Legacies of Vietnam

stage in movies and on TV. He's also a playwright. His play Memorial Day tells the story of a Vietnam veteran on the verge of suicide over a Memorial Day holiday. He developed the play in collaboration with the Actor's Studio, with support from actors like Harvey Kitel and Ellen Burston. Memorial Day was ten years in the making dell It started to play after he was living in New York trying to become an actor, and one of the planes

flew over him that September morning. That's when all this Vietnam stuff got triggered, uh In in a major way. And I started to take pieces of it into the actor's studio and are icons there Uh Norman Mailer Harvey Allen said, you got to keep bringing more of this in. And this was the beginning of what would become the

play Memorial Day. And Ellen was instrumental in helping me shape it in terms of having a beginning, medal, and end, and also not having to totally rely on the exact details of my story, so that I started combining situations that served the greater truth of what I was trying to say. When you wrote this, and in the time you've worked on this, I'm wondering did it bring about

interaction with other generations of soldiers? Yeah, there were some older veterans, but there was the younger ones that started coming around. There was a I guess like a halfway house around the corner from the actor's studio where men and women coming out of the service could transition into civilian life for like the next six months if they

wanted to. It was I think it was on forty three Street, and this UH guy came and he had done a couple of tours in Afghanistan and I didn't really know him, but we set a little a couple of times and he said, if you do this again, would you tell me let me know how? How can I find out? And they said, well, you know, the studio will mention it. And I think it was like

six months later. We did like two or three weekends at this little theater called the Drilling Company up on the Upper West Side, and he let me know that he was bringing one of his buddies from Afghanistan that he had been with and that they were going to come and see it like the next night. I said,

we'll say hello afterwards. So they did. They came, and because the play really addresses the whole notion of suicide and the prevention of suicide ultimately is the goal of the play, so he um, he comes with his friend and I guess it was the next day he uh contacts me and he says, you met my friend. You met last night? I said yeah. He said we were maybe two blocks away from the theater and he stopped and said, I've been planning to kill myself the last

couple of months. I don't know what to do. At that time, I was thinking of stopping doing this because it was costing me money. It was no financial reward. So that meaning when that guy said that to you, that put the wind back in your sales for the project. Yeah, I just thought there's a purpose for this. You know, if one if I can keep one guy from eating a bullet, you know, I want to go back and I want to just do a little quick timeline. So

you grew up Brown in Jersey, raised in Pennsylvania. Your dad sold bar related materials, mixers, alcohol or whatever, cordials. I love that. Yeah, he was what they called a missionary. He was also a liquor salesman. But he when he was at the height of his career, he would go around and he would present slide shows to the wholesalers in New Jersey and basically say, look, we use only purified water and we do this, and they have my sister and I have to sit through these slide shows

where they show these guys, here's that much formooth. You wanted that Martin us an eye dropper. And then you got drafted or you enlisted. Oh I got drafted. Was your dad in the military. He was a World War Two guy. He flew twenty four liberators and uh he was actually interestingly enough, he was not like you should do this. Like my mom said, are you going to go to Canada? And I said, no, I'm not gonna

go to Canada. And my father he was interesting. He just said, I don't know if this wants for us? And where where're you going to train? Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And it was tough because that was the home of the eighty second Airborne and a lot of those drill sergeants had already been to Vietnam. They were uh in some instances there were rangers and they just didn't take any ship um and uh um. I don't know. I was surprised because I went in kind of less a

fair like let's get this over with. And then when you have someone in your face like that and knows how to scare you in the best way, and so that was it was it really, it was a really powerful um preparation. And also I didn't expect to thrive in the military. I didn't know. I didn't know it's gonna be a good shot um. And I wouldn't even figure this out till a couple of years ago that the eye hand thing came from archery when I was like eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, because I've never had

to handle the weapon. I haven't had a weapon since the Army, So it's like, um, it was really weird to to to suddenly go, wow, you can. You're an expert shot with an M fourteen and X six thing. So finally you go and you get over there, and I mean, you're an actress, so I'm assuming there's gonna be an interesting description here. What does it feel like? What does it feel like? Okay, I'll get to that

in one second. I didn't I didn't see my first professional play until after I came back from Vietnam, so like like I had no and I mean I have to say, I think you're you're picking up on something, which was I guess I was recording this, you know, just and I mean I had the thing. I think Stone really captures it in a platoon when you get off the plane and you get hit with the heat and you don't know where you are and the smell and everything like that, it's just like you feel like

you've arrived at another planet. And so uh, in my case, I landed in Cameron Bay and then um, I was sent up to this area. But the place that was called True Lie that very the very first night. Um, that gave us some bad chow and it was hot. This was early March of six and they gave us warm beers and we sat down in these benches and they had this giant white plywood screen and we watched the movie called The Devil's Brigade, a World War two movie.

