Video Interview: Richard "Dick" Merritt

Roaring Fork Veterans History Project

2-3-07 

Lt. Col. Richard (Dick) Owen Merritt (Ret.)

US Marines – Vietnam War

(1957-1979)

Interviewed by: John Masters

At GrassRoots Community TV, Aspen, Colorado

I am John Masters, and I am the Executive Director of GrassRoots Community Television in Aspen, Colorado, and I am conversing today with Richard Owen Merritt. He retired as a Lt. Col. In the United States Marine Corps. Birth date was the 29^th of June 1935. He had a 22-year career in the Marine Corps, from 1957 to 1979. Served in Vietnam in 1966-67, and over those 22 years was stationed in many different areas, and we will go over those. (Speaks off camera)

Colonel you were studying forestry at the University of Washington in your hometown of Seattle. And how did we get from forestry into the service?

Well in 1953 I graduated from high school, and I took a national scholarship test for the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Washington to become a Midshipman. I was successful and I had earned a scholarship that was better than a football scholarship, we had tuition and a stipend and we got to go to Europe every summer with the Navy, so I wore a Navy uniform for four years and then took a Marine Corps commission at the end of four years.

What was that environment on campus in the 50’s for ROTC? You wore your uniform to class?

Right in the 50’s it was post-World War II, post-Korea, we still had many temporary buildings on campus at the University of Washington, that were built for the veterans under the GI Bill. And so it was very pro-military. I was proud to wear that uniform onto campus in the 50’s.

Were those who weren’t in the ROTC envious?

Oh! Like I say it was better than a football scholarship, because in those days nobody was traveling, only the military. This is before the Jet Age, and so we would travel to Seattle down to Norfolk, Virginia, and catch the ships out to the European ports-o-call, and train.

And train. So tell me about that training in Europe during the summers.

Well we would, uh, I went on the USS Albany out of Norfolk, Virginia. We were, our sister ship was the Wisconsin. And we served on a six-week tour, cruise. And we served two weeks in engineering, two weeks in the combat information center, and two weeks on the deck. I got deck down in Cuba, down in Guantanimo Bay, and I was out there with a holy stone on the teak decks and I had a beautiful gold tan. But in the interim, we would pull into places like Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden, and go up into the Hinterland and it was a wonderful traveling experience in those days.

So you stayed on board ship most of the time?

Yes we stayed on ship and lived as Midshipman. We weren’t enlisted, and we weren’t officers, we were in between, like the Naval Academy, we had the same status.

So you were scrubbing the deck more?

Scrubbing the deck in Cuba, we were out there. So I don’t know if that the reason that I went into the Marine Corps, but being in forestry I wanted to be close to the Earth, and uh I certainly was after 22 years in the Corps.

So how did you go from being a Midshipman into being the Marines?

Well at the end of the 2^nd year you could take an option, the Marine Corps. They had a Marine Corps instructor there and he was recruiting and 16% of the Midshipman could go into the Marine Corps that are at the Naval Academy and at the NROTC, throughout the university, throughout the United States. And when I got commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1957, I went to Quantico, and one of the reasons that I stayed in the Marine Corps was the quality of the officers that I served with. 2^nd Lt. Jim Mora served two years and he went on and was an All-American at football, and went on to coach the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. And Hume McElroy, he was went on to become the Bank of America, and Hodding Carter went on to become State Department Spokesman for Jimmy Carter, and Lt.’s from Stanford and Princeton, and I went out of being a provincial guy and kind of raising my outlook on how our country was and meeting these kind of high level officers, that is why I stayed in the Marine Corps.

You said that there was 16%, a limit, so that was a preferred alternative it sound like?

It was. Guys like Joe Bolino who was All-American at Navy took the Marine Corps option and, you were selected, you didn’t just say ‘I want to be there”, they selected you. The physical and mental, and there was a lot of physical involved in it.

Ok, so what was…Were there any other differences that you saw in your experience there just as you became a Marine from being in the Navy?

Well I observed the difference in leadership, the officers and the Navy officers as opposed to the Marine Corps officers. I went to Quantico, Virginia in 1956 and saw how Marine officers handle their men, and when I became Lieutenant the first thing that they told me was to never ask your troops to do anything that you wouldn’t do yourself, and that means excelling physically, on the rifle range, being trained to lead you troops, and taking care of your troops is #1. And I felt that I had a gift for leadership.

Did you, was your desire to be in infantry, or in some other aspect of the Marines?

Well, I decided shortly after I got commissioned that I wanted to make a career out of it, and so every Marine officer strives to become an infantry officer. And I did all the physical and we took all the mental tests and all that, and when it came time to get your military occupational specialty, which is MOS, I would up in the artillery, and I went in and tried to get it changed to my company commander and he said “Well, your test scores are too high intellectually, we need you in artillery because we want those rounds going in accurately. So I, you know, artillery is supporting arms, but when I wound up in Vietnam, I was with the 3^rd Battalion, 5^th Marines in a battalion landing team and we went on Operation Hastings in July, 1966, which was the biggest Marine Corps operation, and so up until that point, we had too many artillery batteries in country for that operation, so I formed up a provisional rifle company. And I got to be company commander in combat. And I will say this about my twenty years in the Corps, they were all good years, but the six months that I was a company commander in combat, for a Marine officer is the highlight of your whole career. Commanding combat.

