Monmouth College
Department of History 

INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN J. SVALINA 

Conducted in the fall of 2000 by Brian Kennedy 

 

Kennedy: How did you feel the first time you were on duty in Vietnam?

 

Svalina: I was assigned to a dental clinic on the airbase outside of Saigon. We were taking care of American troops including Army and Air Force. I was somewhat surprised by the modern equipment we had, all of which was portable and could be easily packed up and moved. Other than that, it was like working in a dental office in the United States. It wasn’t that different other than the fact of looking out the window and seeing people of the Asian race, primarily. It was unusual that all your patients came in carrying side arms, rifles, and grenades and you had to remove all that before putting them in the dental chair to treat them.

 

Kennedy: What sticks out in your mind about Vietnam?

 

Svalina: Probably frustration with the Army. I worked primarily with the Vietnamese doing civic action within the territory entrusted to the ninth division. There was a lot more that we could have done if we were allowed to do so. Civic action was readily seen by the population; the need for dental treatment was overwhelming among the population. I am sure that we made a lot of friends in our effort to bring dental treatment to the population. Often times though, the Army would use our civil action as a means to gain military intelligence, which jeopardized our mission to bring dental services to the population as a whole.

 

Kennedy: What affect did the war have on your life?

 

Svalina: It was probably the most unique twelve months that I lived.  Dealing with an impoverished, needy population and being able to provide services without regard to fees was a very rewarding experience. It isn’t something that is easily duplicated in the United States for various reasons, from liability to financial restrictions. One always wonders how one will respond to stressful conditions and be able to say that you passed the test; it is something that I will cherish for a lifetime. Initially, when coming back, I was somewhat disturbed by loud noises, but that soon wears out. I soon was able to forget the negative aspects of my service in Vietnam and remember the high points.

 

Kennedy: Did you support the war and have your views changed over time?

 

Svalina: When we went there in the late spring of `67, we were told that we were going there to protect a fragile democracy that was being established during a unjust war. The enemy was primarily from North Vietnam. The longer that you stayed there, the more you realized that the war was unjust on both sides and it was actually a civil war being fought. The atrocities on both sides were high, but the government in South Vietnam really did not represent the population as a whole. The population was ten percent Catholic and Catholic generals were controlling the government when I was there, but most of the population was Buddhist. Starting with President Kennedy, we supported a Catholic administration of South Vietnam, and that was continued until the late sixties when Buddhist generals took over control of the administration in South Vietnam. The question will always arise if we had a national interest for being in Vietnam. At the beginning, I believe that we did. Yet I became frustrated with the political events in the country of South Vietnam and in our country; I was unsure of all our objectives by the end of my tour. Upon my return home, I began to feel that we were fighting at the wrong place and in the wrong time. In regard to our own national interests, I also began to feel that the war would end successfully for our side.

 

Kennedy: When did you first become aware of the war in Vietnam?

 

Svalina: I actually enlisted in the U.S. Army when I was a junior in dental school. I became aware probably at the same time, and I probably saw TV and newspaper reports about it. There was a concern of being sent to the Middle East to back up Israel against its Arab neighbors. Prior to leaving for Vietnam, one of the seven-day wars was fought. Once I was in the Army, we knew that there would be an excellent chance of being sent. I was always uncomfortable with the idea that Army friends of mine with families would be sent there while I would be stateside. So I actually volunteered for Vietnam.

 

Kennedy: How aware do you think you were of the war as it was happening?

 

Svalina: The war was fought in stages from the late fifties and early sixties with just advisors, then the advisor groups became larger. After the death of Kennedy and the election of Johnson over Goldwater, the American effort in the war escalated drastically. So there was more to read about the war shortly before my departure to Vietnam. There had been at least twenty-four months of heavier American involvement prior to my arrival to Vietnam. It wasn’t hard to keep up with the war. The motivation for the war from our side was that we were helping the democracy stay alive in the midst of an unfair and unjust war with the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. Once we were there, you had the armed forces radio, television, and newspapers and you were getting uncensored news programs from the States. Then there is always the gossip that goes around. I would think that while we were there, we were very tuned into the war.

 

Once I arrived home in `68, I was surprised by the lack of reporting of our successes in Vietnam. I was there for the first TET offensive; even though it was a surprise to our armed forces, after two or three weeks of intense fighting, our forces gained the upper hand. It was an overwhelming defeat to the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. I don’t think that was well reported in the United States. The way it was reported here was that we lost during the TET offensive, at least that was my impression. When I got home, the news was overwhelmingly negative about the conflict. The events that occurred on the battlefield, for the most part, were successful for our side, but I don’t think that was reported. The idea that it was going to be a long war was successfully reported and I would agree with that. If it had gone on, it would have went on for decades.

