Summer of '69: Guillermo "Bill" Torres

Guillermo "Bill" Torres, 59, of Lindenhurst, a supervisor for AmeriPride, a uniform linen company in Bay Shore

I landed in Vietnam in March 1969 and came home in March 1970. I was in the United States Army, 1st Infantry Division. I was in a place called Lai Khe. That was my base camp. I was a combat engineer.

I volunteered. I was 18 when I joined. I didn't want to take the chance of going to college and getting a good job and getting drafted. Plus, my brother was over there, so I thought I would follow in his footsteps.

I landed on March 25, 1969. It was very scary. I didn't know what I had gotten myself into. I remember getting off the plane in Long Bien and feeling like I was walking into a blast furnace. The heat and the smell. And I remember them saying I was reporting to the 1st Infantry Division. Meanwhile, I was not trained for infantry, so I was being put into an area that I wasn't really trained to do. But I learned. It wasn't straight infantry. I wasn't there fighting every single day. My job was to sweep the road for mines, help build bridges, repair diesel trucks.

It was extremely hard. Being homesick, of course, and being scared. And seeing a whole bunch of Vietnamese walking around you, not knowing who's the enemy and who's friendly.

We used to get a newspaper called the Stars and Stripes, and it would tell us what was happening stateside. Every now and then we could hear a radio broadcast about what was going on. We got all the info about the draft card burners and burning the American flag and Woodstock. A lot of the stuff, like the Mets and the moon walking, all that kind of stuff really didn't phase me too much. But I was really ticked off to hear about the people protesting what we were doing. And then to come home and to be treated like garbage. That was the worst part. Here I am fighting for your freedom, getting shot at, and you're over there totally against me.