CENTER FOR U.S. WAR
VETERANS' ORAL HISTORIES
Vietnam War
Angel G. Rodriguez
Vietnam War Oral History Interview
US Army, 11th Infantry Brigade
Date: June 15, 2013
Interviewer: Carol Fowler
Summarizer: Paige Green
Veterans History Project
Summary
Angel G. Rodriguez was born in May 1948, in Manhattan, New York, and grew up in the Bronx. His mother died when he was eight years old, and his father later remarried. His father was very proud of being an American and encouraged his children to speak English outside the home and Spanish inside. Rodriguez described his family as proud Americans while also maintaining their Puerto Rican heritage.Â
After graduating high school in 1966, he moved to Puerto Rico, partly to leave the rougher neighborhood where he had grown up. At eighteen, Rodriguez began working as a bank clerk and eventually became a bank teller. Although he continued receiving draft notices and was able to postpone them for a time, he was eventually drafted into the United States Army. Rodriguez served from April 1968 until March 1970 with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, making him the only member of his immediate family to serve.
Rodriguez’s Army training took him to Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort McClellan, Alabama, during one of the most turbulent periods of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. had recently been assassinated when Rodriguez arrived at Fort Benning, and Robert Kennedy was killed while he was at Fort McClellan. Coming from New York City, Rodriguez had never experienced the segregation of the South firsthand. He recalled being shocked by the racial divisions he encountered, and he struggled to understand why people were treated differently due to their race. Rodriguez’s experience was particularly complicated because he was Hispanic. He felt that he did not fit into the Black and White racial categories around him and instead felt caught between both groups. Rodriguez described Puerto Ricans as particularly difficult to categorize because of the mixture of racial backgrounds within the community.
...and I had it difficult because, I wasn’t Black, I wasn’t White, I was Hispanic, and I was being pulled from both sides, and that was not an easy experience.
One experience in Alabama particularly demonstrated the reality of segregation to Rodriguez. Accustomed to New York City, where the back of a bus was a place where young people could talk, smoke, and have fun, he went to the back of a bus and began talking with a man. Rodriguez eventually asked the man to get lunch with him. When they arrived at a restaurant, he discovered that his companion was not allowed inside because he was Black. Rodriguez remembered being overwhelmed because he had never experienced anything like it. The experience was so powerful that he later said he would never return to Alabama by choice. During training, his ability to speak both English and Spanish was also noticed, and he was frequently asked to translate.
After completing his training, Rodriguez attended Non-Commissioned Office (NCO) School. He was offered an opportunity to reenlist for six years and serve as an Army translator, but at nineteen years old he considered six years too long a commitment. Instead, Rodriguez chose to serve in Vietnam. His father was disappointed by the decision, although Rodriguez later joked about the irony of believing that Vietnam was the shorter commitment. After completing training at Fort Lewis, he traveled through Hawaii and the Philippines before arriving at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, in April 1969.
Rodriguez remembered his arrival in Vietnam as surprisingly calm. One of the first things he saw was an American soldier eating ice cream. Rodriguez recalled the humorous contrast between his own fear about arriving in a war zone, and the casual behavior of the other soldier. He spent approximately two weeks at Cam Ranh Bay receiving instruction about Vietnam and military conduct before being sent to Duc Pho and eventually to his assigned unit. Rodriguez arrived at his landing zone by Huey helicopter and joined Bravo Company. He remembered Sergeant Jack Frost, his platoon leader, as extremely intelligent, and spoke highly of the leaders in his squad. Rodriguez felt fortunate that the men responsible for him were not focused on earning medals but instead wanted to accomplish their mission and bring their soldiers home alive.Â
The first thing I saw was a soldier eating an ice cream. It’s like, here you are scared out of your pants, and here's a guy with a Mr. Softee or whatever it was.
Rodriguez recalled May 1969 as a particularly difficult period because of the number of small firefights his unit experienced. One soldier was killed after wearing a black beret instead of the protective helmet required in the field. The deaths of fellow soldiers became one of the most difficult parts of his experience. Rodriguez explained that soldiers were sometimes considered cold because they seemed able to continue fighting after someone was killed, but he believed this mistook what combat required. There was no time for ceremonies or extended mourning. Soldiers had to continue their missions and could only privately pray and mourn for their friends. He explained that soldiers still had feelings about their fallen comrades but were not given the opportunity to openly express them during combat.
We discuss this, all of us guys, when a person gets killed you do not have time to have a ceremony, the only thing you can do is keep it to yourself, and at nighttime, pray for him, because you have to keep moving.
