Reflections of
Photo by Harry Gerwien
VIE TNAM
H onoring our L ocal V eterans
William Whitmore
It’s not often that you hear stories of people dropping out of college to enlist in the Army. It’s even rarer that you hear stories of people dropping out of college, enlisting in the Army and volunteering to serve in Vietnam. But that’s just what William Whitmore did. “I was raised as a military dependent. My father was Air Force. We’d come home from church and Mom would fix a good Sunday meal and Dad would tell stories. He was a bombardier on the B-17s in WWII over Germany. I was always impressed with military. I think it was just a part of my heritage,” said Whitmore. That heritage spurred him one morning in February of 1966 to get in his car and drive to the Army recruiting station that was located on Granby St. in Norfolk at the time. “I walked in and the young man said ‘What can I do to help you?’ I said ‘I want to enlist.’ He said ‘What do you want to do?’ I said ‘I want airborne infantry, light weapons. And I want to go to Vietnam.’ And he just got this grin from ear to ear,” Whitmore laughs. After enlisting, Whitmore reported Ft. Benning, Georgia, to complete boot camp and advanced infantry training. He received orders to the 101st Airborne, his dream assignment. Despite a reassignment to the 173rd Airborne before shipping out of Ft. Dix later that summer, Whitmore would end up spending his year in Vietnam with A Company, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne, otherwise known as the “Screaming Eagles.” “We were the only company that served in Vietnam that was adopted by a city in the U.S. because in December of 1967, Joe Artavia wrote his sister Linda about how low the morale was,” said Whitmore. Linda made it her mission to get her brother’s unit adopted. On March 4, 1968, San Mateo, California, officially adopted the Screaming Eagles. On March 24, the Screaming Eagles walked in to an ambush and Whitmore was with Artavia when he was killed. “We went back in 1988 and had a reunion in San Mateo. And we went to the national cemetery in San Francisco and went to Joe Artavia’s grave,” said Whitmore, choking up. Whitmore would go on to receive three Bronze Stars while in country, two for valor and one for meritorious service, along with a Combat Infantryman Badge. One of the Bronze Stars he earned on a night in October of 1967. He, along with six other Soldiers, had been sent up a hill in an “observation post” position. “We were set up on the side of a rock formation with an old tree at the top of the rocks. Unfortunately, nobody told others that we were there. I had just laid down with my helmet, and TOP PHOTO: On Christmas day in 1967, Whitmore and all of a sudden I heard incoming 105 fellow company members gather around the Christmas tree rounds. Six of them. Just heard them Whitmore had decorated with shaving cream to make it more coming in. They fired a battery at us. The first one came in and I looked festive. up and saw the tree explode,” said Whitmore. BOTTOM PHOTO: Newspaper clipping featuring William The man beside him was hit and had Whitmore’s company commander, Capt. Julius Johnson. “I his leg blown off. would have followed him through hell with gasoline drawers “I went over to him to try and stop the bleeding and I heard more rounds on,” said Whitmore of Capt. Johnson. coming in and I covered his body ... I covered him to protect him while the rounds were coming in. I was yelling ‘ceasefire!’ because I knew they could hear us at the top of the hill,” said Whitmore. When he got home, he finished his tour of duty and got out of the Army, a move he still regrets. He went back to work as a toll collector at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel before applying to, and being accepted by, the Virginia Beach Police. He spent the next five years as a patrolman and an officer in the traffic department and earned seven letters of commendation, including one from the FBI. After leaving the police force, he went into the insurance business, where he still works today. He lives in Virginia Beach with his wife of fifteen years, who he proposed to in a Hooters on Oahu. “I had qualified for a convention to Hawaii and she had never been. The convention was on the Big Island of Hawaii, but she had never been, so I took her to Oahu for three days. On Oahu, there’s a Hooters that overlooks the marina from Gilligan’s Island, where the boat left from. Well, I took her to Hooters, we love chicken wings, and I proposed to her at Hooters,” said Whitmore, smiling. They ended up getting married only days later on the Big Island in the garden of a small church they found while exploring the island. “I tell everybody that, when you get married in Hawaii, the vows are only good for seven years. You have to go back every seven years to renew your vows. So in 2007, we went back and we exchanged vows again, except this time, instead of in English, we exchanged vows in Hawaiian,” said Whitmore.
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