Guadalupe Olguin
Guadalupe Olguin was actually born Antonio Segovia Olguin, he was born on December 24, 1945. He was born to Vicente and Pomposa Olguin; however, they were divorced by the time my father-in-law was four years old. His mother and step-father, Fernando Mora, sent him, his four brothers and sister to live at St. Peter's orphanage in San Antonio. At the age of 16 Antonio was informed that he would be relocated to Boysville and he had heard terrible things about this place. He knew he did not want to live there so he went to the orphanage and told them he was Guadalupe Olguin, who is Antonio's brother, and told them he needed a copy of his birth certificate and he took his brother's social security card and he joined the Army. During his basic training he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and he trained to be a military police officer. During this time he traveled all over the United States chasing prisoners for the Army. After about a year of this he decided to join the 82nd Airborne, which would make him a paratrooper. After his training he was shipped to Panama for jungle training then in 1964 he was sent to Vietnam. The interview will give the details of his tour in Vietnam. When he returned home in March 1966, he met my mother-in-law Aurora and they married three months later. They have four children and four grandsons.
You joined the Army when you were 16, is that correct?
Right.
After basic training where did you go from there?
I went to the 208th MP Company at Fort Leonard Wood also and then I was the main company of the 208th was in Washington State at Fort Lewis, Washington but I was assigned to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
How long were you in the military police?
I was a prisoner chaser for one year.
At what point did you decide to join the 82nd Airborne?
Because you never volunteer for nothing in the Army it was either that or something worse. So I went ahead and joined the uh, I went to jungle training in Panama. When I got back then I joined, I volunteered for the Airborne and I though I was going with the 101st but they send me to the 82nd Airborne Division and that's where I took my training. And then from there I was reassigned to, I was sent back to my company the 2nd Engineer Amphibious Support Command I used to train Marines for amphibious warfare and wetnet and drynet.
What year did you get shipped to Vietnam?
it was in 1964 when they called us all together everybody had to be an E5 or above with airborne jungle training we knew something was up. They sent us to Aberdeen, Maryland and we were in a restricted area guarded at 24 hours and we trained every day for something we didn't know what it was and then we were loaded on the U.S. transports the Flying Tigers we went to Washington D.C. we were loaded with bag and baggage we flew to California, we were stuck in a warehouse at San Francisco and then from there they put us on buses and loaded us on the U.S.S. Breckenridge and that's when we started our trip to Vietnam.
Were you in Vietnam before it was considered a full-fledged war?
Yeah, we were the advanced party.
What were you there to do?
We were there to set up the perimeter for the 7th Cav. for the 3rd Marine Division that was coming over. Clear the area of all explosives, all land mines everything and set up a perimeter where their advanced party could come in and combat engineers come in and set up a camp.
How long were you there before the American public knew that soldiers would be sent to Vietnam?
About a year the main body when the I think they sent the body back, in 1965 was when they sent the first major shipment of troops over there but we have been in Vietnam since 1951, all special forces and in '63 and '64 is when they started sending the advanced party to do all the clean up and blow up stuff and go to places we were not allowed to go. We went to Laos we went to Cambodia we went to North Vietnam and back.
These were places that American forces were not allowed to be in?
Right.
What was your job while you were in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam?
Blow up things, I was a demolition man and my job was to blow up bridges anything to stop the convoys from coming from North Vietnam they would go through Laos and Cambodia, our job was to find where the stashes were and blow up the ammo dumps, blow up the bridges and anything else we came in contact with that they saw fit that needed to be blowed up.
If anything had happened to you while you were in those places, the U.S. said what?
We weren't supposed to be there, they didn't know nothing. We were on our own.
Do you remember when it was that you got captured?
sigh....It was in 1965, uh, February of 1965 we got run over by, it was just a small group and we got run over by a battalion size, we ran into them by mistake where we weren't supposed to be. Near the DMZ [demilitarized zone] close to North Vietnam and uh we ran out of ammo and we had to go to hand to hand a few of us made it and they took us in. Tried to get information from us and the Army just wiped us off. They didn't send nobody to look for us they didn't send anybody, the only reason that we got saved is because the um one of the special forces was doing an operations in the area and they just happened to stumble across where we were and they took us out.
How long do you think you were there?
About three months.
Do you think that the people that rescued you were also on a black-op?
Yeah, that was a special forces outfit, Mr. Benavides was there.
How many of you were captured?
There was 10 of us captured and only four of us made it out alive back to the United States.
When you were captured where were you sent to?
They didn't send us anywhere they stuck us in the Mekong Delta in tiger cages in the water. That's where they were keeping us. We didn't get nothing to eat, we got rice but it was spoiled and shit and that's why to this day I can't eat rice.
Were you mistreated?
Yeah, they did. They messed up my toe nails they had us hung up and they cut our armpits. Just to make us bleed and shit like that.
What specific thing do you think is a misconception about the Vietnam war?
People didn't understand why we were there. The reason we were there was because the French was there helping them first and the French bailed out back in 1951. They asked us to help them, people think that we went in there on our own free will and it wasn't that way. The government asked us to go in and help them now that the French had abandoned them. We went in you know trying to help those people cause they were under communist rule and people are under the assumption that we were there to take over the country. Which was not what we went in there for, we were just trying to liberate those people.
82nd Airborne page Gives history of the 82nd airborne. America's Guard of Honor.
Medal of Honor This page give a brief history of medal of honor recipient Roy Benavidez. He is awarded this honor for rescuing troops in Vietnam. (04/03).
Boysville - Fast Facts This site provides a history of the Boysville establishment. Gives information on whose eligible to be housed there, and information on their facilities. (04/03)
Fort Leonard Wood: Images of the Past Provides photographs of what Fort Leonard Wood was like during the 1960's.(04/03)
Maps: Vietnam Provides map of Laos, Cambodia and North and South Vietnam. (04/03)
Tiger Cage (04/03). Shows a picture of a Vietnam POW kept in a tiger cage.