And then um, I was right after the movie, about twenty minutes after the movie, and I had just talked to this guy from Philadelphia. We were talking about Acapella. Anyway, after the movie, all of a sudden, the rockets came in. We were getting rocketed, and I didn't know what the hell was happening, and and they didn't tell us. They didn't tell us where the bunkers were. You could see them, but I wasn't paying attention, you know, I'd expect to

get hit that night. But the rockets poured in and um, there was all the screaming and they black out everything. They turned the lights out right away, and it's like I hit the dirt. I'm in the sand and I can't see anything. And it was in that moment that I felt this and drogyn this something next to me. Maybe just give me a kiss on the cheek, you know, and it was really I felt it was like this

beautiful form of death. And I remember thinking, no, no, I'm not going to do that with you, you know, and by Jessica Lang and all that jet exactly, Yeah, totally, And so that I pushed that away. And it was at that moment I made this vow that somehow, some way,

I was going to get home. For people, like, when you're in Fort Bragg and you're getting ready to deploy and go over to Southeast Asia, do you basically are you basically told in any terms, whether they're vague or specific terms, and they basically are they telling you you're going to the ship man, like you're not going to work in some telegraph office, you're not gonna edit movies, You're going to get a gun and you're going to

the thick of it. Did they tell you that when you're on your way and they will tell you where you're going? Well one plus, you don't know. If it's hard to describe the where is July in the topography and the geography of Vietnam, it's Um. If you go back to when it was half and half North and South Um, there was the second largest city was Danang and truly was about seventy miles seventy five miles south of Denang along the coast of the South China Sea.

When you were there, what do you do? Like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, whatever? What did you do to get through the experience of two years of this? Wow? Um? Well, I lived for the letters that would come from my girlfriend Carol and from my mom. My dad never wrote to me the whole time, and I didn't even notice it. Why do you think The rationalization, which I would find out in psychoanalysis years later, was oh, he's not a letter writer. It's like you mean you? I think this is me

getting nailed by the shrink. Did he need to disengage because he thought maybe you weren't going to come back. I don't know. I mean I I find when you came back. What did he say? Well? I I never brought it up because I just accepted it, because it was like if people said, did your dad right you, I'd say no, my mom wrote for both of them. I had totally rationalized. But I lived for the letters.

I lived for the letters. Um. The letters from Carol and the letters from my mom were like life sustaining. They were tethers. And as far as the day to day, it's truly one day at a time. Living. You're looking at the calendar all the time. You're seeing guys who are going to leave in thirty days. So you see guys that are leaving, and you just do you feel that thing in your chest. It's like, God, when's that? When's that day going to come? There were two times

I cried in Vietnam. Um. Once when I was in the hospital I had skin problems that were really bad. The other time was when I left the day I had to leave my company to come home. I was walking to go to the jeep with my duffel bag and a couple of the guys I was tight with crew following me, and I started shaking. I didn't know what was going on. I thought, what's the I've been living for this day? And um, I'm like, I'm coming apart, you know, And I uh, And of course they're laughing.

They're like, a man, you're going home. You know what's your version of why one was? I made it? I'm going home. Um. I have my opinions, but that's one of the that's one of the most profoundly human emotions you can feel is to finally be escaping the clutches of a situation that you prayed would be over, and it's finally over, and you just collapse. Why do you think you collapse when it was over? You know, I have to. I wanted to fit this in and I

hope it's not a non sequitur. But it's as opportunities arrived to appreciate life's beauty, mysteries, truths, and heartbreak, to understand life on a higher plane. That's from your memoir. That's so anyway. I don't mean to throw that idea like this, but I felt it yesterday thinking about it, which was this is going be a conversation about transformation. We'll talk about it. We have so much to cover

