G. Theodore Talbot, Jr. oral history interiew

Oral history interview with G. Theodore Talbot Jr., Class of 1965. Oral, for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. He describes growing up in New Jersey and his experience attending Peddie School for his junior and senior years of high school, where he finished third in his graduating class from high school. Talbot discusses his arrival to Dartmouth, his participation in the Outing Club, joining Phi Kappa Psi, and joining the Army ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps], and how his social life as mostly revolving around Outing Club activities. Talbot tells of his time after Dartmouth as a graduate student at Princeton prior to receiving his orders for Vietnam. Talbot discusses his transition from school into the Army in January of 1969 where his duties were administrative/project management desk work. Talbot describes his time in an ARPA [Advanced Research Projects Agency] field unit in Vietnam. He shares his perspective on the Army’s phrase, “win their hearts and their minds will follow” as having not been successful. Talbot describes being pro-war prior to arriving in Vietnam and very quickly became disillusioned which led to a sense of mistrust in governments. He recounts his time after the Vietnam War and his career in market research and how he returned to a career in counseling.