1
50
1
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/13b2afb3011e5f53bbb7e45791f56d27.pdf
53de96731b87651435bccf8afeaa9318
PDF Text
Text
Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Leonard Blevins
Boone, North Carolina
14 October 2011
ZC: Zack Crittenden
LB: Leonard Blevins
ZC: It’s October 14, 2011. We are in Boone, North Carolina at High Country Neurology. I’m
Zack Crittenden interviewing Leonard Blevins. How old are you sir?
LB: Fifty-Six.
ZC: Where were you born, Mr. Blevins?
LB: Down the mountain in Hayes, North Carolina.
ZC: Hayes, North Carolina…is that in Wilkes County? Have you always stayed there or have
you traveled around North Carolina?
LB: Yeah, after college I joined the army. From that time on I’ve been traveling. I was assigned
in North Carolina to Fort Bragg.
ZC: How exactly did you get there?
LB: I went through college on the ROTC scholarship and entered the army in 1977. I was in the
army for twenty-six years. You start off going to a school, just like basic training for anybody
but the officers learn more before you go there. It’s kind of interesting, I went into the army as a
second lieutenant and I was twenty-two years old. I had forty guys under me but since I was the
officer, I had a lot of older people that I had to boss around (both laugh).
ZC: Well, that’s better since you didn’t have to go through boot camp right? How were your
privates? Did you give them some hell?
LB: Not more than they deserve.
ZC: You’re just being a good officer. Did you ever get to know any NCO’s (non-commissioned
officers)?
LB: Actually my first NCO in the army came to my promotion to colonel. We were good
friends outside of work; but inside of work you have to be the officer and the NCO.
ZC: So you didn’t see actual combat?
1
�LB: Not in the army, no. I’ve seen people shooting at each other though. My part in the army is
Special Forces so I wasn’t on the front line. I worked behind the line, with maybe strategic
targets and reconnaissance.
ZC: You told me before you were in Yugoslavia with the Special Forces. Did you operate more
with the people behind the lines?
LB: I went into Kosovo, and the Serbian army had pulled out of Kosovo, but their police were
there. We had intelligence that suggested that the police would go to the border; change out of
their army uniforms and changed back into police uniforms. We basically went and observed
and talked to the people to investigate shootings and things like that. Make data on the
policemen.
ZC: And so you were with NATO? Did you go there in uniform?
LB: I went there in civilian clothes.
(Mr. Blevins and I got a bit off track, speaking mainly about the Yugoslavian people and Slavic
culture and heritage. When we got back on track I brought up the subject of the interview
again.)
ZC: Were you awarded any medals, Mr. Blevins?
LB: I have service medals. I went to Kosovo and got the Kosovo Medal, stuff like that.
ZC: Can you tell me about some of them?
LB: Nothing high, just a sign you were here.
ZC: Did you stay in touch with your family?
LB: As much as I could. You know, now we’re in the information age. I mean, a good friend of
my adopted son who’s in Afghanistan…he Skyped his wife every night. Also, the nature of my
job sometimes means in Special Forces they send you places and you can’t tell anybody your
there. Often times I’d stay in contact if I could, and there were times where there was obviously
silence.
ZC: Did your family worry about you?
LB: I think they did, it was hard. My mom and dad are pretty conservative country people. I
think they were proud I was in the army, but I don’t think they understood what I did. I’d call
them and say I’d be leaving and be gone for a couple months.
ZC: That’s amazing, Mr. Blevins. Did you have any affiliations with the CIA?
2
�LB: Sometimes we’d work with the CIA but it’s more of a military thing. A lot of what Special
Forces do is called Foreign Internal Defense, where you go another country and arm and train the
locals.
(Mr. Blevins spoke more about the nature of what the Special Forces are intended to accomplish.
Somehow - most likely because of the subject of Yugoslavia - we also began a long conversation
on dictatorships. There were short breaks of silence in between sporadic bursts of conversation.
I felt like he was about to tell me something but knew it classified information. I didn’t pry.)
LB: When you go into Special Forces, there’s no distinction between officers and enlisted. You
start together. You do all the stuff together. And then at some point they divide out the group.
You have a specialty; a guy in Special Forces may be a communications specialist.
ZC: So you are where you need to be
LB: Yeah. Special Forces is based on a twelve-man team. You may be where you want to be, but
gradually you break up because you have to use your specialty. It’s pretty intense; Special Forces
training takes about two years. They can do great things; they’re amazing people.
ZC: Sounds like it. You do any half-day hikes or runs?
LB: You do runs. In fact, part of Special Forces training is a timed run. They don’t tell you
what the time is, but you have to do the run in a certain amount of time to go to the next phase.
(Mr. Blevins went on to describe his Special Forces activities in great detail. His favorite, being
a countryman, was being left in the wilderness to find the correct path that would lead him to the
next phase of his training. As he described it, it sounded extremely fun. I asked him lastly about
entertainment in the army. His answer? Star Wars.)
ZC: Star Wars?
LB: That’s the perfect war movie. I love Star Wars.
ZC: You find a lot of correlations in that film?
LB: I don’t want correlations. I want to be entertained. (Laughs) (Since Mr. Blevins said he had
nothing left to add, I thanked him and we ended the interview.)
3
�
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/5b97c568ceed293342b06e3fe00bb936.mp3
07545313783dad3fd569d5cfeabe89e2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project
Description
An account of the resource
Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers.
Copyright Notice:
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Crittenden, Zack
Interview Date
10/14/11
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:22:24
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound.
3 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Leonard Blevins, 14 October 2011
Subject
The topic of the resource
Special Forces
Blevins, Leonard
Veterans
Military Science
United States
Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Zack Crittenden interviews Leonard Blevins on his time in the Army Special Forces. Mr. Blevins discusses his duties in Kosovo and talked about his military training
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Language
A language of the resource
English
Hayes NC
Leonard Blevins
Special Forces Kosovo
United States Army