therapy forget about suicidal and the deepest painful thoughts. But how soon do you want to go to therapy after you get back? How soon? Oh? I got sent to a shrink at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. I had to do my last few months at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. So I was basically going back and forth from home. But it was it was a disaster because I didn't trust the guy, I mean, the key, the key things with most veterans, and especially coming out of these situations

is trust. You know, who did you trust him? Why? I just didn't trust him. I didn't think I wasn't gonna talk to him at all. And I trusted the bars. I was into the bars and drinking, and because I didn't drink that much in Vietnam, I had a lot of responsibility. So I took it pretty seriously. And uh um, I mean I'd smoked grass once in a while and stuff like that, but it was it was really about the work, and also I want to be as responsible as I possibly could. When I got home, I thought

I would sleep for the next two weeks. When I got home, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep for more than two hours a night, and every night I was out drinking, and I had a load of cash. And I got into trouble a couple of weeks after I was back because I wasn't twenty one yet and in Pennsylvania, you know, and I was getting away with it because in those days, you had a military idea where you had your picture on it, so and I was a

big kid, so they didn't even look at it. But then I you know, I got into this scrap with this owner of this bar, and uh, I got in trouble and it was it was long. Not long after that, there was a situation where, um, I was in New Jersey and it was a very violent incident that took place, um like right next to me. And it was the day after that thereabouts, I just decided I had to do something with my life because I was wrecking cards.

I was just I was feeling like it was me against the world and uh and I just didn't trust anything or anybody. And I was it with you. I was with your girlfriend and your parents who were primary to you while you were overseas. What was it like when you we engaged with them? Um, I scared them. Um My girlfriend, uh, Carol just kind of she wanted to keep like this distance, you know, and it was

um and of course that made me crazy. And we've had this incredible um relationship, really romantic and all that stuff before I went over there. And when I got back, you know, a year can change a lot of life in a ninety twenty year old and uh so, um so we had trouble, you know, finding our way back to each other to the end eventually it was off. I became a volcanic thing for the next few years. I mean, um my, my dad was really worried. My mom.

They were worried continually, like what's he doing now? You know. There would be like they'd see me open up the trunk of the car and they'd be like, you know, a bunch of coats from the army and stuff like that. They didn't know what was going on. So what what were the coats? They were, you know, like fatigue jackets or they were those kind of dress army coats. And what were you doing with them? I had I was

giving them away half the time. I didn't care, you know, it was just I was And if somebody wanted to buy one, I'd sell for five bucks or something. When does the acting playwriting? When did the arts take hold? My second year of college, where did you go? Again? You said, Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. What did

you study? I started just generally, and because I was terrified of college because I had had bad reading learning problems all through school, and so some confidence came from the Army in terms of work ethic and stuff like that. But I took a reading course to learn how to really read. I had site things that I was doing that we've never been corrected from the time I was a kid. I got this guy. He saved me. He

just he set me up for college. It was the first year I got my confidence because I got this reading problem taking care of. And then in my second year, I was thinking pretty mad because I had this confidence I didn't have before. But I took this acting class because I couldn't get the math teacher I wanted. He said, get me next semester. So I, Uh. I took this acting class, and two weeks into it, the guy said, can you stay for a minute. So yeah, he said,

you should drop out? Why I love me drop bad? He said, you're not You're not getting up, you're not working. You can't just watch. So he gives me a monologue from your good man Charlie Brown, and it's when Snoogy goes up to fight the Red Barren. He should come back with this next week. Don't come back. And so I did. And I came back, and I was scared the ship out of me. But I had a great time, and I felt like, you know, I wanted to work

further into this fire. Then I got into this play and then I started taking classes and when I transferred the writer they had a really great little field apartment there and they were right down the street from the Carter, which is where I would do this internship. The following year, my senior year. Um, it was in this melodrama called Deadwood Dick and who wrote that idea? Because from like

the nineteen twenties or something. I played the sheriff and it was bigger than life and I popped my arms. Where did you do that? Where? At Fox County Community College? I was terrified, but there was something there for me. I knew there was something there for me. I had no idea what was there for you? What? There was a sense of purpose and there was a sense of kind of just an approval. It's like you could get

this putty in yeah exactly. Yeah. And also the thing too that that you get from the military and I'm just thinking of this now, but from the military and theater film people is you have a community. You know, it's a very specific community and it has its own language. You're part you're you're part of a society. You get into a society where there are rules and beliefs. I don't want to say it's a religion, but it's rules and beliefs and language and codes and references that are

just unique. But you're in a world where you know the passion runs pretty deep. You walk out a writer with a degree in theater. Yes, And where do you go? New York? I moved to New York and I don't know anybody. Where do you live? Well, my first apartment was on the Upper west Side. It was between Giverside and West End, and when it was a dodge city days, I called it the wild Wild West. Oh yeah, wild

