Philip G. Levesque Slides Collection MCC-00432 Finding Aid Prepared by Anne Chamberland, November & December 2016 Acadian
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Philip G. Levesque slides collection MCC-00432 Finding Aid Prepared by Anne Chamberland, November & December 2016 Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes University of Maine at Fort Kent Fort Kent, Maine Title: Philip G. Levesque slide collection Creator/Collector: Philip G. Levesque Collection number: MCC-00432 Shelf list number: UP-432 Dates: 1967 - 1969 Extent: 3 albums (0.14 cubic feet) Provenance: Material was acquired from Mr. Philip Levesque Language: English Conservation notes: All slides were taken out of their carousels and inserted in slide preserver sleeves. Access restrictions: No restrictions on access. Physical restrictions: None. Technical restrictions: A slide projector or a computer/scanner with slide viewing capabilities is needed to access this collection. Copyright: Copyright has been assigned to the Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes Citation: Philip G. Levesque slide collection, MCC-00432, Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes, University of Maine at Fort Kent Separated materials: Not applicable. Related materials: Not applicable. Location of originals: Not applicable. Location of copies: Not applicable. Published in: Not applicable. Biographical information: Philip G. Levesque, the son of Hercule Levesque and Jeannette Dube, was born in 1948 in Frenchville, Maine. Phil attended Dewey School in Frenchville up to the 8th grade and graduated high school in Madawaska in 1966. Phil was drafted in the military in 1967 and was sent to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. After the war, he married Karen Plourde of St. David and lived in Connecticut for a while. Coming back to Maine, Phil served as the Frenchville Town Manager from 1982 to 2011 when he retired. He served as the president of the Frenchville Snowmobile Club; served as administrator of the Northern Aroostook Regional Incinerator Facility; served as a board member of the Frenchville Historical Society. Historical information: Vietnam War, (1954–75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the “American War” in Vietnam (or, in full, the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North. The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.1 Scope and content: This collection consists of 1,350 slides. The slides are mostly about the everyday life of Mr. Levesque while he was a soldier during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1969. Also included are slides from different places in the US where Mr. Levesque was stationed and visited such as Fort Knox, Kentucky, San Francisco, Alaska, Mississippi, Washington and Oregon States. Mr. Levesque also has slides from Australia in 1969 and from his Maine home town of Frenchville. The order of the slides from the carousels was kept and Archives staff numbered each slides from 1 to 1,347. (note: a few slides are numbered with a, b, and c) 1 https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War Inventory: Note: Language within single quotation were written as is from the slides. Descriptions in parenthesis were made by Archives staff. Headlines throughout the inventory were directly copied from the carousel boxes. Box 1 of 3 Choppers attacks on camp, blown-up Jeep, tanks, grounds bouncers, mine fields, 1968 Slide1 ‘Cotto’ (US army truck with white star on driver’s door) Slide 2 ‘Faber’ (soldiers at machine guns) Slide 3 ‘Chinook & plane’ (view of a Chinook helicopter and a plane in the sky) Slide 4 ‘Cargo Chopper’ Slide 5 (Cargo Chopper) Slide 6 (Cargo Chopper) Slide 7 ‘Crane’ (view of cargo chopper & helicopters from the ground) Slide 8 (Cargo chopper & helicopter from the ground) Slide 9 (Cargo chopper & helicopter from the ground) Slide 10 (Cargo chopper & helicopter from the ground) Slide 11 (Cargo chopper & helicopter from the ground) Slide 12 ‘Chopper’ Slide 13 ‘Chopper’ Slide 14 (Helicopter flying) Slide 15 (Chopper in mid-air) Slide 16 ‘Chopper’ (in the air) Slide 17 ‘Don’t Mess with Me’ (view of a tank and observation tower) Slide 18 ‘Lots of Fire Power’ (soldiers in jeeps with machine guns) Slide 20 ‘Rounds Coming in’ (soldiers with guns crouching near a building) Slide 21 ‘Camouflage tank’ (army tank) Slide 22 ‘Where Hide?’ (soldiers walking; view of barrack) Slide 23 ‘Bohn, Mama Rosa’ (3 soldiers with guns crouching near building) Slide 24 ‘Mini guns on Jeep’ Slide 25 ‘Bohn, Ponce, Mama Rosa’ (3 soldiers with guns near building) Slide 26 (View of airfield with choppers) Slide 27 ‘Rocket Target’ (View of airfield with choppers) Slide 28 ‘Rough Job’ (view of airfield with cargo choppers) Slide 29 (helicopter on the ground) Slide 30 ‘Shot-up Chinook’ Slide 31 ‘Let the bastards come out’ (army tanks in field) Slide 32 ‘Taxes’ (view of airfield with choppers) Slide 33 ‘Heavy Load’ (cargo chopper in the air carrying helicopter) Slide 34 ‘Got away lucky’ (view of fences, road, and houses) Slide 35 ‘Where did we go wrong?’ (soldiers with weapons on rock bunker) Slide 36 ‘Houses Lost’ (demolished houses behind fences) Slide 37 ‘Bunker in pain’ (beat-up rock bunker w. soldiers on top) Slide 38 ‘War is Hell’ (demolished houses behind fences) Slide 39 ‘Say Mac! Hone’ (soldier in beat-up jeep) Slide 40 ‘What a mess’ (blown-up army vehicle on back of a truck) Slide 41 ‘Blown up Jeep’ Slide 42 ‘F*** the V.C’s’ (view of houses, people on motorcycles from behind fences) Slide 43 ‘Fasten seat belt’ (blown-up jeep) Slide 44 ‘Customized’ (blown-up US Army jeep in a truck) Slide 45 ‘Sweets’ (looks like Phil Levesque next to barrack) Slide 46 ‘Going to Town’ (looks like Phil Levesque sitting in blown-up jeep) Slide 47 ‘Myers Camera Bug’ (soldier sitting on truck cab taking picture of blown-up jeep) Slide 48 ‘Sorry about That’ (blown-up vehicle) Slide 49 ‘Were they dead?’ (blown-up vehicle) Slide 50 ‘God Damn’ (blown-up vehicle) Slide 51 ‘Lost my wheels’ (blown-up army tank) Slide 52 ‘Blown up A.P.C.’ (blown-up Army Personnel Carrier) Slide 53 ‘Ponce scared’ (soldiers looking at a blown-up vehicle) Slide 54 ‘Rocket hole’ (soldiers, vehicles near barracks) Slide 55 ‘Ration Truck Shot up’ (US Army ration truck with bullet holes) Slide 56 ‘Plugged Up’ (soldiers & vehicles in open garage bay) Slide 57 ‘Staff car’ (car with flat tire) Slide 58 (Completely destroyed machinery) Slide 59 ‘Bombed’ (Completely destroyed machinery) Slide 60 (Completely destroyed machinery) Slide 61 (Chopper in the air) Slide 62 (Cargo chopper with a load) Slide 63 (Dark slide, cannot identify) Slide 64 ‘Troops Moving Thru Rice Paddy’ Slide 65 (Helicopter on ground) Slide 66 ‘Heliport’ (view of airfield) Slide 67 ‘Cargo Chopper’ (on the ground) Slide 68 (Sky and green field) Slide 69 (Sky and green field) Slide 70 ‘Heliport’ (airfield) Slide 71 (Fenced field, apparently mine fields, and house) Slide 72 ‘Swamp Boat’ (view of swamp boat in the background) Slide 73 (Sky and green field – probably a mine field surrounded by fencing) Slide 74 ‘Lovely Honey’ (view of houses across mine field) Slide 75 (view of houses across mine field) Slide 76 ‘Scenic Vietnam’ (view of building across mine field) Slide 77 ‘Bunkers’ (view of a bunker) Slide 78 ‘Mine Fields’ Slide 79 ‘Captured Weapons’ (soldier looking at captured weapons aligned on the ground) Slide 80 ‘Flight line’ Slide 81 ‘Control Contact by Telephone’ (armed soldiers outside a house making a call w. portable transceiver) Slide 82 ‘Troops Fording Swollen River’ (troops crossing a body of water on foot) Slide 83 ‘Under Intense Sniper Fire’ (soldiers in a field) Slide 84 ‘Removing Grommets From Projectiles’ Slide 85 ‘On Guard Protecting Rice Harvest’ (soldiers w.