Veterans' Voices 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

MONTANA VIETNAM VETERANS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES 50 YEARS AFTER U.S. ENTERED THE WAR SPECIAL COLLECTION, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2015

A2 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Commander Dan Hall searches for the hero who saved him VINCE DEVLIN vdevlin@missoulian.com‌

a meat company. They made lunch meats and sausage. I was a sausage stuffer, and then ‌RONAN – Dan Hall, comworked in the shipping departmander of VFW Post 5652 in ment. Was there for 15 years Ronan, spent four months and and five months. Then I went 12 days in Vietnam in 1967 to work for a book company before being wounded when for 10 years, where my wife ran a fellow paratrooper in the the business office. I was in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division shipping department. I had a stepped on a landmine. farm, too.

“I heard it ticking, I was that We’d put up hay till 10 or 11 close to him,” Hall says. at night, then get up at 4 in the Pfc. William Eugene Hammorning and make the hour ilton, 20 years old and from drive into Minneapolis to start Scottsdale, Arizona, was killed work there. Been a rancher for in the explosion. Another the last 22 years. nearby paratrooper lost a foot Q: Servicemen and women in the blast. Hall spent nearly four months in hospitals in Courtesy photo‌ today get a lot more respect, but it wasn’t like that for VietAsia and the U.S. before being Ronan veteran Dan Hall, as nam veterans. How were you returned to active duty. he prepared to leave home for treated when you returned?

Originally from Minnesota, Vietnam.

A: I didn’t have too much Hall is 70 now. He moved to Ronan 22 years ago, and lives on months, and he came close the trouble. I didn’t announce it.

They didn’t have a name for last time. his ranch west of town.

Q: How long were you hospi- PTSD back then, but I wanted

to be away from everything talized?

Q: Tell me about – the public, loud noises. I A: I spent two weeks at the your injuries. avoided bar situations because hospital in Chu Lai, nine days A: I took shrapnel from here of the noise. The Fourth of July in Da Nang, 29 days in Japan, (pointing at his neck) all the doesn’t bother me – I’m ready way down. My neck, my shoul- overnight in Philadelphia, overnight in Fort Scott (Kansas) for noise then. But if something der, my stomach, my chest, in fell on the floor behind me right an artery in my right leg, in my and two months at Fort Riley, now, it’d about stop my heart.

Kansas, which was as close as ankle. The shrapnel’s all still they could get me to Minnesota The PTSD isn’t because of what there, except for the stomach. happened to you, it’s because at the time. For a long time, I They took that out. of what you saw happen to the couldn’t do nothing but lay on Q: Where were you? What guy to your left or the guy to a table. I couldn’t lift nothing, were you doing that day? your right.

A: Tam Ky. The Marines were my legs were just gone. The Q: The man who lost his foot muscles atrophied and it was already there, and had been in that minefield – do you keep slow recovering. overrun. They’d put 3,000 in touch with him?

Q: And then you were landmines on a hill, and the A: He lives in Seattle, he’s returned to active duty?

Vietcong had dug them up and doing OK. They took his leg off A: At Fort Bragg, North moved them down below. The six inches below the knee. I’m hill was supposed to have been Carolina. I brought my orders trying to find the guy who got in and the Sarge says, “What detonated by jets. We jumped me out of the minefield after out of a helicopter right off the the heck can you do? Lay on we got blowed up. He was the your back?” I said, “That’s minefield, and the officer had about it.” And here’s the Sarge, leader of another outfit – the us walk through it. You could walking with a cane. They made hero, I should say. He came tell what it was, it was all dug home with two Silver Stars, a up. I would have walked around me a communications chief.

Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

Q: What did you do after it. Instead, I ended up with one I think he’s in Virginia, if I have the war? dead friend and another who the right guy, but I don’t have A: Got a job and went to lost a foot. I ended up with bad an address or phone number work. Went back to Minhearing. That officer almost for him. neapolis and went to work for killed me four times in four

Provided photo‌

Greg Burham, center, towers over fellow Navy SEALs Barry Feece and Bob Harger in Chuong Thien Province, South Vietnam, in 1971.

Burham counsels others through his own PTSD KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌

‌At 6-foot-6, Greg Burham was a standout basketball player at Flathead High and Missoula Sentinel in the 1960s. As a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, “I was the biggest target in my platoon,” Burham said.

He served a seven-month tour in Vietnam with SEAL Team 2 in 1970 and early ’71, and returned to Missoula to finish his undergraduate and later a master’s degree in counseling at the University of Montana.

Burham spent 17 years as a juvenile probation officer in Missoula Youth Court. In 1994, he became a trauma counselor for combat veterans at the Missoula Veterans Center, retiring in 2007.

Q: Where in Vietnam did you fight?

A: We had all our operations in the (Mekong) delta. There

were 44 provinces in South Vietnam and ... through Army intelligence we found out that ours (Chuong Thien) was 44th, or first depending on how you looked at it, in that 75-80 percent of everybody in the province were either Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers. We had a lot of rocket and mortar attacks.

Q: What was your closest call?

A: Well, there was one gunfight when I didn’t have any cover. I was out on a dried rice paddy, laid down. I killed the first guy that started shooting at me. Then another guy popped up and he hit my M60 twice. My gun was shot up, and I was lucky that I only got burned by a couple of rounds and didn’t get hit. I was lucky I didn’t get killed.

Q: How did you escape?

A: One of my teammates was by the canal and said, “Greg, leave that damn See BURHAM, Page A4

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A3

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I miss key words in a sentence or frequently need to ask people to repeat themselves.

I have difficulty following the conversation.

Background noise is bothersome to me when I’m with others.

I turn up the volume on my television or radio.

I have difficulty hearing the doorbell or the telephone ringing.

Carrying on a telephone conversation is difficult.

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Someone close to me mentioned that I might have a problem with my hearing.

A4 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Pete Lawrenson advised Vietnam’s Ranger Battalion took a job as head of secuDAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com‌ rity for Montana Rail Link, ‌ ete Lawrenson went P to Vietnam on his 20th birthday, a fresh-faced Montana kid who joined the Army with two of his buddies because he wasn’t ready for college and he believed America needed to fight communism.

He arrived in Saigon on Nov. 3, 1968 as a second lieutenant and was promoted to first lieutenant within five weeks.

That December, he was stationed as an assistant adviser to the 11th Vietnamese Ranger Battalion near the town of Plei Ku in the central highlands, not far from the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail and the borders with Laos and Cambodia.

He served in Vietnam until November 1969, but stayed in the Army for another two years and got out as a captain at age 22, for a total of five years in the military. Lawrenson later spent 25 years with the Missoula Police Department, including six years as chief. He retired from the force in 2000 and

a position he held until his recent retirement.

Now at age 66, Lawrenson can reflect on his time in Vietnam during the war.

Q: What is one of your most vivid memories from that time?

A: First of all, I got married before I got to Vietnam, so I had a wife at home. This is a fun one.

This is the first thing that really stands out to me.

We had met in Hawaii in August for a sevenday R&R. So when I got back to Vietnam then, it was like late September, I got a letter from her and it talks about having been to the doctor and everything was fine. It’s like, what’s she talking about? Over the next week or so, I get a couple more letters and I’m able to figure out that she’s pregnant. But what I never did get was the first letter where she said, ‘I think I’m pregnant, I’m going to the doctor.’ And what had happened was there was a military airplane that was

Courtesy photo‌

Pete Lawrenson was in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, serving near the borders of Laos and Cambodia. basically a mail plane, and it crashed somewhere up in Alaska. And we figure the letter that she had sent me was probably on that airplane and I never got it.

So to find out when you’re down to under two months that your wife is pregnant, that’s pretty exciting.

Q: What was the scariest situation you found yourself in?

A: We did a battle in April and May of ’69 where two of the three battalions, we were north of Plei Ku, and there was a major enemy buildup.

We went in there as a

specific force with a major intent to engage them. We got in there and quickly realized that we were outnumbered. I mean, it wasn’t a fun time. It was very rough terrain. We had good artillery support and good air support. We spent 19 days out there in the field. It is mountains. The one thing, when you’re in combat situations, you want the high ground. You definitely want the high ground. As we finished up toward every day or every operation, it was always with the intent to gain the high ground. We were having trouble gaining the high ground, but we sustained some real major casualties. When we went to the field, there were either five or six Americans as advisers in different capacities, and all of us had scrapes and cuts, but I was the only one that was truly ambulatory. Others could walk with assistance, but they were not truly ambulatory. The point of that was I was 20 years old, and I was just absolutely scared. It was a frightening experience to be in that

kind of combat.

Q: Where were you located?

A: We were a combat unit in the central highlands. It was a real hot area. As often as not, what we were tasked to do was not necessarily engage the enemy, but go out in small teams and assess what their buildup was, what direction they were going and see if we couldn’t give intelligence to combat units. We did a lot of reconnaissance.

If there was a real hot spot somewhere, Rangers would be dispatched to be the primary fighting unit. When we weren’t in the field doing military operations, we were working with Vietnamese to enhance quality of life a little bit. We helped in a brick-making factory and helped them build homes.

None of them had electricity or running water.

We were very active in being good neighbors and good stewards. We also worked with the provincial chief and city officials on garbage cleanup and general sanitation.

be honored like my father and my friends’ fathers were. ... Well, it didn’t work out that way for us when we first returned.

Q: What did the Vietnam War mean to you personally?

A: Well, I was really lucky to go with SEAL Team 2, I was really lucky to survive. I still have PTSD, but I was glad to be helping other combat veterans. When I was counseling at the vet center I had World War II combat veterans, Korean War

veterans and Vietnam veterans and everything since.

Q: Do you still have flashbacks?

A: I have nightmares sometimes ... I still get some counseling for my PTSD. I see (mental health therapist) Dr. Tom Clucas just about every week. I needed to see him once 9/11 and the global war on terrorism started. But I really was glad to be here at the vet center and be here for these kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

FROM PAGE A4

Burham

not going to get a Purple Heart. I don’t deserve one.

I wasn’t even burned badly Continued enough to get scars, for God’s sake. burning weapon and get Q: You got out of the the hell out of there.” So I Navy in 1972 and redid. I was probably about enrolled in college while 50 yards from cover. One the war was still going. of my officers after the operation asked if I’d got- What was that like?

A: I love the University ten hit. I said no, I just got burned by a couple rounds. of Montana, but in the He said, “Do you want me early ’70s it was not a veteran-friendly environto put you in for a Purple ment. The only person you Heart?” I said no. Guys told that you were a veteran were getting killed and was another veteran. I losing limbs and getting understood the pro-peace, seriously wounded. I’m

anti-war stuff, but the anti-military, anti-veteran crap, blaming us for the war. ... I volunteered to go to Vietnam, but I didn’t start the war. But there were professors who were going on and on about the anti-military, anti-veteran stuff. I had to bite my tongue. I never commented about any of that.

I was the only veteran I ever met at the university who had a job, too, at Sparta Health Spa. If you put Vietnam on a resume back in the early ’70s,

forget getting hired. We were all supposed to be psychopaths and drug addicts and crazy. You probably remember the TV programs in the early ’70s and a lot of the movies. The villains and the perpetrators and the crazies were all Vietnam veterans. What the heck?

