WEBVTT 00:00.420 --> 00:03.593 - Thomas J Cutler, retired Lieutenant Commander, US Navy. 00:07.760 --> 00:10.410 Normal spelling of Thomas, T-H-O-M-A-S, 00:10.410 --> 00:14.000 and Cutler is C-U-T-L-E-R. 00:14.000 --> 00:17.110 I'm the Gordon England Chair 00:17.110 --> 00:18.730 of Professional Naval Literature 00:18.730 --> 00:20.973 at the US Naval Institute; it's a mouthful. 00:20.973 --> 00:23.620 As long as you say US Naval Institute somewhere, 00:23.620 --> 00:25.510 that's the most important part, so, yep. 00:25.510 --> 00:26.600 What we're tryin' to achieve here 00:26.600 --> 00:29.470 is to educate young people about the Vietnam War 00:29.470 --> 00:31.140 because I think it's important 00:31.140 --> 00:33.430 to embrace our history in general, 00:33.430 --> 00:36.853 but especially something as important as the Vietnam War, 00:37.740 --> 00:38.860 and one of the things I try to do 00:38.860 --> 00:41.050 is rather than just stand up and try to talk about it 00:41.050 --> 00:43.400 in general, I wanted to try to bring the audience 00:43.400 --> 00:46.022 into the environment and address them 00:46.022 --> 00:48.180 as though they just arrived in Vietnam 00:48.180 --> 00:49.350 and give 'em a briefing as to 00:49.350 --> 00:52.000 what to expect while they're gonna be there. 00:52.000 --> 00:55.510 That seems to have had some success doing it that way. 00:55.510 --> 00:58.040 No, I did not; there was no such briefing. 00:58.040 --> 00:59.860 I think there shoulda been. 00:59.860 --> 01:03.640 I found myself sitting alone in a barracks the first night 01:03.640 --> 01:07.300 and wondering what was going to happen next and so forth. 01:07.300 --> 01:09.930 So no, I did not receive that; 01:09.930 --> 01:12.070 eventually, you learn the ropes and so forth, 01:12.070 --> 01:13.670 but there was no formal briefing 01:13.670 --> 01:16.840 like that available at the time. 01:16.840 --> 01:18.970 I was there for one year; the tours in Vietnam 01:18.970 --> 01:21.620 at that time, throughout most of the war, 01:21.620 --> 01:23.810 for the Navy, at least, were one year tours. 01:23.810 --> 01:26.290 You spent exactly 365 days and then you went 01:26.290 --> 01:28.630 back to the world, as we called it. 01:28.630 --> 01:31.140 I felt that Vietnam was where the war was. 01:31.140 --> 01:33.400 I mean, granted, you had a Cold War going on, 01:33.400 --> 01:36.300 which much bigger stakes and so forth, 01:36.300 --> 01:38.720 but Vietnam was where we were actually 01:38.720 --> 01:41.220 clashing with the enemy, and I was young 01:41.220 --> 01:44.230 and I wanted to have a certain amount of adventure 01:44.230 --> 01:46.860 and just felt like it was the place to be 01:46.860 --> 01:49.110 if you're gonna be serving in the front line. 01:50.540 --> 01:53.570 To answer your second question about the service, 01:53.570 --> 01:55.530 I'm hard-pressed to tell the difference. 01:55.530 --> 01:57.600 I mean there was some really good volunteers 01:57.600 --> 01:59.310 and some not so good volunteers, 01:59.310 --> 02:01.020 and the same is true with those who just 02:01.020 --> 02:04.720 had been ordered there without any choice in the matter. 02:04.720 --> 02:07.400 People are all different and they respond in different ways. 02:07.400 --> 02:11.190 Most people I worked with were terrific in Vietnam. 02:11.190 --> 02:14.980 It's an amazing turnaround; post-Vietnam, people mostly 02:14.980 --> 02:17.070 did not wanna talk about Vietnam in particular, 02:17.070 --> 02:20.130 but even the military was not held in very high regard, 02:20.130 --> 02:22.080 which was really unfortunate. 02:22.080 --> 02:23.650 People just didn't understand, I think, 02:23.650 --> 02:28.460 and somehow that transformed; it took awhile, 02:28.460 --> 02:32.150 but now I'd say it's almost to the other extreme. 