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Culver grad interviews military veterans to preserve stories about their service

Tom Coyne

Charles Boardman '23 interviewed Culver Military Academy master military counselor Camilo “Mo” Morales Cabrera as part of the Veterans History Project. (Photo by Tom Coyne)

 

A recent Culver Military Academy graduate is helping the Library of Congress with a project to interview military veterans to compile stories about their service.

Charles Boardman ’23 has spent part of his gap year interviewing veterans, most with Culver connections, about their miliary experiences so future generations can better understand what they did, saw and felt during their service through the Veterans History Project, started in 2000.

“I’m doing this for the veterans and their families. There have been countless veterans who have served this country whose stories are disappearing,” Boardman said. “So if there’s any way someone like me can help decrease the number of stories that are disappearing, that’s a responsibility I’m willing to take on.”

Boardman, who will enroll at Washington & Lee in Lexington, Virginia, next month where he plans to major in history, said the project also has value to historians.

Boardman’s interviews can be seen here, although most of his interviews have not yet been posted. It takes months for the Library of Congress to post the interview transcripts and even longer to post audio.

Boardman said he got involved because his grandfather, Jim Carroll, wanted to preserve the story of his brother Thomas J. “Tom” Carroll, an Army corporal killed while on a search and destroy mission during the Vietnam War. Boardman interviewed his grandfather during the summer before his senior year at Culver. That’s when he learned about the project.

Tom Carroll was a business major in his senior year at the University of Notre Dame when he was drafted in 1967. He proposed to his girlfriend just before leaving for basic training.

Jim Carroll was in Vietnam as part of the civilian Office of Revolutionary Support, which sought to help the South Vietnamese build a viable government. Because the Army had a rule that two brothers didn’t have to serve in a combat area at the same time, Tom Carroll could have requested an assignment elsewhere. But he accepted his assignment in Vietnam, Jim Carroll said.

Tom Carroll was killed on April 26, 1968, when he was struck by an 80-millimeter mortar while taking wounded soldiers to a helicopter landing zone.

Jim Carroll, who previously served as a Marine, told Boardman that even before his brother’s death he was aware of the horrors of war.

“I could see that warfare is a terribly destructive force, not only in people's immediate experience, but lingers on for many, many years and often in very unexpected ways,” he said.

He said for years he was not willing or emotionally ready to visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“I wasn't ready to go there until my mother, that pacifist, asked me to take her. That helped me kind of find some closure with Tom's death, and to help my mother find some closure,” Carroll told his grandson. “So we went and said our prayers and remembered, I remembered my brother, for the man who did his duty and was proud to do it.”

 Boardman decided to continue interviewing veterans. He connected with some who worked at Culver and others through Culver Connect, a platform that lets Culver alumni reconnect with other alumni.

The Rev. Stephen Felicichia of St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church in Culver, a graduate of West Point, described how he was motivated to join the military after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was 15 years old.

“I took the attack personally,” he said.

Felicichia -- who ministers to the Academies' Catholic community -- served two deployments in Afghanistan as a field artillery officer, first in a place called Sabari, which he described as “one of the most violent places.” He said his unit was there fighting organized crime, trying to stop them from smuggling in explosives, firearms and weapons systems.

“But it was very, very hard to do because you’ve got 70 guys trying to hold down this massive area,” Felicichia said.

 

Charles Boardman '23 interviewed the Rev. Stephen Felicichia of St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church as part of the Veterans History Project.

 

Felicichia said he was frustrated because his superiors would always reject new strategies he would suggest, such as hiring local “toughs” to keep the enemy from placing improvised explosive devices.

“I’m making all these cases and arguments and trying to get people to think outside the box. And there’s this absolute refusal to do so. And that was frustrating beyond words,” he said.

CMA master military counselor Camilo “Mo” Morales Cabrera describes how he joined the Army looking for a better life. He grew up poor in Santurce, Puerto Rico, the only one of five siblings to finish high school. He worked part time at a supermarket to pay for college but lost his job after 2.5 years. He wanted to join the Navy, but was told he needed to learn to speak English first.

The Army told him he could join and he’d get a crash course in English while at boot camp. So he enlisted. At the intake area, where they spent several days filling out paperwork, he met five other recruits from Puerto Rico.

But instead of being sent to boot camp in Fort Knox, Kentucky, they were sent to Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

“We didn't care. We didn't know the difference. We just want to get going to the United States,” Morales said.

The difference was that Fort Knox had English classes, Fort Jackson did not. When they arrived at Fort Jackson, the drill sergeants started yelling and most of the other recruits dropped their duffel bags in a pile, but Morales just stood on the side as the drill sergeants were yelling.

“I’m frozen. I’m standing there. I don’t know what’s happening,” he said.

Morales said that for the next three weeks, he and the five others who spoke no English had no idea what was going on. The Army then sent them by bus to Fort Knox.

“Then we started training all over again. So my training was a little longer because of that,” he said.

That’s when they took a six-week course learning basic English.

He said he wanted to quit, but he hung in there. Morales said one thing that helped him learn English was reading a newspaper aloud so he could hear his pronunciation while others were spending their Sundays going to movies or doing other social activities.

At the end of basic training Morales was given an award as most improved.

“To me, that was huge,” he said.

Morales said he thinks his work in learning English helped him get promoted faster. Four years later he saw one of the other recruits from Puerto Rico and he was a specialist while Morales was a staff sergeant.

“I noticed the difference between both of us,” he said.

He said once he learned English, he was promoted quickly. He decided to re-enlist and was deployed to Germany. He was stationed in Germany in 1989 when protesters tore down the Berlin Wall that literally divided the city and figuratively divided East and West Germany. He watched on TV as it occurred.

“It was an amazing thing to be able to see that happen,” Morales said.

Morales also was deployed to Saudi Arabia to take part in Operation Desert Storm after Iraq invaded Kuwait. But he never saw any action. Following a 43-day high-tech air assault on Iraq, the ground assault lasted only 100 hours before Iraq surrendered.

Morales said as a Christian he was glad he never had to shoot at anyone.

“I'm glad I don’t have live with that,” he said.

Boardman has interviewed 11 veterans from the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War, about half have seen combat duty.

Boardman, who also spent part of his gap year working as a digital court transcriber to help pay for college, said he finds the interviews fulfilling.

“I knew that it would be a great project and that it would benefit a lot of people,” he said.

 

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