You know, my dad and all my friends’ fathers were World War II veterans. And they were so honored for their service that I wanted to be in the military when I got old enough, so I could

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A5

Garrity haunted by ‘mass death coming in’ on the Medivacs the Tet Offensive of 1969. The Tet Offensive of 1968 is famous because everything blew up on the Americans, but no one has ‌John Garrity was 19 when his heard of the Tet of ’69, when draft number came up. Raised we had 400-some killed in the under the belief that killing was whole of South Vietnam. The wrong, he enlisted as a medic in most killed and wounded was the U.S. Army. in our camp. We were partially The young soldier arrived overrun and we had two medics in Vietnam on Dec. 30, 1968. killed, one who was trying to There, he was based at a Mobile save someone who was down Army Surgical Hospital at Dau Tieng, about 45 miles northwest and another killed with a (Rocket Propelled Grenade). of Saigon.

Q: Do you still think about Garrity went on to win the that day?

Bronze Star and the Army A: Being overrun and having Commendation Medal, but he’d return home a changed man. He two fellow medics killed, you can now devotes his time to preach- never not think of that every day.

One of the company commanding peace and condemning the use of force, while also support- ers in the mechanized infantry, who helped his fellow soldiers, he ing the needs of veterans. came in blown apart, his whole Q: What do you remember about serving at the MASH camp heart and guts all blown apart.

He was a West Point grad and he in Dau Tieng? told me that he hated the war so A: The highest week of Americans death in 10 years was much and all the soldiers he was MARTIN KIDSTON martin.kidston@missoulian.com‌

losing, that he was going to go to Switzerland with his wife after the war. He came in blown up soon before he was to go home.

Q: How did your experience in Vietnam change you?

A: I don’t know if I had just been a civilian back in the states that I would have spent my whole life speaking against war.

But as a veteran, I felt an obligation to do it. I was just raised that honesty is honesty and decency is decency. I believe you should speak up against what’s wrong.

I’m pro-veteran, and believe that every man and woman should serve his or her country, but I’m anti-war.

It’s the civilians that send people to war, and very few of their kids ever serve. Most of the people, the chicken hawks, are too chicken to serve themselves or send their kids to get killed, but they’re willing to send everyone else into war. I think if

I could kill another person, under any circumstances. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a World War II vet, but we weren’t raised that you could harm someone.

Q: Is it hard to believe that nearly 50 years have passed?

A: Yes. I just went to my 50th high school reunion a couple of weekends ago. I lost classmates from Scouts through to grade school and high school. It’s very present for Vietnam veterans who were in combat, and the ones who are talking about it a John Garrity lot and bragging about it – a lot of them were in Vietnam, but only people who knew the cost of they never saw combat. It was war personally had to decide the mass death coming in on the wars, the wars wouldn’t happen. Medivac helicopters. I handled heads and arms and legs of Q: Did you always see things American soldiers and put pieces that way? in body bags, and when you see A: I came out of the Catholic that and realize the people who seminary at the age of 19. I was caused that to happen on both in the draft call, and I went and enlisted in medical because I was sides, well, they never have any not the kind of person raised that involvement or skin in the game.

Ibsen helped detect enemy movement near the border which was in the far north.

Q: What military branch were you in and what was your rank?

A: I got out of the Army as a ‌Carl Ibsen, former Missoula buck sergeant E5 – the first level County sheriff and a Vietnam of sergeant, the lowest level. veteran, comes from a proud My training was infantry and military family. His father, electronic warfare specialty.

August Ibsen, mother Norma Q: What does that mean?

Onberg Ibsen and uncle Carl A: Electronic warfare means Onberg served in World War II. His sons, Leif and Trevor, served all sorts of different things, but my specialty ... was what in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ibsen enlisted when he was 17 they called UGSO, unattended ground sensor operator. My and was home from Vietnam at home company was the 101st 19, before he was old enough to vote, buy a beer, or even start his Military Intelligence Company, and we worked out of fire bases career in law enforcement.

– little hills or mountains with Q: What did you do in the tops cut off and a bunch of Vietnam, and what years were cannons put around it and wire. you there?

A: I was there from May of ‘70 And then we would operate out of there, and we were loaned out to May of ‘71. I was in I Corps, KATHRYN HAAKE kate.haake@missoulian.com‌

to whatever normal, straight-leg infantry units wanted or needed our services.

We would go out and dig holes in the ground near the trail and plant these (sensing) devices.

Then you would go back to a nearby fire base to a monitoring position. ... The devices would detect movement along that trail, each one doing a different type of detection, and then we would monitor them on a panel.

When they would activate, we would get a signal and then when we determined it was the enemy down the trail, you would call the grid coordinates into a nearby fire base and they would fire cannon howitzers.

Courtesy photo‌

Carl Ibsen’s home company was the 101st Military Intelligence Company, See Ibsen, Page A6 which worked out of fire bases near the border with North Vietnam.

A6 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

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VETERANS’ VOICES

from pagE A5

John Snively was air intelligence officer

hell of a fight right there.

So you are nervous. Well, you can’t function real Continued well if you are nervous all the time. You gradually Q: You were stationed adapt to higher and higher on the border of North levels of stress, so what Vietnam. Was that area the most dangerous, con- used to stress you out and sidering you were so close get you up here, is now the normal. to enemy territory?

Q: How did it affect you A: Oh yeah. But their infiltration was the whole to come back at the height of the war protests? length of the country.

A: Obviously, I took a And I think when I was there, the Fourth Infantry side. I went in the Army and I went to war. I Division was down in believed in it and I still do.

III Corps and they were having some of the hottest Coming back to Missoula, action. Keep in mind, they Montana, was a little bit of an interesting shock. didn’t want us to come You named it, it was the into contact with the enemy. The goal was to get height of the war protest.

The ROTC guys didn’t the devices planted and wear uniforms on campus. get them monitored and not to get into action with They didn’t dare to. Now it doesn’t create problems the enemy, whereas your for them. I enrolled in colregular line units, their job was to go out, find the lege that fall, and I lasted about a week and a half, enemy and get in a fight.

Q: I can’t imagine being because at that time it was not a friendly campus for that young and being real short-haired, really exposed to such a hostile dark tan, obviously exenvironment. I mean soldiers. you couldn’t even buy a Q: Now you are 64 beer, right? years old and you’re from A: No. That was interesting when I came home. a military family. Can you speak to the differences of I was too young to buy generations of vets coma beer, but that doesn’t ing back? mean I didn’t. When I A: The biggest differgot back, I was a year too ence is technology. My young to be a policeman, so I worked at lumber mills parents would be able to say the same thing. We until I was old enough to had some really super get on with the cops. high-tech razoo stuff in Q: Do you remember my war, and my kids tell any specific things that me, ‘Dad, all that stuff you learned in Vietnam is in museums.’ They that helped you through really got neat stuff. It your law enforcewill probably change for ment career?

A: Stress is ... a relative the next generation. In the WWII era, your mail experience. The human animal is incredibly adapt- could be months in transit.

In WWII, once the war able. Those of us who started you were in until were there for the first the war is over. For ‘Nam, time, you are expecting it wasn’t that way. You had you know, from the news a tour, then you went out ... you are going to step of country. off the plane and have a

seriously affected, either mentally or physically, by their participation in that war. ‌John Snively was a Q: Did your experience noncombatant air intelmake you an activist? ligence officer on the A: I belong to Veterans aircraft carrier Kitty for Peace. I’m active Hawk in 1969 during the in writing letters and Vietnam War. politically supporting At the same time, people who reflect my Snively’s brother had volgoals, but I have not been unteered for the Marines, an earth-shaker in that and served in Vietnam. movement or an activist Snively wasn’t necesas many people would sarily planning on going define it, aside from talkto war when he graduated ing to people and trying from college. During his to get people to see. I have time in the Navy, howalso been active in Misever, he appreciated the soula’s community affairs people in his squadron as Courtesy photo‌ and assisting my wife, the best group he could John Snively Carolyn, in distributing have encountered at that her book, “The Smiling PI officers. We worked unit and went through time in his life.

Photo,” a collection of closely with the ship’s initial training and boot As a veteran, Snively haiku poems describing camp as an enlisted man. company, and we helped also came to see the the effects of war.

At the end of that period, to plan missions for the devastation one war Q: How is your life difKitty Hawk’s aircraft to I was notified I had been can bring to an entire ferent because you were go over South Vietnam. accepted for OCS in culture, and to families in Vietnam?

Q: How did the war Newport, Rhode Island. and friends, a story he A: Being a veteran, shape your views of U.S. believes is powerfully told One of the naval career it gives me a kinship, foreign policy? options was to become in “The Sorrow of War.” although a more distant A: I saw things that an air intelligence officer.

“I don’t think most made me scratch my head one, to combat vets. The So I went through a year Americans understand struggle my brother had when I was there, such and a half of training in the grave consequences for 30 years after he got it had for the Vietnamese various naval schools and as wide swaths of B-52 the Lowry Air Force Base craters which did little to out and what I’ve seen people,” Snively said.

Q: How did you end up in Denver, and then joined stop the flow of weapons with close friends here in Missoula makes me and supplies from north my squadron. Just after in Vietnam? think, if there’s any other to south. It wasn’t until the Christmas of ‘68, we A: During my high way that we could do this later when I got out, and school years, I was part of left for Vietnam on the without putting our men, I started understanding USS Kitty Hawk. a Sea Scout group where young men especially, Q: What was your job? more and more of what I learned a lot about who are so fragile at those was going on. It gave me A: My squadron’s boats and ships. When ages, into those experiperspective as to how mission was to do I was leaving college in ences and changing their ineffective it is to bomb reconnaissance using 1966, I really didn’t have lives forever, we should people to bring about a multi-sensor RA-5C a clear vision of what do it. democratic change in a aircraft. This aircraft I wanted to do. So at a Bao Ninh, in his excelcountry. I marveled that friend’s recommendation, had a special radar and lent book “The Sorrow Vietnam and the U.S. electronic listening able I submitted my name to of War,” described the normalized relations so to pinpoint radar emisthe Navy and took the incredible loss of famsoon after the war and test for Officer Candidate sions from ground sites, ily, friends, culture and as well as many different wondered how things School. Then, I just photographic modules. It would be different absent infrastructure during kind of forgot about it was ahead of its time, but the great loss of American war. We fail to foresee and spent that summer these consequences in our really, the technology was and Vietnamese lives. working. In September rush to military action or Also, after I became a pretty bad compared to sometime, I got a draft brutal sanctions against today’s standards. I was a civilian again, in ‘71, I notice, and I thought, I countries we disagree began to see from the photographic interpreter will make my own deciwith and then fail to outside our soldiers in and was attached to my sion on this. So I joined pursue other options.

America who had been squadron as one of its the local Naval Reserve

Ibsen

KEILA SZPALLER keila.szpaller@missoulian.com‌

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VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A7

John Keefe found his love for Marines during his world tours DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

‌John Keefe’s life has taken him around the world, from Europe and China to a pair of deployments in Korea and Vietnam during his time in the U.S. Marine Corps.

The son of a Texaco marketing executive, Keefe was born in Dublin in 1930 but moved to China when he was 18 months old, settling in the city of Qingdao.

When the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s, Keefe and his sisters were evacuated to Shanghai, and as World War II loomed they were sent to the United States. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Keefe’s father was captured as a prisoner of war.

He was later traded back to the U.S. and reunited with his family.

After graduating from boarding school in Oregon, Keefe attended Gonzaga University in Spokane. He enlisted in the Marines in 1949.

“All that seems like yesterday,” Keefe said.

