John Untereker
Most people don’t know of the trials and events that John Untereker
endured and triumphed over to produce the man he is today--the man that seven,
including myself, like to call Papa John and two call Grandpa John. John Untereker is a Vietnam veteran. Untereker was a member of the 90th
Replacement Battalion, and used his engineering degree to do surveys for the
U.S. military.
I was born in
1944, April, and I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first part of my
childhood was not the best because when I was eight years old my real dad died,
and I can remember they’d keep me out of the room. He died of cancer; and he was in a lot of misery, so I couldn’t
go in the room where he was, and it was kind of tough on me.
After my dad
died when I was eight, then we moved to South Dakota and my mother re-married
my step-dad, and his name’s Frank Mittelstaedt. And that was kind of tough on me, too, because in Minneapolis I’d
been at Catholic school and I had to wear uniforms. And when we went to McIntosh--it was in South Dakota, out in
western South Dakota--and the schools of course out there all they wore was
jeans and it seemed like I was always in fights; and those clothes didn’t last
too long. I ended up with blue jeans in
a couple of weeks.
Susie is my
only sister. I have no brothers, and
she’s nine years younger than I am. She
was born about a year after we moved out to McIntosh. She’s my step-sister; but as far as I’m concerned, she’s just
like my regular sister.
My dad (Mittelstaedt)
was a supervisor for Farmers’ Home Administration--a county supervisor in
Day County out of Webster--and my 
mother was a
housewife.
I volunteered for ROTC in college. When my real dad passed away, he had left a
trust fund aside for me that paid for my college. All that I had to worry about was spending money. My tuition and books were all paid for by a
trust fund that my dad had set aside.
I went into the military, basically,
when I was in college. I ended up
taking ROTC in college--Reserve Officer Training Corp. I figured I might as well if I was going to
go into the service. I figured I might
as well volunteer rather than be drafted because at that time they were
drafting a lot of people anyhow. So, I
took ROTC and ended up getting a commission as a second lieutenant when I
graduated. It ended up that I didn’t
get orders right away so I worked for a year in the States before they called
me into active duty.
I worked for a consulting engineering
firm in Watertown, South Dakota. I’m a
mechanical engineer, but I did a lot of civil engineering. The firm I was with did a lot of interstate
highway design. In fact, last weekend
we went to South Dakota and I drove on several of the sections of interstate
that I had worked on. We designed seven
mile sections of the interstate and there were probably three or four sections
that I worked on while I was there.
I was in the army, the U.S. Army, and ended up in the Corp of Engineers. I took officer basic course in Belvore, Virginia. I was out there for nine weeks, and then I was transferred from Ft. Belvore to Ft. Carson, Colorado, and I was in a Corp of Engineer unit out there. It was a divisional unit and we got all of the crap duties, but it ended up we worked seven days a week, twelve/fourteen hours a day.
We knew we
were going to Vietnam when we got assigned to Ft. Carson. You just knew
it. If you went to Ft. Carson, you were
either gonna come or go from Vietnam. I
don’t know why they ended up being so nasty to us there, but they were--we put
in some tough duty in Ft. Carson.
John (first
child) was only like--well, he was less than a year old when I left, so it was
kinda tough leaving Mom. Of course, you
had a lot to think about. Mom had
already been--she had been dependent on me for everything, and of course I knew
that she was going to be by herself--so I was trying to make sure I had
everything set up for her, so it wouldn’t be hard on her.
When we landed
in--landed in Vietnam--I’m trying to think of the name of it--90th
Replacement Battalion’s where I went into; and that was in Tansanute, which is
not too far from Long Binh, which is where I ended up being stationed.
When I went into
the 90th Replacement Battalion I was--it was a nervous time for
me. I went over to Vietnam with a
Combat Engineer MOS, and that in itself--when you have that MOS, that means
you’re gonna be on the front lines and you’re gonna be out there building
stuff for the infantry to get where they gotta go.