West May. So you're there on the Upper west Side, And do you tell yourself, I'm going after this professional thing? Where you were because you sound unsure about a lot of things in your alive Yeah, did you have the confidence to turn pro? Now? I worked in restaurants. I worked in restaurants for for almost four years, and I started having nightmares about the war and it was like freaky. It was like it was like if you touched the stove and it was hot, and six months later you

feel your hand burn. It was like that kind of like I didn't know what to do with it. A pure PTSD exactly, but it was, but they didn't have the name for it yet. So I did go to the v A and when I got to the front entrance when it was located on twenty three Street, I threw up and I thought, I'm not supposed to be here. That's what that means. Ended up working with this guy, Larry Stern. He was a psychoanalyst and he really angel

the box among us. He was the one who really get out of the hole that I was thinking and at the time, as it was drinking too much and it was just a it was at sober every here. Uh see, I stopped on my own and eighty five got into a recovery program, and the recovery program and so, um, you're in the city, and uh, when you're riverside the wild wild West, And when does the actor's studio become an avenue for you? Oh? Not until Um I was really putting my nose in the grindstone when I met you.

Did a little bit that little little student thing. When I got my first job on a soap opera in New York, they would put you in the show very sparingly. They wanted to kind of build you into the show so you didn't have much to do, so I worked maybe a day. I mean if I worked two days a week, it was it was epic and they paid you per show. And I went and did a play Summer Tree, a young guy whose family were pretty well

to do. They would produce him in these plays, and I played, you know, the event, like the kid would go into war and I would play the soldier I would play. I played all the other ancillary characters in these little bursts. So I do the play, and then I would go to the student Film Bulletin Board at n y U and they have casting cards put up on the index cards wanted and I would read them. And I ended up in a bar in Brooklyn with you because while I was doing the soap right and

we shot that agend and the bar was closed. And that's crazy fucking movie about who You were an alien? Or I was an alien? Who was the alien? Oh? No, I mean I I just played it. I just played a pretty weird guy with a spider on my cheek or something. I think you were the alien. I think the bar Matter of Space and were Bartender was some crazy show. But anyway, so um, you get your equity card win anyone. I worked in both productions in Central Park.

How did that happen? Oh? Because uh, I knew no one. So I went to the public theater back in like December of eighty or thereabouts, and I dropped off a picture and resumeas ad the open door policy. And I met a woman named Ellen Marshall who worked for Rosemary Tishler Stanley soboll Le Novak, and I gave her my picture resume. She said, we're not doing generals for at least none of the six months. I said, okay, well, thank you, and I went back. Of course, six weeks

later you were here before, right, I said, yeah. She's well, I'm gonna tell you again, and it's not Gonner six months. That's okay. Of course I came back again. I came back to March and then she said, and I've been polishing up these couple of these good monologues. One was a one from Henry five, one was contemporary piece, and she um, she says, okay, come back in two weeks, call me in two weeks and come in with the questional monologue and contemporary. I said, okay, fine, I show up.

She said, okay, here we are into April. She said, now I want you to come in and you're gonna audition for the three casting directors. So I commended an audition for the three casting directors. Then Standley has me come in in audition for des Maconoff for a small part and a bunch of fighting stuff in Henry four. So I go in for that, and then and the call back for that, Elenova came in and watched it, and I had no idea that um I got into

Henry for. And then they called me the next day and they said, can you also understudy in the Tempest for like Steven Keats and a couple of other actors, And I said yeah, like holy shit. So that was like the doorway was opening to like start to work in the business with great people. And then and then the studio becomes an option when not for another few years and how does that happen? Well, I did place at the at the public I did I did uh Hamlet with Diane Vnora that Joe direct I saw you

in that. Oh that's right, I got you one of the posters. I think, Yeah, I love that. Jamie who played Forton Brass at the end, Jamie Sheridan, Oh, Proud Death. He came in. I loved him. I loved him. I love that production. I love Diane Vanora in that part. Pat was going to be the first man to cast a woman in a major production, and I thought she was fantastic. I love it was exciting, excited. There was just something about the humanity of it. It was so beautiful.