Since retiring from the Marines in 1977, Keefe, now 85, his wife Sheyla and his golden retriever Buddy have lived in Missoula.

Q: What happened to you in the lead-up to joining the Marines?

A: At Gonzaga, I lived with four guys who had been in the military. Keeping up with GIs is just impossible because these guys are ready to catch up on the years they lost in the war. At the suggestion of one of them, I joined the Marines in August of 1949 and was sent to San Diego for boot camp.

Q: How did you get sent

to Korea the first time?

A: I go to Camp Pendleton, and by that time the Korean War has started.

Boot camp was not a piece of cake, but it was a hell of a lot easier than four years of prep school under priests and brothers.

The Marines’ overall numbers go from 86,000 to 315,000 during the Korean War and they needed more lieutenants.

So I’m sent to Quantico for screening. The Marine Corps, then and now, still has a belief that I share of a close relationship between physical and mental courage. I make it through and become a commissioned second lieutenant. I’m sent to Army school to learn tanking, then sent to Korea for a year in 1952. I was originally supposed to be a platoon leader in an assault amphibian battalion, but it is switched to an infantry unit.

Q: While in Korea, you adopted a daughter. How did that happen?

A: I used to give extra food from the unit to a Catholic orphanage. I kept noticing this girl. The nun said her father was a GI and her mother had been a Korean woman who had died after childbirth.

I thought if I can do anything in this world worthwhile, maybe this is it. It took three years to get it done. She couldn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Korean.

In December, Jackie will be celebrating her 60-year anniversary of coming to the U.S. Q: What was your military experience in Vietnam?

A: The first time I was in Vietnam was with the Marines, the second time with a group called

during your deployment with CORDS? A: I was there again four years later in 1971 and 1972. We were halfcivilian, half-military and headquartered in Saigon.

We would do pacification attitude surveys. We had 300 Vietnamese working for us spread throughout the districts of South Vietnam, essentially (taking) a census – how they felt things were going, where their informaCourtesy photo‌ tion was coming from.

John Keefe enlisted in the The surveyors couldn’t U.S. Marines in 1949, and use paper, they had to served tours in Korea and remember the questions Vietnam. and answers. If they were suspected of working for us they would be put on a CORDS, which stands for Civil Operations and Revo- list for elimination.

This was classified, lutionary Development and there was a long time Support. My first tour I couldn’t talk about it. was with the 1st Marine There’s a lot of things I Regiment. During the tour, my best friend Bob Harris, a battalion head, was killed and I took over his battalion. At that time, I was a lieutenant colonel.

I extended my deployment and stayed 15 months. I should have stayed longer, because I was a professional and we were putting the hurt on the bad guys and keeping the good guys safe.

Q: You were awarded a Purple Heart.

What happened?

A: After I took over Bob’s battalion, I was shot in the right calf. We had a guy who would come up to the wire and shoot at us, trying to get us to fire back and show our size and position. I went into the med the next morning, but the helicopters were dropping off casualties from a firefight. I said what’s it going to do if you just close it up? That bullet stayed in my calf for nine years.

Q: What did you do

have put out of my mind and don’t think about.

If you have some bad experiences, you have to replace them with some better ones.

I came back and was promoted to colonel, and was tasked with reconstituting my division to be battle-ready again. Then I became the assistant chief of staff for human affairs, which means I took on the jobs nobody wanted, including reenlistment and education programs, racial relations and took over a drug rehab program.

Q: What was different when you returned to Korea?

A: When I left Korea, it was wooden plows and human labor. I was impressed at the advancement. The thing I learned

about Korea is this is what Vietnam could have been like. I was sent there as a senior adviser to the Korean Marine Corps in 1975. One thing I did was help them procure new amphibious assault vehicles. They had been using old LVT-3Cs. The interesting thing to me was the old Cadillac engines were still running. These guys are fabulous, they could take a broken shoelace and make a whole boot out of it.

Q: What do you remember most about your time in the Marines?

A: It took me a long time to realize that I really love the Marines. It’s a dumb word and we use it for so many things. Every day, I think about the Marine Corps. It was that camaraderie, that love we had for our brothers in arms.

400 N. 1st Street Hamilton

363-0188

A8 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Morgan drove trucks, Jeeps VINCE DEVLIN vdevlin@missoulian.com‌

‌RONAN – Aside from 1967-71, when he was in the Army, 66-year-old Dale Morgan has spent his life in his hometown of Ronan. He and his wife Faye have three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

He worked for Plum Creek Timber for 26 years, then Jore Corp., then Plum Creek again, until the Pablo mill was closed for good in 2009 – 16 months before Morgan planned on retiring.

Before all that, Morgan spent a year in Vietnam, in the Mekong Delta, much of it driving military vehicles along what U.S. troops called Thunder Road. He was 19 years old when he arrived, and 20 when he left.

“Vietnam was a pretty country,” Morgan recalls, “if it wasn’t for the war.”

Q: Tell me about your year in Vietnam.

A: I got there in March of ’69, and in June they said they were sending our unit home. I thought, ‘Oh boy, just three months and I’m going home.’ I was wrong. The only thing that came home was the colors.

Everyone with two to three weeks left got put in the 9th Division, and we got stuck in the 25th.

I got there right after the Tet Offensive, so I didn’t get hit with a lot – a couple of times with mortars, a couple of times with personnel. Basically, the war was starting to shift and the Viet Cong were not as active in 1969.

I had some friends who got wounded. There was a captain, who was very well liked, he got killed along with his driver on the day he was going to Saigon

Courtesy photo‌

Dale Morgan spent a year in Vietnam, driving trucks on the Thunder Road.

to catch a plane home.

Another guy got a hardship discharge because he was the only son – he got ambushed the same day he found out he was going home. He didn’t die, but he got ambushed.

Q: Were you drafted or did you enlist?

A: I was 17 when I was drafted, but I enlisted after that, and took an extra year so I could go to signal school. The Army would train you for something, but 90 percent of the time you wouldn’t do it. They’d stick you where you were needed. You were always a soldier first. I ended up in a mechanized infantry unit.

Q: What vehicles did you drive?

A: Trucks and Jeeps.

The first six months, I drove trucks a lot. We went every day into Saigon to get supplies. Every morning, the minesweeper would go out and sweep Thunder Road before the trucks went out. Later, they (the Viet Cong) learned how to detonate by remote control. The locals had these three-wheeled things – I called them

golf carts – and (the Viet Cong) would take them and drive them down the middle of the road real slow, so our trucks couldn’t get by them. Tracs can go sideways, so we’d send them out and they’d swipe those golf carts right into the rice paddies.

We all had to take turns driving the fuel truck, go in and get 1,500 gallons of fuel, and when your time came, you hated it. You knew all it would take was one bullet, and you’d go “boom.” The next three months, I drove the commanding officer wherever he needed to go, and the last three months I ran the company club. That was all right.

Q: How did the war affect you, or change you?

A: I didn’t think it did at first. But those first 10 years back, my wife got me out from under the bed a lot of times. At first she didn’t know where I’d gone, then she figured out I was always under the bed.

I’d have bad dreams, see things. I drank a lot those first 10 years back, too.

Finally my wife said, “We can’t do this no more.” I got help and quit drinking heavily.

You’re 18, 19 years old and in war, you see things that are not normal – people getting blowed up, shot and killed. You never forget it. After 10 years back, I realized I wasn’t in Vietnam anymore. I was home, I had a good job and a good family, I just needed to go do … (his voice trails off).

I still, every once in a while, see something like it was yesterday. The idea that you go to war, do a job, come home and forget about it, that just doesn’t happen. The war never goes away.

Ron Milam was a ‘Seadevil,’ rescuing downed pilots honored for his work KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌ by the Naval Helicopter ‌ orty-five years after F he left it, Vietnam remains on Ron Milam’s mind every day.

Born on the Fourth of July in 1949, Milam enlisted in the Navy at 17 and served as a mechanic with Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 7. The “Seadevils” were the Navy’s only dedicated combat search and rescue unit.

For the past 14 years, Milam has been the historian for HC-7, documenting through records and papers some 150 daring air rescue missions over North Vietnam for pilots and their families.

In 2013, he was

Association with the Mark Starr Pioneer Award. As a member of the Bitterroot Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, he was instrumental in design and construction of the Ravalli County Veterans Monument in Hamilton in 2011 and 2012.

Milam grew up in the Seattle area and came to Missoula after his Navy service to go to school.

Even as he was taking classes at Missoula VoTech, he began working for an engineering company in town. He retired in 2009 after a 36-year career as a land surveyor.

Q: When and where

were you in Vietnam?

A: From ’69 to mid’70, a year and a half.

We were a helicopter unit based out of Atsugi, Japan, and I was in Vietnam four different times, or off the coast. First, I was with a mine-sweeping unit with helicopters, then I went into a combat rescue unit off the coast of North Vietnam in Tonkin Gulf, picking up pilots. We were North SAR (search and rescue) off the coast of Haiphong Harbor.

Q: You worked on helicopters that rescued down pilots in North Vietnam. Did you actually see any enemy planes?

A: No. I was in DaNang a couple of times. We were orphans. Our

Happy Veterans Day November 11 Veterans play FREE on Veterans Day

Golf Course

3200 Fort Missoula Road • Phone: 721-4416

VIETNAM nickname was “Orphans of the 7th Fleet” because we moved all the time. I was a mechanic, so I carried my tool box. There were 10 of us – two officers and eight enlisted guys. In two days, we were in five locations.

We went from the Philippines to DaNang to an aircraft carrier to a DLG, which is a guided missile frigate, off the coast of North Vietnam. The next day, that ship left and we moved all of our stuff onto another ship. They called it “cross-decking.”

Q: Would you call your service exciting?

A: Yeah, it was for me.

It was a job and I was a mechanic and flight deck director and ordnance man. So I took care of all the guns so, yeah, I took it as a real job. I’m changing the engine on the back of a ship in the middle of nowhere, with an engine being brought to you by another helicopter. They’d

lower it down to you on a hoist ... and you’d spend the next couple of hours changing engines so the helicopter could fly.

Q: What happened after you returned to the states?

A: You separate from active duty, but you’re required to have a six-year commitment. So I then had three years of nonactive Reserve. I went to one Reserve meeting. They flew me from Fort Lewis, Washington, Army base up to Whidbey Island Naval Base in an old boxcar cargo plane and they had P-2 planes there. I looked around and all these little kids were running around working on airplanes. I said, ‘Nah, this ain’t for me.’ And I was a whole 21.

I’d been overseas a year and a half, and that’s the only Reserve meeting I went to. I was the old guy watching all these cleanshaven little kids.

Q: You’ve documented

VETERANS’ VOICES

and he couldn’t get out.

That was Feb. 20, 1970.

Scott F. Moore from Texas.

I knew him. That’s why I wear this (bracelet). I started trying to find his family in 2001. I found his sister and on my way to the first reunion I attended in 2002, I stopped in Houston and met her. People suggested collecting photographs, and that has turned into Provided story‌ this obsession of the many Ron Milam stands by a thousands of documents helicopter he serviced at and photos I’ve collected. the Navy Seabees’ North Q: What does your colSearch and Rescue Station lection consist of today? off the coast of North A. I’ve got 133 binders Vietnam in early 1970. now. I’ve got touchable memorabilia, tons of stuff.

The basement’s full. The 150 air rescue missions. house is full. I work on it What got you started? every day.