One death that affected Rodriguez particularly deeply was that of Louis Leheas, a soldier who had only eighteen days left before returning home to his wife and newborn daughter. Rodriguez and Leheas switched foxholes, and that position was attacked that night. Leheas was killed, while Rodriguez received minor shrapnel wounds to his neck. Captain K, whom Rodriguez remembers as a caring leader, insisted that Rodriguez receive a tetanus shot. The incident contributed to his award of a Bronze Star. The following day, Rodriguez helped move Leheas and other fallen soldiers for helicopter evacuation. He remembered the experience as extremely impersonal and again realized that there was no time to stop and mourn.Â
Rodriguez also recalled Captain K’s actions during another firefight involving his friend Daryl. Daryl, who was six feet two inches tall, was wounded and unable to return to safety. Captain K crawled into the dangerous area, reached Daryl, and carried him back despite being much smaller than him. Rodriguez later reflected that the actions of soldiers in combat were often motivated by fear and the instinct to protect one another, rather than the desire to appear heroic. He did not see Daryl again for more than thirty years before eventually reconnecting with him.Â
This is what fear does to you. This is not bravery, this is fear.
During his deployment, Rodriguez contracted malaria and spent time hospitalized at Cam Ranh Bay. He also witnessed a deadly grenade accident in which several soldiers were killed or wounded. Eventually, Rodriguez was removed from field operations and spent approximately four to five months working on radios at LZ Liz.
Racial tensions also became increasingly difficult during Rodriguez’s time in Vietnam. He recalled that soldiers from different backgrounds initially joked and formed friendships, but tensions increased as the war continued. Rodriguez believed that much of this tension was influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and racial unrest occurring in the United States. Despite these difficulties, he formed close friendships with men from many different backgrounds, including soldiers from Southern states. Rodriguez continued to feel that his identity as a Hispanic man placed him between different groups.
Rodriguez also discussed the moral uncertainty of fighting in Vietnam. During one incident, a young North Vietnamese man emerged from a rice field. Rodriguez believed that he could have killed him, but instead stopped and captured him, a decision he still does not understand. The incident illustrated his and many other soldiers’ larger frustration with the difficulty of identifying enemy combatants and civilians in Vietnam, and the stress created by that uncertainty.
When Rodriguez returned home in 1970, he entered a country experiencing tremendous political and social turmoil. The Vietnam War was still continuing, protests and racial tensions were widespread, and events surrounding Lieutenant William Calley and the Kent State shootings further divided the country. Rodriguez felt caught between political and racial groups that he did not want to join. Vietnam veterans learned not to wear their uniforms in public because of the hostility they could face. Rodriguez therefore withdrew from society for approximately six months in an effort to escape the tensions surrounding him.
The effects of Vietnam continued to affect Rodriguez for decades. He struggled with depression and symptoms that would eventually be recognized as PTSD; he said veterans of his generation were not adequately informed about mental health resources. In 1977, his parents helped place him in a VA hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. Rodriguez described the experience as difficult, because he was the only veteran in his therapy group. He received medication and was repeatedly interviewed by Yale medical students before eventually leaving the hospital in 1979. One of the most significant aspects of Rodriguez’s experience was his missed diagnosis, because he left before PTSD was formally recognized as a medical condition in 1980.
Rodriguez continued working to rebuild his life. He returned to Puerto Rico for a period before moving back to Queens and attending trade school to become a heating and air-conditioning mechanic. His determination eventually helped him find employment at Rockefeller Center, where he waited outside the personnel office for seven days until he was given an opportunity. Rodriguez considered this period a turning point in his life, particularly because he also met his wife Kathy around this time.Â
In 2006, Rodriguez attended a reunion of his former company in St. Louis, Missouri. There, conversations among the veterans’ wives revealed that many of their husbands had experienced similar difficulties after Vietnam. He learned more about PTSD, eventually received a formal diagnosis, and became active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Rodriguez believed that Vietnam veterans became the foundation for modern veterans’ mental health support, because many had experienced the consequences of inadequate care and later became advocates for veterans of subsequent conflicts. He devoted much of his later life to helping other veterans.
...and to this day, we see Vietnam veterans or any veteran, we shake hands, ‘welcome home’, and that’s enough of a conversation, we don’t have to say anything, we understand.
Rodriguez also experienced serious health problems that he associated with his military service, including a heart attack and cancer that he believed were connected to Agent Orange exposure. These experiences further strengthened his commitment to veterans’ advocacy and his work with the VFW.
Angel G. Rodriguez’s oral history provides a personal account of the Vietnam War while also examining the racial, cultural, and psychological challenges he experienced as a Hispanic American soldier. His memories of segregation in the South, combat, the deaths of fellow soldiers, and the difficulties of returning home demonstrate that his experience with the war extended far beyond the battlefield. His willingness to discuss depression, PTSD, therapy, and his eventual work helping other veterans provides an important perspective on the long-term effects of military service.Â
Angel G. Rodriguez died on June 22, 2026. His story demonstrates both the lasting wounds of war, and the importance of ensuring that veterans receive the support they need after returning home.
