December 1st, 1988. This is Martha Mayo,
Sterling Municipal Library. I'm having an oral history
conversation with James Collins. You were born
in Galveston? Born in Galveston in 1947. Grew up,
attended high school, and served in the
military out of Galveston. Two years active Marines,
and four-year reserve, and one-year Texas
National Guard in Lamar, Texas. But you were in Vietnam?
Yes ma'am. Whereabouts? In what we consider the
I Corps area, the name South Vietnam. First Marine
Division, 27th Marines. What was that like? To
quote a phrase, war is hell. It was a trying
experience. It was an experience that had
anyone been there, anyone who's ever been there would
never forget. You're talking about 19 year olds
who probably, like me, had never been any further
than 250 miles away from mom and dad. And you
wake up one morning and somebody says, you're
12,500 miles away from California. You know,
you say now this is not, that's a long way from mom
and dad. But it's an experience and though we
didn't really understand why we were there,
I'm proud to to be an American. Well tell me,
you mentioned to me earlier about the battle
you went, that so many went into. This was
caisson. I was attached to a unit that went in
six months earlier. Well in fact, they left San
Diego or Kelp Pendleton, California with about
3,000 men roughly. And six months after we got
there, they were down to 40 people. That's walking,
40 people walking. I asked the question, where
was the rest of them? And the response was dead
or wounded. So you're looking at about 20,
maybe 2,700 men. Was it jungle kind of fighting?
It was
a jungle warfare but caisson was basically a
city. Take Baytown and let's go house to house. Let's
go, you know, let's go fighting in the heart of
the city just like you would on a good old Western.
Yeah and there were people, there were the
Vietcong. The Vietcong were in the area and,
you know,
entrenched in and around the city. And the
objective was to get them out and so that the
town people could have, you know, their city
back. But it cost quite a few lives on both sides,
on both sides. I know at one time I was told
that approximately 5,000 Marines died there.
Just Marines. But then we were also told that
for every Marine that died, two Vietcong gave
up his
life. So I don't know, you know. It must have
been a shock to be 19 or 20 and see that sort of...
It's like I said, it's an experience you'll
never, you'll never forget it. Never. Even
your training probably didn't. The training
really didn't, well it prepared you in a way,
but then after you got there, you know, it's
like, you know, they didn't tell me this. Yeah.
You know,
where's my drill instructor now? What do I do
now? Do I move? Do I... And then you learn over a
period of time that a lot of the things that
they taught you in boot camp, leave them there. Don't
try it. It won't work. You sort of have to get
it OJT. Listen to the guys that have been there
six, seven, eight months before you. Listen to
the guys that say, look, I've been here two
years. You
want to, you want to try to follow the orders
of the experienced soldier. Oh I would think so. Yeah.
Because you get to a point to where you can
hear different things and know what it is. You
can hear certain sounds and know what's
happening. You can, they got to the, some of
them say they
got to the point to where they could smell a
Viet Cong. You know, I mean, there's somebody
in the
area here that's not right. Is there one
incident that stains out in your mind? Well,
yes, we were
fighting over a water well, a regular water
well in the country on this little island off
the coast
of Vietnam. And our objective, well, there were
several water wells there, but the Viet Cong had
poisoned all but one. They needed the water for
their, you know, for their use. And we needed,
we wanted it for our use. So somebody had to
give up the water well. And that was my initial,
first initial, say one-on-one contact with the
Viet Cong. We were attacked one night and I still
don't know today how many of them there were of
them, but there were 14 of us. And our lieutenant
said, hold, get the well. You know, he said
that's, that's as simple as I can put it, get
the well. We
want the well. You guys set up around it. If
they come there tonight to get water or
whatever, you
don't allow that. And that night, about
midnight, one of the Viet Cong threw a, what we
call a four
second delayed grenade in the directions of the
squalier and myself. And the only thing that we
could do was watch this grenade roll toward us.
