The Interview: Colonel Bill Callender

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Bill Callender, the President of the Battleship Commission which oversees Battleship Park, believes that historical parks like it are important reminders of our past and the cost of freedom.

Callender, a retired US Army Colonel and Vietnam veteran, sat down recently for "The Interview".

"That park is a great place, the relics, the battleship, the airplanes, the people, its great for me to be there," said Callender of Battleship Park.

The 175-acre USS Alabama Battleship Park is full of the relics of war and is one of Alabama's most visited tourist attractions. The tools of American warriors have been on display there since the Battleship first opened for tours in 1965.

"Our pavilion is the only place where you can go in an air museum and see an F-14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 all in the same place. It's unique because there are only two F-17's ever built and we have one," Callender said.

He believes that "if we don't teach our young ones what those objects were for, we're going to lose the freedoms that we have."

"If you don't know the history, you're going to repeat the mistakes," he said.

One mistake Callender highlighted was how Vietnam War veterans were treated when they returned home after the end of the war in the mid-1970s. He said when his unit returned they came home as individuals flying into Travis Air Base and many of them changed into civilian clothes when they arrived because they were advised not to be in uniform.

"Some of us didn't have any choice; we didn't have any civilian clothes. We caught the bulk of the anti-war resentment just because we were doing what we were told," Callender remembered.

In March 2012, Battleship Park was the site of a homecoming ceremony for a number of Vietnam veterans to hopefully help heal old wounds.

"This homecoming meant a lot to these guys, I mean it really did, they had an opportunity to be welcomed home by the Governor, and our Mayor, it was a good time, they came to be welcomed," said Callender.

Callender stressed that, though the servicemen only did what they were supposed to do, they came to be disdained as opposed to the politicians who put them there.

"That war divided a lot of this nation," he said.

"We were strangers in a foreign land, the Viet Cong owned everything around us, we got shot at a lot, like every day, you were in combat," said Callender, who served his first tour in Vietnam as an US Army Ranger.   

"The mission was to go out and look and listen, but it was dirty and stealthy, quiet and hazardous, very hazardous," he said.

During his second tour, he returned as an Army Helicopter pilot. Callender said the metal on the helicopter doesn't offer as much protection as one would think. Armored seats offered the pilots in the front protection but the back seats had no such armor.

"And you're just a sitting or slow moving target; it made a young man old real quick," Callender said.

However, there wasn't much of a need for it, according to Callender.

"We didn't take a lot of hostile fire because we dropped leaflets and said, 'If you shoot at us we're going to answer with big guns, cannons,' and we would. They knew the firepower we had," he said.

He said there were over 700 helicopters in the division.

"We could go get them," he added.

Callender said another misconception about the Vietnam War is what some say about how the war ended.

"We didn't lose that war. U.S. Congress lost that war: they stopped funding," he said. "It really irks me when I hear that we lost the war. Military didn't lose that war, we did every mission, won every battle that we were asked to fight, had to fight. We won them and won them with vigor and pride.

"The guys that we fought with in Vietnam, they're part of the great generation. They went, many of them were draftees, they did what we asked them to do."

Callender said there is no greater honor, to him, than to command American troops in combat.

Some of the men Callender commanded are among the 175 Mobile and Baldwin county service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial wall at Battleship Park. He said seeing some of the names of the men he commanded and knew personally makes it tough to go see the memorial. He said it's an emotional journey every time he sees the wall.

"Its something you have to live with, get over, I was blessed to have great men, young and old to do the missions with, God bless them all," he said.