Yellow Raven

By Ronald G. Therriault

The horrors of warfare through the eyes of an infantryman. From the human wave attacks in the Korean War, captivity in Laos, combat in Vietnam, to moving up the ranks and retiring as the highest enlisted rank in the army: Command Sergeant Major.

This book covers Therriault's fascinating military career with brief chapters of his childhood and life after the military.

 

Therriault was born Nov. 2, 1931, in Stockton, California. After a childhood in the Great Depression, he began his relationship with the U.S. Army at the age of 18. Therriault completed four combat tours in the Korean and Vietnam wars and was the recipient of multiple decorations for valor.

 

After the military, Therriault obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Psychology. In 1979, with his wife Ginny, Therriault retraced his steps back to the land of his people on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. He first began his relationship with Salish Kootenai College as a grant writer. Later, as both an instructor and the director of the Native American Studies Department at SKC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eleven Bravo
• Release date: Jun 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386271055

Book preview

THE FIRST THOUGHTS

In the past twenty years, at no prescribed interval someone or another says, You should write a book. My outward response was, Someday I’m going to do that. My inner response was, Why? My teaching has impacted people, and they see me in a different light. I know I have been given a Gift, the gift of being able to express my thoughts and the thoughts of others in a simple way that, for whatever reason, people are comfortable with, even when the subject is sensitive or opposite their own views. I don’t try to mold my thoughts to be politically correct. (In my mind that is just another way to control how people perceive subjects.)

What does happen is that people start telling me who I am, and that gets scary. The people say, I am a wise man with a warm heart. I understand the true meaning of love. I respect all living things and understand the relationship between the natural world and all the other worlds. I am kind to babies and puppies, and on, and on. I feel it’s what they want people to be. So I am going to create a document, that, when approached to write a book, I’ll hand to people, to read this first, now, Are you sure you want me to write a book?

Of course, the best reason to write a book is to leave something for your children. They know you as Dad, Father, and a lot of other things depending on how you have treated them, but they really don’t know you. Our worlds are totally different. The times in history gave each generation something different to affect their lives. It’s safe to say I was a product of a generation that had few resources, material, and money wise. But I had a slow world, not instant this and that. I could savor simple things and be awed at developing technology. At that point in time, I looked at technology, as I was conditioned, as we are all conditioned, as a good thing, and that was our duty to do so to advance society and the world. I took very little for granted, including life. To listen to the Standard Hour, on the radio Sunday evening was the ultimate pleasure. To be bored was a condition that escaped me. When I tell my children about that life of years gone by, they listen, but I get the feeling, they may think I was snorting Dutch Cleanser. The time will come that I may not be coherent, or just drop dead. It happens you know.

As I’ve gotten older, I have developed a few concepts about being remembered in this world: (1) Your family will remember you for their lifetime, and pass stories to their children. (2) Your friends will remember you occasionally when they think of the old days. (3) People who owe you money will forget you after thirty days and no statement arrives. (4) People you owe money to and did not collect will remember you and curse you for eternity. So if your concern is to be remembered in this world, then borrow from as many people as you can. After all, strokes are strokes, even if not positive. (5) Concept of remembering those who have departed.

I’ve known hundreds, if not thousands of men who have died. Most were doing their duty. (Whatever that means.) Some had families, and they will be remembered, but many had no one left to mourn them. I keep their names and what I can remember about them in my thoughts, and I mourn them. If no one remembers their existence, no one mourns their passing. Then they meant nothing, they didn’t even exist on this earth, their macro-time-speck had no meaning at all.

Another main point is to leave your children a legacy, after all, they, by knowing you, know who they are. I feel it gives them a sense of belonging to the generations before them and maybe encourages them to create a continuum of the family to their children. If you think about it, the condition of families has changed quite a bit over the years. The assumption is that in the past all families consisted of a mother and father. I guess no one ever thought what kids from other than the All American family would think about that. In times past, at least in many cases, nuclear and extended families lived within proximity of each other. In a sense, this made us stronger, more able to survive. Often, Aunts and Uncles were not strangers but part of the children’s daily life. Actually, the family was where, we, as children get our first introduction into the concept of Community, regardless of how dysfunctional the family may have been in the eyes of others.

To look ahead and realize what this great burst of technology has allowed us to do, to destroy the very fiber of the family. It wasn’t the technology itself, rather how the American perceives its place. In one instance, it made us mobile, it opened the world to disperse our families across the country. Maybe it didn’t seem that bad since you could drive, in four or five days, across the whole of the United States. I think back to a time when maybe two of three relatives had one car. Two-car families were not in my neighborhood. Few people really needed more than one car. We were trolley and walking people.

The other instance that comes to mind is television. Of course, there are those that can, using their own values, justify what is produced and presented on the tube. Their normal battle cry is Censorship! Perhaps they have a point, but for myself, I tend to believe common sense should overrule that argument. In 2007 I had watched every show I could, regardless of what I thought of it, and frankly, I didn’t think much of many. I had a Hitlist, the first to go would be the Talk shows. What trash, and the people that appear there are pitiful specimens of human beings, totally lacking in dignity. The so-called Host should be charged with crimes against humanity and summarily shot. The daytime soaps and so-called situation comedies should be trashed. The violence and explicit sex are damaging our values. People often disagree with that concept, but the young mind that has neither the experience nor the ability to separate fact from fiction: those are the minds that are being formed. No amount of profit can justify that damage. What really gives cause for disturbance is the fact the people demand them. In my mind, it just shows how ignorance can be passed from generation to generation. It’s a shame to think of what we have brought upon our children.

