S
cont. from page 25 By Car y Shimek
ince UM was founded in 1893, hundreds of its alumni have faced the surreal experience of leaving the safe confines of campus for a “real world” that includes life-and-death combat on foreign soil. Others survived bloody war zones for a chance to attend college in Missoula and build better lives for themselves. Here are just three of their stories:
Vietnam —Rich Magera
enough grades to get one of those types of scholarships, so ROTC was the best answer. “As a kid, I always kind of thought I would end up in the military, but I thought it would be the Navy rather than the Army,” he wrote from Iraq. “I guess I saw Top Gun too many times and wanted to be a fighter pilot. Plus, had I gone into the Navy, I would have had to go to school outside of Montana.” Brault’s days in Iraq begin at 5:30 A.M. and don’t end until almost midnight. During those long, hot hours, he checks all outgoing convoys
R
ich Magera remembers the day his hometown of St. Regis felt the farthest away. It was 1967 Vietnam, and the young Army sergeant was sent to Saigon for supplies. Driving his vehicle down a crowded street, he saw a little Vietnamese girl selling flowers twenty yards Rich Magera, who served away. She suddenly as the Operations Nonpulled a string and detonated the hidden exploCommissioned Officer for sives she wore, killing herself and five nearby GIs. the 58th Transportation “A combat zone is not a nice place,” says Battalion, handled all of Magera, now superintendent of Plains High the Army aircraft parts School. “There were a lot of heinous things that for South Vietnam—the secondary duty of serving went on.” as a helicopter doorThat wasn’t his only experience with suicide gunner. Here, Magera logs bombers. One night the Viet Cong struck the in classified materials at Tan Son Nhut Airbase where he worked. They the Tan Son Nhut Air Base destroyed several U.S. aircraft using mortars and in Vietnam in 1966. satchel-charge-carrying soldiers who blew themselves up. “Most military guys will tell you that being in a combat zone is hours of boredom interspersed with moments of terror,” Magera says. “You don’t have time to think, things suddenly just happen.” Magera served as a helicopter door gunner, guarding soldiers and supplies flown to and from the field. He often raked tree lines with bullets during landings and take-offs to ensure nobody was there. Sometimes the fire was returned. “Getting shot at is an odd experience,” he says. “You aren’t looking for the bullets coming at you, and they come in too fast to see anyway, but afterwards you feel drained coming down from that adrenaline high. I never got shot, but the choppers took some bullet holes.” After returning to the States, Magera found that “fireworks made me crazy.” He attended UM from 1969 to 1975. He said his time in Vietnam made him appreciate his country more, and he rolled his eyes
to ensure they’re packed with the right supplies and headed in the right direction. He has only five officers and soldiers to assist him. “I spend much of my day putting out proverbial ‘fires,’” he writes. “Everything is a priority and an emergency.” While he was in Afghanistan, Brault spent part of a day tracking down a herd of lambs and goats so some of the allied forces could get a meal. Though he’s only been on the ground in Iraq for about a month as of this writing, he says life there isn’t terribly different from that in
when hearing fellow students complain about registering for classes, professors or trying to get a paper done. They could be in the jungle. He earned his ROTC commission from UM in 1974 and stayed in the military until 1993. He commanded UM’s ROTC Grizzly Battalion during 1981-84. He then returned as a major and served as executive officer during his 1988-93 tour. Magera admits his opinions about ’Nam change daily, but he has a favorite memory: “Getting on the airplane and leaving.”
Korean War —George Gogas
B
y the winter of 1951-52, Lynn Erb of Billings had a hard time focusing in her UM classes. That’s because her fiancé, a Missoula boy named George Gogas, had been sent to the Korean War. Gogas was a 1951 UM graduate George Gogas stands with an art degree and next to his tent in ROTC commission. April 1953, about six “It was sad and months after heading depressing,” she says. “It to South Korea. On wasn’t easy to concentrate days like this, when on what I was doing. But Gogas was held in George was good about reserve and not writing, and I would moving West with the write him back. It helped Third Infantry Division, get us through.” he participated in training exercises. That winter Gogas and his Army company found themselves guarding the 3,400-foot rim of a circular valley called the Punchbowl. It was Montana-cold atop the ridge, where they lived in trenches and bunkers. Strategic points such as the Punchbowl and the nearby Heartbreak and Bloody ridges had been purchased with many soldiers’ lives before Gogas arrived as a replacement. “The enemy were North Koreans,” he says. “They shelled us, and we shelled them. Then we’d duck into bunkers. It wasn’t much fun, I can tell you. We also sent out patrols every night. We only went out 100 to 150 yards—just to let Charlie know we had a presence there.”
26 | w in t er 2008 Mo n ta n a n
Combat_ecfinal.indd 26
1/7/08 12:25:00 PM