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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/c732483dd4af78ca58e8ba84a2cee9d4.mp3
35a9d983d7e335afdb2a7524c923805c
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/e209cd5a814dfd1a6a900dcb62260119.pdf
717a3959d8d75f9290520089849b1081
PDF Text
Text
Name:
Branch:
Years Served:
Conflicts:
Date of Interview:
Doug Patton
U.S. Army
2002-2006
Afghanistan
October 15, 2012
Austin Getzelman: All right todays date is October 14th the time is 4:51 p.m. My name
is Austin Getzelman with Appalachian State University and I am here with
Doug Patton: Doug Patton
Getzelman: And what is your birthdate
Patton: December 19th 1980
Getzelman: All right, well I'm sitting here with Doug Patton and what made you want to
join the military and how did you pick what branch you wanted to join?
Patton: I ended up joining right after September 11th, I ended up doing all my paper
work and submitting stuff because it takes, a lot of people don’t know, it takes a while to
get in to the military. Once you say I want to go you see a recruiter and paperwork and all
the hoops they make you jump through. It takes six months or so to get in but it was after
September 11th and I finally got in, I went to basic training in 2002. So that's kinda the
reason I joined and about the time that I joined so everything else kinda fell into place
after that.
Getzelman: Had you ever thought about joining before September 11th? Or was that
kind of the big kick?
Patton: Not really, I just kinda...it was motivational I guess at the time so I wanted to
help out.
Getzelman: Do you, when you first started up in training, do you remember any, a lot of
guys who had just kinda really been hit by September 11th who were in there with you?
Patton: Yeah, I would say just about all of them around that time were, and people its
funny when you go to basic training you have just people from all walks of life ya know
from foreign countries. I had a guy with me that was from Puerto Rico, people come in
from everywhere and everybody was there kinda for the same reason.
Getzelman: Do you have any particular like memorable experiences from basic training
that you would want to share?
Patton: There's all kinds of stuff but nothing really, you know, I guess story worthy. We
went, my basic training was in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and you would think of Oklahoma as
being kinda warm being the north part of Texas but we went in the winter and it got down
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�to like two degrees I think when we did our field training so it was pretty cold. I just
remember it being just unbearably cold sometimes. But ya know, it was fun, it was
something you definitely when you get done you're proud of it and you enjoy looking
back on it knowing you did it, went through it.
Getzelman: Do you still have a lot of connection with the guys you were in basic
training with?
Patton: A few, not many, because everybody just kinda goes there own separate ways
when they get out but I try and stay in touch with about four of them that I know
Getzelman: Do you remember what were some more of the difficult parts of starting up
basic training? Do you have any previous experience ya know doing some of the physical
and what not?
Patton: The physical was pretty hard but it ya know, you body kinda adapts, you don’t
think it does but the more you do ya know its almost like it becomes less hard but your
doing the same things you started out doing. Your body just kinda adapts and overcomes
some of the injuries and the pain and stuff like that.
Getzelman: And you said you were stationed out in Oklahoma?
Patton: Yeah, for basic.
Getzelman: Okay, where did they move you after that? Did you go straight overseas or
anywhere after basic?
Patton: No, I went to advanced individual training they call it AIT, and that was in
Aberdeen Maryland so that was a pretty neat place, they did a lot of weapons testing out
there. Shooting bombs and stuff all the time out there. So it was pretty great.
Getzelman: Got any cool weapons stories from out there?
Patton: Not from out there, all their stuff is pretty much classified; they do kinda like
R&D (Research and Development) for new weapons and stuff. Stuff that they'll test out.
They'll do it kinda behind closed doors, ya know they got their own secret test facility up
there, but it's pretty cool.
Getzelman: So from there, when did you actually get the word that you would be
shipped out?
Patton: From there I went to Fort Drum New York, and that was my duty station. I got
assigned to Fort Drum Tenth Mountain Division, and first day I got there I found out I
was getting deployed. They send you to a like a reception battalion when you check in
and everybody goes there and then they find where they're going, which assignment and
which company they're going to. By the end of the first day I had somebody sponsor,
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�which is my platoon sergeant, he'd come up and say hey ya know you're going to 514
maintenance company and ya know they're already deployed. They were leaving at the
time they left and I left a week after and met up with them over there.
Getzelman: So pretty much the day you got there they let you know, you were going
over.
Patton: Yeah
Getzelman: Now where exactly was it that you were sent out to?
Patton: Our base was in Kuwait, we went, we actually stayed at three different bases. It
was probably about ten miles south of the DMZ, ya know the line from Iraq. And we
stayed at Camp Wolf, we stayed at Camp Arifjan, and we stayed at Camp Doha, and we'd
run like wrecker missions stuff like that. We would pick up equipment and bring it back,
damaged equipment, and we'd fix it and take it back out to ya know infantry guys. So, I
was a mechanic in the Army.