You got four seconds to clear the area, but thank
God it was a dud. It didn't go off. And I think
about two minutes later, there was a, one of my
friends from North Carolina whose last name was
Best, he said watch it. And we turned to see what
he was talking about. And he just twisted his
ankle and just opened up with what we had, a 30
caliber machine gun. And there was this great
big Chinese guy that had somehow snuck in
behind us
and was ready to waste the squad, everybody on
that front line that was facing that river. And,
but thanks to this guy, you know, he managed to
got the guy, you know, and, you know, that was my,
you know, that was my first time ever walking
over and actually, Jesus, he's dead. You know,
look at the blood just oozing out of him, you
know, and it kind of, you know, kind of left me
sort of numb, I guess. You know, but after
that, you know, my squad leader said,
hey, this is it. So welcome to Vietnam, you
know, and like I said, it was a trying
experience and
that'll be a night that I won't ever forget,
especially that grenade. In fact, I can see it,
you know, rolling, you know. You're in Vietnam
10 months? 10 months. Normally the, your length of
stay there is 13 months. I have a brother,
Clarence Collins, who I told not to, to do so,
join the Marines. And I sort of expected him to
come to Vietnam, but I was anticipating him
waiting until my tour was up. Okay. But anyway,
he, the priest over the unit, the, what do we
call them? Chaplain. He asked the entire unit,
does anyone have a brother in Vietnam? Well,
my brother told me later that a couple of guys
stepped forward. Oh, but not good old Clarence,
you know. No, no, not Clarence. No. So he
didn't say anything. So nothing was done, you
know. So
he'd come on over with his unit and I found out
he was there by going to breakfast one morning
in the cafeteria. And I saw some new guys there
and I said, hey, you know, we asked a few questions.
Yeah, Clarence, Clarence Collins, CC. They
called him CC. Yeah, he's down there asleep,
you know. But
I didn't have permission to leave my area to go
to his area. So we never got visual contact or close
enough to see each other, but then the next 48
hours, they were moved further north to the DMZ.
So we communicated through letters and somehow
my commanding officer found out that I had a
brother there. And I, it was, and my, the
lieutenant that was in control of us had 24
hours to get me
out of the country. Well, two brothers couldn't..
. You can't, you can't have two brothers, uh, something
relating to World War II with the seven, seven,
what is it? Sullivan brothers went down. On all
the ships?
Yeah. Okay, well, for that reason, you can't
have two brothers. I didn't realize that.
Uncles, cousins don't matter. The brothers, you
can't. When your brother got home safely?
Right, all of us returned home safely.
Do you have any other brothers who? I had one
other, no, no, we were the only two in Vietnam.
I had one that
lives in Maryland now, stationed in Germany,
and he was in some top secret unit. He never hush-hush,
you know, and he had a trying experience that
we were glad to be able to help him out of. Some
terrorists was monkeying around with the, his
commanding officer's jeep and whatever, and he
come out, just happened to come out of the area
where he was and saw them. They had guns, according
to him. They looked at him, he had a gun, and
he's just happened to shoot first. Oh my gosh.
And it sort of, you know,
like the drill my mom, Betty, but she called
us, Clarence and I, and we met, look, look,
he's a soldier,
he knows what he's doing, you know, he's fine.
But it so happened that one of the guys, one of the
terrorists was killed and the other one was
wounded real bad, and the only thing that
really upset me
as a brother was that his CO, his commanding
officer, made him attend the funeral, and I didn't
understand that, you know, but he's fine now.
He lives in Maryland, he's married, just built a
beautiful home up there, so, you know, so my
mom has closed the book on Uncle Sam. I hope so.
But other than that, you know, that's
basically us, that's, yeah, that's us. But now
tell me about your, start, let's see, start
with your, your
grandmother. How many grandchildren does she
have? Last count, 70. And her name is what?
Clara Gatlin.
Okay, she's a Gatlin. Right. That's your
mother's mother? Right. Okay. So she has 70
grandchildren, you're one of them.
I'm the oldest grandchild of the 70
grandchildren, and we have 63 grandchildren, we
have four more that should
land sometime between now and 1989. Oh. We have
four more, maybe 67 great-grandchildren. Oh.
And the oldest great-grandchild is
17. Oh my goodness, that's all the people in
the same age group. You know, so, you know, we
have stair steps. Yeah. So it's through her,
then, that the Gatlin connection comes?
Well, really through my grandfather. Yeah, oh,
that's right. Yeah, through Dave Gatlin. Is
Dave Gatlin in this family? Right, that's my
grandfather. That's your grandfather.
That's my grandfather. Okay. All right, now,
you, your family traced its, its history?
Roots, right, it's, well, well, what they call
roots or whatever. Yeah. So when did you start
that? Oh, we started in 1977, and it took us
approximately two years and a whole lot of
phone calls and driving.
And everybody worked on it? Everybody, there
were several of us in the family that, in
certain sections of the country, you know.
Well, what did you get? You know, we'd exchange
information and then we just compiled it together.
Well, how did you even begin to get, I mean, I,
that sounds like a huge job. Well, it all
started with some of the older people that are
here, like the Unker Ike. Some of us knew him.
And he would sit and tell us stories, you know,
and how they used to, when they were trying to
learn how to read, how they used to go and get
under big, these big black pots and cover themselves.
