Everybody can benefit from help
John:
I did use quite a bit of alcohol. I was, it was an every night occurrence. You were getting rocketed day and night, and so after a while you've got to rely on something, you know, to get you to sleep. And you could hear, like I say, you can hear them shooting for outgoing and you knew exactly what was going, but if you heard one incoming, there was something almost the same. It sounded exactly the same except for when it hit, there was a little cracking zone and, you know, you could be dead asleep and you'd wake up right away. They blew up the barracks. I got a piece of shrapnel across my leg and then I got one in my stomach. And it was after I left Vietnam and they took X-rays of me and they found out that I had some shrapnel in my stomach, but I never did go to the doctor. Because, when they blew up the barracks they had seen guys that were with parts of their head blown off and it was quite a mess. It was a 122 rocket. The 122 is about 6 feet, 6 inches long and maybe 6 inches in diameter, you know? And there would've been probably a lot more people killed if... they were just lucky. It came through the barracks, it went into part of the sidewalk, and the sidewalk stopped quite a bit of the metal from going out.
I went from Vietnam, I went to Germany and I did quite a bit of drinking when I was over there. I didn’t realize I had a problem. I didn’t think it was much of a problem to myself, but I did drink quite a bit. And then I went back to Vietnam again and we did the same thing drinking all the time, and then I left from there and went to Thailand and like I said, kept on drinking. And then I left Thailand and came here to Minnesota and I would go to the NCO club practically every night and then I met my wife and my wife didn’t drink or smoke. So, after a while I just started laying off the alcohol. I was still drinking some but I pretty much quit and then I got married and I decided to quit altogether because I didn’t think I needed the alcohol anymore. So, my wife was there to help, you know? Everybody needs help whether they know it or not. Like I said, I didn’t realize that I needed help until I met my wife. Get somebody that you can talk to and try to get away from what you’ve been doing, you know? Like I said, if you’re on drugs or alcohol or whatever, you can try to get away from that that way.
