Burton Quist oral history interview

The Scope and Contents note of this oral history was originally generated by feeding the electronic transcript into OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o on 2024 July 26. It was then reviewed and edited by a human.

Oral history interview with Burton C. Quist, Dartmouth Class of 1968, for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. Quist recounts his early life growing up in a Swedish-American family in Massachusetts. He describes his involvement with the NROTC program at Dartmouth and his perception of anti-war sentiment on campus. Quist details how his plans to join the Marine Corps after graduation were delayed due to back surgery, leading him to enroll in a Master of Arts in Teaching program at Wesleyan University. He then discusses his training as an infantry officer and his deployment to Vietnam, where he served in the Marine Corps’ Combined Action Program working with South Vietnamese militiamen. Quist describes his responsibilities serving in the Marine Corps, such as intelligence and civil-military affairs, and he reflects on the winding down of U.S. operations in Vietnam and the historical impact of the war.