Right, because it was illegal for blacks to
learn to take, have any schooling at all, you
know, any type of education was, you know,
strictly against the rules. And where was that?
And this was in Savannah, Georgia.
And, and, you know, and then we had other
people that lived in the area where my
grandparents lived that knew other members of
the family, and they could tell you who married
who and who, whose son was who and whose
daughter was where and what.
Well, how did you finally trace it back then to
Georgia? That's pretty far back.
That was the stopping, well, that was the
stopping off point on the arrival from Kenya.
So, we first found out that they were slaves in
Georgia, and then some of the relatives went to
Savannah, Georgia.
And we found that this doctor, Tom Gatlin, had
actually purchased some people that came from
Kenya. And from those three people, Rayter,
George, and Ike, then there's five generations
of them.
Okay, so he purchased two brothers and a sister?
A brother and two sisters in some kind of way.
Anyway, the family stayed together.
And we understand that there was some children
that were, from what we can gather, Rachel was
a bright, complected woman. She didn't look
like she was from Africa.
So, she was Dr. Gatlin's cook.
And she had 11 children for him, but they were
sold immediately. So, there are others of us
that we'll never know. We won't ever know.
They were sold as babies.
I mean, that was unheard of. You don't do that.
Isn't that just appalling?
But that was then. That was the time.
She never got to keep a child?
No. Simply because she was black and he was
white, and that was taboo.
You know the family came from Kenya. Do you
know anything about the family?
No, we don't know anything about the tribal
part of it or whatever, because they were
brought from Kenya by other slave blacks to the
coast of Africa to be sold.
So, they had blacks capturing blacks.
But there are no stories about that that came down?
No, we could never get heads or tails of that.
We never could get any additional information.
No more than just, that's where they came from.
But we don't know what tribe or what language.
We just know that this was home and somehow
they ended up on the coast of Africa and put on
ships and brought over.
Were they lucky that it was Dr. Tom Gatlin that
purchased it?
Yes. Now, according to Onka Ike, he never
abused them. He treated everybody equal. He
didn't beat them or misuse them.
In fact, in 1867, when they left Savannah, Dr.
Gatlin moved to Quicha, Louisiana to be near them.
He did?
As a friend. He moved and his place is there today.
And it was strictly because of them?
Yes, because of them. They're gone and I'm
leaving Georgia too.
Well, for goodness sake.
But then after that, we don't know what
happened to Dr. Tom Gatlin.
I see.
After that, we don't know what direction he took.
He didn't keep up.
No, we didn't keep up with him. I guess they
say, hey, we're free. We're no longer your
taskmaster now.
For goodness sake.
But for those people, this is why we're here.
Why did they choose Shreveport to settle in
after this war?
Well, I guess when you're running away from something.
And then I think they had just opened up the
state of Louisiana for people that was looking
for a haven to go from point A to point B for freedom.
They had just opened up I think in 1839 or
somewhere along there.
They had just opened that up then.
And then in 1867, my family undoubtedly had
heard Louisiana as the place you ought to be.
I see. Well, did they buy land? Were they able to?
No, they lived on, what do you call it, sharecrops.
And whatever you produced, you shared it with
the original owner.
And this went on for years, probably
generations, all the way down to my grandfather.
And he was able to purchase an acre.
And then he ended up with about 25 acres of
another piece of land in another little city
called Logansport.
And this is where now we have our family, well,
they call it the Gatlin Estate.
I call it Grandma's house.
She still lives there?
She still lives there. She has a six-room house
which she raised.
Which grandmother? That's not Miss Clara.
That's the only grandmother I have now.
And she has a little six-room house where she
raised, I know of, nine of the kids there.
And she stays there by herself now.
And she travels quite a bit. She goes.
She has children in Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina.
And Detroit, Michigan.
Again, we scattered.
Do you ever see those?
Yes, yes. We either see each other or we call.
I haven't heard from you. What is your malfunction?
I see. Now they're your uncles and aunts.
Aunts and uncles.
And we're all, there's a high school also in
Logansport where I was the first grandchild to
ever attend the same school where all 13 of the
children graduated.
I went from the first to the second grade there. Uh-huh.
Then we moved to Galveston.
I see.
But if you go to this one particular high
school, you can go back five generations.
Is that right?
Right there in Logansport.
Isn't that?
It's something.
To have that sense of roots.
Yeah, of where we are, you know, and who we are.
What brought your family to Galveston? Why did you?
My dad worked hauling, what is it, lumber, pup
wood or whatever, in the summer times in
Logansport, Longstreet, Keecher, Shreveport area.
