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Interview: Gordon Rottman, US Army (Ret.)
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John: Why did you stay in the military after the war was over?
Gordon: I didn’t, at first. I was rather disgruntled when I rotated home. I had stayed a month longer than I had to help close the second camp I was at. I then wanted to extend another six months for Project Delta, a special reconnaissance operation, but they were pulling troops out of Vietnam and didn’t want soldiers to extend. I didn’t think the US was fighting the war right. I may have been just a sergeant, but SF teams received the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) intelligence summaries and I thought the conventional Army was doing a lot of things wrong. They were trying to fight a conventional war and call it a counterinsurgency. They had already lost the counterinsurgency and most of the fighting from 1966 was a conventional war fighting the North Vietnamese backed by VC guerrillas, not a pure guerrilla war, not a pure conventional war, but they couldn’t integrate the two.
US Army Infantryman in Vietnam 1965-73
by Gordon Rottman,
Kevin Lyles (Illustrator)
1841768871
SimHQ link to book page at Amazon.com.
John: Describe your post-war military service.
Gordon: I left the Army in 1970 and joined the Texas Army National Guard in 1974. Texas had the 36th Airborne Brigade. They asked me if I could handle a weapons squad not realizing that I had run a company. In 1975 I went full-time Guard and became the operations and training NCO for the 2d Battalion (Airborne), 143d Infantry in Houston. That was great, I had the ear of the battalion commander and I was able to implement a lot of realistic individual and unit training skills and techniques. We turned it into a pretty good battalion. In 1980 they inactivated the airborne brigade.
US Army Rangers & LRRP Units 1942-87 (Elite) (Paperback)
by Gordon Rottman,
Ronald Volstad (Illustrator)
0850457955
SimHQ link to book page at Amazon.com.
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