Where did you train for artillery, what kind of equipment did you use?

Right, we trained in, uh, because the Marine Corps is a small organization, the Marine Corps has to use the Army to train it’s engineers and the artillery, so I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma twice to be trained as an artillery officer and then brought those skills back to the fleet Marine force.

What kind of technology were you using?

Well we were using the 105 Howitzer, which we are still using; they are a little more sophisticated now. Back in those days we were using everything manual on the fire direction, and that was one of my specialties, Fire Direction Officer. So every mission that we plotted was backed up manually. Well when the computers came in later, we didn’t have the computers when I started, we still followed the missions manually. And you had to do that in case the generators got knocked out, knocking the computer out. So there is still a certain amount of manual things in ceasing and holding and occupying that the infantry is trained to do, and we support them in supporting arms.

Where were you stationed in the 50’s and what did you do?

Well in the Marine Corps, and I liked it this way – if you were from the west coast, or west of the Mississippi River, you would wind up, after basic school, on the West Coast. So I would up at Camp Pendleton, California, which is considered to be the café society of the Marine Corps. Southern California. SO as a result of that, I would up over my 20-year career spending 8 years at Camp Pendleton, all the way up to Battalion Commander, 6 years in the Pacific, and historically the Marine Corps has been based in the Pacific. I spent 2 years on the Philippine Islands as a Guard Officer, 59-61, a year in Vietnam, a year in Okinawa, and then 2 years in Taiwan as the Senior Marine in the Republic of China.

Tell me about the Philippines.

I was at Subic Bay. We no longer have a base there. I was a Guard Officer at the Naval Magazine. And also working with the Atomic Underwater Weapons. We had a lot of things going on out there, at the Naval Air Station that I was at. That was part of one of the companies we had the aircraft carriers coming in to get ammo and to pull liberty, and one of the things that we had at that time and I had to supervise the guarding of, we were flying U2’s out of Cubic Point in Philippines. And that was very interesting time to watch those U2’s take off, and we guarded them very closely.

OK, and then you went to Okinawa?

I went to Okinawa, lets see, after Command and Staff College that would be in 1970, Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, and I went to Okinawa to actually, I was headed back to Vietnam for a second tour.

And that was Okinawa. Did you go to Quantico twice?

Three times. I started my career there as a 2^nd Lt. Went there as a Major mid career, to Command and Staff College, and then I retired in 1979 out of Quantico as the Deputy Director of Amphibias Warfare School, so all of my time was in schooling in either as a student or teaching. And Quantico is the education center for the Marine Corps. It is just south of DC. And we just opened up the Marine Corps museum here in the 10^th of November.

So after the Philippines, what happened after the Philippines?

Well after the Philippines I would up back at Camp Pendleton as the Battery Commander, then I got sent up to University of Washington, up in Seattle to get a Masters Degree in Geography, and I went to Pickle Meadows, the mountain warfare training center in Bridgeport, California to teach skiing and mountain climbing escape and evasion, and I wrote my Masters thesis there. It was called Land Use Allocation for Military Purposes, the US Marine Corps, Pickle Meadow, and California. It involved working with the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamations, local property owners, the State of California Game Commission to have permission for our Marine to go out and kill rabbits and deer to survive. So it was a real interesting tour. It was a three dimensional model of land use, and as our population increases that territory has more cross country skiers up there and people, and so we have to work with a civilian population to get our training done up there. And I might mention that that facility is still in use but it is kind of down scaled because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what we are doing, we have about twenty mules up there and we are training Marines to pack these mules for use in Afghanistan and the mountains in the Middle East right now.

Your training then, or you were doing the training of the escape and….

Both. I was teaching and also doing research concurrently. Then I went back to the university and finished my thesis and then came back to the Fleet Marine Force at Twenty Nine Palms and that was just before Vietnam, and then right after that I finished my Masters thesis, and I was back in Vietnam six months after I finished that, or in Vietnam for the first time.

Did the Marines decide that you were going to get a Masters in Geography?

I asked for it. And the Marine Corps is wanting their officers to get advanced education whether it is an technology, a lot of engineering, they’ll send a the Marines out there. Also programs where the enlisted men can go and get the Naval Enlisted Scientific program get a Bachelors Degree. We send Marine officers to MIT, whatever skills the Marine Corps need at the educational level; officers will go out and get those advanced degrees.

So you had an opportunity to actually use that forestry knowledge?

I did at Pickle Meadows, in helping to negotiate some of the agreements. The Bureau of Reclamation wanted to build a dam where we were in the valley floor where we were training, and we decided that it would be in the best industry under the premises that the defense of the country comes first before building dams, and I know that a lot of that thinking has changed since I wrote the thesis in 1965, but, we kind of held the line there, on that one.

So Twenty Nine Palms, and then you headed off for Vietnam?