Okay, and naturally when it got cold, the rains
come in, they couldn't get the trucks back there.
So my father has uncles that were living in Galveston.
So they told him about the waterfront, the longshoremen.
So dad would, in between seasons, dad would
work in Louisiana, then he'd go to, come to
Galveston for the winter and work on the waterfront.
So that's, so finally mom, after three boys,
four boys, mom said, this is enough.
Now we either stay here in Louisiana or we go
to Texas.
No more of this back and forth and dragging the
kids out of school.
So we, Dad finally agreed and said, well, let's
go to Galveston.
So we all planted our roots on the island,
they've been there 41 years now. Wow.
In Galveston, Iowa.
And so.
Is that a good place to grow up?
I love it.
I've been around the world and y'all can give
me Galveston.
Is that right? Yes.
That's good to hear.
You can give me Galveston.
You can keep your Los Angeles and your
Philadelphias and your New York, but you can
give me my Galveston.
That's my home. Yeah.
You know, and I love my home.
I love my school and everything.
I went to one of the oldest black high schools
in the state of Texas.
What, no? Central.
It was moved from Marshall, Texas to Galveston.
And so I have that honor. Yeah.
You know, to, there's two of us.
My brother that went to Vietnam, he and I were
the only two.
Oh, the two of us. Right.
And everybody else, you know, went to Galveston
Ball, which is a good school too. Yeah.
You know, but Yay Central. Yeah.
But you were telling me something about one of
your grandfathers wouldn't allow the children
to work. Yeah.
This was my grandfather.
That's Miss Claire's husband. Right.
Dave Gatlin.
Everybody called him Dreamer.
I don't know why, but he was big daddy to us.
And as far as I can remember, he would never
let his kids work, you know, outside of the
home unless he was somewhere in the area.
You would never go, the girls could never go
and clean up Miss Washington's house.
The boys, if Mr. Johnson wanted his yard cut,
my grandfather had to be in the area.
You were never allowed to go and do anything
for anybody because he had this thing, you're
a Gatlin.
And as long as you're a Gatlin, you don't do
that without my permission.
So, most of the girls especially, they were 18
or older before they got their own job.
But they had a real sense of who they were.
Of who they were.
Real pride.
Right, right.
I mean, you're not, my grandfather used to say,
you're just not anybody, son.
You're not just anybody, you're a Gatlin.
And the community.
And the community, we still are, we're well
known in that area and everybody knows Mr. Kramer.
That's all you had to say and you could get gas
at the filling station, you know.
But, he was a Pentecostal minister, but he was
a no-nonsense man.
Don't come with your foolishness.
Now, if my children did something, you tell me.
And we hope you didn't tell him.
Pretty rough, isn't it?
Yeah, if my grandchildren did something, were
to do something, we again hope that you wouldn't
tell him.
But he believed in discipline.
He believed in having children.
And he believed in questioning to death the
poor guy that was dating his daughters.
They had a time limit for you to stay there.
And they had a signal when it was time for you
to leave.
So your daddy went through that.
And my mom.
And your mom, yeah.
Well, they were already married.
But the younger sisters under my mom, they had
to hear this. Yeah.
That means the guy's to be standing up. Yeah.
And when grandma come through there and
accidentally hit the light switch.
Oh, I'm sorry.
And turn it back on.
He should be headed out the door.
Now, the next thing you will hear will be that
belt across your back.
Because those people didn't, you know, I mean
that's what they. Yeah.
You know, that was their rules and their regulations.
And you didn't come there unless the grownups
were there.
You said, yes ma'am, yes Sir, no sir, no ma'am.
You was questioned about who your family was.
And if it was something in that family that
they didn't like, you weren't coming back there.
You know, and if grandma looked at you and saw
something she didn't like in you, you
weren't coming back.
Pretty rough.
You know, I mean that's the way that they did
it then. Yeah.
You know.
Yeah, pretty well.
Yeah, and it worked out.
Most of the girls who were on cried and got all
upset and been out of shape and then they
ended up marrying somebody else. Yeah.
And grandma would say, I told you.
I told you that little boy, Sylvester, you hid over.
Now look at him.
Where is he now?
In prison.
Now that's the one you call Miss Claire, but
you're the only one.
I'm the only one that can call her Miss Claire.
What happens if somebody else does?
She would probably become unglued.
You don't want that.
No, and we don't want that.
My grandmother and I being the first, you know,
we're very close.
She was very instrumental in helping me put
Vietnam behind me.
And because of that, we got to be real close.
You had a problem when you came back? Yes.