A: Of all the combat Q: Why do you do it? missions our outfit did, A: For one thing, we’re from 1967 to ’73 ... we fighting to prove that we lost one guy in combat. It touched ground in Vietwas our bookkeeper in a nam to get medical help. If helicopter accident.

The transmission broke you were blue-water Navy off the coast of Vietnam, and it went in the water

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A9

you’re not getting any medical help unless you have a service-related injury. If you have diabetes and touched ground in Vietnam, you’re covered.

If you have diabetes and were out at sea, nope.

Q: Why is that?

A: Agent Orange. I’m fortunate. I touched foot in DaNang several times.

I’ve got a set of orders stamped “Vietnam” on the back, so I’m lucky I can prove I had my foot on the ground in Vietnam. If you have a set of orders, and we traveled in small groups sometimes – three, four, five, 10 guys – I collect these from guys and try to find the others in the same group and say, OK, I know this guy has had heart trouble. Hey, his name is on your set of orders, so (I contact him) and say, I’ve got you on a set of orders in DaNang.

We win. It makes a world of difference in your

medical help.

Q: What did Vietnam mean to you?

A: The biggest waste of life and money ever spent.

Q: Do you feel like we shouldn’t have been there?

A: Not at the time, but now, yes. You learn how political it was, and we didn’t gain anything. It was a waste. I’ve got this (bumper sticker): “In Memory of the 58,265 Lost Lives – Vietnam War 1956-1975.”

Q: How about emotionally? Does Vietnam still stir up things inside you?

A: I think the project helps, and building the monument (in Hamilton).

A reward is when I do a show and the wife or a grandchild comes up and says, ”That’s what my dad did or that’s what my husband did?” They don’t know what went on, what we did, because we’d leave and they’d stay home and take care of the home front.

Honoring all who have served.

Thank you for serving our country & protecting our freedoms!

A10 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Bjergo saw impact of agricultural aid MICHELLE McCONNAHA michelle.mcconnaha@lee.net‌

‌ orvallis resident Allen C Bjergo was a platoon sergeant in Korea in 1953 and was a contractor under the State Department during the Vietnam War. He served as deputy chief of agriculture for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides economic development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of U.S. foreign policy goals.

He was in the Mekong Delta during 1967 and 1968, working to improve lives by creating better crops and healthier livestock. He returned to Vietnam in 1989 and in 1994 on fact-finding missions, discovering the agricultural assistance provided during the war continued to impact lives years later.

Q: Was there was an agricultural program during the Vietnam War? A: About 100 American agricultural advisers served in Vietnam together with specialists from Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea and other allied nations. At one time, 6,464 military, 1,137 civilians and 223 thirdcountry advisers were stationed in Vietnam.

Q: How did the agricultural program get started?

A: The County Agents for Vietnam program began as a result of Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s visit to South Vietnam in 1965.

He was familiar with the Cooperative Extension Service system, which has improved rural life and raised U.S. farm production since 1914. In 1966, the White House

sent a study team to Vietnam that found lots of agricultural bureaucrats in each province, but relatively poor service for rural people.

President Lyndon Johnson met with South Vietnamese leaders in 1966 and from that meeting put out the word to the Department of Agriculture and land grant universities for agricultural advisers willing to serve in combat zones.

Within days, I found myself with other county agents in Washington, D.C., being interviewed, sent to language training and then sent to Saigon on Feb. 20, 1967.

Q: How did the program get built?

A: President Johnson created an Office of Civilian Operations in Vietnam with almost 1,000 American civilian employees and a $128 million budget.

Q: What was your main job?

A: I had been commissioned as an infantry officer at one time and was given a State Department rank in Vietnam. I quickly found that my counterparts in the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture liked to generate large volumes of reports, but rarely ventured out to talk to farmers. Many bureaucrats had no agricultural experience at all and disliked being away from large cities.

It was clear they would be slow to change their office-bound ways, so I spent time getting acquainted with the U.S. SEAL forces, Special Forces and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam teams. Soon, they wanted me to go out with them and I learned what assistance

farmers needed.

I tried to teach the U.S. teams agricultural tenets. The introduction of improved rice and vegetable seeds greatly helped Vietnamese farmers, as did importation of purebred boars to breed Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, creating crossbred hogs equal to any in America. With the aid of U.S. Army veterinarians, we also helped the Vietnamese improve animal vaccine production and prevent livestock losses.

Q: Did you see any combat?

A: Civilian advisers were supposed to avoid combat, but spending so much time in congested areas exposed us to the same dangers the isolated American military teams faced. Our agricultural advisory team members also suffered casualties and capture. Of the 74 men and one woman recruited from the U.S. Extension Service, one was captured, two died and several were wounded fighting alongside their allied military counterparts.

Q: Can you give a specific example of how agricultural knowledge helped?

A: When I was assigned to investigate the feasibility of settling large numbers of refugees on the barren flats in the Soc Son district, I traveled there to collect soil samples. The area was surrounded by VC, and it was decided that I should simply walk out on the flats with a shovel and pail, my M-2 carbine concealed as much as possible while the MACV team covered me.

When the soil was analyzed, it showed a pH

value of 2 to 3, almost like battery acid, giving little hope for growing crops in the area. My report halted a multimillion-dollar land deal and angered the Vietnamese generals who had hoped to make a fortune selling the land. We later helped the villagers settle in a more secure area and earn their living making pottery. Later that year, that entire MACV team was killed by a command-detonated mine in the same place.

Q: What food provisions did you receive during your agricultural travels?

A: We scrounged food from the local economy, sometimes eating dog and eel meat. My advisers, our Vietnamese counterparts and I were often invited to eat from the meager larders of remote villagers. I only became sick from food poisoning once – from eating a hamburger at the officers club in Saigon.

Q: Do you have a crop example?

A: In addition to producing better crops and livestock, one effort that improved the lives of delta farmers was helping them irrigate during the six dusty months of the dry season. I noticed that the Vietnamese used “shrimp-tail” boat motors to drive their sampans. We figured that if the propeller was reversed and a stovepipe was clamped along the shaft, the unit could lift water over the low dikes from canals into the paddy fields. The ingenious Vietnamese quickly began to adopt and improve on the idea, and within a year, thousands of hectares were producing crops year-round.

Lilley a night supervisor at the ‘bomb dump’ holes. We worked all night on 12-hour shifts to get the planes ready to ‌HAMILTON – Delbert go again.

Q: Was it dangerous at Lilley of Hamilton joined the Navy on July 6, 1949, the bomb dump?

A: When I first got in Seattle and spent there, the earth was five years stationed in Guam, Hawaii and Japan. shaking and I thought it was an earthquake, but Civilian life was a little it was B-52s bombing less exotic in Olympia, the Ho Chi Minh trail Washington, so without telling his wife, he signed 20 miles out of Saigon.

We’d also get rockets up for active duty again fired at the base from the in May 1958.

Cambodian border about “I got itchy because 25 miles away. They’d I hadn’t traveled for a sneak across and bomb few years,” he sheepthe base at night. One ishly admits. time, a rocket blew up Within a month, he our mess hall. It killed was training in Reno, about 50 Army troops Nevada, and then who were inside eating. attended a four-month aircraft hydraulic school It was terrible.

Then my hero Richard in Amarillo, Texas, to Nixon became president prepare for his missile and he sent troops into assignment with the Cambodia to take their 18th TAC Fighter Wing goodies away, which in Okinawa. was not very popular at He served on several the time. Army Rangers missile maintenance brought back tons of squadrons for the next weapons from Cambodia decade, but by 1969, he volunteered to be cross- and that made a huge difference. When the trained with munitions Army took away their and was sent straight to arms, we were signifiVietnam on New Year’s cantly safer.

Day 1970.

Another time, I had

Q: What was your first just climbed into my bunk after a 12-hour assignment?

A: I was a night super- shift and some rockets came flying in. There visor at the bomb dump – at least that’s what we was a guy in a truck that took cover underneath called it. I supervised eight guys and just about and shrapnel blew all every night, we’d load up four tires. The guy 500 500-pound bombs survived all right, but it on all these flatbed was just outside where I trucks and they’d deliver was sleeping and about them to the flight line knocked me out of to be loaded on fighter my bunk. planes. It was about four I would sit on the bunmiles from the bomb ker at night and watch dump, so they’d snipe the war going on around at them coming and me. I watched fighter going. Our vehicles were planes and tracers going patched up so many all night long. Once in a times because of bullet while, the enemy would STACIE DUCE for the Missoulian ‌

VIETNAM connect and take down a plane. The next morning, those big choppers would go out and pick up the aircraft and bring it back to the Army base next to us. It was filled with blown-up aircrafts and parts. The destruction was terrible.

Q: How was your homecoming?

A: You can’t imagine what it’s like to fly back over the United States and realize you’re home.

You see all the lights and it felt so good to be home. I was actually released early. I went to Vietnam in January 1970 and came home at the end of October.

My mom was in a rest home and her leg was gangrene, so they had to take part of her leg off and thought she was going to die. So I got an emergency leave to be with her. I flew straight to California from Vietnam across the Pacific without any sleep. My wife was waiting for me and she hadn’t slept for a day or two either.

I got off the plane and we jumped in the car to drive to Davenport, Washington, to see my mom, but neither of us was in very good shape for driving.

The whole thing was pretty emotional.

When I got home, we lived in a place near where a noon whistle went off. Every time that whistle blew, my wife would find me under the bed. I was sick for about six months because of Agent Orange. I’ll never forget flying over the jungle in a helicopter and seeing where the jungle suddenly looked like a desert. Agent Orange had eaten all the foliage. It just took out the jungle entirely.

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A11

Williams values a moment of empathy over a combat story CORY WALSH cory.walsh@missoulian.com‌

‌Ron Williams, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, served as a crew chief, specialist 5th class, on a Huey helicopter for the U.S. Army for a one-year tour in Vietnam.

In January 1968, his helicopter was shot down in Laos while transporting a special forces team on a reconnaissance mission.

He stayed on the ground with a special forces captain and several others after the first round of wounded were transported out. He received numerous medals of valor for his service, but says he was “mostly just a kid trying not to screw up.”

After the war, he developed a career in commercial and fine-art photography in his home state. Fifteen years ago, he moved to Missoula and then Stevensville.

Q: How old were you when you served?

A: I turned 20 in Vietnam after already having lost my first helicopter.

I had already been wellseasoned in combat before I turned 20.

Q: Did you enlist or were you drafted?

A: I joined. If you do any research, you’ll see that probably three-quarters of vets volunteered.

I was an 18-year-old kid who wasn’t a very good student in high school and I wasn’t athletic. I wanted to know who I was. I had an uncle who was in Vietnam, my father was in the second World War, and have ancestors who fought all the way back to the War of 1812.

It seemed like it was my duty to serve and it was what the elders of

our village – a town with a million people – were telling us to do. So I did.

Q: What happened after you were rescued in Laos?

A: There’s an event that happened after the incident that means more to me than anything else.

When we got back to the special forces camp, we went in for a debriefing. We’re in a typical Army tent: the smell of linseed oil and canvas and bad coffee.

I sit down at a table and I’m shaking. This is probably an hour after we were initially blown up.

We’re all safe now, but the adrenaline has started.

Somebody hands me a cup of coffee. I don’t even drink coffee, and I sat there and can barely drink it. And then somebody hands me a lit cigarette.

And I did smoke, and by the time I finish the cigarette I’m not shaking anymore.

I noticed someone was sitting next to me, and it was the person who’d handed me the coffee and the cigarette.