Right. I headed off for Vietnam. We left, with my Field Artillery group from Twenty Nine Palms, in February and sailed to Vietnam, and I went ashore, and put the battery ashore, and then they decided that they needed a Battery Commander to go with the 3^rd Battalion 5^th Marines, which I would up going to Okinawa and training with them and then coming back aboard ship in May, and making our landings in a special landing force. We operated; I was first on the Princeton aircraft carrier. And we would cruise up and down the coast of Vietnam, and wherever there was a hotspot on the delta or all the way up to the DMZ we would go in on operations and reinforce the troops on the land there. And we went in on the 10^th of July on Operation Hastings up on the DMZ up on where the Rockpile is and Helicopter Ridge and it was the most successful Marine Corps operation at that time. We were confirmed 681 North Vietnamese KIA’s, these weren’t Vietcong these were regular troops. We uncovered a Field Hospital dug into the ground with with nurses in uniforms. Then we went back aboard the Princeton, and my battalion stayed in country, and I went back to the Philippines and picked up the Iwo Jima, which was another aircraft carrier and picked up the 1^st Battalion of the 26^th Marines and then we went into Qua Vet, up north and we took a lot of heavy casualties, and this a new unit that came straight from the states and hadn’t been trained in Okinawa and the casualties were really high. The Iwo Jima incidentally is still in the fleet, it is over in the Middle East supporting our troops with the battalion landing teams, and I have seen the Iwo Jima down in New Orleans in Katrina as a command ship, so I am kind of related to following the Iwo Jima around.

When you first landed in Vietnam, tell me about that, what was the environment? Did you training prepare you for what you were…?

We were physically prepared to go in. (Pause) my twenty years in the Marine Corps, the 3^rd Battalion, 5^th Marines was the best organization that I ever served with. And we trained in Okinawa, we were acclimatized and physically up and down the island. We got on the Princeton; we were exercising every day and ready to go in. I will just take you back a little bit to 1957 my brother enlisted in the Marine Corps the same year that I was commissioned, and he joined the 5^th Marine Regiment, and his platoon commander was Hans Hopt who became a company commander in Vietnam, and so, we have a brotherhood. My experience was that when we first went in, I got up that morning that we were to land on the 10^th of July, this was our first really big operation going into Hastings, and our aircraft carrier was I don’t know going 15-20 knots in to the wind and getting the wind right so that we could land the helicopters. SO the rifle companies all went ahead of me, cause I had the artillery to get set up and when we were standing on the deck we were waiting for the helicopters to come back and take us in. And the LZ was cleared and I heard on the intercom of the ship, Medivac coming in, and in that landing zone from Lima Company, they took a Marine off of the helicopter and he had his leg blown off, and were standing there ready to go into combat on the helicopter and he died right in front of us. And so, here we go, I mean the umbilical cord is cut and there is no way that you are not going to go, and so, we went into the landing zone, and I knew that we had mines there, and we got in the LZ and I tiptoed around for thirty seconds, and I said, You gotta get your battery into position and from that point forward my whole command, I never, you never think of yourself personally, it’s the troops, and if you take care of your troops, they’ll take care of you. That is the way it is in the Marine Corps. And we survived and we did well, and then we reverted and sent the guns back to ship and I formed up this provisional rifle company with half of my artillery battery and with cooks and bakers and typists and their all trained riflemen, and I mean we did a heck of a job out there!

So you got to command infantry after all?

In combat. Yes. After all.

So, what was Hastings about? What were you doing there?

Well it was the first intrusion into, they were coming down, and we had I think five infantry battalions in there, we were reinforcing, and we wound up in the middle of a hornets nest. India Company, right next to my company, had I think 79 casualties, I think about 35 KIA’s, and it was really a tough night for them, and of all the company commanders, lets see, Hans is dead. India Company is dead. Another one is ailing. Out of five company commanders, there is only probably two of us that are I’ll say hale and hearty now. And I just went to the first reunion that w e ever had of the Battalion Landing Team 3-5 this summer in Colorado Springs. Forty years ago since I saw these officers and men, and you know it’s, the bond is there, and your thinking of them, and I have reunited with them. And were on the Internet, you know talking back and forth now…

Did your geography and forestry come in of any use to you?

The geography did. The geopolitical things at Command Staff that helped me write my papers and uh, of course in the Marine Corps were dealing with maps all of the time and then I read maps pretty well. I’ll tell you why. One night we were on an operation. This was another operation off of the aircraft carrier, and we were landed in a position where we had to rely on French maps, we didn’t have our own maps. And I put my whole career on the line that they told me that we were at these coordinates, and there was an island in the river we had a rifle company out there, and the Viet Cong were coming after the rifle company, and they called for fire, they gave me coordinates out here, and we didn’t register, which means, what we usually do, we just fired for effect, and the coordinates were right, so I do trust the French!

Having an understanding of the geography and the bigger picture as an officer, were you clear on your mission, did you know the strategy? Now, Hastings, was this up close to the DMZ?

