Stories from Around the World

From the Transitional English class at Holtville High School, Holtville, California. Interview by Hector Bautista.

H: This is going to be an interview with Michael Patin and he is going to tell me about his life.

H:What war did you fight in?

M: Well, when I first went into the Air Force the Vietnam War was, uh, it just started and also at that time very shortly after I went  into the Air Force they had what they called the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and they also had what they called the missile crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were deployed down to the south part of Florida to set up a radar that would detect any missiles fired out of Cuba towards the U.S. After a period of time, Russia backed down and moved the missiles out.

H: Did you volunteer or were you drafted?

M: No I enlisted in the Air Force ten days after I graduated from high school. I had gone in there to see about getting an education and it was something that I wanted to do, but that all changed very shortly after I got in there because of the missile crisis the cold war was getting hot. South East Asia: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam were all starting to grow, so no, I volunteered.

H: Did your family try to stop you from going?

M: No, in fact my family was very supportive of my going into the military. My father had been in the military. He had been in ground action in the South Pacific for a number of occasions during the Second World War.

H: How did you feel about going?

M: I was really looking forward to going. I did a lot of tours in isolated places, in northern places like Canada, around the Arctic Circle. It was believed at that time that if the U.S. was going to be attacked by the Russians, it would be coming across over the polar cap rather than around from the west to the east. They'd actually come over the polar route, there were a number of radar sites up in the Arctic Circle. It was called the DEW line, the Distance Early Warning line. I was at two different sites during that period also.

H: Was the training tough?

M: Yes, it was. I thought it was at the time, as I look back on it now, it really wasn't all that tough. I went through some additional training when I was employed by the U.S. Border Patrol that actually was tougher than the physical training that I got in the military. The scholastic training that I got in the military was very difficult. It was very precise, very pointed, and there were no ifs, ands or buts.  When you were involved with the following of air craft., the detection of air craft that could possibly be so hostile that could be a Russian bomber or a Russian incoming ICBM missile.

H: How long was the training?

M: Well, to begin with my boot camp that I went through was 12 weeks, my additional scholastic training was for another 6 months. On top of that the hardest part about that was being in the southeast part of the U.S. where the humidity was so doggone high that it was almost unbelievable to try to live down there in Mississippi and in Florida.

H: Can you tell me about your commanding officers?

M: Well, I transferred quite a bit because I was specialized in a field that uh, I had a number of commanding officers and for the most part I don't really remember my commanding officers because I saw them so very little. The only one that I do really recall and I worked very close with, was the one that I had when I was stationed in New Mexico, but all my commanding officers that I worked under were very exacting and they expected no less than 100% of cooperation and your best efforts at all times.

H: Did you ever have any problems with one of your commanding officers?

M: I never had a problem with any of my commanding officers. No I didn't and I don't think any one in my unit did. We had a job to do when we were told to do it. I can remember one occasion when were were involved in a training exercise when I was at the DEW line in Northern Canada, a couple of the intercept control officers messed up very bad. It was very fortunate we didn't have a mid-air collision amongst about four different airplanes. Our commanding officer at that time was probably about five hundred miles away at another base in the middle of the night. It didn't take him very long to get up there. He relieved two officers of their duties and had them thrown out for their mistakes. He was very exacting and you had to be when you had aircraft that were flying in on each other at top speeds, you can't have them coming in at the same altitude from opposite directions, it was like drunk driving on Interstate 8 when everybody is in one lane, it just doesn't work.

H: How long was the war?

M: Well I got out of the military in 1966 after 4 years. The Vietnam War went for another 10 years.

H: Can you tell me about the war?

M: During particular parts of the war in Southeast Asia I was assigned to units and we did aerial reconnaissance which would require us to go out and take electronic interceptions of codes, messages, relay those back to the proper officers where they would be deciphered. We would eavesdrop on orders that were given by the North Vietnamese to units in the South. Different air crafts had different assignments. Some would be required to go in and take aerial photo reconnaissance, the sites where intercept missiles were being used to protect different places in North Vietnam. It was a very risky job. A lot of times the only protection you had was a hand gun that you had on your hip. The aircraft actually did not have any because of the cameras and the electronic gear that was on board, it it did not have any guns to protect itself with.  I had a number of friends that were shot down. There was more than one occasion where we came back with an airplane that had quite a few holes in it, but fortunately we made it back. I can say that I had numbers of friends who did not make it back. It was a very dangerous job at that time and it still is today.

H: How old were you at that time?

M: When I went to the Air Force I was 17 years old and when I got out I was just short of 22 years old.

H: So your job was flying an airplane or...

M: No, my job was sitting in the back of the air craft interpreting what we saw on a radar screens what was coming over radio, electronics. It was like sitting in a big operations room. The only problem was it was 20,000 feet in the air.

H: Were you one of the best soldiers or normal?

M: Uh. . . There were a lot of us at that time doing our jobs and they required very exacting work. We did our work. I don't know if I could say I was one of the best. I did my job. We got a unit citation and that was every one in the unit together. It wasn't a one man job it was a whole unit working together.

H: Did you ever save some body from dying?

M: Actually not while I was in the Air Force I didn't, no. There were some that I wished I could have. A very very close friend of mine was on an aircraft like the one I was on. We could see the aircraft going down and there was nothing we could do about it.

H: Do you have any good memories from this war?

M: Oh... there is a lot of good memories. The camaraderie, the friendships that were created still go on today. Learning how to depend not only on your self but on other individuals. Life today is not an individual thing we all have to work together, yeah there's a lot of good memories. there's a lot of good memories.

H: Do you have anything that reminds you of the war?

M: Oh yeah there is a lot of things that I remember about the war. As a matter of fact a friend of mine came over today and we were discussing some of the things that come to mind from time to time. Payne Stewart was killed in an aircraft accident yesterday where the air craftflew from Florida to South Dakota. Nobody was in control of that aircraft. I had very vivid memories that back in 1963 or '64 , a very similar thing happened and a plane was just flying and flying until it went down and there was nothing you could do about it. Yes, there's alot of memories.

H: Can you tell me about your life after the war?

M: I guess I was destined to be in a very structured career. I was in the police department. After I was discharged from the air force and I spent five and a half years there and then I went to work for the U. S. Border Patrol and I was there for almost 25 years, so it was a very structured life. It was, I guess it was the way it was meant to be. In those jobs there were good times and bad times. It was really no different than in the military. You had friends that were shot and killed. At different times you were shot at yourself. At different times you had to return fire. It is a war, but the war was here on our own territory; robbers and thieves and murders, drug runners; just a whole conglomeration of things.

H: Thank you for letting me interview you, Mike.