 Paul Wisovaty
Tuscola, Illinois
Probation officer - He was 21 when he arrived in Vietnam in 1967 as a radio operator in an Army armored cavalry unit
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 "About the third night I was there, the Viet Cong mortared or rocketed the place, and of course it created quite a disturbance. There was a very large fire and I remember all the guys in my unit putting on their sunglasses because it was very bright and looking out at that incredibly large conflagration of all these bright colors and saying things like, ‘Wow, man, that’s really cool!’ And I realized they were all stoned. And then I realized it was going to be a somewhat different sort of war."
"I think there are too many people in this country who want to whitewash our invasion of a foreign country and what we did to about 2 million of those people, which of course was to kill them and they were almost all civilians. … The first step to our healing the wounds of the Vietnam War is to admit we were guilty."
" ... Frankly every man’s war was his own war with that calendar. We very literally marked the time. It was so-called ‘short-timer’s calendars’ and you would cross the days off, much as you would have if you were in prison or something. So even though every day was alike, our concern wasn’t so much with winning the war or losing the war. Our concern was finishing out the tour and getting out."
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