But I was in a play with a combination of Vetko and the public that Joe and the Scott tom Burke put together, so play Tracers came into be Tracers. Was we did that. We did that for I think eight or nine months there and then we did it in London for the Real Court for a couple of months. Harvey uh Kitel and de Niro came one night. That's

what would lead me to the studio. There was a guy who had asked me to do a scene with him there and they said, oh, we can't have non members coming in, and Harvey said, I know this guy. Then I worked and at that time, back in those days, they wouldn't six. I think the moderators would not they wouldn't give you any comments. But then Ellen had taken over for Lee to run the place and she gave me this kind of I don't know what to call it, like a guest status. So I got to do that.

And then there happened to be a play we're doing. We ended up doing Very Child, and she said that's going to be your final audition, because I auditioned a couple of times for judges and they said very different things, and and she said, let's see what you're doing the Very Child. And then I got in with Michael O'Keeffe a couple other people, and that was and he seven tell people in the time we have left, because there's so many other things, I want to ask you, describe

what is Memorial Day about? What's what's the story. It's a guy who's on the verge of suicide. He's basically going to take himself out. How old viet Non better in age, I'm seventy one. He's basically got the gun under his chin. And here comes this character I called Sister Blister that when he met that first night in Vietnam. And here she comes and she's ready to help him.

She wants him to come over, and he hesitates because he's gotten a voicemail from his daughter who's concerned, and it breaks his resolve and he freezes and he goes into this nether world with her because she wants him to be clear about his decision, and they go through the scotlet of memories. The play is about remembering. That's

one of the most important things veterans can do. Remember their stories, share their stories, and have the people around them, whether they're veterans or non veterans, to be able to listen. And was the last time you did it out here at the Road Theater? It was perfect and they had projections. I'd always wanted to do it with projections because when we took it to Vietnam, when I did it over there, I did it with their one of their actresses. She

did it in Vietnamese, her part in Vietnamese. I did mine in English. We had what was that like? I thought, Oh my god, Oh my god. Did you and she have a tear in your eye together? A couple of times. I'm telling you, yes, she I feel it. We had two nights and I and they were talkbacks. And when I was there as a soldier, she was seven years old, and and she had the year before she had done Dollhouse,

Ibsence Dollhouse. Before that, they did all my sons. When they found out I was from the Active Studio, they got all excited as well. When they did the stage Preasent Tayon was a four hundred seat house. They had screens, big screens on both sides with Vietnamese translations for what I was saying in English translations for what she was saying for sub titles. What year was that, I said, We did the play over there in two thousand fourteen.

What was your first time you'd returned to Vietnam was when two thousand twelve you went back to Vietnam for the first time in two thousand and twelve. Yeah, for what purpose? I went as a veteran because this guy Dr. Edward Tick and his organization came and saw the play in workshop when Ellen was helping me, Um and uh we did. He saw it, he said you should take this to Vietnam, and I just thought that was stupid. I just said, no, that's I'm not doing that. He said.

He said, you'd be surprised. The Vietnamese are more curious about the American point of view now than than ever before. So I went over as a veteran and I met the culture ministers. Then In the second trip we set up the whole thing, and then the third trip we went we went there and h and I just can I share one thing? I gotta please, please please. The second trip I got away from I was in Hannoy and I took a plane down to Chula, the place I was telling about before where I was first in country.

And I was standing on the ground there and um, it was right by the ocean, and I had three Vietnamese with me, a videographer, driver, and a translator. I said, guys, I just need a minute and I just want I just wanted to be quiet and still, and I got on my knees and there was um this feeling slash voice which was of the guys who did not get back, and they were saying, we're okay, and so are you.

And it was from that moment on that's something broken, a deeper level where I started to see their humanity, their divinity because before that a lot there was a lot of white knuckling and I don't trust these people. I don't I don't see anything divined in these people. Yes there's a lot of beauty here, Yes this this and that and the other thing. But that was that was.

