Marion Ronald ‘Ron’ Oates, Jr., author of Our Boys In Vietnam: The Town of Faison’s Welcome Home, receives copies of the book he spent approximately three years researching and writing. (Ron Oates|Courtesy photo)
Throughout Our Boys In Vietnam: The Town of Faison’s Welcome Home, author Ron Oates includes QR codes linking readers to videos that help further tell the stories. This particular page shows Oates at a Veterans Appreciation Day event held October 20, 2015, where each Faison-area veteran (or a family member of each deceased veteran) received a specially-made medal (shown in photo). Veterans from all wars, not just Vietnam, were honored. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Charles Jones is a highly decorated veteran who served two tours in Vietnam. In 2011, when being evaluated for PTSD by a psychiatrist at the VA Center in Fayetteville, he realized that the doctor could not begin to imagine what he had lived through. To help her better understand his experience, he asked permission to ask her three questions, and she agreed. Those questions were: Have you ever gone 79 days without being able to change clothes or take a bath? Have you ever had to put your best friend in a body bag? Have you ever had to dig up a grave?
This is one of the stories shared by Marion Ronald “Ron” Oates, Jr. in his book Our Boys in Vietnam: The Town of Faison’s Welcome Home, and even today when he recounts this story his voice breaks with emotion. “It’s amazing how some people got the courage that they did,” he says.
Oates lives in Raleigh, but he grew up in Faison and graduated from North Duplin in 1962. Since retiring in 2012 he has dedicated much of his time to becoming an expert on his hometown’s history. Through his research, he learned that more than 80 Faison-area men served during the Vietnam War (though not all were stationed in Vietnam) and six Faison-area soldiers were killed during the war. Wanting to tell their stories led to the writing of Our Boys in Vietnam.
Researching and writing the book was “about a three-year project, and many, many hours,” Oates reveals. “The last 10 percent of the book…probably took 20 to 25 percent of the actual time, just to finish it off and get it right.”
Much of his research came in the form of the interviews he conducted with numerous veterans. Those interviews, he says, are “really what makes a book like this special.”
One of the men Oates interviewed was Linwood Thornton, who was a dog handler during the war, patrolling alongside his German Shepherd, Hasso. In telling Thornton’s story, Oates inserted a QR code that directs readers to a YouTube video entitled “War Dogs of Vietnam.” Although the video doesn’t specifically show Thornton and Hasso, it is well worth watching, as it tells about an aspect of the Vietnam War not often told — the importance of the 4000 dogs (German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers) used during the war for such purposes as scouting and detecting dangers (like trip wires), and the special bonds formed between the dogs and their handlers. “It is hard to watch that video and not get emotional,” says Oates.
This isn’t the only instance in which Oates makes use of QR codes; they’re scattered throughout the book. “I’d never seen anybody include QR codes as part of the story,” he notes. He decided to use them to help bring the stories alive, although he admits that initially some readers didn’t know how the codes were to be used.
The video about war dogs is over an hour long, but many of the videos referenced in the book are much shorter — just a matter of minutes. And they really do help add an entirely new dimension to the book.
Prior to writing Our Boys in Vietnam, in 2015 Oates helped organize an event in Faison to coincide with the town’s annual Market Days. The purpose of the event was to honor local veterans of all wars. A special medal was commissioned for the occasion, with a medal being presented to all living veterans in attendance (about 170) and to the family members of deceased veterans (about 130). Oates says about 800 people attended the event.
“That event was a very moving event for the veterans,” he recalls. “It was, many would say, the first time they’d ever had any recognition. And most of them had just had to put their service in the back of their mind.”
Videos were taken during the event (by Nelson Best and Douglas Best) and QR codes for those would later be included in Our Boys in Vietnam, which was written and published several years later, in January 2022.
The focus of the book is on the Faison-area men who served in the war, but it’s helpful that the book begins by providing broader, more general information about the war. For example, a timeline of the war is given and several maps of Vietnam are included; this helps set the stage for the individual stories that follow.
Three or four months after the book’s publication, a book signing was held in the fellowship hall of the Faison Presbyterian Church. Oates describes it as the perfect atmosphere for the event: “It was cozy and very friendly…and some of the members of the Faison Improvement Group, they made cakes and food for people to enjoy.”
The book signing was unique in that Oates had a special request: “I said, I don’t want it to be about me; I want it to be about the veterans.” So, in addition to getting Oates’s signature, those in attendance also went around to the 15 or so veterans who were present and got their signatures, as well.
One of the more moving — and surprising — occurrences at the signing, according to Oates, was that “the veterans, they would just spontaneously walk up to the microphone and start talking.”
He found it particularly gratifying to see that the veterans “just enjoyed themselves immensely.”
Our Boys In Vietnam wasn’t Oates’s first book exploring Faison’s history (in 2019, he published Baseball Boys of 1908: 100 Years of Sports History in the Faison Area), nor will it be his last (he is currently at work on Historic Faison: Founded in 1776).
Copies of Our Boys In Vietnam and Baseball Boys of 1908 are available for in-house browsing in the reference section of the Faison Library and are also available for check-out from this library. Further, the books can be requested from other libraries that will be able to access them from the Duplin County library system.