Getzelman: So you were more on the mechanical side than anything with on front lines
or anything like that?
Patton: Yeah, yeah more or less. We would do missions and stuff but it more along the
lines of picking up equipment from those guys and meeting up with them, trading stuff
out and stuff like that.
Getzelman: Cool, Cool. Now when you were serving overseas did you find it difficult to
kinda keep in touch with your friends and family back home?
Patton: Not really, I mean it's obviously its different it’s a little harder. But I had bought
a phone, an international cell phone from over there and I was able to put minutes on it
and call. So I had it on me pretty much all the time, it just got expensive. We also had the
Internet cafe where you could send emails and stuff like that so it wasn't too bad. But its
just more inconvenient than here but its not, ya know, its what you expect when you're
that far away from home.
Getzelman: Now while you were serving, did you get to travel anywhere else overseas
besides Kuwait?
Patton: Yeah, got to go to Germany, we stopped in Italy; I actually spent a couple days
in Germany. But we stopped in Italy, we stopped in Ireland. Ya know, on the flight over
to the Middle East, that was pretty neat, seeing all the countryside that was pretty cool.
Got to hang out in Germany for a few days that was pretty cool, that's a pretty country as
well.
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�Getzelman: Now how would you say your overall military experience has influenced or
changed your thinking about conflicts in general? I know you said when you joined it had
a lot to do with the events of September 11th.
Patton: Once you join you kinda see, what’s the best way to put it...you kinda see things
on a bigger picture. Until you put yourself in that position, ya know, it’s easy to watch
something on TV and say, why aren't they doing this? Why is this happening? Why are
we doing this? But then when you see how many different things how many different
jobs people have, like in the military for example ya know there's, ya know the way the
reason we do things isn't as cut and dry as black and white as we think it would be and
once you go over to another country you see how other people live and you kind of figure
out the militaries role in all this. Your like well okay, I kinda see why we couldn't just do
this or couldn't just do that, ya know there's more involved but it kinda opens your eyes,
ya know to everything.
Getzelman: Being over in Kuwait, how did people kinda respond to you guys being
over there when you first arrived? Did you have a lot of interactions?
Patton: Yeah, it’s weird. Cause you'll go down the road over there and you're obviously
in a military vehicle with weapons and you'll pass a car load of kids and they'll give you
thumbs up and they'll smile at ya and then the next car will be middle aged man or
something and they just look at ya like they wanna shoot ya. You know so it's a little
weird, it puts you on edge, especially with some of the stuff that went on in Kuwait,
there's different cells of these groups that they fight a little bit of everywhere so it's weird,
it's different.
Getzelman: Does that change your perspective a lot seeing kinda how, here like you
said it's on a much smaller scale how we see things. Ya know people in over countries
they see it completely different. So you definitely get ya know, a view of both worlds.
Did that kind of change your opinions seeing how they see things opposed to us?
Patton: Well as far as that goes you see kinda where they're coming from in a sense of
how they were raised how they live, all their ya know...but its still some of the things ya
know, some of the things they do. I still don’t understand why they do that. You kinda
see where they're coming from but it doesn't make it right or wrong. It's just a difference
of opinion.
Getzelman: Was it a bit of a culture shock to kinda see there, what they think as norms
opposed to us?
Patton: Yeah, oh yeah. And just the country itself with regards to just the layout and the
geography of the country is totally different. When you fly in, you just see sand, that's all
you see. There's no, there's not a lot of trees just palm trees, there's no color, there's really
no blue sky’s. There's sun, no clouds...so its just bright and sand all the time there's no
real contrast...So and ya know at least over here you have rainy days and a difference of
environment changes. It doesn't over there it's just the same thing.
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�Getzelman: Was that a pretty easy adjustment to make, going from being on all these
bases over in the states, and then immediately once you get to New York its like, hey
you're going over to Kuwait.
Patton: Yeah, it kinda puts things in perspective because you kinda plan and you train to
deal with it and you're like alright well when this time comes, you in the mindset of when
it comes...But now you're like, now I'm going so you kinda scale back and you're like
alright well now what I really need to do is kinda start planning
Getzelman: How do you mentally, how do you prepare yourself from going base to base
and then you finally get to kinda to home base and what not and then as soon as you get
there they say alright you're going overseas?
Patton: It's...traveling around here, it goes back to kinda you're on edge in that country. I
think its worse before you leave because you don’t know what to expect the kinda fear of
the unknown to me was worse than when you're over there. When you're over there
you're in a tense situation but at least you kind of know how to prepare for it. You know
what’s going on, once you're there and you see what you're working with for lack of
better words. But I was probably more nervous here leaving just because you don't know
what part of the country you're going to, they don't tell you anything. They just tell you
you're going to this country, so with that being said, you're like wow...I could be
downtown Baghdad, I could be in ya know, Afghanistan...you don’t know yet, the orders
are so general when you leave you get another set, when you get on the plane so we
actually got orders for another country and that's why it was kinda weird for me...I was
like wow! We’re going here and then they redirected us, which were kinda weird, but we
ended up in Kuwait, we got orders for Afghanistan. So.... which isn't much better.