Somehow, I ended up with a staff job in Long Binh. I don’t know how that happened, but I ended
up getting a job with USAECAV. USAECAV
is U.S. Army Engineer Command, Vietnam; and I was stationed in Long Binh, and I had a set of orders that--open
set of orders where I could go anywhere in the country. All I had to do was show those orders at any
airport, or wherever 
I was and I could fly any place I wanted
to. Of course it was all on priority
flying. If a general was there, he
went first; but I flew all over.
I was over
there in 1969. Probably the toughest
time was TET of ’68; so I got over there a year after that. So the fighting wasn’t as tough when I was
there. But, I was not in the actual
front lines. Like I said, I had a staff
job, and my job was--I was basically in charge of all contract projects in
Vietnam for the army, and I worked with OICC, which was a department of the
Navy. They’re the one’s that had
control of funding; so, I had to go to Saigon a lot for meetings because that’s
where OICC was--or the Navy. All the
funding had to be approved by them in Saigon.
In Long Binh I
had a staff of civilian engineers, it was--the name of the firm was Quinton
Budlong. And they had--they probably
had twenty civilian engineers that worked for us, and they designed all of our
projects, and my job was to make sure that we got the funding for the
projects. I had to go over all their
designs and make sure that we were getting what we were paying for.
I had a staff
of three people under me. I was a
second Lieutenant and I had three enlisted people under me, and we were
responsible for going through these designs.
All my enlisted personnel were also graduate engineers. In fact, I had a couple that had masters’
degrees; but they were enlisted so they were under me, but we had some pretty
sharp people in our group.
Part of my
job, of course, was doing surveys for the things we were gonna design. Probably the scariest time was when I was
told that I had to go out and survey a bridge to figure out what we needed to
do to fix it; and do a design on it. It
was on QL1, North of Saigon. In order
to get there I went on a LOACH--a light observation helicopter, and at that
time I think the life expectancy of a LOACH pilot was like six to nine months;
and of course if you stop to think about that, it just scares the living
daylight out of you. I went to the
helicopter pad and got in, and we take off.
I told the guy where I wanted to go and gave him the coordinates, and he
takes me out there. He says, “I’m gonna
drop you a quarter mile from the bridge.
As soon as I hit the ground, you get out and I’m gonna be gone; and I’ll
be back in thirty minutes. If you’re
not here, forget it.” It was scary as
heck.
Like I said,
the bridge had been blown up the night before so we didn’t know if there were
any VC in the area; and I’m out there with the only thing I had to protect
myself was a pistol. I can guarantee
you that that quarter mile was the fastest quarter mile that I’ve ever run, and
it was the fastest survey I ever did.
But I had to do enough so I could know exactly if the abutments were
damaged, and how much of the bridge was damaged so that we could go ahead and
repair it. I also can guarantee you
that I was back at the location within thirty minutes to get my ride home; and
we did make it back, but that probably was one of the scariest times.
I also had
another time when we had a radio problem up in Vung Chua Mountain, which is way
up North. I had a civilian engineer
that went with me and we were in a twin engine Beechcraft that we had flown in
to go up there. It was up by Vung Tau, and we went into the airport--and
it’s along the coast. There’s mountains
there, and of course, there’s up drafts or side drafts coming in from the ocean. We started to land with this twin engine
Beechcraft, and we were probably a hundred feet off the ground and all of a
sudden it just dropped fifty feet. It
just scared the daylights out of us. In
fact it scared the pilot and he poured the coals to it, and we just barely
missed the ground. He did get it back
up in the air again, and we ended up going inland to--and I forgot the name of
it--it was an Air Force base. It was
inland about thirty miles, and he landed there, and then we had to convoy to PhuCat
Mountain. In the convoy, on the way of
course, you get into the jeeps and the deuce-and-a-halves that they had.