That was a cathartic um moment. That was beautiful. Also, I just wanted to mention too, with the whole saga with that, with that play Memorial Day and having done it in Vietnam in front of the former enemy, and then having filmed it and my good friend Robert Duncan is putting together. But I think we have are close to our final rough cut and so um yeah, we want to start to take it out to you know,

whoever will look at it. So this involves soldiers who we turn who you might interact with, if at all I'm not assuming you do. But if you interact with men, people who see the play, people who have had whatever level of PTSD experience themselves, what do you tell them? What's your advice to them? And what's your advice to and what's your advice to young actors? Okay, so give me give me the soldier first. Well, the soldier first

is uh. I feel that the most important components for PTSD recoveries combination, spirituality and community and the bottom line too is PTSD. If I think I can handle it by myself, it will crush you. Bottom line. Don't be ashamed to ask for help, ask for help. That's Brian Dellett. He lives in l A today. If you want to hear more about the war in Vietnam, take a listen to my conversation with Ken Burns and Lynn Novik on

the making of their ten part documentary about Vietnam. When Americans talk about Vietnam, we just talked about ourselves, and that what what we needed to do was to triangulate

with all the other perspectives, not just the enemy. It's finding out what the civilians felt, the enemy felt, the viet Cong felt, but then our allies, the South Vietnamese who get treated like you know what all the time, and their civilians and their protesters, as well as all the servicemen that we did and everybody all the way out to deserters and draft dodgers across the American spectrum.

And if you then do that, then the kind of political dialectic loses its force because you realize that more than one truth could obtain at any given moment. The rest of that conversation can be found in our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing as a young man, Dick Hughes thought he was going to enter the priesthood, but then he transferred to Carnegie Mellon for theater and wound up at Boston University for graduate work

in the same subject. This was the late sixties, the Draft was underway. Hughes was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, but he ended up getting a journalist visa and going to Saigon on his own. He found a wire service in Vietnam, but his focus became the street kids, those making do on the street, hustling, shining shoes and stealing. Hughes opened a shelter for these children called the Shoeshine

Boys Project. This led to a foundation with support from people all over the world, including hughes as family and friends from his hometown in Pittsburgh. He's from a big family, one of seven Catholic family Pittsburgh and lived in Pittsburgh right below the Hill Section, after which Debochco named Hill Street Blues. Yeah, Irish Catholic family and uh yeah, I at one point was looking at the priesthood. Do you

know why? What was it was the sense of the drama of the Catholic church and and and the power in a sense that the priest has, you know, all of that is kind of attractive. I thought about becoming a priest. Yeah, the oldest son of an oldest in an Irish Catholic family, it's supposed to become a priest. I was told they sold me that idea, but I went off into actual drama, another kind of drama. You don't go to Vietnam for US until sixty eight. I

don't go to Vietnam until nineteen sixty seven. So yeah, as I was in bought at the graduate school in Boston and then the theater Company Boston, Uh, Vietnam became so enormous the moral question uh that it was it was hard to concentrate on my acting because of that. So yeah, that's when it really started kind of eating

away at me. And I think in some sense I was in a bit of a quiet rage about it, in the sense not understanding why we were doing that, uh, and seeing things like, uh, the generals shooting that we had cong in the head and stuff like that. That really uh So at that point I got drafted. So then I had to decide in in six s seven, you had to decide. But I now decided Okay, I think what I'm gonna do is refuse induction and go to and you're going to be decided. I was going

to go to where the center where this was happening. Um, I'm going I'm gonna face this head on and I'm not gonna do it your way. I did it my way. And so I decided to go to Vietnam. I didn't know anybody, I had no connections, and I had no money, and I didn't tell anybody. Um, and you went there to do what I was going to go there just to try to do something to help people who were affected by the war. Had no idea what it would be.

I was able because the university newspaper covered my draft refusal to get an accreditation from Boston University News and go as a quote journalist unquote. I actually did end up doing some journalism. I ended up traveling with the Marines and the army ended up starting dispatching new stories.

