Terry Turner's interview for the Veterans History Project at Atlanta History Center

Catalog number: VIS 201.0573
In this interview, Dr. Terry Turner shares his experiences as a United States Army infantry officer leading a MACV District Mobile Advisory Team during the Vietnam War. Turner wrote the 1985 best-seller "Once A Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam" under the pseudonym David Donovan. He discusses his upbringing on a farm in Colquitt County, Georgia, where his family was "land-rich, but money-poor." He talks about attending the University of Georgia during the mid-1960s and attending ROTC. He went to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1968, and he tells how his first assignment was as executive officer of a door gunner training company at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He then attended the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg for CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) counterinsurgency training. He then describes his deployment to Vietnam on a MACV District Mobile Advisory Team. He talks about how he and four other Americans lived in a village along the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta training local Regional Forces and Popular Forces (RFPFs), which functioned as local defense forces. He describes the area's culture and subsistence agriculture. He describes how operating outside regular Army channels led to logistical issues, in addition to making it hard to relate to most Vietnam veterans. He recounts tactics and stories of how his unit conducted combat operations in coordination with local forces. Eventually he became Senior District Advisor in the area, a role typically being reserved for older, more experienced officers. He discusses the responsibilities it entailed, as well as the social and religious makeup of the district. He recounts how difficult it was to communicate his traumatic experiences. He discusses his post-war career as a professor of urology at the University of Virginia. He tells the story of his abrupt exit and difficult homecoming from Vietnam via Red Cross leave after his father suffered a heart attack. He relates some cherished memories from Vietnam, before discussing virtue and friends from the war to close the interview.