02:32.150 --> 02:34.350 People, everywhere I go, I'm getting this, 02:34.350 --> 02:36.152 thank you for your service and so forth, 02:36.152 --> 02:39.070 and it's a much better way to go, 02:39.070 --> 02:40.400 I mean, not for me personally so much, 02:40.400 --> 02:44.270 but just, I think the armed services are extremely important 02:44.270 --> 02:47.830 and the American people need to recognize that. 02:47.830 --> 02:49.820 Well, when you spend a year of your life 02:49.820 --> 02:51.840 doing something unusual, you begin to wonder 02:51.840 --> 02:54.660 if maybe somebody else would like to know what you did. 02:54.660 --> 02:57.550 That's not always the case; don't get me wrong, 02:57.550 --> 02:59.330 but the truth is, one thing I'd like to make clear, 02:59.330 --> 03:01.460 is the book is not about me and my experiences. 03:01.460 --> 03:05.170 My experiences lent to the book and so forth, 03:05.170 --> 03:06.730 but what I wanted to do was tell the story 03:06.730 --> 03:10.310 of the Navy in the Coastal Riverine Forces in Vietnam, 03:10.310 --> 03:11.640 and that was way bigger than me, 03:11.640 --> 03:14.140 so that's really the focus of the book. 03:14.140 --> 03:17.330 Yes, I've been invited to go out on some craft 03:17.330 --> 03:20.440 and so forth, and I find them extremely impressive, 03:20.440 --> 03:23.430 much more technologically advanced 03:23.430 --> 03:24.400 than what we were dealing with; 03:24.400 --> 03:26.450 the things we were dealing with, they were makeshift, 03:26.450 --> 03:29.660 they were pretty primitive in a lotta ways, 03:29.660 --> 03:31.790 and now these craft today are being built 03:31.790 --> 03:34.150 in a keel up to do the job they're meant to do, 03:34.150 --> 03:35.840 and they are very impressive, and the crews 03:35.840 --> 03:37.840 that are manning them are very motivated 03:37.840 --> 03:40.510 and a great group that you can, 03:40.510 --> 03:44.133 a lot of camaraderie and goodwill going on there. 03:45.360 --> 03:46.420 It's an interesting experience, 03:46.420 --> 03:49.830 being in Vietnam, you, on the one hand, as I said, 03:49.830 --> 03:52.280 I was a volunteer, but, from day one, I couldn't wait 03:52.280 --> 03:54.903 to get back to my family, as you can well imagine. 03:57.230 --> 03:58.853 It's hard to explain. 04:00.560 --> 04:03.000 I mostly was focused on those kinds of things at the time. 04:03.000 --> 04:06.950 Again, I was a young sailor and, it's in the years since 04:06.950 --> 04:08.370 that I've been more introspective 04:08.370 --> 04:09.700 and looked back on the experience 04:09.700 --> 04:11.550 and began to appreciate some of the things 04:11.550 --> 04:13.410 that were going on and why they were happening 04:13.410 --> 04:14.920 and so forth, and that's one of the things 04:14.920 --> 04:16.450 that motivated me to write the book was 04:16.450 --> 04:21.450 to get that point across and try to clarify to some degree. 04:22.313 --> 04:23.730 - [Voice Offscreen] What is the title of the book? 04:23.730 --> 04:26.240 - Brown Water, Black Berets, and then the subtitle is 04:26.240 --> 04:28.623 Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam. 04:29.640 --> 04:32.448 Well I hope, above all, I hope we preserve 04:32.448 --> 04:36.990 that change of attitude towards American servicemen 04:36.990 --> 04:39.480 in general, not just the Navy or Coastal Riverine 04:39.480 --> 04:41.970 and that sort of thing, and Vietnam veterans, 04:41.970 --> 04:45.303 for that matter, but, I think it's, again, 04:45.303 --> 04:48.160 one of the things that worries me is without the draft, 04:48.160 --> 04:50.420 the draft had its own problems, but without the draft, 04:50.420 --> 04:54.620 we've lost a connection there between the average citizen 04:54.620 --> 04:58.556 and the services, but the good new is that that connection 04:58.556 --> 05:02.240 is apparently being preserved in the right format, 05:02.240 --> 05:04.410 if you will, and I think that's important, 05:04.410 --> 05:07.020 so I hope we can continue to do that. 05:07.020 --> 05:09.070 Sure, you can never have too much information. 