Like most Vietnam veterans or any veteran of
any war, there was a lot of hostility.
There was a lot of, you know, what the hell was
I doing there?
And, you know, and where were you, Turkey?
I'm over here fighting and you sitting back
here eating ice cream.
There were times when my nerves were shot to
death, you know, just little nothing.
I'd come unglued at the seams.
And what, you were staying with her then?
I was staying with my mom at the time.
And the phone would ring.
I would snatch it out from the wall without
answering it.
And I would chase my little brothers a half a
block if they slammed the screen door.
So noises?
Noises, anything, anything.
If people stared at me, you know, I had a
problem with stares.
And I would go out to eat and I would never, I
had a problem with sitting in an open restaurant.
I would sit with my back against the wall and I
would have flashbacks.
You did?
And for years I wouldn't watch Westerns or
anything that John Wayne did as far as war movies.
I sort of, in my own way, blamed Mr. John Wayne
for some of the guys that died in Vietnam.
Trying to be.
You know, this idea of making war seem like it
was something glamorous. Yeah.
A lot of us got there and we found out, ah,
this is not the case.
This is real.
You know, this is not John Wayne.
This is not Clint Eastwood.
You know, this is a real McCoy.
And a lot of things, you know.
But thanks to my grandmother, you know, she
took me home with her and talked to me and
done a lot of praying.
And in about two years I've given up.
And I haven't had any problems since. Never.
You know, just no.
You know, you got to drop a bomb on my bed to
wake me up.
Are you starting to tell your little girl?
Some of this family?
Not yet.
She's going to get her copies and she's going
to be told, you know, that you're somebody.
And that you're in a good family.
And that you can be whatever you want to be.
And if you don't want to be anything, then
that's your choice.
But then it won't be because, you know, you
were surrounded by people that weren't anything. Yeah.
Because, you know, you have, you know, we have
firemen and nurses and doctors and, you
know, future doctors.
We have two first cousins that are down at
Azalea University in New Orleans and one at
Washington State.
Go Huskies.
So they want to be doctors.
So we'll have three doctors, hopefully.
In the family.
That'd be wonderful.
So, you know, she's in a good family. Yeah.
And she's my, the apple of my eye.
But other than that, you know, we're just a
simple family, a blessed family.
No, I don't know.
It sounds pretty special to me.
You know, we're blessed.
We're a blessed family.
We're very church-oriented.
In fact, if Grandma found out you haven't been
to church the last two Sundays, she
would want to know why.
And she will call and ask you, what is your malfunction?
If your car won't start, you know.
You better have a good answer.
You better come up with a good reason, you know.
But overall, you know, the family, we consider
ourselves as just being blessed, just a blessed family.
That's wonderful.
That's it.
You know, that's, you know.
Is that your grandfather?
Your great-grandfather?
Oh, no, your great-grandfather.
We called him Papa.
He had coffee cans, any peach cans, just
whatever he could open.
And these are the places that he would put his
money, buried in the yard.
He wore a money belt around his waist until death.
Oh, my goodness.
He didn't believe in banks.
He said, you can't prove to him that those
white people are not taking his money.
So, but that was Papa.
And he didn't mean any harm.
He just didn't understand the banking system,
you know.
He had reason to feel what he did.
And I think when he passed, you know, all of
his children, my grandmother included,
all of them had shovels.
And that place looked like a Punji pit when he
got through with it, you know.
Look under this tree here, you know.
Hey, here's a can here.
Yeah, full of money.
There's $50 bills in here, you know.
Do you remember any other elegance back beyond
your grandmother?
I knew my dad's grandfather, Grandpa Floyd.
And I knew his stepmother, and she was a
Cherokee Indian, and that's all I know.
And I used to walk behind her trying to figure
out why her hair almost touched the floor
and she would never walk on it, you know.
But I was real little.
I didn't know. Yeah.
You know, and I remember Grandpa Floyd because
he gave my brother next to me,
he gave the both of us a little pig.
A real one?
A real one.
You know, he had about 40 of them out there.
And he said, well, that one right there is
yours and that's yours.
But we never went back to see whatever became
of the pig.
But they picked huge.
Big ones.
You know, you know.
But I was fortunate in getting to know both
sides, you know.
I even knew my father's grandmother, Grandma
Momma Della.
We called her Momma Della.
But when I met her, she was sick, very sick.
And the only thing I remember, she had crystal
hair, crystal hair.
And she was a tall woman, a bright, complected woman.
And when I touched her, she was hot.
She had fever.
And I don't remember when she died.
I was five, five.
But I remember Momma Della.