 

Kennedy: What was your view of the anti-war movement?

 

Svalina: I think the anti-war movement served a useful purpose because the war itself was questioned. The actual anti-war movement seemed to be led by a large group of upper-middle class college students who didn’t want to go to Vietnam for various personal reasons. To me, it never was an all-inclusive movement. Wars were always fought by the youth of our nation that came from under-classes who were economically disadvantaged, rural America, and urban youth who failed to go to college. Their ability to create a revolutionary type environment during the late sixties kept the population constantly questioning the war. I also think the anti-war movement had a far greater effect on our politicians who were so impressed with the intensity of the demonstrations. They failed to realize that the movement itself didn’t represent the entire American population by far.

 

Kennedy: Did you feel the leaders were conducting the war well?

 

Svalina: I thought the political leaders in the country bailed out on the war and left President Johnson holding the bag. I think Robert Kennedy bailed out; even though while Attorney General for his brother, he supported the effort during the early sixties to support the Catholic regime that was running Vietnam. I thought Nixon failed miserably; he succeeded as a politician, but failed miserably as a leader. He promised a quick resolution to the war, but allowed it to continue for another five or six years. Even though he promised a plan, he never had one in mind to conclude the war successfully and promptly. In terms of the military leaders, while you were there, all you could hope was that they were doing an appropriate job. Like I said, the war itself was fought using standards that could be used with invading enemy when actually the war became clear to me as a civil war. The effort to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese over to the new government was not done during my tour successfully. As the war continued and the American withdraw, there was more of an effort to conduct the war in a way to win the masses’ loyalty to the government.

 

Kennedy: When did you come to disbelieve the government?

 

Svalina: I don’t think that I would totally say that I disbelieved the government. I am not sure the government really understood what the war was about when they went in. When you are fighting it on the premise that it was an outside invader that was harming a weak democracy, I would think the government leaders initially believed that and continued with that--even though future events prove that this was a civil war rather than the conditional war. The government pushed the military leaders for indications of success, the military leaders in Washington pushed the military leaders in Vietnam who pushed the lower ranking officers for indications of success and wouldn’t accept anything less than success; you ended up getting artificial body counts. There was a refusal to accept that there was a strong underground Vietcong that was conducting the war with the help of the North Vietnamese regulars. That led to the famous statement of “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.” That statement was made a couple weeks before the first TET offensive. Obviously, he failed to say that they light at the end of the tunnel were the locals.

 

Kennedy: How did the war affect when you came back?

 

Svalina: When I came back, we were told to be prepared to accept insults if we were in uniform. I wasn’t in uniform that long upon my return. I came in on a late afternoon on the same day that Robert Kennedy was pronounced dead after his assassination. I was in uniform only as long [as it took] to catch a flight out of San Francisco to Chicago. Once I arrived home, I took off the uniform and never wore it again. But I did a residency program in oral and facial surgery within a few days upon my return. When the students and patients realized that I was in Vietnam, I ended up fielding a lot of hostile questions of why our troops were baby killers and why we were guilty of significant atrocities. One very seldom received any positive feedback about your tour over there from people. People who were supportive were probably even afraid to verbally provide that support. It was almost politically incorrect to support the war effort in Vietnam. I think that was unfortunate because it became a frustrating tour of duty for most people. To arrive home and realize that the people didn’t support your effort over there was very depressing . I am sure there were individuals that were psychologically affected by that attitude. I don’t count myself as one of them, but I know that there were people adversely affected. I feel for them and these people are probably still experiencing difficulty with the fact that they were there and not received as heroes or even welcomed back by the population as a whole.

 

Kennedy: Do you think the American people were informed about what was going on in the war?

 

Svalina: I don’t think any war was fought more publicly than the Vietnam war and no war since then and in the future will be as widely and freely covered as Vietnam was. Walter Cronkite threw in the towel and [opined] that the war couldn’t be won; supposedly he was a neutral newsman on the CBS network. I think when a person of that status makes a public statement, the public as a whole began to realize that the war effort was hopeless.  Perhaps it was; once the war was going to be extended into North Vietnam, the rules of engagement were changed. There was probably no way to actually conclude the war in a decent time frame. It could have gone on for decades. It would have been something that would have sucked up our youth and treasury in Vietnam. There was always negative reporting toward the war prior to the first TET offensive, but the reporting probably went almost totally negative after. I don’t think that the population had a real complete understanding of the successes that our forces were having over there. I think that people get tired of it just like people get tired of different explorer missions. Until [the Challenger] blew up, the media even stopped covering it live on TV. When the war went on and on, there was a gradual disengagement of troops and fewer casualties, and less and less of the report came through and it was in a  negative tone.