Who we started our own news agency called Dispatch News, which Sihirst broke the Melie story through UH and with Asians French press a fp OAR service UH and UH and I also UH, you know, I I wanted to kind of get into combat and find out if my philosophical objections were more than just speculations sitting in Boston, and so I kind of thought, I'll go in to where the battle is and see. And I wasn't there a week when we walked into an ambush and uh and I had a corporal beside me, a radio operator

bleeding from the head and uh. Sergeant goes back under all this fire and hands me a cocked forty five and says, they're coming up on the rear as soon as you see them start firing. And and I'm what's wrong with this picture? This is a conscienous objector and a foxhole at County End, uh, with people coming up in the rear who may kill you. Uh. And I A million things go through your head at that time. How many other people that you encountered over there were

like you? Nobody? There no free agents that I encountered. Uh. There were some conscients objectors who stayed in the army and were UH medics. There were some country objectors with the Quaker organizations than men and sing. But I haven't yet run into anybody who just packed up and flew off to Vietnam. And got into the airport, and when the whole place cleared out, said all right, now where do I go? Um. I also early on also met some of these street children whom shine shoes and made

the living in the streets. And when I got an apartment, I would mention from time to time, you know, a few folks want to come down, You're welcome to each show or do everyone? It took a while they were like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they finally did come down. So I was on two tracks. Uh. It was covering the war out with the military, and it was starting this home for these street kids. After a year, I decided to turn this over to some Vietnamese students and friends.

So I spent the next seven years raising support. Those students, brought in other students, opened up eight homes. They helped children during the war. You stayed in Vietnam? Yeah, after the fall. I stayed about eighteen months after the fall. I was I may just be still doing the same thing. I was winding down the project. You know, I think I'm, if not the I'm one of the last Americans to leave.

I felt that that there was no reason to evacuate, and it was really tragic that so many uh NGEO voluntary agencies and charities were evacuating with the remaining military and the embassy people. Because I thought, you can't just drop a project. Uh And in August of seventy six, I came back to New York to close the foundation down and go back to acting. Finally, that's that was the plan. I was sitting there saying, I mean, I have this image of you having tea in some cafe

and sagon and you're reading variety. Uh No. I always had in the back of my mind, I gotta get this done. I gotta get this done. I want to be an actor. I love acting. I didn't do any of it over there. I didn't do acting over the acting school over there. No, because you know, I was going, I'm like a doctor in the emergency room. We were going seven. We were in mortuaries and hospitals, and you know,

there was no there was never a day off. There's never a vacation, and there was never uh cercease in the tension that was there. It was it was racing, racing against time through the whole thing, and those are connections that are forever. And so I kept in contact with sending a little money to help people from where I could that human rights thing, uh, you know that

to get those two guys out. And then in two thousand and five, coming across Philip Jones Griffith's Agent Orange book and saying, you know, the last thing I need is another Vietnam humanitarian thing. But the pictures are so graphic. So when you when you described to me when you first came across this book, this is uh one of the best photo of journalists, uh, in the came of this that you gave me, Yes, Philip Jones Griffiths. It's

called Agan Orange Collateral Damage in Vietnam. Philip covered the war and a lot of his photos are used over and over, iconic photos, uh that you see from time to time. But then he went back after the war many times and he went to villages where Agent Orange had been sprayed and where people had been horribly deformed and affected illnesses by it. And he came out with a book that has just dedicated to Agent Orange, the

Collateral Damage, and to meet him. I knew Philip very well from from he came to the shoeshine boy house, so I knew him over there. He was a good friend. Yeah, what's the work now. Well, the effort is to get I want to jump start serious aid to some three million victims in Vietnam through the US Congress. Uh, we've had some success with that, but Agian Orange is like below the radar. No president from ford On ever put

Agent Orange in the budget. None Democratic Republican. You have soldiers on each side of the war in Vietnam who had healthy children before they went go to the battle fight where it's sprayed. They come back, they have one too horrific bursts and they go, yeah, that's kind of anecdotal, you know. I think what they have to do is get damage done to their own d DNA materials. Uh. They are in denial about it, but it's not because it's political. It's just a kind of lethargy of the bureaucracy.