This was the special forces captain who stayed on the ground with us. He just sat there with me till I calmed down. So here I am, some 19-year-old kid with no rank, and here’s an experienced special forces combatant. He was just being my uncle for a few minutes to say, “You did a good job.” He didn’t say anything, but he just gave me that bit of his time, ‘cause I was more important than anything else at that moment as far as he was concerned.

And that’s always felt really good. For a kid whose dad always treated him like he couldn’t do

started acting up, and I think whatever defenses I had could no longer defend me.

Q: Did you seek help from other veterans?

A: I went to a meeting in Nashville, and I was sitting in a room with a half-dozen to a dozen people who were just like me. And I didn’t know there was anyone just like me. I thought I was the only one.

That did more than anything else to connect me with some other normal people. Normal combat veterans, put it that way. Again, none of them are average. But they’re absolutely normal for a combat veteran.

Q: How did you decide Courtesy photo‌ on Montana?

Ron Williams A: I went to Boulder, Colorado, first. It Vietnam. You did your anything right, that was wasn’t for me, and a best, but the world I pretty important. friend suggested I check left didn’t exist when I Q: What did you do out Montana. got back. when you got back to I got to Missoula late I was very involved in the U.S.? one night. Everything was the church when I was A: I looked for a job. fogged in. You couldn’t Nobody would hire you if a kid. I left for Vietnam see across the street. The with them all patting me you were a Vietnam vet. on my back. When I came bars were all filled with I couldn’t even get a job pumping gas. So I decided back, they wouldn’t even drunk college kids.

I went back to the hotel sit next to me in church.

I might as well go to college. I went to a two-year And I think that’s a result and slept and was going to of the news media and the leave. The next morning, it electronics school and protests and all the other was sunny. I walked around made the dean’s list. So town and stopped at Butstuff that went on. here’s a C, D student in terfly Herbs. I had a cup of Q: Why did you high school who three coffee and the kid working leave Tennessee? years later makes the behind the counter was A: I ran away. I had a dean’s list in electronics. courteous and nice.

Whatever the change was, career in advertising at When I left, I was it was direction, purpose. a small creative house in greeted by Tommy the Nashville. I reached the After that, I went to a Leprechaun (a local street point where I was sucfour-year college. Then cessful, and found myself character who dressed as I went to California to a leprechaun.) And I knew throwing clients out of study at a place called the magic word, so he my studio. I don’t know the Brooks Institute for gave me a wish. My wish professional and fine-arts exactly what triggered was to have a happy life, everything, but I just photography.

Q: What was it like as a couldn’t stand to do busi- and so Tommy granted me my wish. And there was ness anymore. I couldn’t returning veteran? a peace sign on the hill. stand people, or even A: I didn’t even answering the telephone. And I thought, ‘I think mention it to anybody. it’s 1970 here.’ And I liked I had a back injury Nobody in college even 1970. So I decided to stay. from the crash that knew that I was in

A12 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Emotional over failed rescues

Arriving in time for Tet

MARTIN KIDSTON martin.kidston@missoulian.com‌

KATHRYN HAAKE kate.haake@missoulian.com‌

‌In the spring of 1963, Turner Demmons graduated from Flathead High School. Inspired by his brother, who flew C-130 military transport planes, the younger Demmons set his eyes on becoming a pilot.

Demmons took the appropriate steps, attending the University of Montana before earning his commission in the U.S. Air Force. He earned his wings in 1969, when his plans to become a pilot took him to Vietnam.

While Demmons ended his flying career years later piloting helicopters for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and medical flights for St. Patrick Hospital, it’s his experience in Vietnam that has stayed with him for nearly 50 years.

Q: What was your first experience with Vietnam?

A: I started flying the C-141 transporters. We’d go to Utah, pick up a load of munitions and go over there (Vietnam). We’d come back with the black body bags or wounded Army guys. We all knew we were going to Vietnam.

We were all first lieutenants. I got orders to go fly helicopters, which was a death sentence. All you had to do was watch the 6 o’clock news.

Q: What was your experience as a helicopter pilot?

A: We had 13 helicopters and about 20 pilots and a bunch of para-rescue guys for when somebody got shot down. We always had two crews on alert.

We always flew with two helicopters and two AE-1

‌Jim Rather was a naive 19-year-old college student when he received a letter from his Uncle Sam. The draft notice came as a shock for the Midwesterner, a parttime college student and full-time worker, even after he had passed the state-mandated physical in May 1966.

“I was surprised. I was scheduled to have dinner with my parents and meet my grandparents there,” he said. “As soon as I got there, they handed me this letter and my mother was crying.”

He served in Vietnam from Jan. 19, 1968 to Sept.

7, 1968.

Q: What was your reaction to receiving the letter?

A: Well, I guess I will have to quit my job.

Everyone was kind of emotional about it, but I just thought it was my job. OK, so they called you up—go do your thing.

Q: So you landed in Vietnam on Jan. 19. What was it like getting off that plane?

A: It was 130 degrees when I got off that plane.

It took my breath. I landed at 68 feet above sea level. And that humidity and that heat just takes your breath away. It was like walking into an oven. I was on a Pan Am 707, and as we landed they were mortaring the end of the runway ... because it was the beginning of the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Q: What was your main job while you were there?

A. I had two friends and we would take a Jeep and go from base

Courtesy photo‌

Turner Demmons was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, flying rescue missions.

Sandy Raider sky pilots.

They would go in and troll for gunfire, to see if the place was safe for us to go in and hover and drop the penetrator to get these guys out. Those AE-1s were armed to the teeth.

They were the ones that plowed the roads for us.

We were talking to the pilots who’d been shot up and punched out. Small arms weren’t a problem for us. It was AAA batteries and missiles that had us pull off. We helped locate where these guys were, but we didn’t effect the rescue, so that part was a failure.

Q: Why do you consider it a failure?

A: I saw the lights of Hanoi and saw the lights of the pilots we were looking for down in the bushes. We were talking with them and they were hunkering down. I was the lead pilot. I made the decision to pull off. It was getting dark. I’ve got five guys on my machine and five guys behind me. I told the pilots we’ll see you in the morning. We’re heading back and low on fuel.

My compass freezes and I take us over the nastiest part of Laos and we start

taking gunfire. It knocked out our No. 2 engine. I was looking down through the right shin window and I could see these beautiful orange balls coming up. It reminded me of the Fourth of July on Seeley Lake. I told everyone to break up.

Nobody got hit except us.

We can’t maintain altitude and I had everyone put parachutes on. I thought we were going to go down in Laos, which was a bad place to go down.

Q: What happened then?

A: Our base for recovery was Udorn (Thailand). It was not our home base, but it was the safest place we could go. I had the gaggle behind me.

When I landed, I got back on the radio. I knew the other helicopter was right behind me, but now I’m checking on the (AE-1 Sandy Raider) pilots. The one pilot asked me to send a tug out. He’d run out of gas and didn’t have enough to taxi off the runway. It was that close.

But he was making sure we didn’t end up in the brush ourselves. It’s a real band of brothers. But those See Demmons, Page A14

Jim Rather arrived in Vietnam in January 1968, during the Tet Offensive. to base. I didn’t have a map, didn’t have GPS. We would just drive.

Someone would say go, take Highway 1. Go over to the coast and go to the Phu Cat Air Force Base and work on stuff over there. So we would just go base to base and work on stuff, and while we were there the base would get attacked, and so we would go get our rifles and get in the bunker and wait to see if we should be part of the fighting.

I never had to actively hand-to-hand combat or anything like that.

It could be extremely boring. They had a monsoon season and you could stand outside and hardly get your breath.

Q: How did you manage that transition – from one minute being so bored to the next minute in fear of your life?

A: There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs. I call it sleeping with one eye open. I have a sleep deprivation problem now, and I think I got it in Vietnam. We were always hyper-sensitive to noise and light. If there was a flash or the slightest sound – you were listening for it – and when there would be an attack, it was normally at

night. We got used to it.

The government told the military, you are not on the offensive, you are on the defensive.

Q: That must have been extremely frustrating for you.

A. We knew what they were going to do.

And my company had a team of Korean troops stationed with us. They were hand-to-hand combat experts and they did a three-year tour. If we were attacked in any way, these Korean troops would go into the village and find North Vietnam sympathizers and slit their throats. They were brutal. They hung a guy ... on a cross they built and staked him in the center of the village and he stayed there for a week or two. He turned black and swelled up, and there were all these little kids playing around this cross. That was really gross. I couldn’t believe they would do that.

Q: Do you feel like your position insulated you from many of these atrocities?

A: I think my belief that things like that couldn’t happen, I think that put a hard shell around me. I said, “Now, don’t think about that.

Don’t let that get to you.”

It’s really weird when you think about it. When I was a little kid, we had cap guns and BB guns, and we’d play cowboy and Indians, and we shot each other and we would play dead. But when you get to Vietnam and that actually happens for real, it is astounding. It really is astounding. I didn’t see my first dead person (from violence) until I was in Vietnam. I was 20 years old.

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VETERANS’ VOICES

Marine Graler led rifle platoon STACIE DUCE for the Missoulian‌

‌CORVALLIS – During the second week of June 1967, Bob Graler graduated from the University of Kentucky, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and married his sweetheart.

For the next six months, he received training with 500 other second lieutenants in Quantico, Virginia, and by December he was a rifle platoon leader in the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam.

He served for six months in some of the bloodiest battles before he “ran into a disagreement with a booby trap” and was sent to Okinawa, Japan, to rehabilitate and serve in logistics.

Q: What was your biggest challenge when you arrived in Vietnam?

A: At the time, it was normal to have 41 men in your platoon, but in mine, we had 20. In the best of times, I had 25. We kept trying to do things like they taught in school, but during my entire service, we didn’t have the ranks of people we were supposed to have. Attrition was so high. We couldn’t keep up.

Another problem that we never overcame was Marines spent 13 months in country, but there was no rhyme or reason as to when people were transferred in or out. It was a big hindrance to unit cohesion.

My biggest challenge was making people work as a team when some were new and some were going home in two weeks. They hadn’t been through the same things together.

Now, Marines go as a unit instead of individually, which is so much smarter.

Graler During the Tet Offensive of 1968, we were involved in heavy fighting. At one point, I had seven people left in my platoon, and for a few days I wasn’t one of them.

We moved between Hue and Da Nang, from fighting in the jungle to going house to house for about a 10-day period. It was quite an experience.

Q: The experience must have been traumatic?

A: Everybody’s war was different based on their background, their training and their expectations. I grew up with World War II heroes. I was proud to be a war baby, not a baby boomer. All the guys I knew were war heroes – fighters – and I wanted to be like them. I volunteered to go to Vietnam, but I was a little older than most and went in with a little different attitude and a lot more training. Things in Vietnam looked very different to a 25-year-old officer than to an 18-year-old toting a rifle for the first time.

Q: So you continued your military career after the war?

A: Yes, I had a 20-year career in the Marine Corps. I was deployed in the Western Pacific when my son was working on his college education.

I didn’t know he was involved in the NROTC program and didn’t know he would follow in my footsteps. He’s been active duty for 24 years.

We’re starting to get a line of Marines in the family.

Between the two of us, we have almost 50 years of service.

The one difference between our deployments is communications. He can Skype with his wife and be in touch with family. For me, it took two to three weeks to get letters.

So it was five or six weeks before I’d get a reply from my wife.

We never really were in very good contact with each other while I was gone, which was hard.

People nowadays don’t understand that.