 

Kennedy: How did your family feel about Vietnam?

 

Svalina: They were emotionally disturbed about me leaving. I didn’t actually advise them in advance that I had volunteered for Vietnam because they thought I was picked at random.  When I called my father from Oakland [to say] goodbye, that was probably the first time that I encountered tears on my father’s part. They were shook up and I am sure that the experiences that I was writing to them by letter or tape also shook them up a little further. Being involved with civic action was a somewhat different experience than what most people who had serviced in Vietnam.

 

Kennedy: What do you think the best way was to win the war?

 

Svalina: I am not sure that the war would have ever been won. From the time that the first American from the administration took over South Vietnam after the Indo-Chinese and French war, I think that the pattern was set by the Eisenhower administration and reinforced by the Kennedy and Johnson administration. Then the Johnson administration decided to make a major effort in the war because of their belief in the domino effect. If South Vietnamese fell, they believed that Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines would fall to the Communists. As far as the huge military effort, the fact the South Vietnamese people were not actively engaged in the defense of their own country was a mistake from the start. As I understand it, there was still a college deferment for the South Vietnamese young men while we were starting to build up our forces in Vietnam.

 

To win the hearts and minds of the peasantry of Vietnam was hard; they were just trying live and make a living off the land or fishing. It was a very fertile land and these people were engaged in living on a day-to-day basis... On the other hand, if the intense training of the South Vietnamese forces (so they could actually conduct the war on their own) had been successful, they may have been a chance for a negotiated settlement of the war. While I was there, the South Vietnamese were used primarily as security forces while the war was actually being fought by American forces.

 

Kennedy: What do you think the country has learned since the war?

 

Svalina: I am not sure the country learned an awful lot. You hear Bush and Gore talk about nations that we shouldn’t involve our forces in, yet Vietnam was probably the primary example of that. In other words, we were attempting to support a fledgling government during an actual civil war. I don’t think that we will ever commit a large body of armed forced to Southeast Asia again. That makes you wonder what we will do if China attempts to take over Taiwan.  Perhaps the reluctance to use armed forces in a large way unless the success is pretty common was a lesson from Vietnam. Like in Desert Storm, we had a mass of forces but we knew we were facing a relatively weak country. I don’t know if we will ever commit forces again in an effort when the outcome it unsure.

 

The other question is whether our nation’s youth will ever follow our political leaders into a war again. Million of mostly young men with a few women served in Vietnam, and most of them went there committed to do their duty in spite of threat of bodily harm. I am not sure if we will ever be able to instill that type of motivation in today’s youth again. We are so used to a sterile war with a few casualties and there is such mistrust in government leaders that it may be almost impossible to bring about that environment again.

 

Steve Svalina's tape recording from Vietnam:

 

I sent you some photographs and you will be noticing certain power surges in this tape. Our power has been going off and on to some extent. I hope that this tape won’t be too screwed up. I have been receiving quite a few tapes from you the last few days. The one John and Dad made had me worried for a while until they stopped and started it again. I mentioned Saturday in that letter, and last night I finished writing to Karen about it. Now I will relate that epic adventure of me in Vietnam.

 

Saturday morning, we went to a hamlet in a place called [Loi Tran?]. The first photographs that I sent home were taken there when our men were at that open air temple. We got there about 9:30 and two AICs (Army Impersonal Carriers), two jeeps of military intelligence and their interpreter met our jeep with two MEDCAP men and our interpreter, Quan, my dental assistant, physician, and a few of his medics. Also we had some MACVs (a few Vietnamese civilians) who were going to use a public address system to lure the patients to our MEDCAP. We got out there and it was quiet. There were no children or no adults obviously. Normally the children are attracted to the security because they usually bring them things like gum, cigarettes, or C-rations.  The MACV sergeant started to walk up the path to tell the people that we had arrived because we hadn’t been there since last November, so they weren’t really expecting us. I walked up to accompany him up the path. We were also accompanied by the military intelligence, their interpreter, my dental assistant, a couple of MEDCAP boys, and our interpreter Quan.