The deuce-and-a-halves are the big trucks. They had steel plates on the side of ‘em, and we were going through hostile territory. Of course, we were getting fired on the entire way. But we did make it, and I got up to PhuCat Mountain and checked out our radio equipment and ended up going back to the Air Force base and flew back. But that was pretty scary when that plane dropped that fast. I didn’t know if we were gonna make it or not.
There’s one
other (memory). Vietnam was kind of, in
my opinion, a bad deal. We were over
there fighting a war and people really didn’t want us there. Long Binh is about, I think, thirty miles
from Saigon. I had to go into one of
the meetings with OICC, and I was in a jeep.
We were on our way into Saigon and all of a sudden MP’s are up there and
they stop us and they say, “You’re gonna have to wait a little while. We’ve got some gunfire going on up ahead,
and we’re not exactly sure. So when we
go in, we’re gonna go in a convoy.”
They waited
for probably ten or fifteen vehicles, and they got ‘em all together in a convoy
and we start through. It was VC
shooting back across QL1 at each other.
They were having their own fights--err--not VC, but the Vietnamese were
fighting their own unit.
It was just
stupid. I mean here we are sittin’
there, one on one side of the highway, one on the other side of the highway,
shooting at each other. That’s what the
conflict was. It was just stupid. But they convoyed us through real quick, and
we all made it; but, ya know, you wonder why in the heck are you over there. They’re fightin’ amongst themselves. We’re trying to protect ‘em against the VC,
and they’re fightin’ against themselves!
It just makes you wonder why you were even there.
I had a lot of
friends over there, but I didn’t know where they were at. It was kind of ironic. One of the people that we met when I went to
officer basic course in Virginia, his name was Gary Woodard his wife’s name was
Marge, Karen and I met them in Virginia and we got to be pretty good
friends. They were from Arkansas and we
ended up spending a lot of time playin’ cards together and goofin’ around in
Virginia; but we ended up goin’ to Ft. Carson together.
We were in the
same unit at Ft. Carson, he was in a different platoon than I was, but we were
both with the same engineering unit in Ft. Carson and it ended up we got orders
for Vietnam at the same time; and we ended up going on the same plane over to
Vietnam.
We flew out of
the Air Force base at Ft. Lewis, Washington when we went; but we ended up on
the same plane goin’ over there, and ended up in the 90th
Replacement Battalion. I ended up with a
staff job in Long Binh and he ended up with a combat engineering unit out in
the boonies; but he did survive and made it back, which--there were a lot of
them that didn’t. But we’re still in
contact with each other to this day. I
talked to his wife here just a month ago.
I went over in
June of ’69 and came back in June of ’70.
A lot of people would re-up. I
didn’t. When I came back in June of
’70, I went into the reserves. I had a
six year obligation; and I had, in June of ’70, I had completed my two year
active duty and I went on inactive.
I had honors
in the States. I got an Army
Accommodation Medal in the States, which was unusual, and it was for duty
there. Ft. Carson was kinda stupid,
anyhow; but I got an a commendation medal for a project that I’d worked
on. Of course, you get the typical
Vietnam medal. I didn’t get any Purple
Hearts ‘cause I didn’t get shot; but I got the typical medals that you get for
being in Vietnam and bein’ in a combat area.
Life is
precious. Prior to that, ya know, holidays
were always a big deal; and anymore, to me, time doesn’t mean anything. A holiday isn’t really much. It’s just a day. You just take a day at a time.
It (Vietnam)
made me appreciate life more; appreciate what I did have. The tours were only for a year, that really
made it a lot easier. Ya know, the
people in past wars went and they had no idea when they were coming home. So, in this case, at least, you had something
to strive for.
It (coming
back) basically was tough. It appeared
that there was no appreciation for the Vietnam vets, and it was a tough time
cause we’re sitting over there fighting for our country, getting fired upon,
and havin’ people killed, and you come back to the States and the attitude was
“So what?” It--just like I told ya
earlier--we were fightin’ a war that we probably shouldn’t have been fighting,
and that’s the way the people felt in the States. And the majority of Vietnam Vets don’t feel that they got the
recognition that they should have gotten.