Q: What advice did you give your son before he was deployed?

A: Keep his head down. What can you say?

Q: Do you keep in contact with the Marines you served with in Vietnam?

A: I trained with 500 people – a whole class of second lieutenants. We lost 47 of them – some in Vietnam – and the last classmate we lost during active duty was hung after he was captured in Beirut in the 1980s. Ten percent of my class was killed – decimated is the term for that. If Roman legions lost 10 percent of their soldiers, they were said to be decimated.

Needless to say, we lost a lot of heroes. I still keep in contact with some of them – one sends me birthday wishes every year. I think I adjusted well after the war because I had a very good support system. My first job after the war was a guard officer at a Naval sub base.

So for years, everyone I associated with had been in Vietnam – Marines and naval officers – we had a positive support system.

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A13

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VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Sperry served 2 tours, awarded for heroism that happened was watching my buddy get shot between the eyes. The scariest thing was when the Armored Personnel ‌CORVALLIS – Allen Carrier I was driving at Sperry grew up in Corvalnight was hit by a rocketlis and left high school propelled grenade. to work in the smelter in

Anaconda. He received his During Sperry’s draft notice in 1967 and second tour in Vietnam, enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Sperry served two tours Courtesy Allen Sperry‌ he served with an aviation battalion from March 1 in Vietnam for a total of Allen Sperry stands through Aug. 29, 1969. He 18 months. with his weapon and was a door gunner, then First Sgt. Allen Dean transportation vehicles in a crew chief. His job was Sperry received a combat Vietnam. resupplying fire bases, infantry badge, air crew flying combat assault misdirected men and with wings and an air assault sions and spraying Agent “complete disregard for badge. He received two Orange – a harsh chemical his own safety fearlessly Bronze Stars, a meritoriused to eliminate the forest braved the holocaust of ous service medal, nine cover of the enemy. exploding projectiles.” combat air medals, one He received an air

air medal for heroism, medal for heroism when Q: Were you homesick an Army Commendation the helicopter he was in Medal for heroism, a Viet- for Montana? came under intense enemy A: I was a little homenam service medal with fire as they landed in a sick at first, but then not six campaign stars, and a battle area to evacuate a Vietnam campaign medal. at all. I did miss home Sperry’s first tour was in cooking – we ate C rations captured prisoner. The commendation said it was the infantry from February and enjoyed feeding the Sperry’s valorous actions 1968 to February 1969 as a C rations to the kids in that made the mission the area. rifleman. He worked near successful.

Q: Were you worried Doug Tieng and Tay Ninh,

doing search-and-destroy about dying?

Q: How has the war A: I didn’t worry about missions. He also cleared and secured the main road. dying – it’s all in the Lord’s impacted your life?

A: I have post-traumatic hands. I was there to do Sperry received the stress disorder, Agent a job.

Army Commendation Orange problems and Q: What was comMedal with Valor while hearing loss. Hearing firebat like? serving as a squadron crackers and helicopters A: Complete chaos at leader when his company can take me back to battle, first. It was hot, humid encountered an intense and rained every day dur- as can certain smells. On attack from a large ing the monsoon season. I the positive side, my milienemy force. tary experiences taught me feared getting ambushed.

According to the discipline and teamwork.

The most difficult thing commendation, Sperry MICHELLE MCCONNAHA michelle.mcconnaha@ ravallirepublic.com‌

Q: What did you think of the Vietnam War? A: Then I felt like we were doing the right thing by helping the South, but now I see the war was run by politicians – a big mistake. I feel war protesters should have been drafted.

After the Vietnam War, Sperry went back in to the Army and served for a total of 22 years, 1 month and 12 days. He worked in Belgium, Germany, Korea and Kentucky.

He eventually used the GI Bill to get a college education.

Sperry never married, but moved back to Montana to care for his parents.

He designed the veterans monument at the north end of Hamilton.

As part of the Vietnam Veterans of America Bitterroot Chapter 938, he worked to collect names, gather donations and build the memorial, which was dedicated in May 2013.

The memorial honors all honorably discharged veterans and their service to our country from all branches of the military. It bears the names of veterans who served from 1756 to 2012.

In addition to names on the granite walls, there are paving stones detailing the service and awards of veterans.

Larry Anderson led machine gun company KEILA SZPALLER keila.szpaller@missoulian.com‌ more quiet and interested

‌ arry Anderson was L the executive officer for a machine gun company of 150 men during the Vietnam War. Since then, he’s been a city manager for the city of Missoula, on the Missoula City Council and Board of County Commissioners, staff member for former U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg, and a businessman who started Eastgate Rental and ran it for 12 years.

After he graduated from the University of Montana, Anderson knew he would be drafted, so he joined up under a deferred enlistment, which allowed him time to earn money fighting fires in Alaska.

In 1967, Anderson went into the service. He went through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, advanced training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then Officer Candidate School in Oklahoma as well.

In July 1969, he left for Vietnam, and he returned one year later.

Even people who don’t have death-defying experiences in war come home different, maybe

in staying away from the crowds, he said.

“You were changed, from the time you went into the service and went into a combat situation, from what you were before,” Anderson said.

Q: What was your job in Vietnam?

A: We were artillery, but we operated crew-served weapons that were used in the Korean War as air defense weapons, four 50-caliber machine guns mounted on a turret. Our battery provided either convoy support if they were mounted on the back of a truck, or we could take them off the truck and provide perimeter support for the artillery bases.

We supported operations throughout I Corps. There was the battery commander and myself, and 150 enlisted men.

My job was to make sure my men had what they needed as far as ammunition and supplies and meals when they were deployed. The one thing I learned was to put your NCOs in charge. Let them know when they did a good job, let them know when they did a bad job. But mostly, I learned

treated us the way they did when we got back.

I spent 22 years in the military, both National Guard and active duty, and we used to wear our uniform. When we couldn’t get space available on a military flight, you’d go jump on United

or American Airlines.

We’d get 50 percent off, but it wasn’t worth it to walk through the terminal with the comments, the looks and disdain everyone had. I quit wearing my uniform, even though I was really proud of what I did.

FROM PAGE A12

Demmons Continued

downed pilots sure wanted out of there. I told them we’d be in at first light. We sent another group of Sandy Raiders and CH-53s at first light

and got them out.

Q: The memories still seem fresh to you.

A: I’m 70 years old and I’m still a little emotional.

The combat missions, even with the failures, we knew were doing the right thing. The hardest missions I ever flew were

the C-141 transporters with wounded guys in the back.

I was a co-pilot at the time. We usually depart Saigon and refuel in Hawaii and fly to Travis Air Force Base where the big hospital was. The nurse would come and

tap me on the shoulder.

She’d give me a slip saying such-and-such name, rank and serial number just died.

Q: What about the Vietnam War has stayed with you?

A: I still have trouble with the people who

VIETNAM

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A15

VETERANS’ VOICES

to trust my NCOs because they were the ones that were there from day to day. With only two officers, we learned to delegate.

Q: Did you lose men?

A: We lost a couple. The Tet Offensive had occurred in 1968, so they had heavy losses then. This time, there was not as much activity, actual firefights. We experienced a lot of mortar attacks and rocket attacks on our base, but not necessarily the intensity of what they had experienced the previous year.

Q: What stands out for you when you think back on your service?

A: I notice the biggest difference was my dad’s time in World War II and mine in Vietnam. He went overseas as part of a unit on a ship, and it took a month of travel. I was inserted into a unit as an individual. I went over by myself, dropped in, spent a week with the outgoing executive officer, and that was it.

When I got out within a couple weeks of being in a firefight, I was back in the United States, out of the Army. So there was no sense of camaraderie or cohesion, and I think that was true of a lot of people like myself.

Q: What do we civilians get wrong about Vietnam?

A: In 1987, we decided to go to the City Council and get permission to put in a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There we were, 17 years after I got out of the service, 12 years after the war was essentially over, and here were these people who still had very strong feelings about us as baby killers. They strongly opposed any memorial honoring the 316 Montanans who were killed in Vietnam. When I got out of the service and returned to Montana, I didn’t tell anybody I was a veteran.

When we did get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I think we changed people’s attitudes from blaming the combatants and separating those from the political decisions to go to war. The biggest thing is recognizing we didn’t have any control over what was going on at the time politically. We did our duty as we saw it, and that was not necessarily our decision. Many military personnel hated the war as much as the people that were protesting. They saw buddies killed and wounded, but they were drafted and they did their duty.

Q: What should we be thinking about this Veterans Day? A: I think there’s just remembering veterans for their service and realizing that most of them have changed somewhat through that service. And recognize

Provided photo‌

Larry Anderson served in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, leading a machine gun company.

a lot of them overcome a lot to get back civilian life and readjust. But generally, most of them are proud of their service, although not necessarily everything they had to do. You look at how many people are in the service, it’s less than 1 percent or 2 percent of our population. So it’s quite a decision to make, and then to live with the consequences is pretty tough for a lot of people.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you took home from Vietnam?

A: Honoring veterans for their service and trying to do what I can to help them so their experience coming back home was not the same as ours, the isolation, the derision that we experienced. I didn’t directly experience that, but a lot of those folks did. And so today, I mentor veterans in the Veterans Court program and try to help those folks who are coming back and having issues trying to readjust to civilian life.

Q: What’s the most rewarding part of your mentoring?

A: I’m going on my fourth year, and most of these people, veterans from Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, they have reached rock bottom. And they have said, what I’ve been doing in the past isn’t working. It may take six or eight months, and like any other recovery program, you have trips and falls along the way. These were young folks, probably directly out of high school when they went into the service. They went from one structured environment to the structure of military service, they got out of the service, experienced probably things that most adults don’t experience.

Most of these folks have convictions for a variety of offenses, usually involving drugs and alcohol. So to see them start through this program and make a decision along the way to turn their lives around, and seeing them graduate from this program and start to move forward is pretty rewarding.

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A16 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Keith Jensen injured in two-day firefight arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of December later, he was dead. Because 1969, and on his first few after we were in that fight, patrols in a platoon within ‌Keith Jensen’s service Charlie Company, he could things got a lot worse. in Vietnam was cut short sense the danger.

Dozens of the people who when he took a piece “A lot of those people were in my platoon that of shrapnel to his lungs had been there for a while day didn’t make it. So you during the so-called St. already, and they were see, I had a million-dollar Valentine’s Day Massacre pretty uptight and pretty of 1970, a two-day firefight wound. I got out of there. nervous about things,” It was a pretty hairy situin a mountainous jungle he said. “I didn’t run into ation.” that claimed the lives of much trouble, but I saw Jensen was just a 13 American soldiers and 22-year-old farm boy from lots of evidence of it: helmore than 30 North Vietmets with hair, and holes in north of Wolf Point when namese fighters. he was drafted into the U.S. the helmets.”

He had only been servJensen has vivid memoArmy in 1969. ing as an Army medic for ries of what the soldiers “I screwed around and three months when he called a “mad minute” at a my grades went down, was evacuated back to the landing zone, LZ Mary. and next thing you know States. The memory of “You go out and fire your what happened to the guys I got a letter from the weapon over the bird (the president,” he recalled. “I who were left behind still helicopter) to make sure kind of expected it. But I troubles him. they worked,” he recalled. was always told we were “This is what can really “One guy goofed up with stopping communism, wear on a person,” he an anti-tank weapon and explained. “I got wounded so I didn’t argue or think blew his hand off. He says, and evacuated out of there. about going to Canada or ‘I expletive up.’ Things like anything like that.”