 

They all stopped at the first house and they were directing the loud speaker to it with no results. I continued up the path and five people came down the path; three old, lame men and two children came down the path not as a group but in a space interval. Before we got to this house, I told the MACV sergeant that it was a little too quiet and I really didn’t care for it. He also mentioned it, and he didn’t like the idea either. I continued to walk past these people, and I said good morning to the old men and they said good morning to me. There was really nothing terribly unusual, except for the quietness and lack of people.

 

As I reached the end of the path where it made a right angle into the hamlet, I could look right down the main street of the hamlet. There I saw two individuals, one with a weapon and one with a broom stick object, but it was a long object in his hand. Upon seeing me, they darted to a hut. I turned around and the one of the MI men came up. I told him that I saw two men dart in a hut with weapons, and they were probably PFs or VC. His interpreter immediately responded that they were no PFs in this village. The MI went down on one knee in a ditch with his M79 grenade launcher and I uneasily started walking back to a point that I came to Quan, our MEDCAP interpreter. I shook my head and he shook his head. I took two strides from him going to the right of the road when a machine gun opened up, which I could see smoke rising from the barrel.

 

I hit the ground quickly, not wounded or anything like this, and I was not harmed at all through this whole thing. The fire kept on going and I pulled my 45 out and cocked it…I ended up giving away my carbe already. After all these different weapons that I have had, when something did come up, I ended up with a 45. I had it out and cocked and just looked forward with about two feet high of weeds for protection. I was flush with the ground. When the firing stopped, I could hear some noise with the weeds breaking and I was tempted to fire, but I could see nothing. I was aware of the fact that I only had a 45.

 

Eventually, I don’t know if it was Quan’s groan or what, but I looked over my shoulder and I saw Quan lying in a shallow impression. He was groaning and his leg was probably covered with blood. During the impulse of the time, I thought to head back to the AMCs. I crawled over toward Quan and he started to crawl toward me. Meanwhile, one of the MEDCAP medics came up. I was on Quan’s left as he came up on Quan’s right. I ripped off Quan’s fatigue pants with a pipe knife that John gave me, that stainless steel one, and found a pressure point. He had a thigh wound and the blood was just pulsating out. I applied a pressure point and stopped it. Then the medic took off his belt and I wrapped it around Quan’s thigh. I picked up Quan’s carbe and waited.

 

One of the other MEDCAP medics said that everyone had already taken off already. The four of us were left there. We didn’t know where the VC were and how many there were. We should have waited for them to do something, but the idea of engaging them as they proceeded to attack…..We were expecting the APC to move up on us, but they didn’t come. It was a very weird, isolated feeling that I had at the time, one guy said that he was going to go after the APC, but I told him that I would go for it. I handed him the carbe, took out my 45 again, and crawled on hands and knees down to this shelter alongside an ox cart trail. It wasn’t really a road or a path. We were about a hundred and fifty yards from the APCs.  I spotted the MACV sergeant coming back up with a medic and a couple of the MI behind him. I stopped and they reached me. Together we went back for Quan, but they had dragged Quan forward somewhat.

 

We got back there and I organized a party somewhat, and we took off and came back with the wounded, with Quan. Then I found out that one APC was out and the other PC had refused to come up without protection. We had been left out there pretty much on our own. That is how much use your security team is sometimes. Than a security team went in afterwards scouted out two squads of VC. They killed one and captured two and kept seventeen VC suspects, while capturing six weapons. Yesterday they went into the same hamlet and killed two more. Evidently, we had come into a real hot spot of VC activity.

 

I was a little bit nervous after I got back. We got Quan into the emergency room and I felt a little shaken after that, but I recovered rather rapidly. I even went back to work because they had brought some Vietnamese kids in for MEDCAP, but the big problem that caused me more distress than anything else was all the decoration jazz. I will make another tape on this matter to you or maybe write you a letter on this. It was really a cheapening type of atmosphere and made me sorry that the whole thing occurred anyway.

 

Anyway, I am going to Australia April third. There will be a physician I know that will be there on April first and a special forces’ captain too. So we will have some company over there and we are expecting to have a good time. I bought a pair of slacks today and a couple shirts. These are things that I really don’t need, but I just went ahead and got them anyway. I am in good health and probably eating too much. Other than that, I am as solid and stable as always, just waiting to come home. Seventy-five days left so if can’t be too long now. Bye Bye now.

 

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