For Veterans Day, Ann Alquist visited with the Head of Reference Services, Sarah Walker, at the Heritage Center in Bismarck to learn more about two veterans she interviewed as part of an oral history project: Nathan Goodiron and Thelma Saxby.
Nathan Goodiron:
Base camp was pitch black at night. I wasn't on one that was big, I was on a smaller one, so pitch black and all that. So when I got there, big difference. There's no difference, you know. So when I got to Vietnam, it was like being back home. I was still, no electricity and no running water, but we had sea rats, you know.
So we were busy all the time, so I didn't have time for all that, you know. But talking about veterans, we were, and my mother, but on my father's side, we go way back. If you look at the book, we go back to Little Bighorn and before that.
Sarah Walker:
I met Paul through a different interview I did. Paul's son, Nathan, was in Afghanistan and was one of our casualties from North Dakota, from this area.
And talking to Paul, he came in to do this interview. He was so excited to share about what he had experienced. He was so proud of what he had done as to what his son had done as well. And he just, he was, he was a firecracker.
He has since passed away, and I'm really glad that we have this history with him.
Ann Alquist:
So let's talk about our next veteran, a woman, Thelma Saxby. This clip that we're going to hear from her was about delivering babies. She saw a lot of deliveries with the military brides when she was, that was part of her service.
Thelma Saxby:
She had a weak uterus, so she was bed bound. The story back on medical was she was just full of gas and they couldn't do anything to get rid of the gas. And I told her to stick her butt up in the air. And she couldn't wait until the visitors had left. She made quite a racket.
But her baby was born early. She wasn't stillborn. She was very lively.
Ann Alquist:
So what I love about Thelma is about the day to day life of military service.
Sarah Walker:
The day to day matters are not always the same as seeing combat, as being POW or experiencing some of those really horrific parts of war. But I think that there was a lot of honor in that for all of these men and women.
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Today's Dakota Datebook collected by Sarah Walker.
