. CG: What about when you came to town? HK: Well, I didn’t really tell anybody that I was coming. I just came back and saw my good friends from high school, the ones I kept in touch with. I got a lot friends in high school, but you tend to go on their own ways, and do what they do. But I’m lucky to have seven or eight right here in town that’ll really stick with me. Lucky for that. So, I came home, and I can’t remember what we did. Probably had a big barbeque. Probably cooked a bunch of food. CG: What kind of food did you miss the most? HK: Man, depended on how hungry I was, I would say, I don’t know. I don’t remember missing specific foods. The most, I guess, Eastern Carolina barbeque. That and game meat. I love wild game meat. I never got to eat any of that. We actually thought about trying to shoot some local coyotes in Afghanistan, and cook them, but we asked the locals and they said they had bad diseases. Pseudo-rabies and stuff like that, so we didn’t mess with it. I don’t know, just any American food. There was one point in time where we didn’t have food for about four days, so Cliff bars were looking pretty good about that time. Hunger’s a good cook, so generally anything, I guess. When we came back, I remember, definitely seafood. The Marine Corps base is the coast, so up here you don’t really get fresh seafood much. So, when I’d come home, I’d go down to some dock or peer and find a shrimp boat, and buy fifteen pounds of fresh shrimp, and bring it back up here and grill it out with my buddies. That was awesome. CG: What was the first thing you ate when you got back? HK 13 HK: I don’t remember. Probably, if I got back and wanted to go out to a restaurant, you stay at the base for a week or two when you get back, so, we probably went out for seafood or something like that. It was abundant down there at the coast. CG: Did you sleep a lot when you came back? HK: No. CG: Your body got into the schedule of not sleeping a lot? HK: It did. And that kind of started in boot camp and continued to now. If I’m awake, I’m going to be awake. I don’t like to sleep in until eleven or anything like that. CG: Sleep when you’re dead. HK: Exactly. Got one life, don’t sleep through it. CG: What challenge did you face readjusting to civilian life? HK: One stands out. That was when I went to college, these kids would show up to class and either they would be on their phones the whole time, which annoyed me very much, especially when the professor’s doing a good job, or they never brought their pencils or pens to class, or they’d just not care. Or just, I don’t know. I shouldn’t criticize them. They’re all nineteen years old and just started doing their own laundry. But coming from a place where you have to do all that good stuff, be responsible and mature, keep what you need with you all the time. It was always annoying when kids would talk in class when the teacher was teaching, or the professor. Texting, not having their stuff, complaining about assignments. “Oh, this assignment sucks.” I’m enjoying it. I guess that was the only thing that annoyed me. It was just being around younger kids, but I don’t know. Learn to mellow out a little bit. Need to take a chill pill, I think. That was it. And you know, PTSD is a big thing now. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Everybody talks about it. I’m not saying people don’t have it, and it’s okay. People’s minds react how they’re going to react to things, but to me, I got a lot of friends that we all have the same…everybody has the bad dreams and occasional freak out, or whatever, you know. But I’m trying to think of a way to put it. If you play football, you’re probably going to end up with some smashed fingers, you know? Or if you take your truck mudding, you’re probably going to tear something up, or get stuck. So, if you sign up for the military and you go to war, you’re probably going to have PTSD when you get home. By the books, most people have it, but to me it was expected, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal all the time. It’s kind of a packaged deal. People will not like me for saying this, and I don’t mean to offend, but for a lot of people it kind of irks me to see so many veterans collect government money for PTSD when everybody did the same thing. If you have it, talk to folks about it, cry, whatever you need to do. But to me it’s not really a point to get an extra $130 a month. So, that’s my take on it, and like I said, a lot of people would not like to hear me say that, and I’m probably wrong on some aspects. I’m probably very wrong on some aspects of that, but that’s just how I think about it. What do you think? You got any thoughts? CG: Well, in some cases I could see people doing that to get money, but I don’t know. I guess, biomedical technologies kind of helped with me thinking about medical illnesses, and maybe HK 14 something just triggered something in someone’s mind and they lost control and can’t really get back to normal life. HK: Right. No, I think you’re right. When I first got into the Marine Corps, a lot of the squad leaders were on their fifth and sixth combat deployments. Had been in Humvees where everybody had burned up and all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, everybody’s got a point where they don’t want any more, so I shouldn’t down people for reaching that point. But a lot of people are deployed and not see anything worth claiming that over. That’s a fact. CG: There’s probably some people out there just doing it just to get money. HK: Oh yeah. Or sympathy, or whatever. CG: Did you ever see the movie, Hurt Locker? HK: I did not, honestly. I know it’s about the army, and a bomb technician. An IED guy? I never saw it. CG: It’s a really good movie. From the movie, he’s still serving, he never went back, he just constantly kept doing a lot. He disabled a lot of bombs. A lot. It was unbelievable. HK: Yeah. I don’t doubt it. CG: It was a good movie. HK: And that was Iraq, was it? CG: I think so. HK: Iraq had the sophisticated IEDs. You know, they’d have… CG: Traps everywhere. HK: …professional bomb makers from other countries come in and make them. They’d make them where if you disconnected a laser beam it set it off. Iraq really revolutionized the IED. I wouldn’t want to mess with those things. CG: One of them he had, this bomb, there was five of them all connected together. HK: Daisy chain. CG: Yeah. HK: That’s some real stuff. Afghanistan was a little more primitive about it. We’d always have those EOD guys with us, and that’s a dangerous job. Somewhere along they’re probably going to lose three or four of their limbs. Or just everything, or just die. Those guys got to be tough. CG: It’s intense. I don’t know if I could do that. I mean, try to help someone who’s been forced to being a suicide bomber. They had choice in it, and you can’t help them. There’s no way you can get it off. HK 15 HK: Well, I don’t know. There’s a lot to it, I guess. What they do and what a lot of marines do is treat everything as a business transaction, so they don’t think about that bomb exploding, or whatnot. They just think about something to take apart, and they go do it. So, that’s a good way to do it. Kind of drowns out the emotional aspects of it CG: Did you plan on making a career out of the military? HK: No. When I was a kid, yes, and thankfully, my dad gave me wise advice or I’d probably signed a twenty year contract. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I wanted to go to college and see some other things around the country while I was still in my twenties, or whatever. So I got out and I planned to go back in. So, I never really wanted to go like a long-term officer route. That gets more into the paperwork, as you move up in rank it’s more writing time and less trigger time, and that’s not what I was interested in. So, I never set out to make a full career out of it, but I’d planned to go back for another stint or two, but plans changed. The war’s done, almost. The war’s dying down. So, I got other things I’m interested in. I’m in a very committed relationship, so that definitely takes away the willingness to go fight and die, and get maimed in another country. I thought about it a lot, especially with both deployments, I got the best of the best. I figured I shouldn’t be selfish, and I should just settle for and be happy with it. But if we go to war with North Korea, I may very well be down at the recruiting office. We’ll see what happens. CG: Why did you get out? HK: Like I said, I wanted to do other things while I was still younger. It was a good time. That’s mainly it. I didn’t get driven out or anything, I loved my job, best job I’ll ever have. I enjoyed being out too, but that’s different. It’s fine. [Interview interrupted briefly to move out of the rain] CG: How does your military experience relate to your current occupation? HK: I guess in multiple ways. I’m not in a leadership position now, but I’m outdoors a lot, so I do a lot of hiking and staying in the woods, and equipment operation. So, I guess what transfers is knowing how to pack stuff and waterproof things. And equipment maintenance is good to keep, is a good mindset to have. Things to have for the job and stuff like that, planning. I work for the National Park Service now, on the trail crew. We also, the crew I’m on, we operate the barge on Fontana. Were you down there the other day? Did you go with them? Okay. Well, anyways, we work on a pretty sizable boat, so you got to keep safety in mind. Working with stuff that can hurt you pretty badly if you goof off, so that’s something that helps out. Any government organization like that is similar to the military. You know, you’ve got your chain of command and paperwork, of course, and missions, and all that good stuff. It’s similar. CG: What draws you to this area? HK: I grew up here. I like these woods. And I like the culture and history of the mountains, but I want to live around the US a little bit. I lived in DC for a couple of years. My next plan was to go to Texas and live there, but gas prices, when they went down, my oil-rigging job fell through HK 16 with it. So, I ended up back here because I was broke. I got in with the park service, and I think I’m going to try and work in Florida next. They like it when you move around parks, and work in different areas. So, I’d still like to live out west. But things change. Minds change and a lot of things happen that you don’t anticipate, but I’d like to live out west for a spell, and then I’d sure like to raise a kid here. Or two, or three, or five kids, or whatever. I think this is a good place to grow up. I think this place, especially being rural and mountainous, I think it breeds tough people. I like that. There’s a lot of culture here. You can be a country boy from anywhere, but you can be a mountain boy from only one spot. So, I like that. CG: What are your best experiences in the mountains? HK: In the mountains? Growing up here is a big one. That’s pretty general. One thing we can do here that not a lot of places offer is bear hunting. And that has become a major interest of mine. CG: We just had a bear get into our trash the other night. HK: Oh yeah? Did you run it off? CG: We didn’t hear it, but we found the remains and it bit into our trash can. Big bites. HK: Oh, I bet. That’s a strong animal. I love to bear hunt here. I forgot the original question. I’m sorry. CG: Some of your best experiences in the mountains. HK: Growing up here and camping here. Then the hunting and all. I guess that’s about right. Being able to tell people I’m from Appalachia. People always ask, “Aren’t you scared of everything up there in the mountains?” They think it’s untamed territory here. Some places are, I guess, it’s all justified. CG: Why did you choose to work at Fontana? HK: Well, I wanted to get on with the Park Service, and all their spots were filled so, they created another job opening for me down there. I didn’t even know they had boat down there. I’d never been to the park, to the Smokies, or Fontana, or anything growing up. We had plenty of woods up here in Cullowhee. I just never went there. I never had a power boat, so I never went to Fontana. But then when he told me about it, he said, “You get to work on a boat.” The good thing about that job is you get a lot of diverse experience on that trail, on that particular crew of the trail crew. So you do boat work, and vehicle work, and then trail work. Then you also have all these north-shore cemetery visitations, so you do a lot of people interaction. So, one selling point was during the cemetery visitations they bring a lot of homemade food, and they share it with us. That was a good aspect as well. It’s a weird schedule. You work weekends and Monday and Tuesday, but it’s okay. CG: What are your favorite or least favorite aspects of the job? HK: Favorite being they’re paying me to do things that I’d probably be doing on my own. That’s good. I like wearing a uniform, honestly. The Parks Service uniform is kind of similar to one of the Marine Corps uniforms, so I like that. You get dirty and you’re out in the woods, and you HK 17 work with the rougher half of people. I like that. Least favorite aspects? I don’t know. You’re always going to get cold, and tired, and hungry, I guess. That’s okay, I don’t mind that. Honestly, I can’t really think of any, I guess. You got any in mind I might not like that you can think of? Well, I guess that’s about it. We use Husqvarna chain saws and I like Stihl. That’s not a big beef, but that’s it. That’s small potatoes. CG: Thank you for agreeing to do this. HK: Thank you. I hope it was helpful.
Object