Historic Laredo

making money, and at such great expense to the
American people—58,000 young men and
women taken from their families, a trillion dollars
in 1999 dollars, the removal by violence of
elected officials with high ideals that clashed
with those of the military industrial complex,
like President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy,” he
said. “Read JFK, The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to
Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Read Bloody Treason.
The explanations in those books for the war in
Vietnam are day-and-night opposites for the
reasons we thought we were in Vietnam when
we were 19,” Godines said.
“Not my children, not anyone’s children. I
don’t want them to be exposed to any unnecessary
war. There are more good people in the
world than bad. According to our current CIA,
the narcotic dollar is destroying global democracies.
The military industrial complex has been
replaced by a money laundering complex.
Narcotic dollars fuel oppressive regimes, like
Syria’s. Narcotic dollars are destroying countries,
continents, and lives. As humans, we have
the ability to change how our government does
business, to have a voice in its policies. As parents,
we have the responsibility to raise good
children who respect each other and who
respect life, children who know that drugs are
the ruin of lives. This world is asking us to be
role models of respect and education. This
world is asking us to re-weave the tapestry that
holds us together, to make it grow, to allow us to
live in peaceful co-existence,” Godines said.
A CIVILIAN IN VIETNAM
“There was danger everywhere,” recalled José
Cardona Martinez of his time in Vietnam as a
civilian who worked for Lockheed to repair
damaged aircraft. “Since the object of the
enemy’s focus was to destroy aircraft, including
those I worked on, it seemed at times to me that
I would not get out alive,” he remembered.
“I saw it then, but could not say it then—
Vietnam was a mess, a waste of human lives,
resources, countries, hearts and lives. The idea
that Americans and foreign troops would fight
the Viet Cong in the jungle while the regular
North Vietnamese and the regular army of
South Vietnam would fight over the cities was a
ridiculous idea. Why would you send an inexperienced
G.I. to find the enemy in the jungle
country of the enemy? That is why we lost so
many men. I had worked at many bases repairing
aircraft for return to combat, but I have
never seen the level of incompetence and lack
of heart that I saw in Vietnam. The people of
South Vietnam did not want you there. Those
who helped you in the day worked doubly hard
at night to hurt you.”
Martinez, who is known to his Catholic War
Veteran contemporaries as “J.C.” or “Lefty,” was
in Vietnam from April 1967 to March 1969.
“Saigon was under rocket fire when I got
there. I was there for three months at Ben Hoa
Air Force Base and then moved all over
Vietnam—Tan Son Nhut, Chu Lai, Da Nang,
Kan To,” Martinez continued.
“We were targets. It wasn’t a war. There was no
front. It was guerrilla warfare,” he said.
A civilian working for a defense contractor,
Martinez wore a uniform but carried no weapon
in Vietnam.
His career in the military began as a PFC in the
United States Marine Corps. Martinez enlisted in
1946 and was assigned to VMR Marine Squadron
352 in Pearl Harbor. “We were part of a Marine
Air Force service squadron. The C-54 was our
airplane, a cargo and transport plane. We flew to
different islands to take food and supplies,”
Martinez said. He was discharged June 13, 1947
and returned to his family in San Antonio. “I got
❖
A 1967 map of South Vietnam.
Chapter VI ✦ 55