 Randy
Evans,
San Jose, Illinois
Artist - He
spent most of 1970 in Vietnam as a 19-year-old Army medic
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He enlisted because he didn’t want to miss the excitement of Vietnam. "In some sense at that age I didn’t understand my mortality. But I wanted to go there for the adventure, and I didn’t want to miss it. I did get my wish. Three days after I was there I thought, you know, ‘Man, what an idiot! Now I got to pay attention for a whole year just to get out of here.’ "
"I’m sure I really did some good over there, but I think the amount of bodies really outweighed the amount of lives I saved because when you get hit, you step on a landmine or you get your ass blown up or your head blown off, there ain’t a goddamn thing I can do. And it wasn’t my fault."
"I didn’t go over there as a killer, I went over there to help people. And I got accused of being a killer when I came back. … I wanted to help; I wanted to save the world. … And then you know, after a few days, seeing this brutality, I knew I was an idiot. But all of a sudden I decided, I’m going to have to get it together, stay here. I’ve got this group of people that are dependent on me. The rest of the time I was there, we were a team and we rotated in and out of that place. But they were the craziest and the finest people I ever met."
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