Somebody had to go out that really stand out in After basic training, he and replace me. The guy

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your mind.”

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, near the Cambodian border, was Jensen’s first real fight that he was involved in.

“We were walking through a jungle area, and we thought there were a few of them (NVA) in there, but it turned out there was a lot more than what they thought,” he recalled. “We got into a firefight in there and 13 of the people I was with were wounded. And you can imagine, it was the first real fight I’d ever been in. And technically, those guys were my responsibility. I tried to take care of them. And all hell breaks loose and everything was going on, and I heard some people calling for a medic. And I got up to go and they said, ‘Doc, you’ve been hit!’ And I hardly even really realized it at

the time. And I had been. I think what happened was some kind of a shell blew up in the trees above us and came down on our backs, because you’re all laying down. The shrapnel is still in there. It was only about as big around as my finger.”

Jensen was “medevaced” by helicopter, and tubes were stuck into his chest to alleviate his collapsed lung.

“The next thing I knew, I went to Japan and stayed there for a week or so and I was brought back to the States,” he said. “I’m really fortunate that none of the guys I was with that were wounded that day died, because that would have been a terrible burden to bear. But we lost an awful lot of good people over there.”

Now 68 and still working at an education logistics company in Missoula

with his wife, Jensen recently returned from a reunion of his fellow medics in Charlie Company.

He wasn’t in the war for very long, but the experience changed his perspective.

“I was only there for three months, but I guess I could categorically say that I saw enough so that I know that we’re mighty blessed to be in a peaceful country,” he said. “Because you were always thinking that the next turn you took could get you into bad trouble.

It was an experience you’ll never forget. It would have wore on me if I had been over there for a year. You hear about people having bad dreams and that kind of stuff. So I was lucky in that sense. It could so easily have been so much worse.”

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VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A17

Bates on Special Forces team out. I’d come back first thing in the morning and the bridges were rebuilt and looked like 1,000 ‌Roy Bates and his wife trucks had already driven are beginning a new chapover them. They had a lot ter in their storied lives by of manpower and worked building a retirement home all night with picks and in the Bitterroot Valley on shovels to rebuild. One land that’s been in his famthing I learned, Asian ily for generations. mentality at the time was “I’ve been retired almost very different than yours as long as I was on active and mine. Life was cheap duty in the Air Force,” and so was labor, and he said. they exploited both.

After three tours in Q: What else did Southeast Asia during Courtesy photo‌ the Vietnam War and 24 Roy Bates was an Air Force you learn?

A: As a young kid years as an Air Force pilot, pilot, and served three tours coming from Missoula, Bates then served as a in Southeast Asia during Montana, you don’t commercial airline captain the Vietnam War. understand what the for another 12 years, but he heat and humidity was doesn’t fly much anymore. was good. But I kept some like. When we arrived books on hand, studying “Flying is like surgery,” in Vietnam and that math trying to improve he said. “You’ve got to plane’s charter door first my math capabilities. I’m do it all the time to do it opened, the heat hit me terrible at math, still am, correctly. It’s a repetitive but it kept my mind going. in the face like a fist. I’ll business. I would dearly never forget that. I also We had 12 guys from the love to have an airplane Air Force and 12 guys from became well acquainted to fly to Phoenix to take the Army – an A Team that with the abject poverty care of business … but I know I would mistreat that lived off the land. Near our of the people. It was a completely different way privilege and that wouldn’t camp was a paved runway of life from Montana. It built by the French in the be right. Pilots need to was all new.

1940s for the president’s fly at least once a week Q: Were you hunting lodge. to stay proficient or they ever injured?

He’d fly in to hunt shouldn’t fly at all.”

A: No Purple Hearts elephants and such. We Q: Tell me about your for me. I never got hurt, owned the airstrip in three military tours. never got hit, although the daytime and the bad A: I spent one year in I was shot at a lot. I also Vietnam from 1965 to 1966 guys owned it at night, which was interesting. We didn’t come home with the prior to the build-up of forces. Then, I was in Thai- became well-versed in the mental anguish that many experienced. The Air Force ways of Army weaponry. land for six months flying was different because we Q: Where did you fly B-52s and one year flying weren’t out crawling in during the day?

F-4s in Ubon, Thailand, the swamps with people A: I was a forward air on the north-central side. shooting at us from the During the first six months controller in an O1 – we’d bushes. All the landmines fly low to the ground at of my first tour, I was at and snakes and poor living 75 miles per hour over the Nha Trang on the east conditions and sleeping in coast of central Vietnam. It same areas, so we’d know your clothes for a month was a huge resort area with the land like the back of – it was tough on them. In long, white sandy beaches. our hand. We’d make two the special forces camp, we trips – right after sunrise The second six months, and right before sundown. had some deprivation as far I was in an Army special We didn’t have any night- as food goes. We lived off forces camp in the middle the land and C-rations and of nowhere. We lived in the vision goggles and such rice, so not much meat. For in those days, so all of our hills with pretty primitive work was done during day- 20 years after I got home, living conditions. you couldn’t get me to eat light. By the end of every Q: How did you spend day, the roads were all cra- a grain of rice if my life your time at the camp? tered, the bridges bombed depended on it.

A: I flew a lot, which STACIE DUCE for the Missoulian‌

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VETERANS’ VOICES

Lewis Higinbotham volunteered for 4 tours — 49 months CORY WALSH cory.walsh@missoulian.com‌

‌Lewis Higinbotham of Missoula always wanted to be in the military, a desire that took him to West Point. He volunteered for four tours in Vietnam as an Army Ranger, from August 1964 to August 1967.

After a year in the U.S., he returned for another tour from August 1968 to September 1969 for a total of 49 months. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1983.

Q: Where were you first deployed to Vietnam?

A: I was an adviser for a year to a Vietnamese Ranger battalion in the Delta. We were deployed most of the time, kind of a fire brigade for the local area. The adviser before me in that battalion was killed, and the adviser after me in that battalion was killed. At the end of my year with the Vietnamese Rangers, I volunteered for an extension of a year for assignment to the 101st Airborne Division, which had just arrived in country. In the 101st, I was a rifle platoon leader, I was a rifle company commander. I was a recon company commander, and for part of the time I was a battalion staff officer.

I had one rifle company, and would really like to have another one, because for an infantry man, being a rifle company commander is the best job on the planet. But I was a very junior captain and there were a lot of captains in our unit who were two and three years senior to me, so I could see that I would not get another rifle company in the 101st.

So when I volunteered to extend again at the end of my second tour for a third year, I requested a transfer to the 173rd, which was

not quite as overrun with captains senior to me. And the next year I commanded a company again, a second rifle company, and at the end of that year I went back to the States.

I thought about going back to teach at West Point, but decided it didn’t square with my view of what I was supposed to be doing – to go to graduate school and then hide out on the faculty somewhere teaching, when there was a war going on. So I volunteered to go back for a fourth tour. Again, I went to the 173rd. I was rifle company commander again, Battalion S3, operations officer.

Q: What was your role as adviser?

A: Without having an interpreter assigned to our unit, and because I’d been to the language school and spoke a little bit of Vietnamese, I got the opportunity to get much practice in the use of it, and so I was lucky to be essentially fluent in Vietnamese.

I was a first lieutenant, we had a sergeant and eventually got a second sergeant, and after I’d been there for several months, a captain came in.

None of those other three Americans spoke Vietnamese and none of the Vietnamese in that unit – in some units there were Vietnamese who spoke very good English – it just some happened that in this unit, we didn’t have any. That was the luckof-the-draw sort of thing, where my limited training in Vietnamese before I went over there allowed me to use it and get more proficient. So at the end of that year I was, at the small-unit level, essentially fluent. What goes on in the village, what questions we

West Point to be a soldier, and when there’s a war on soldiers should be in the fight. It was certainly not a widely held view.

I went back and went back and went back, and used the experience I had to do a better job than if I hadn’t had that experience.

That sounds self-serving, and (an) inflated selfimage. (Laughs a bit).

Q: Have you met anyone else who did four tours?

A: I know of no others.

I know of one other guy, a good friend of mine, he served five. It was just not the common thing to do.

Q: What did you do after the last tour?

A: While I was home in the States between the third and the fourth tour, just before I was scheduled Courtesy photo‌ to go back, I met an Army Lewis Higinbotham volunteered for four tours in Vietnam nurse at Fort Benning as an Army Ranger. and it was the epitome of a whirlwind courtship. I waited until the second need to ask civilians about battalions didn’t have a fixed base or a fixed home. date to propose to her. It what the Viet Cong were took me almost a week to It went anywhere in the up to – I could do all that. province that had a reason persuade her to say yes, Q: What parts of Vietand we got married shortly nam were you deployed to? for the province chief to send us there. We were out thereafter. She was an A: That first year was essentially the whole time. Army nurse, and she was in the southern part of Q: Where else in country assigned to Thailand while the Mekong Delta. It was I was in Vietnam on my essentially rice paddies and did you serve? fourth tour.

A: The second, third mangrove swamps.

In the last summer and fourth tours, I was Q: What was your batof my fourth tour, the in the central highlands: talion’s mission? political situation changed A: The Ranger battalion hill country, jungle, considerably. And this will canopy. There are places was under operational be hard for you to write in in the central part of the control of the province country where, right along such a way that it doesn’t chief. So wherever there make me sound terrible, the coast, there are rice was a serious problem, or but the president of the paddies, but most of the serious opportunity, the United States, bowing to central highlands is just province chief directed the Congress of the United that: central highlands. that the Ranger battalion States, wimped out.

It’s jungle and mountains. go and deal with that And they declared that situation. In some cases, it So my year with the 101st would be because a district and my two years with the everything was fine, and we were going to start 173rd, I was in the central or an outpost was being attacked. We had to go and highlands most of the time. bringing the troops home and they started VietnamQ: You volunteered to help them. There would be other cases where their serve all those tours. What ization, which was the process of turning it over drove those decisions? system of intelligence to the South Vietnamese, A: It was my personal gathering indicated there and they were clearly not philosophy. My belief in was an enemy target and we’d go after it. The Ranger what I was doing. I went to ready and capable to do it

by themselves. They still needed our help.

I didn’t want to be stranded out there somewhere when my support had been sent home. I decided I’d done my bit.

I’m sorry, but if we’re going to quit and go home, I guess I am too. Even though this was ‘69 and it didn’t really go bad until ‘72, I could see that it was really terrible. And my wife, she wasn’t adamant, but she was a whole lot less than enthusiastic about me continuing to stay in Vietnam. So I requested a transfer from Vietnam to Germany, and then from there on out I had a normal Army career.

Q: Did you receive any commendations?

A: During the time I was there, I was awarded three Silver Stars, a Bronze Star for valor, a Purple Heart and two awards, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry while I was Ranger battalion adviser.

I know for a fact that my survival was based on experience and knowing tactics, and knowing what to do and think faster than the other guy and outsmart him. The grace of God protecting me from all sorts of bad things that could happen. Poor enemy marksmanship – I got shot at a lot and didn’t get hit.

The only time I got hit was a grenade that was thrown at very close range; and I think being willing to consider more than just the average. Instead of preparing only for what we knew that the enemy always did, I always thought: “ ‘What else can they do?’ ‘What can they do differently?