This was right on the DMZ. Yeah. We knew our mission. The problem was that was really the first, or the last big battle where we were ready to across the DMZ, in pursuit, but we were held back, we couldn’t go there. And as we put piecemeal troops in, the NVA and the VC sent down the Ho Che Mihn Trail their forces to match us, so it became a checkmate situation. Right after Hastings, and the last Operation 126, I got promoted to Major, and I lost my battery, lost my troops  and went to a staff job at Dong Ha on the DMZ and I was in the operations center, and I was sent out for 6 weeks with a Vietnamese paratroop battalion right on the DMZ. And I had some experiences there with people that, well the South Vietnamese in particular, and one person that I would like to mention is Sean Flynn, Errol Flynn’s son, and he was a photojournalist, he was about 27 or 28, and a guy who carried his own weight, dug his own foxhole, was never a burdon to us, and we had some firefights and he was there with us, and after that operation he went out back to Saigon and went out to Laos with three other photojournalists and was never seen again. He went into the Killing Fields. But he was a great great young man, and I think of him often. And the other one, who I never did meet was Bernard Fall, who wrote Street Without Joy, and one of my assignments at Dong Ha in operations was to escort dignitaries, and I was to escort Bernard Fall the next day and he was killed, and I never got to meet him, but I read his books, and all that. Others that I met there were Robert Mitchum and Dandy Don Merideth, the football quarterback came and had breakfast with them and you know various people would come through that I would be coordinating briefings for, like McNamara, when he put up that electronic line there, we put Amtracks all around the command post and he came there, and my Senator from the State of Washington, Scoop Jackson came in and took photographs together. And I have got photographs of Gen. Westmoreland and myself on at the end of Operation Hastings, so I got to meet up close a lot of well-known people. John Steinbeck came, Grapes of Wrath, and autographed a book for us, you know, we had a lot of I felt support because they came. Probably one of the highlights were, we were up in so far north, we had a USO show came, and six girls came, and that was great, you know, we didn’t get the Bob Hope shows because we were too far north and in artillery range, and it was just too dangerous to bring up the headliners, but we did have USO girls up there, and it was great.

Now it might have been a promotion but that must have been a big change going from being a commander in the field to, seems like a desk job and showing dignitaries, and taking care of dignitaries?

Yea. The commander in the field in combat, and I say that my prime time in the Marine Corp was that time, but I tell you when I was with Sean Flynn and the Vietnamese paratroopers, I was out in the jungle and getting leeches on my boot tops and that and uh, but that was six weeks of that and it lasted for about four months. But later on I became, I commanded two artillery battalions back in the US from 1973-75, and that was great, I had 720 men in those battalions, but it wasn’t combat, and as a battalion commander, you are not as close to the troops as you are as a company commander, or a battery commander.

What was it like working with, fighting with the South Vietnamese Army?

Well they were really good. The discipline was good. A lot of them had been conscripted and I thought that the discipline was a little bit brutal from the officers to the men. We were up on the DMZ and went into an operation and I got a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry Bronze Star for that one, calling in artillery fire for our troops. But about 20 of the men went home to see their families, what was called an unauthorized absence. And when they came back to the battalion the battalion had them line up and get on their knees and he hit every one of them on the side of the head on the ear you know and they fell to the ground and he had them get back up and then he came back the other direction and knocked them to the ground, and probably pierced some ear drums, but that was the way they handled their discipline there, and put them right back in the combat situation. The South Koreans were the most feared troops by the VC and the NVA. I never worked with them but I heard rumors of their activities with the enemy down there. The NVA and the VC really didn’t want to engage the Koreans.

You were in the middle of a lot of heavy combat?

Yes.

And you came through relatively unscathed?

I should have been wounded several times. When we were over there with the Vietnamese, I had two other Americans with me, and we didn’t have any other fresh water and we drank out of the rice patties, and this officer here and this officer here and myself drank out of the same helmet, they both got malaria and I didn’t. And, the only way that we could tell the days of the week over there when I was with the Americans was the Corpsman would come around with a great big ol Orange Malaria pill, and that meant that it was Sunday. You know? That was the way that it was there. But I had some close scrapes, and I wasn’t wounded, but I should have been probably, but I wasn’t. I have a friend of mine down in Glenwood he flew 530 combat missions and same thing, he came back 2 out of 3 didn’t make it and he made it back, and so, that is fate I guess.

And that is what you have to leave it to, I guess?

That is right, yeah.

After Hastings, what happened in Vietnam?

Ok, lets see. After Hastings, I left Vietnam in March of ’67 and went back to 1^st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton and I stayed there for two years and went to Command and Staff College. The war kept going on, and I went to Okinawa, and wanted to go to Vietnam but had to stay in Okinawa, then I went in ’71 to recruiting duty in Detroit, Michigan. That was a tough deal. I recruited, I was responsible for recruiting 240 Marines a month, and never missed quota in two years, and got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, but I would recruit mainly minority groups, and they wound up in the infantry, and many times six months later I would have to bury them, and I would have to go to their parents and tell them that they had been killed in Vietnam.

How do you do that?