And I also I think people who are just new to it feel it's just one more thing. They can't make any difference about what can I do? Defects as a result of dox and still being born of absolutely to this day, dioxin is so lethal. Little parts of it are can wreak havoc and dioction doesn't go away, it stays and it's in the soil, etcetera. And people think that a in Orange is past history, and you say, no,

it's right now and it's a million victims. Now when you came back here, you came back where to New York? To New York? How would New York changed? New York was dense full of people. Uh, they didn't talk to each other on elevators like they did in Vietnam. Nobody held hands or touched each other. That was a little bit of a cultural adjustment. Uh. But um, yeah, I was so I was on two tracks. They're closing down the foundation and going back into acting. When you come back,

how would you changed from being over there? Um? You know what? I think one of the biggest changes I experienced, especially it came out of combat. Um, Before I went and I saw things like I mentioned the general Sagan General shooting the Vietcong soldier in the head, that famous photo. I jumped right out of my seat at that time, and I thought, how could we be doing this? How could we be involved that this? But what I learned

in combat was, uh, my darker side. I learned that I too, under certain circumstances, could be capable of the same thing. So I think what I got an education is a more rounded sense of what human beings are and how I could employ that in drama. That's why I love drama so much, because I think it can articulate almost what can't be quote articulated unquote people considered a drama and go yes, yes, without saying exactly what it is. And to me, that helps avoid wars, that

helps humans grow. So I I actually saw theater in just as sacred or as just as profound a sense as I did the acting work, as I'm sorry, the social work that I was doing in Vietnam. I felt it was as important you saw your darker side. Do you want to articulate that more? Meaning you're not talking about like me? Lie, you didn't think I'm capable of anything? Oh, I think human beings are. No. I am capable depending on the circumstances, depending on being pushed to it. I

think that's what dramas about. You know, you know this, Uh, when you're playing a character who's up to something reprehensible, you play them on their terms. You know, you have to justify why they do that. And I think people who who are are toying with the darker side, are justifying it in some respects uh. And to me, that's as much a part of the human soul as uh

the some of the brighter side of it. When you get a sense of that, you have that capability to do that, you're less about judging other people and you're more about I just got to use all my time two in this case for me, uh, presenting theater in a sense that will help educate people and answer questions that are out of the context of black and white or or debates back and forth the Because you've dedicated so much of your life to theater, to acting, uh,

in and around your relief work and your advocacy work, have you ever thought about writing a play? I have a real experiences I have about the shoeshine boys and about young Dick Hughes arriving there, And um, I don't

know who would play young Dick Hughes. I could get a little makeup down, and we want to sell some tickets, so look at the right guy to play the young And I think do a kind of documentary, uh, because we have a lot of film footage and stuff like that that would show how to work in another country and do it effectively. That's one thing. The Uh when

you come back? Um, and uh is it safe to say that acting is the is your primary focus when you come back and what you want to get back to that and you want to give that everything you've got? And is it a case where you have this lingering empathy for what happened back there and you're haunted by

what you saw? Have stopped me if I'm getting too dramatic, But but but when it's like the Godfather Part three line, Uh, they keep pulling me back in, you know what I mean, the Pacino line meaning to go there and you want to Are you done with that? No? I think here's the funny thing about that. It makes a huge It's it's forever there and those are connections that are forever. And so I kept in contact with sending a little

money to help people from where I could. So it was I always had a sense of being pulled again, you know, to tide, dragging me kind of back in, but acting still being the first priority. But interestingly enough, I made three post war trips two thousand one, two thousand eight, and two thousand sixteen. And when I went and I when I left Vietnam. There was nothing emotional much about it when I got on the plane and left, which I thought was kind of odd making that break.

But the first trip back UH, some of the grown street kids and their families and other friends who worked with me UH set up visits, all reunions and kind of stuff, and we went to the airport. They had all taken a day off they couldn't afford. And as I went up into the section transition section, transit section,

they were all waving goodbye. And I got on the plane and I sobbed all the way to Hannoy, and I thought why, And then I realized what had happened was I had gone over there, giving up everything, my job, I had no money with girlfriend, my family, hadn't even told my family. I was going with this idea, I am going to do something about this goddamn war. And I came back and it wasn't until I returned again in two thousand one that I saw that their lives

they'd made it. So the odd thing about it was that that promised to myself and sixty eight was not resolved until that two thousand and one of seeing them healed and survived and healed, and that my effort in that respect was over. Dick Hughes, actor, writer, founder of the Shoeshine Boys project. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing four