Clyde Rivers was 18 years old when he walked into the Marine Corps recruiting office after a night shift at U.S. Steel. Young, Black and filled with a longing to be part of something greater than himself, he didn’t wait to be drafted, so he volunteered. His decision to serve in Vietnam wasn’t about politics, college deferments, or protest. It was about purpose, about doing what he felt was his duty as an American, even when America had not always returned that sentiment in kind.
“I really felt a little patriotic going into the Corps,” Rivers said. “I felt blessed leaving the Nam.”
Now in his 70s, Rivers reflects on the tension many Black Americans have grappled with for generations: What does it mean to fight for a country that has not always fought for you?
The Choice to Serve
Rivers wasn’t drawn to higher education. The booming steel industry offered immediate income and material rewards–like his brand-new Ford Mustang–but they felt fleeting. “Suddenly I realized that I wanted to pursue something more meaningful,” he recalls. That “something” became the United States Marine Corps.
He recounts his experience entering the USMC: “Out of basic, after infantry training at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, was transferred to 29 in California. After a couple of months there, they needed personnel at Barstow, which was also located in the Mojave Desert. They needed help in the Food Service Department, specifically in a huge bakery. I volunteered.
“They sent me back East to Camp Lejeune where I went to school for Food Service for a couple of months. After that training, I returned to Barstow to work in the bakery. I made E-4 NCO, Corporal, in 18 months. After being in the Marines for almost two years, I was transferred to Camp Pendleton for Infantry training. With four other platoons, I was then sent to the First Marine Air Wing in Da Nang. I hung out with the wild bunch and lost a stripe there for being off-limits in a village named Dog Patch. I had the chance to stay in the Nam and try to get my stripe back, but my three-year enlistment was up. I called it a day. They flew us back to El Toro in California, where I received an Honorable Discharge.”
For Rivers, Vietnam represented not only a geographic departure from home but a symbolic one; it was a dare to do something that stretched beyond a steel mill job in blue-collar, industrial America – a leap toward purpose, identity, self-discovery and belonging in a country still learning to see him fully. He enlisted voluntarily, chasing what he now describes as “adventure,” though he acknowledges the weight of that choice.
“I went to the ‘Nam to do what I had to do. Serve the country,” he said simply. “If I didn’t enlist, they would get me anyway.”
Fear, Discipline and Pride
Boot camp at Parris Island tested Rivers’ mettle. “They scare the fear out of you,” he laughs. “They teach you to face fear and be afraid to be afraid.”
It was here that Rivers began to understand the meaning of discipline – not just as military protocol but as a mindset.
“The Corps taught me to always try to keep a strong mind and body. At times I strayed from that discipline, but I always tried to return to it.”
That training would carry him through deployments, the Tet Offensive, and long stretches guarding the perimeter at Da Nang. His unit–the First Marine Air Wing – was surrounded by bunkers and fences that separated them from Vietnamese neighborhoods known to harbor Viet Cong operatives.
The Paradox of Patriotism
Rivers’ story speaks to a larger, often unspoken question: What does patriotism look like for Black Americans?
From Crispus Attucks to the Tuskegee Airmen, Black service has always been paradoxical – risking life and limb for freedoms still withheld at home. Rivers’ reflections may generate more questions than answers. He didn’t march in protests or burn draft cards.
“It was a means to an end for a newly minted 18-year-old, seeking to claim his place in a nation still struggling to recognize the full humanity of those who looked like him – at a time marked by the assassinations of Malcolm X, Dr. King, and Fred Hampton, the uprising in Watts, and the deadly protests at Kent State against the Vietnam War.”
“Freedom and Democracy is the gift that Americans inherit at birth,” Rivers said. “Some have more opportunities than others, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the individual to make the right choices.”
War, Loss and Becoming
“I never compared love with death,” Rivers said, “but I know I loved leaving Vietnam, because I was leaving a lot of death behind.”
Rivers never sought to be a hero. He doesn’t romanticize war. He speaks candidly about friends lost, villages bombed, and the dehumanizing cost of military conflict.
“When you see how people die in a war zone – civilians along with soldiers – it makes you love life.”
Yet amid that destruction, he also found glimpses of beauty and transformation: swimming in the China Sea, witnessing how people lived in third-world villages, and sharing beers off-duty at concerts near Hill 327. These experiences, while shaped by the trauma of war, expanded his worldview.
Black Man, U.S. Marine
For Rivers, service was also about belonging. Not just to a military unit, but to an idea of America that – while flawed – was still his to claim. He didn’t enlist to prove loyalty; he enlisted because it was an avenue open to him, one that felt purposeful.
“Everybody my age was getting drafted,” he says. “But I was ready to do something different.”
What does he tell his 18-year-old self now?
“Get a good education first. Chase your adventure later.”
Looking Ahead
Clyde Rivers’ story isn’t about glorifying war or denying the ugly truths of America’s racial history. It’s about a young Black man choosing to serve with dignity, knowing the contradictions of the nation he served. It’s about walking the tightrope between sacrifice and survival, discipline and disillusionment, love for country and love for self.
When asked if he’d do it all again, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Yes, I would. Only better.”
His words offer no easy answers to the question of Black patriotism–but they offer something more enduring: truth, layered with complexity, told by a man who lived it.
“I really wasn’t concerned about being a hero. There were already a lot of heroes who had died in the NAM. I just wanted to show up and do my best.” – Clyde Rivers