Well when you are a career officer. The mission comes first. You put the mission first. And I have you know, in the Marine Corps, it is a bond of men that go through a tough boot camp, a tough training, and the officers put the Marine Corps first, and many of my friends did two or three tours of Vietnam, and my battalion commander on 3-5, Lt. Col. Bronars made Three Star General, and he told me at Pendleton, after Vietnam, he said you know I had a great career, but my family grew up and I didn’t know my kids. And many officers put the Marine Corps first, and their wives turned to maybe the anti-war, that happened to my friend in Glenwood, it happened to me, you know I got a divorce, but the Marine Corps was there for me, you know sustained me, because I had support there. We didn’t have support from the civilian population, the civilian population attacked us, they killed the messenger, and the should have gone to Washington, and they ultimately did. My first night back in the states when I was married to my first wife, she introduced me on my first night back at a party, you know to her principal that she worked for, and he wouldn’t even shake my hand and asked me “How many women and children did you kill?” And of course, I’m shocked. And this happened to many of my friends that came back as Marines. We didn’t come back as units, we came back singly through San Francisco airport in uniform, and the assaults upon us as fighting men coming back left a lot of wounds that have no left today. My friend Hans Hop, who I mentioned, was my brothers platoon commander back in 1957 in Camp Pendleton and then served with me as a Company Commander in Vietnam was at the University of California at Berkeley and he was the ROTC instructor for the Marine Corps, and there were all the protests at Berkeley, this would be about ’67, and a can of red paint was thrown of him and at that point the government took that protester to court for destroying government property for destroying Hans’s uniform, because we were having real problems with officer training corps on campus. You asked me in the’50’s, it was great in the; 50’s, but in the ‘60’s ROTC, a lot of the colleges didn’t want to allow it anymore, and there were, well at the University of Washington they burned Clark Hall, where I was a Midshipman, you know and protests all over Madison. And we had these, and we still have some, Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at the best universities: Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, Southern California, Berkeley, Washington, all over, and there was just a turning of the backs upon the military.

When you came home to that environment, did at some point did you start questioning…

No. Because I was a career officer, I couldn’t get back from Seattle to Camp Pendleton fast enough, to be back with the Marines, and that is how we all felt. We felt that the only support that we had, was our fellow Marines.

So it must have been an incredibly difficult to recruit in that environment?

It wasn’t, because the draft was on. And Detroit was becoming depressed and it was, they had had the riots there, and every time there was a layoff at Chrysler or Ford, I mean I had people waiting in the wings. We had what we call back then what we called Project 100,000. And it was basically, if you could get up in the morning and brush your teeth, and we forgot any minor criminal activities, you were in the Marine Corps, and you were in the infantry and you were in Vietnam.

So, it was preferable to go into the Marines rather than to be drafted into the Army?

A lot of the people that came into the Marine Corps in the draft at that time felt that way, its always been that way, that they want a real challenge to be physically, and I will never forget, in Okinawa, just before we went to Vietnam we had a draftee come into the outfit, and the First Sgt.  briefed me and said said you know “Captain, we had better talk about this guy. He’s a hair dresser from New York City.” And I said, oh man, a hairdresser! But he was a real fighter, and you cant tell a book by its cover, but he wanted to be in the Marine Corps, and he was a great Marine, and the thing is that when you do have the draft, you have a cross section of the United States it is a great educational experience for everyone to learn the different cultures of the different regions of our country.

I’m sorry to go back here, but it seems like, having to tell a mother or family that their son has got to be tougher than fighting in the jungle.

Its really tough, because emotionally, you talked with the young enlistee about what the opportunities would be for careers and I must say that many of those ghetto youth that came on into the Marine Corps stayed on and made a career out of it. And it was the only way out, to get out of the ghetto, to learn a skill and leadership and have be buildup that you were someone important, you know. Yeah, it was really tough, but that went along with the job, you know, and in the Marine Corps there are what is called Water Walkers. And there are three categories of Water Walkers, one is the drill instructors, these are all hand picked. Embassy Marines that guard the embassies and recruiters, and so if you are selected for recruiting duty you are considered to be a Water Walker, if you know what I mean.

Yeah! (Off camera comment). Sure, and this also reminded me, we mentioned leadership in the Marines and never asking you men to do something that you wouldn’t do, and I would like to explore a little more about what being a leader is, and being a commander in the Marines…

Well first thing, your men come first. You take care of the troops. The troops eat first in the mess line, in the field, if there is no food, you don’t eat. If you are an officer in the Marine Corps, and every Marine is a riflemen, as I mentioned the provisional rifle company I had in Vietnam – cooks and bakers and typists and truck drivers, they were all required to qualify with the rifle, and if any Marine doesn’t qualify, and especially if an officer doesn’t qualify with the rifle, of course you go back to the range, but that is a strike against you that you know, and physically you have to be in top shape. When I was a battalion commander and I was 39 years old, at Camp Pendleton, we had a three-mile run, and I had 720 men. I had the fastest time in the battalion. And you know they are pushing you, but you have to physically take care of yourself and mentally, and you cant go off by yourself and ever feel….you know I had a divorce, you’ve gotta get back and lead your men. That is leadership. Setting the example for the men.

What is the big deal about being a Marine?

Well it is an elite fighting organization; it’s a macho organization. We’ve fought through the Pacific, and the Iwo Jima battle, I don’t know if you saw Flags of Our Fathers or read the book, but it is always been an organization that has prided itself on duty, courage, commitment, and the people that come into the Marine Corps basically are team players that played high school football, or outdoorsman who used to go hunting with their fathers, skilled in marksmanship, proud of their physical carriage, and leaders. And not necessarily what I might say considered to be milquetoast citizens in that a lot of them had minor scrapes with the law because of this macho thing – fighting. And we control and direct that fighting in our training with the physical fitness, pugil sticks, bayonet training, that type of thing. So there is a challenge to be a Marine. Basically you have to be strong before you go into the Marine Corps. You cannot be someone who is not up to sleeping outdoor in the elements, or playing football in a snowstorm, that type of thing. So we are always looking for a physical challenge.

