WATERLOO | For many veterans, their experiences during the Vietnam War were life changing -- even if they didn’t make it to the front lines.
For Donald Griggs, who graduated from East High School in 1961, serving in the Marines taught him discipline and gave him a unique perspective of the historic events of the time, as he related in a 2009 video interview for the Grout Museum District.
Griggs enlisted right out of high school.
"At the time, I wasn’t sure of my future," he said. "College was a question mark to me. … There was probably seven, eight of us friends that talked and decided that we wanted to perhaps get the military experience before venturing out into life."
Griggs and his fellow enlistees took a train from Des Moines to San Diego for 16 weeks of boot camp. Once there, they boarded buses.
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"That's when you realized that the party was over," he said.
"Boot camp was an experience. I would say to people it made a man of me in a matter of days, but it was an experience that I don’t regret."
Griggs said he learned discipline, how to be a team player and respect.
While stationed at Camp Pendleton, things starting heating up in Cuba -- preceding the 1962 missile crisis. Part of his outfit went to Puerto Rico to prepare to go to Cuba. The remainder of the unit got combat ready.
"The ships were ready for us to go," he said. "We were on standby for a week to 10 days."
Griggs said he was prepared to go to Cuba to fight.
"Yes," he said. "It was part of our training. As a Marine you learn that very quickly … that you are there for a reason. Whatever the orders they give, that’s what we’re there for, to follow those orders."
Griggswas a radio operator. "It was my job carry a PRC-47 (radio) on my back and follow the company commander around and give orders to the rest of the fire teams or call in fire strikes or whatever he needed," he said. “It was a highly visible position, because in battle … the first thing they’re looking for is where is the guy, the head man, the lieutenant or the colonel, who’s leading the pack? And where are the communications?"
Griggs then served at El Toro Airbase in southern California for about a year before getting orders to go to Okinawa, Japan.
Griggs was assigned to a reconnaissance division, an elite force of the Marine Corps, as the radio chief. They did recon training in the Philippines, Korea, Tapai, etc., including survival, rubber boat and submarine training.
"Our goal was to get behind enemy lines, gather information and not be seen," he said. "We were training Army Rangers (in jungle survival, escape and evasion) that were going over on missions, undocumented missions."
One of Griggs' more memorable experiences was his own jungle survival training by indigenous Filipino people called Negritos.
"Actually, they were pygmies, they live in the jungle," he said. "They taught us about survival, what to eat, what not to eat."
Griggs and his team members were dropped off with a map, a handful of rice, half a canteen of water and a hollowed-out piece of bamboo. They had to survive and find their way to a predetermined spot where a helicopter would pick them up about five days later.
At night, they would search out platforms Negritos had built 30 to 40 feet off the ground for sleeping.
"You can't survive in the jungle by sleeping on the ground," he said.
Hunger and thirst was intense. “We ate some things to this day I wonder how I got it down."
While overseas, Griggs' learned of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
He was shaken awake, told of Kennedy's death. "They had us preparing for battle, for war. I mean we had no idea what was going to happen."
Later, when his unit was set to sail to New Zealand on a goodwill tour, things in Vietnam escalated and the ship was detoured and sent to prepare for an invasion," Griggs said.
"They issued us our Geneva Convention cards and live ammo and all the other things it takes to be ready for combat."
Griggs was sent back to the States before any such mission materialized. He had served 13 months overseas.
When he returned, he married his high school sweatheart, Celestine Brown. They live in California and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in March.
Griggs spent his last few months as an military policeman at Twentynine Palms, Calif. His stint ended in July 1965.
"The Marine Corps was good to me," he said.
