Oliver Halle: Swift Boat Vietnam Vet with a “Life Changing” Family Secret

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history and everything in between, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. Our next one is brought to us with permission from the Veterans History Project at the Atlanta History Center. The Veterans History Project provides unedited, first-person interviews from men and women who’ve served our great country. Today, we’ll be hearing from Oliver Halley, who will share with us a bit about his experiences in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War. We will also be hearing about the unearthed family secret that would forever change his life. Here’s Oliver.

I grew up in a small family. My mother and father were only children, so I had no aunt, no uncles, no cousins. I had two brothers: my older brother, who died in 2009; he was two years older; and my younger brother, who’s almost two years younger than I am. He still lives in New York. My father and his family emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1935 or so, and my mother was born in Brooklyn, but her father was born and raised in Germany and came here as a young man. And my mother’s mother was born in Brooklyn as well, and we moved to Brooklyn when I was a baby, so I have no memory of where I was born whatsoever. My first memories began in Brooklyn, and then we moved to Staten Island when I was seven, and that’s where I grew up. Two, my father and mother built a legend around our family. Again, I knew that my father and his face family had moved from, emigrated from Nazi Germany, but they built a legend around that, and the legend had to do with that his father, my grandfather, who I didn’t know. He was killed in a car accident in 1939. I did know that, and he was a prominent surgeon in New York. And the legend was that they resisted the Third Reich. My father was in an underground movement, and it was all very romantic, and that was the story that I grew up with. But when I was growing up, everybody went into military. That was just the way it was. A lot of people don’t know that. The draft began in June of 1940, and it didn’t end until I think roughly 1975. So even during the peacetime between the Korean War and Vietnam, people were being drafted. In my high school, you know, people eat the voluntary, he had went into the military, and it was acceptable. Nobody even thought about avoiding it. If they got—if they didn’t want to join—they were drafted, and they didn’t complain. That’s just the way it was. And I grew up in that environment, that post-World War Two. Used to see a lot of veterans from World War Two during parades. It was always a big deal, and it was, it’s just what you did: that it was your turn to step up when it came time. So there was never any doubt in my mind I would go into service. And growing up in New York and seeing the ships in New York Harbor, I was attracted to the Navy. It just, it was just, there was never any doubt. That’s where I wanted to go. So my friend Kenny—I don’t, I don’t remember where, but somewhere he heard about swift boats. I said, ‘What’s a swift boat?’ And he described it as best he could, and I said, ‘I’m going to volunteer for that.’ I said, ‘Well, you know what, I’ll volunteer with you.’ ‘I know.’ We arrived in Vietnam on September 27th, 1969, and when we got off the plane, you see all these sandbags, and we landed in Cameron Bay. Cameron Bay was one of the swift boat bases, and it was the headquarters for Coastal Squadron I; and then from there, we were going to be farmed out to one of five coastal divisions. And I remember seeing the sandbags and seeing, you know, you say, ‘Wow, we were definitely in a war zone!’ When you saw that, you saw everybody in fatigues, and you had an Army there and avy and Air Force, and they said, ‘Whoa, this is the real deal.’ So that was my impression. So on Christmas Eve day, December 24th, I think it was, a C-130 flew us down to Cat Low, and the boats were already there, and we were happy. So we get there, and I remember we were sleeping that night in Low in some barracks, and I remember the next morning, just, I guess it was before the, you know, the truth went into the Christmas truth, winning in effect. But it was my first introduction to B-52 bombing somewhere in the area. I don’t know exactly where, but I mean, it was incredible. I couldn’t believe how the ground was shaken, you know, and it’s like, ‘Ooh!’ I mean, you know, I hadn’t experienced that in Danang, and Danang we worked in Danang. Marines operated out of I Corps where we were; that’s it. And we did work somewhere the U.S. Marines up in I Corps along the Coudai River. This particular day, again, I don’t remember why, but we were transporting Korean Marines these rocks to Hooian. I don’t remember, you know what, you know why. Oh, I know is somebody, you know, we were given an audit, you know: take, pick these rocks up, take them to Joyan a few miles up the river. So there was a sergeant and, probably, you know, maybe ten or twelve of these Korean Marines, and we had on board. We had searched a couple of sandpans in the river, and I remember vaguely, I remember that we took several women prisoners because they didn’t have paperwork, and they may have had some contraband. No weapons, but they may have had contraband. I don’t remember why, and it’s not particularly important. All I remember is we took them on board and handcuffed them because they had done something, and we were going to turn them over to Navy Intelligence in Joyan. So we had these Korean Marines on board too, and these were young Vietnamese women. And I was in the pilot house, where that’s where normally stayed when we’re moving. I’m in a pilot house.

And you’ve been listening to Oliver Halley recount his early days right up to his enlistment and volunteer enlistment in the Vietnam War. He volunteered for swift boat duty in September of 1969, and everything changed. We’ll hear more of Oliver’s story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue with Our American Stories. In Oliver Halley’s story, let’s return where we last left off.

September 8th, 1970, changed my life forever—forever. I don’t know why I’m getting emotional, but I think about it. I told you earlier in this interview, in the beginning, that my mother and father were only children. I had no relatives, and my father sighed in particularly a lot of mysteries that I never knew the answers to. My father had committed suicide on May 9th, 1966, in college. I was 20 years old. I was a junior in college at the time. And in that book that I wrote, I put in there that, you know, he just couldn’t outrun the demons that had chased him from the Third Reich. And he, as I said earlier, he had built up this legend. He was in this German underground movement, and they got into street fights and all of that. Well, it turned out that’s all true—that part is all true. What never made sense to me as I got older was why, with a wealthy family—because my father came from a wealthy family. He was an only child. His father was a very prominent surgeon. And I didn’t know until I sent you the story of New York Times. I didn’t know until this year—until this year, February of this year—that he had actually been a physician for Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas of Russia. I didn’t know that until this from the New York. And Sue has seen the sorry to ‘New York Times,’ 1939, when he was killed in a car accident. So anyway, he committed suicide four years earlier. And I’m sitting with Miss Buck, and she had never married. She was a woman, probably in the seventies at the time, and she was so excited to see me. I mean, oh, she was just fluttering here and finding them. ‘I’m so excited to finally meet somebody from the Halley family after all these years!’ This is oh so happy. ‘Finally, you know, this is wonderful!’ And I can’t wait for your mother to call, you know; I’m just so looking forward to that. And then she said as follows; she said, and I don’t remember her exact words. I was too stunned, and so I’m close, but these are not the exact words. I just don’t remember what they were. I wish I did, but I don’t. She said something like this: ‘Did your mother ever reconcile with her father from marrying outside the faith?’ And I looked at Miss Buck, and I said, ‘Miss Buck, I don’t understand your question.’ ‘My mother and father, you know, were Protestants.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by marrying outside the faith.’ And she said, ‘No, no, no, no, no!’ She said, ‘Your mother was Jewish; she married your father.’ But I said, ‘My mother’s not Jewish!’ She said, ‘Of course she is,’ and she’s my head. At that moment, exploded. You know how you get shocking news—whatever the really shocking news—that’s what happened to me. It was like that because I had experienced antisemitism growing up. I grew up a Methodist, but I experienced a lot of antisemitism. I don’t care, anybody, you know, that I don’t know. I looked Jewish. Okay. I mean, there is a stereotype, and I’m one of them. My head exploded; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So she saw the look on my face, and she stopped short. She says, ‘Oh my God, I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have said!’ And I said, ‘No, I—’