What is different about the mission of the Marines?

We are basically a force in readiness. And even today we are in these battalion landing teams as I was in Vietnam, where a battalion will go aboard an aircraft carrier, in this case the Iwo Jima, and they are out in the Gulf right now and they go out and land, we are in a situation where we are more in a land occupation position, which is not really our mission, but that is where we are. In the Battle of Fallujah in November, two years ago, my old battalion was there with other, three other Marine battalions and two Army battalions, so we took a lot of casualties there. And it seems like today, that wherever there is a hotspot, anywhere in the world, these battalion will go to the Horn of Africa, or down to Indonesia and help on relief, or help in the Philippines so we are a force in readiness and we are lean and we have our own air wing, our own helicopters we rely on Navy shipping, so we are very mobile. Is the role that we play…

Do you think that, I guess, natural selection of men who go into the Marines, along with the training…Do the Marines come out of war more intact, perhaps?

No, we take a disproportionate share of casualties. We have always been put up, in Vietnam, up on the DMZ, up on the ICORE. Even, were smaller fighting force. 100%. It’s basis of the total military, were still drawing the highest percentage of casualties, of KIA’s.

I guess that I was thinking psychologically. If there is a stronger, tougher group, that you survive better?

They are as strong as any group, that I served with, the Marines that I served with and the Marines today, however they are being subjected to more combat than we were, and I am speaking about Iraq. Where they are in Iraq for seven months and then back in the states for seven months, but during the seven months back in the states they are subject to deployment with a battalion landing teams, they come back and they go right back into Iraq. I have one of my friends who is a helicopter pilot who has done 5 tours, 35 months in Iraq, and he is going back for his 6^th tour, 42 months, and so there is a lot of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, that is a big concern, and the wounded, I work with the disabled veterans here in April of every year, and I will probably have about 55 this year form Walter Reed, mentally and physically the toll is heavy today – Army, Navy, Marine Corps, the Navy Corpsman are taking a, you know you see Navy casualties in the newspapers? You think, what are those guys doing on ships getting killed? Well they are up with the Marines. I had in my outfit in Vietnam, I had a corpsman. His name was Applebee. He was a great corpsman, he wore the Marine Corps uniform, and because his name was Applebee he ad a tattoo on his arm that was a Red Delicious apple on his arm with a yellow bumblebee. Apple Bee. You know on top of it. So the troops are stretched today, they are really stretched. And I think even more so, and I mean that Vietnam was tough, but we knew that after one year we would go home and that we wouldn’t be sent back for another year. And even then in Vietnam, if you wanted to extend for six months the Marine Corps, the military would send you in any place in the world that you wanted to go – Australia, or England or whatever, and many Marines would extend for one or two tours. And rank came fast and everybody had pocket money so to speak, and you could travel the world. The problem was when they came back to the United States, and I was a battalion commander, they would come to my battalion with maybe $10,000 or $12,000 in their pockets and they would go out and buy new fast cars and they would go up to LA form Camp Pendleton and they wouldn’t come back on Monday morning because they got killed on the freeway. They were safer in Vietnam than they were back in the states, that is the way that it was. Rank came fast and life was good if you survived, but there was, you know, that side of the coin also.

You requested to go back to Vietnam when you were in Okinawa?

Right. But I wasn’t allowed to because there was ten of us that graduated from Command and Staff College and we all had orders to go back to Vietnam, and at that time we started pulling troops back in the summer of 1970, and so I would up on the General, G3 for Gen. Wilson who went on to become the Commandant of the Marine Corps. And I wanted to go back to Vietnam and they sent a request out to Okinawa for a briefing officer in Saigon and I volunteered to go, and the General called me into his office and said “ You’re too valuable to me here, and you are not going back to Vietnam” so I never went back for a second tour. And then concurrently I got a Law Degree along the way and they made me the Foreign Claims Commissioner for the island of Okinawa, and I worked for  Gen. Barrow who became the Commandant under Gen. Wilson, so it is really unique to serve under two generals who became back to back Commandants, and they were two of the finest men that I ever knew.

What made them great leaders?

Their stature their dignity, their caring for their troops. General Wilson had the Medal of Honor in WWII. Their bearing, and the fact that they cared for the Marines.

I think that we will take a break here, to change tapes.

Col. Merritt, you had a degree in Forestry, you got a Masters in Geography, a Law degree, all of your experience as a leader. Now you would have been valuable outside of the Marine Corps. I am fascinated as to why someone would stay for 22 years?

