William (Bill) Link oral history interview

Oral history interview with William P. Link for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. Link discusses his childhood, growing up in Laredo Texas in a family of eleven children. He shares his experience as a white child in a majority Mexican American community. He describes the transition from Texas to the Naval Academy where he attended college. Link shares what was expected of him as a student at the Naval Academy and an experience marching in President John F. Kennedy’s funeral as a midshipman. He describes his semester spent in Peru at the Peruvian Naval Academy. He describes his first assignment on the USS Nicholas, a destroyer out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Link was a communications officer and he describes life on ship, his duties, and where the ship traveled. Link also describes command duty officer school in Newport, Rhode Island, prior to his assignment as chief engineer on the anti-submarine destroyer, the USS Brownson. He attended Vietnamese language and counterinsurgency school in Coronado, California. Link discusses his time as an American advisor on a Vietnamese riverboat, Vietnamese ship 229, on the Mekong Delta. He shares his medals and service ribbons from combat. He discusses his experience at Northeastern University working on his master’s degree in business. Link describes his career post graduate school working in computer companies.