Getzelman: Did you know anything specific about what your orders were supposed to
be for Afghanistan?
Patton: No, like I said they're really vague because they try to keep it as secretive as
they can before you get in country. And then they'll say alright you're here because this is
your mission and they give you basically a job description of what you're supposed to do
and my company was like a mechanics a maintenance company and that was our job, our
job was to basically take care of three maybe four infantry battalions that would bring
their equipment to us and it was our job our goal.
Getzelman: Did you ever have anything where the infantry companies would be on the
front line and you guys would have to go in and do any sort of maintenance while
they're...
Patton: Not during any fighting, we would have to go up there and trade stuff out and
see a lot of times, what people don’t really realize I think is there’s, there really wasn't a
whole bunch of fighting. It was more or less random firefights here and there. And that’s
5
�what a lot of those guys were dealing with, because you had no real army vs. army
fighting it was just this group of ten people with rifles.
Getzelman: So it was much more smaller conflicts than on a larger scale?
Patton: Yeah, yeah...and like I said it just, you kinda get used to that after a while
too...you can get into a situation and see things are about to happen. So you kinda prepare
for it but like I said its totally different than being around here.
Getzelman: How much has serving in the military affected your life since you've been
out? What sort of positive things did you take away that maybe you could share with
future generation who are looking to enlist?
Patton: Positive things.... For me the positive would be, being able to say that you know
you got the experience of being under pressure and having to make decisions that directly
affect peoples lives, kinda like being here (Doug is a firefighter)...this is on a lot smaller
scale, its kinda that scenario where I feel comfortable in a really rough situation know I
can handle situations and my thought process sis pretty cleat...just the experience of
having that and that and the discipline of things just being responsible for yourself just
small stuff just taking acre of yourself just looking after your own finances your own
everything. Your equipment your gear that kind of thing I see with other people ya
know.... anybody that wasn’t in the military you can kinda pick up on little things like
that...that and the physical end of it trying to stay in shape, stuff like that...there's a few
positives a few negatives but I wouldn’t change it. That’s one of the things I kinda ask
myself sometimes is would I change it if I could go back and ya know had the option to
not go and I'd go because like I said there's so much you get from it ya know it ill make
you a better person a stronger person
Getzelman: Do you think if the events of September 11th had never happened do you
think you still would have joined?
Patton: I don’t know that’s hard to say, probably not there again that was a lot of the
reason I joined. Some of the reason I joined was because I was 21 and I kinda wanted to
get out get away for a little bit and I needed that, that kinda helped me...ya know
everyone when they're younger they wanna get out wanna leave town, they don’t wanna
be here but the more you see of the word the more you realize that wow, I had a really
awesome deal there, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Kinda going back to third world
country stuff its once you see how other people live you really appreciate what you have
and it makes the problems that you have really not that big of a deal things that you
usually stress about and that’s one of the things that I kinda well enjoy I guess is the
ability to say wow I appreciate small things now that’s a good thing that’s positive
Getzelman: If you could take one phrase from your entire service how would you
describe it to someone else in just a few words. What was the best thing you took out of
it?
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�Patton: I would just say it's a wild ride cause you do so much stuff in such a small
amount of time and you know be here one day here another doing this and that, and you
got to be able to roll with it ya know be flexible. That’s another positive thing I can pull
out of it too.
7
�
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.
File size
58.2 KB
41.4 MB
Format, digital
MP3
Military Branch
military branch (U.S. Army, etc)
U.S. Army
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Getzelman; Austin
Patton; Doug
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Getzelman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Patton, Doug
Interview Date
10/15/2012
Number of pages
7
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:18:07
Date digitized
2/6/2015
Checksum
alphanumeric code
1365302d69f6a0db2ee336b949752c1d
35a9d983d7e335afdb2a7524c923805c
Scanned by
Leah McManus
Equipment
Adobe Acrobat XI Pro
Resolution
300
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.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
UA.5018. American Military History Course Records
Recording rate
A/V rate (48,000kzh x 16 bit)
48000kzh x 16 bit
Format, original
Electronic File
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
5018_Patton_Doug_20121015_transcript_M
5018_Patton_Doug_audio_A
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Doug Patton [October 15, 2012
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Getzelman, Austin
Patton, Doug
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a>
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Doug Patton joined the military after September 11th and entered basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After basic, he went to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) and shortly after was deployed to Kuwait. He says there wasn't much fighting there, only "random firefights."
Subject
The topic of the resource
Patton, Doug
Veterans
Iraq War, 2003-2011
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
Afghanistan
AIT
Fort Sill Oklahoma
Kuwait
September 11th