Well along the way, because of my love for skiing, and being a ski instructor in the Marine Corps at Pickle Meadows, I bought real estate here in Aspen10 years before I retire, so I knew that I had a good place to come to. A lot of the people that weren’t in the military didn’t have Aspen, Colorado. And I, we adopted two Chinese children when we were in Taiwan, and we raised them here from the time that they were one year old, so that I knew that had some psychic income by being in Aspen, and living in this environment, which I still live in today and teach skiing everyday. So, I’ve had a lot of people, my students that are instructors, that tell me that they’re Wall Street, semi-magnates that they would gladly trade places with me, just to be here. So I have had, I have been blessed with health and a good life and an opportunity to meet people of high standing, and it has enabled me to teach private people with a lot of credentials here in Aspen. That is one thing that, living in the world and traveling around the world, I have traveled with the Marine Corps on leave through Thailand and into India and all through Europe, a and I can converse with people and understand where they are coming from and just generally relate to the world in a better manner.

I think to civilians who have never been in the military, or those who were only in for a short while, it seems like a choice that is outside of the mainstream, that it is a peculiar life, that it must be difficult to really have a regular social life, family life. Can you speak to that, and the challenges of being a career officer?

Well you have choices. Like when you’re overseas you live in government housing and in Taiwan I lived quite well, as a Lt. Col. In Bank of Taiwan housing. I had a garden boy and my wife had two maids, one to sew and one to cook. In the Philippines I had a garden boy when I was a Lieutenant. When I was in the states, I basically lived quite well in Southern California, in the café society of the Marine Corps, always lived on the beach. I owned condominiums in La Jolla, California at one point, and so it was my choice that I could live as well as the civilians. I don’t know about to day if I could buy into the California real estate market, but I could 20 years ago. And live quite well. We were accepted into the community, invited to the social events, enjoyed the good life. If you wanted to live in the civilian society.

So it is pretty good being an officer?

It is good being an officer. Yeah. It really is.

You have the freedom?

You have the freedom. I do believe in the rank structure. Because of financial things times have changed. When I was a Lt. we had, and probably up until I was a Major we had officers clubs, staff clubs and enlisted clubs, but because of the economics of the situation in the civilian community there was a lot of places where you could go for recreation and meals. And the officer clubs and staff and NCO clubs weren’t pulling their weight financially so they combined the officer and staff and NCO clubs together. And I don’t think that it is good to socially be mixing with the enlisted people. Especially if you have a disciplinary situation and you’re an officer at the club on a Friday night, and maybe had too much to drink and the Staff Sergeant is going to come in for his office hours on Monday morning and he is there with his wife and sober and I think that the two, there has two be a distinction between these two, the fraternization I don’t believe in.

You were in Vietnam for a year?

Yes.

And so it seems like in WWII they were out for four years or more. Today it seems like soldiers that have to go back. Maybe you were fortunate. Talk about that stress of having to go back, or being overseas for a long period of time.

That is the way that it was. I grew up as a young boy, I think that I was five years old when the World War started and when it ended I was nine or ten. But the civilian community was behind the war effort, we had savings bond drives, we had victory gardens, my mother saved all the bacon grease for munitions. My father raised rabbits and so every Sunday we would have rabbits to eat, and so everyone sacrificed for the war effort. And coming out of the depression the people were pretty strong, and it was understood that our land had been invaded and there was a strong desire to prevent any enemy form coming to this territory. And then we got into, well Ill just take Vietnam where we had the draft and built the Marine Corps up to twice the size that it is today so that you knew that you had one year to serve there, R&R in the middle at six months, unlike the battle in the Pacific that our forefathers fought. It was tough in WWII, Vietnam was tough, but I don’t think, that you know, you knew that you were coming back at any given time. But I think that what is going on in Iraq today is even tougher, the stress level of being sent back. If you enlist in the Marine Corps today and you are in the infantry, you are going back for three tours, which is 21 months in a real tough combat. And I have been observing the Iraq War and I would rather fight in a jungle than I would in an urban environment in Baghdad, against 6 million people.

I don’t know if we skipped anything, but I would like to talk about Taiwan. Is there anything in your career we missed before you were in Taiwan?

Yeah. Taiwan was a company tour, as I mentioned, and rather unusual in that serving so much time overseas. I went to the Philippines with my first wife and went to Taiwan with my second wife, and we had no children and we adopted two Chinese children there. And I mentioned I was the senior Marine in Taiwan, and my commandant of the Chinese Marine Corps was my counterpart and I was involved with the State Department and the CIA over there, and the thing that really got my attention was that I got there in July of 1976 and in September of 1976 the Admiral called all of the officers into his office. Admiral Snyder. And told us that Mao Tse Tung had died, and here we were in Taiwan, and our sabers are rattling in Quemoi and Mat Su and I thought aw, you know, the world is going to go crazy and they are going to lose control and they are going to come over and they still want a communist mainland China and take over Taiwan. And I was in the middle of that confrontation, and I felt just like I did in 1961 where I was on leave in Europe coming back from the Philippines around the world and I was in Germany when the Berlin Wall went up. And I was away from the Marine Corps and there were no Marines around, and I thought ‘I’m caught in the middle of the start of World War III, and I have had that feeling twice, in Germany and in Taiwan, China. And that was probably my best tour, as far as utilizing all of my education, my training, and everything that I learned in Vietnam in combat I helped train the Chinese Marine Corps and transferred that experience to the Republic of China.

Was that your primary mission there?