The problem is Americans are gutless when it comes to giving up their own so-called pleasures; they lack the fortitude to exercise their good common sense and what they know to be decent and refuse to look at it. If they would take that action on their own, the TV Trash would wilt and fall off the vine. The major problem, again, are the American people. One old adage, often retold, says when you write a book or letter of instruction; always write it at the lowest understanding level of the audience that will have to use it. That is what the producers of the media have done: they create entertainment that pleases the base level of Americans.

That should terrify you. So on with the story. I would ask you to keep in mind the first forty-five, or so, years of my life were spent in elements of society where cursing or downright vulgar language was the norm. The years in the Army really limited me to Yes sir, No sir, and F**k it sir. Through the years we just added Mother to preface the last word, not much in the way of progress. Although I was anything but a Goody two-shoes, I have always disliked the use of vulgarity. I feel it limits a person in communicating with any other person. But if you function in a society where vulgarity is the basic language, then that’s what you use. Otherwise, no one understands you. So, prepare yourself. In the context of these ravings are such vulgarities as Shit, Asshole, and Damn. The other terms that I use, and do not apologize for, are racial descriptions. They are part of who I was at that time in history, and that’s what we called each other. It was not kind or considerate, or sensitive, but it was honest. But as I stated someplace in the writing you could rise above the names. Live within the society within the rules and persevere.

This book is presented in the Oral History concept. I’m going to sit and tell you about my life, as if we were talking, a friendly conversation. You will get an idea of who I am, and of course, draw your own conclusions whether you like me, hate me, or don’t give a damn one way or the other. Then I go through the major subjects that I have a strong opinion on. There are those who say I have an opinion on everything, and they are right. Some will agree with me. Some will say I’m full of it. Some will disagree violently. Some will say, Hell, I knew that. The some that will satisfy me are those who will get a Chuckle, or those who might be a little wiser for the whole experience. After all, isn’t one of the reasons we exist is to learn lessons and pass them on in the hopes someone may be spared pain or approach the world with a mind a little more open? Take from it what you can gain. If you think I’m a fool, then fine, I’ll be your fool, just learn from it.

CHILDHOOD

We live in a Nation where every individual is equal, and can be anything they want. We respect those people that have authority. All causes are noble. We believe in Mom, Apple pie, and the Flag. Our code of conduct is Duty, Honor, and Country. We can say anything we want. Our justice system is fair and impartial. Regardless of the individual’s status in the social order, we always respect their opinion. We have freedom of religion. We respect each other. One never disgraces the flag, since it is sacred. Those people who hold public office are above reproach and are warm, caring, and concerned for the common citizen. Work hard and you shall persevere. Honor thy mother and thy father. A man’s home is his castle. Candy cost a penny a piece. Crazy people are locked up to protect us. Preachers are without sin. Hell is Galt, California. Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real. Well, that was sort of what I had shoved down my throat as a kid. The only thing that was even close was candy was a penny a piece. The rest started to unravel when I reached the age of five.

To have been raised in the 1930s gives an individual a perspective on life that few, except, those that lived it, could relate to. The United States was in the throes of a depression. The economy had failed. The securities of institutions that we now enjoy were not in place at that time. If you had investments or bank savings you were broke overnight. In the case of my family, it really didn’t impact us. We had neither investments nor savings. In fact, the only money we had depended on whether, or not my mother was working. It was often said in my family, that if we could get up to where other people got down to, we would have been rich.

My earliest thoughts, whether true or not, are of my mother, Gertrude. It seems all the things I think of between age five and sixteen centered on my mother. It may have been because she was the center of my universe, and nothing else mattered. In the 30s everything I recall rested on spurts of visions. My mother and her girlfriends were always going to or coming from a bar. They were heavy drinkers. If there was one great joy for my mother and her friends it was to party, go dancing at Shit Kicking Cowboy Bars and with it, enjoy life. My mother had boyfriends who seemed to show up about dinner time, sometimes with dinner, sometimes not. In that day and age, my mom and her girlfriends were what people would call immoral women. That didn’t concern me then, and it doesn’t concern me now. It is just what life was. As I said, My family was my gage of social order and the center of any love I felt. How could that be wrong?

In 35 or 36 I remember the Paddy Wagon coming to the house to collect the ladies. My mother had put me in the closet and told me to stay there until someone came for me. This happened more times than I can remember, but, it was no problem. I thought that was life. After putting me in the closet, I could hear the ruckus, shouting, cursing, and sometimes, as the brawl would start with the police I could hear the bodies hitting the wall or the floor. These were big women and the idea of a fight would be right down their alley. The police would be shouting, Damn, I hate dealing with these drunks, and I would think, Well, if you were smart, you wouldn’t mess with them. I’ve seen that crowd take more than one guy out of the living category. After a couple of hours someone, either a woman I knew or a new one, would open the door and say, Come on honey, you’re going to stay with me, If people knew what immediacy comes to mind when