When you’re
gone, you’re looking at a two year commitment--training in the States and then
when you go to Vietnam. So basically,
you’ve lost two years of your life. So
when you come back, people that didn’t go into the service are workin’ the jobs
that you coulda had two years ago. So,
ya know, it sets ya back a couple years.
Of course, when you come back the job market was tough. I didn’t wanna work for that same
engineering firm because I was looking for more money, and I tried finding a
job and it was tough. I had a mechanical
engineering degree and there just wasn’t a lot available at the time. I just hit it at the wrong time so I ended
up going back with the engineering firm.
The other
thing, of course, there were a lot of people that had trouble with drugs over
there. Well, I didn’t have trouble with
drugs; but I did drink a lot of beer while I was over there, and it got to be a
habit when I came back. It’s just one
of those things that you do.
One of the
main things that I noticed when I came back, ‘course as I told you before, my
wife Karen had been totally dependent upon me.
With me being in Vietnam for a year, she had to become dependent on
herself. So when I came back, it was
like a totally different environment because she had been taking care of
herself for a year; and she didn’t wanna listen to what I had to say at
all. So, it was an adaption process for
the two of us to try and get along with each other, and it was tough.
When I first
got back my mental thought process was messed up. I’m thinkin’, “Well, I’ve been in a war, and I guess you probably
oughta look up to me--or something like that.”
I don’t know how to put it, but you weren’t. They figured if you were over there, you were stupid.
One of the
things I noticed when I came back, also, was I’d be havin’ a conversation with
somebody, and they’d be talkin’ and I must have been in lala land because I
didn’t hear ‘em. And the next thing I’d
do is ask ‘em a question, and it’s what they just told me. It was just like I was in a daze. Karen made the comment several times. It took me probably a year to get over
that. I’m assuming it was just because
everything was so regimented, and like I said, there were no holidays. It was just a day at a time, and that’s
kinda the way I looked at it when I came back.
I thought
there should have been more available for us when we came back and there
wasn’t. I had a heck of a time finding
a job. Of course now, since I’ve been
in the work force, I’ve found out a couple of times that that’s typical in the
work force. It was a growing up process
I guess, and it took me a while to get over that.
It taught me a
lot about life. It’s an experience I
really didn’t wanna go through, but I really am glad I did because it has
helped mold my life. Prior to that, ya
know, life was just one big party to me; and after that I was just a lot more
serious about it. It just made me more
serious. It was a growing up time for
me, and I wasn’t as young as a lot of ‘em over there. When I went, I was twenty-five.
I think I was twenty-five when I went over there. So, I actually was one of the older ones;
but it definitely was a growing up time.
There’s no doubt about that.
Vietnam was
definitely a traumatic experience, and it definitely was a growth process for
me; and it’s something that I think that everyone should go through. Well, I don’t know if I wanna say it that
way; but it’s an experience that I don’t regret going through.
To tell you the
truth, I don’t really regret anything I’ve done. I think I’ve been blessed with the experiences that I’ve had, and
the good Lord had his hand involved because he’s helped mold me. So, I don’t really wanna relive any event.
I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve experienced 
so far.
The main thing
is to keep focused. Keep your life in
tact and enjoy every experience, ‘cause you don’t get a chance to do things
over. So you have to take advantage of
what you get the first time. You need
to appreciate life and appreciate what’s going on around you.
Even though I complain about politics,
ya know, our country does care, and we are free, and of course being in Vietnam
I saw that. I mean Vietnam was to me
just a land of rotten buildings with roaches.
It’s just filthy dirty in my opinion.
Just a terrible, terrible country; and then when you come back to the
United States and you see what we have, it’s just unbelievable. So ya need to appreciate what you do have
and work hard. You get what you earn. If you work hard, it’ll work out. If you don’t, it’ll catch up to you.
*From an interview conducted in November 2001 with John Untereker by Kelly Untereker.
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