My primary, well I was in the Taiwan defense command and it was unified command, we had an Admiral in charge, we had an Air Force General, 2^nd in Command, and we had a Navy Captain that I worked for, we had Army Colonel’s, a Marine Colonel, myself, so it was a very interesting command, and I cant really discuss some of the intelligence that we were involved in, but it was very interesting.

It was almost a political…

Yes it was a political deal. And that is the thing too, you know, not only are we trained to fight but also we are trained to politically and socially interact with where ever you are stationed with. And in Detroit I am interacting with a civilian population, and they’re recruiting these Marines to come into the Corps.

How, what were the Marines…. How many United Stated Marines were there in Taiwan at that time?

There were the Embassy Marines, about 12, and then two over at the Mag, and myself. Fifteen.

So you weren’t there to defend Taiwan, you were there…

No I was there to plan I was in the planning section. But you know we have a saying in the Marine Corps, “Once a Marine, always a Marine”, threes no such thing as a former or ex-Marine. And your father (John Masters father) was in the Marine Corps, and you knew the sense of pride that he would sound off and let people know that he was in the Marine Corps and he was proud to have fought in the Pacific in World War II.

That is true, still to this day. I believe that you were involved with some sort of nuclear warfare planning, can you talk about that?

Yes. That was my second military occupational specialty, I was a nuclear weapons deployment officer, and I was the reliability program, and in charge of reliability, which means that you have to be, your in the Marine Corps, but yeah, you have to be morally and physically, you cant be having domestic problems because there is a chance to compromise a nuclear situation. And I got involved in the nuclear weapons out in the Philippines in ’59-61, and then when I became a battalion commander, just before that I got sent to a number of nuclear weapons schools where I learned how to assemble the weapons and employ them. And then I became an inspector for Fleet Marine Force Pacific and I would go out and inspect the aircraft that would be dropping nuclear weapons, all the artillery, 155, and the 8-inch, the engineers and I worked with the navy inspectors. And I never had to, obviously use one, but I had all the training to employ them.

So these nuclear warheads were it sounds like small enough to go on field artillery?

Yeah. They aren’t really big. I mean were not talking about the Big Bertha and Hiroshima and all of that, these are you know pretty refined but yet will accomplish the mission that they are designed for.

Seems like I covered everything that I could think of, is there anything else that you would like to…that we’ve missed or that is important.

Well, I think, John what is important that we had troops that were in Vietnam, and we have this community here in Aspen and they are very aware of what the veterans have done, the 10^th Mountain division that were instrumental in the ski industry in Aspen specifically, and they are appreciated, we have our ceremonies at the memorial here every Veterans Day and every Memorial Day, and the Elks Lodge has a banquet on Veterans Day and a community picnic on Memorial Day. What we have is two young Marines that are serving in Iraq, and we are very concerned and we are in contact with them on Veterans Day everyone signed a card wishing Lance Corporal Black well, he grew up with my kids, and the other Lance Corporal Daniel Hess is the son of General Hess who is the retired Staff Judge Advocate for the Marine Corps and Dan came home form boot campo and took his leave to teach skiing with me, and he was on my team these past two weeks, and now he will be in Iraq within 30 days. And so we have a connection and I have helped with the Marine Corps toys for tots in this valley, and I do help with the Marine recruiters to recruit Marines and I am still involved with what is going on in the Marine Corps today. And so we support our troops and specifically Lance Corp. Hess and Lance Corp. Black, over there. Lance Corp. Black was here, Chris Black, and marched in the 4^th of July parade in his dress blues and he was the youngest Marine, and we are really proud of him and he is over there fighting for our country right now.

One of the things that we didn’t touch on was what are you are doing right now!

We since I have been retired from the Marine Corps I have had a number of experiences and that have all been basically in the ski industry. I started out teaching kids at Aspen Highlands in 1979 and then I went on to be the Vice-President there for Safety and Guest Services and then the company got sold to the Ski Company so I went back onto Aspen Mountain and went on the ski patrol and then I found my way back to teaching skiing to kids at Buttermilk and I am a team leader with 15 instructors, so I am on the hill teaching skiing.

How has the Marine Corps helped you in your skiing career?

Well it has helped me actually a lot in that I have organizational skills, communicate, I have everyone of my team leaders is on my internet site, their phone numbers and they report to me and I have breakfast with them and we go skiing together and I try to set an example of being to work early so that they are there in time and their uniforms are clean and that they are wearing nametags. I just sent an email yesterday about the uniforms, “I want clean uniforms” you know the trousers get dirty they’re light, “and I want name tags” and put in parenthesis “I don’t want to sound like a Marine Corps drill instructor but I want you to be professional.” So it carries over, you know the standards and professionalism and caring.

Is that a little different than the other team leaders in the ski school?

Yeah. I am older, much older, I am competing with instructors, and have to keep up the skills with them, their 50 years younger than I am, but being a Marine, you know, don’t ask your troops to do anything that you wouldn’t do. You know, so I am not really that crazy but I ski with them.

They like working with you?

Oh yeah they like working with me and they respect my experience and not only from the Marine Corps but from 27 years in the ski industry. I have been around the block a few times. Yep.

Thank you.

(End of interview)