05:09.070 --> 05:11.080 One of the things you have to understand is 05:11.080 --> 05:14.640 that everybody's experience in Vietnam was unique 05:14.640 --> 05:18.170 to that individual, and, in fact, 05:18.170 --> 05:19.820 many of the people that've come back from Vietnam, 05:19.820 --> 05:22.210 you talk to 10 people, you get the feeling 05:22.210 --> 05:23.470 that they were in five different wars 05:23.470 --> 05:25.870 because there's so many varied experiences, 05:25.870 --> 05:27.560 but individual experiences vary; 05:27.560 --> 05:31.799 people learn things and bring home takeaways 05:31.799 --> 05:34.950 that might get lost if they aren't shared, 05:34.950 --> 05:38.077 so, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. 05:40.930 --> 05:42.830 - [Voice Offscreen] Without the Navy, could 05:42.830 --> 05:46.163 the United States have successfully operated in Vietnam? 05:49.570 --> 05:51.910 - That's a tough question; I think they could have, 05:51.910 --> 05:53.670 but some of the missions that we performed 05:53.670 --> 05:58.317 would have gone wanting, and, as I mentioned in the brief 05:58.317 --> 06:01.110 that I gave, the Mekong Delta was 06:01.110 --> 06:03.720 an extremely important part of Vietnam 06:03.720 --> 06:05.880 and the rice that comes out of there was 06:05.880 --> 06:09.180 not getting to market; that was extremely important 06:09.180 --> 06:11.600 to make sure that that was opened up, 06:11.600 --> 06:14.350 stopping some of the infiltration coming in certainly helped 06:14.350 --> 06:18.120 the war effort, but there was plenty of other infiltration 06:18.120 --> 06:20.790 coming in by land, too, so you could make that argument. 06:20.790 --> 06:23.870 So, it depends, but I think the Navy 06:23.870 --> 06:26.420 certainly carried its weight 06:26.420 --> 06:29.870 in its own relatively small realm in that respect. 06:29.870 --> 06:31.870 You know, the Navy did a lot more outside Vietnam, 06:31.870 --> 06:34.070 of course, with the aircraft carriers and the strikes 06:34.070 --> 06:36.120 on North Vietnam and a lot of other things, 06:36.120 --> 06:39.520 but the in-country element was rather small. 06:39.520 --> 06:41.050 Well, nobody's been forced to watch it, 06:41.050 --> 06:44.970 so they generally are very receptive, I guess; 06:44.970 --> 06:48.310 I did one time give it to a high school group 06:49.160 --> 06:53.430 up in Baltimore one time, and didn't quite understand 06:53.430 --> 06:54.860 my audience well enough at first, 06:54.860 --> 06:56.850 and actually scared them for awhile 06:56.850 --> 06:58.420 until we got things under control, 06:58.420 --> 07:02.360 but no, it's been really a good experience, and, as I said, 07:02.360 --> 07:05.040 I've given it to everything from church groups 07:05.040 --> 07:10.040 to veterans' groups to more formal things like today, so. 07:11.010 --> 07:14.220 Well, it started when I was teaching at the Naval Academy, 07:14.220 --> 07:16.163 and it started just as a lesson. 07:17.040 --> 07:19.040 I was trying to get across to the midshipmen 07:19.040 --> 07:23.760 what it was about, and so I began to bring in my own slides, 07:23.760 --> 07:25.570 and then I decided to put them to music, 07:25.570 --> 07:27.060 and one thing led to another, 07:27.060 --> 07:30.600 and the groups got larger until back in the 80s we had, 07:30.600 --> 07:34.670 we were doing six to eight hundred at a time to see it 07:34.670 --> 07:37.260 and so forth, so there's obviously people, 07:37.260 --> 07:39.062 'cause a lot of those people are receptive to it, 07:39.062 --> 07:42.500 and if I don't get too old, I'll keep tryin' to do it, 07:42.500 --> 07:44.913 so that's the motivation. 07:45.820 --> 07:48.430 No, I'm just honored to do this, 07:48.430 --> 07:52.810 besides like enjoying being the center of attention, 07:52.810 --> 07:54.540 as anybody would be, 07:54.540 --> 07:58.560 I think I'm honored to be able to do this, 07:58.560 --> 08:00.253 so thank you for the opportunity.