What if they try something new, what might that be and how can I prepare my folks to be ready for them?’ “

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A19

George Mayer delivered promotion orders to Marines the spinning blades of a helicopter and ask them to deliver orders for me, or ‌HAMILTON – From 1965 I’d jump on myself if they were transporting guys. It to 1970, George Mayer of was up to me to get where I Hamilton was a reservist in the Marines, with duties was supposed to be. It was a good duty. mostly in Yakima, WashQ: Were you at risk while ington. delivering orders?

He was sent to Vietnam A: Of course. But we also on Oct. 14, 1968, and took on mortars and rockets because of his previous service, he reported as a E5 and small artillery fire most days at headquarters, which buck sergeant with more privileges and pay. His unit meant a lot of paperwork for me. I made sure what we in Vietnam included some published about our battles of the same officers he was accurate and sent to the worked with at home. right people. That was the

primary part of my job.

Q: What was your job The fun part was taking when you arrived? promotions out in the field.

A: My job was to receive If someone was promoted and deliver personnel to sergeant, I’d take the changes and orders from chevrons off my own command. I had enough uniform and give them to pull to secure a Jeep and him. It’s not like I had a big a driver. My driver was supply of what I needed. on his third tour and was Since I made regular rounds pretty salty. When they heard he was coming back, into the field, I’d also pick up things for outlying they told me not to give platoons, which they him a rifle because he was appreciated. trigger happy, so I made After showing photohim my driver. I trusted graphs of his headquarters: him entirely. He knew the A: Here’s a picture of the country, knew how to get tower at headquarters. It me where I needed to go and knew when to refuse to was shot by rockets at least three times and twice there go because of safety. was somebody in the tower.

He wouldn’t drive roads One day, we were taking that hadn’t been swept for rockets and a guy thought booby traps, so sometimes the tower was a safer place.

I’d have to run under STACIE DUCE for the Missoulian ‌

View all our special publications at

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A: I came home early do an administrative bust.

There was one sergeant who because my dad was diagwas stationed at Hill 55. His nosed with terminal cancer.

I was able to visit with my job was to take his group dad for nine days at the out in the danger zone and hospital before he passed. patrol all night long. He came into headquarters one They gave me a choice since mom was left with a day and said he was not 20-acre farm, so I took the going back. He had lost all humanitarian station and but three of his squad and helped her. I spent 14 more he was fed up. months as an inspective So they gave him a twoinstructor staff. stripe bust and made him For a long time, I didn’t a private. He still went out, but he wasn’t in charge. He tell anyone that I was a Provided photo‌ was really knowledgeable, Marine and had been to George Mayer of Hamilton standing in front of the Vietnam. I had to learn to so he was assigned to a “hooch” where he lived at headquarters on base in isolate myself, hold my green platoon and guided Vietnam. His favorite part of his administrative job was temper, control my drinkthat guy. They finally delivering promotion orders to Marines in the field, learned to go out on patrols ing and hold my tongue in where he often had to rip the chevrons off his own order to control my sanity. and just park. If they were uniform to give to the new sergeants. doing what they were sup- I stopped socializing, trusting and believing posed to, they’d get sniped people’s stupid intentions. something to make it go and out. But if they went and But a rocket took a leg But it’s better now. I live were eyeball aiming, so they parked, then they could out of the tower so it was near my brother, who is watch and be ready and leaning but didn’t fall over. weren’t very accurate. also a veteran and we’re Q: What part of your job fight effectively.

He had a radio up there Q: What happened when involved in the veteran did you not expect? and sighted in where the groups in town. you came home?

A: Every so often, I’d shooter was. He got a Silver Star for that – being in the wrong place at the right time. But I bet his drawers were full.

However, the Vietnamese were not good shots. They were capturing our rockets when they could and stockWestern Montana Clinic piling them, but they didn’t have a very sophisticated salutes and thanks way of shooting them. We’d all veterans. find these bamboo racks they built. They’d hit the Your bravery in the face rocket with a hammer or

of fear is awe inspiring.

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A20 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Dan Mayer was medic on foot patrol to secure, no village to protect, no direction.

We were supposed to be looking for Viet ‌HAMILTON – Dan Cong, ammunition and Mayer was drafted into rice storage. the Vietnam War in 1965 I packed medical and spent 11 months and supplies and a .45, but 20 days in country.

I didn’t usually pack a His experience was difrifle. After about a year, ferent than his younger there were half of us left. brother’s, and different The rest were killed or bit than most men he talks by a snake or a scorpion to, because the war was or a punji stick. One guy a unique experience for went crazy – there was a each person involved. little bit of war neurosis.

Although he didn’t Q: What is a admit he was a veteran punji stick? for more than 20 years A: The Vietnamese after returning from the would bury them in the conflict, at one point he ground so you stepped knew he needed help and the camaraderie of others Provided photo‌ on them. Or sometimes, they’d attach them to who had served.

Dan Mayer lost 40 to 50 gates and when you’d pounds while he was in He was instrumental Vietnam, from carrying an open them, the sharpin helping establish the 80-pound pack on foot ened stick would swing Bitterroot Chapter of around and stab you.

Vietnam Veterans, whose patrol for a year.

They were wooden sticks members meet regularly – there was no base camp smeared with feces. and boast to be the largThey wouldn’t kill you, there, just white sand. est chapter in Montana. but it would give you Q: What hap an infection. pened next?

Q: What was your Q: As a medic, what A: So we went into reaction to being drafted? did you do? the field for about five A: I was young and A: More or less what days, came back for wanted to see what I was supposed to do.

Christmas for four days. war was like. I wasn’t I administered basic Then we went back out progressing at the time; first aid, but we weren’t and never came back to I was working and going trained like they are now. to school on and off, so I a base camp. We slept If someone got hurt, I’d was ready for adventure. on the ground the entire stabilize, treat for shock, time except for those I was a little older than clean the injury, stop the the others in my platoon. four days. Every three bleeding and try to get I was 21, while most were days, they’d bring us C-rations on a helicopter. a medevac, if needed.

18 or 19.

I’d make everyone take Sometimes it would Our platoon was full their malaria pills, and of draftees, and we knew be longer. We were all I treated a lot of jungle young and didn’t fight we were headed straight the war for love of God or rot – one little scratch to Vietnam. I was sent could become infected, so country. We just wanted to medic school. We had I had a lot of Band-Aids to survive, that’s all we 40 in our platoon who and iodine. trained together and went could think about. We We’d walk all day and didn’t even know what to Vietnam together. So at night, we’d set up a communism was. that was a lot different perimeter with me, the We were farm kids, than other guys who flew radio guy, the lieutenant over on Pan Am and indi- the working class. So and the platoon sergeant vidually joined a platoon basically, we’d walk around and try not to get in the middle. The radio when they got there. We guy and I would pull ambushed. Then we’d went over in a boat, so wake up and walk around radio watch, and the guys it took 19 days before on the perimeter would again. There was no hill we landed at Tuy Hoa STACIE DUCE for the Missoulian ‌

call in every hour. We didn’t sleep much – it all depended on how scared we were. But by the time we got home, I was in good shape. I lost about 40 to 50 pounds just walking around carrying 80 pounds on my back. It was an effective weight control program.

Q: What did you learn while you were in Vietnam?

A: Not to trust politicians, I guess. It just seemed so useless, so pointless. The big thing was a body count.

Generals living nearby in luxury homes with swimming pools and ice cream would call and want to know how many we killed that day or what we found. My service was not for my country, but I’m really glad I went. It was the opportunity of our generation. There were 2.8 million guys who served in Vietnam, and those who are left know better. They know what war is like firsthand and don’t have to listen to anyone else’s opinions.

Q: As a medic who lost half your platoon, you must have had many traumatic experiences with the deaths of those you cared about.

A: I think I have a really selective memory.

There’s so much about that year that I don’t remember. About 20 years after I got home, I went to a reunion and they were talking about things that happened that I don’t remember at all. I haven’t gone to another reunion since. We were all so close when we were there, but when we got home, it was hard to get together because we didn’t want to remember.

Mike Jarnevic was last known Vietnam vet to retire from military service contractors to keep the South Vietnamese system running. I enlisted on that day (March 28). … In April ‌PILTZVILLE—Sgt. 1974, I went to my first Major Mike Jarnevic’s duty station on the USS last military uniform is Ranger. We left for the on display at the Indiana Philippines and Vietnam Military Museum. His (in) May. This was the war stories come from the Vietnam era and some period between when American troops pulled 38 countries in every out in ’73 and Saigon fell decade since. in ’75. The war was still The concrete passive going on. We didn’t have solar house Jarnevic direct involvement over built in Piltzville, six miles east of Missoula, is there any more, but we certainly had a vested home to the last known interest in what happened.

American veteran of We went to what was Vietnam to retire from called Yankee Station off military service. the coast of Vietnam, The end of a career where all the ships rendezthat spanned 42 years came four months ago, on voused. We had intended to go to Hong Kong for two July 8, his 60th birthday. weeks of R&R, but were Jarnevic was feted that diverted to Da Nang. The day in a ceremony at the Rocky Mountain Museum North Vietnamese had the city surrounded on three of Military History at sides and were shelling it.

Fort Missoula.

There was the possibility Jarnevic became a Marine at 17 and deployed of what we call an NEO, a noncombatant evacuation off the coast of Vietnam.

Later, he became a Green operation. I think we had a Beret, serving in Hondu- consulate there, and there ras, the first Gulf War and were a lot of Americans working at Cam Ranh Bay Afghanistan. An Army and all those areas around reservist, Jarnevic spent Da Nang. the 16 months before We finally came back retirement at Fort Lewis, in October 1974. We had Washington, where he a crack in the hull of the was an analyst of intelligence reports in the fight ship which couldn’t be fixed, so we came back against ISIS. Q: What was your Viet- six months early. Those Westpac cruises were nam experience like? normally a year, so we A: The last of the U.S. would have been there troops left 28 March at the fall of Saigon (late 1973, but there were military people still at the April 1975). I had buddies on another carrier who embassy in Saigon, and were part of the evacuaa lot of former military tion. people were used as KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌

VIETNAM I didn’t put any boots on the ground, but I was in a combat arms unit, we were in a combat zone, and the war was still going on. It’s not the same as if we were staying at Camp Pendleton during those years.

Q: You’ve said your closest shave was in 1991 during the Gulf War. What happened?

A: It was the very first day of insertion into Kuwait from Saudi Arabia. I was a medical specialist attached to the Egyptian Third Mechanical Division. We were making a movement into Kuwait, and we had stopped. All of a sudden, you’d see people running in front with rags over their faces yelling “Gas! Gas!” We went to MOPP 4, which meant putting a gas mask on.

We were already in full protective body suit.

In 10 minutes they said, yeah, it’s a false alarm. Well, we later found out it was not. There were 18,000 chemical alarms that went off in the Gulf War, and on top of that, right after the war was over, Army engineers

VETERANS’ VOICES

Courtesy photo‌

Sgt. Major Mike Jarnevic is the last known American veteran of Vietnam to retire from military service. went in and blew up ... a big ammo dump in southern Iraq so Saddam couldn’t get his hands on it. Prevailing winds blew the chemical emissions into Kuwait

and Saudi Arabia and half a million people were exposed. I actually got exposed twice.

Q: You came to Montana in 1980. What brought you?

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A21

A: I had previously come up here in 1971 with a guy I lived across the street from in Kansas City and fell in love with it. I always said I would come back and I finally did. I lived up in the Flathead at Martin City and got an AA in history and political science at (Flathead Valley Community College), then I came to Missoula and got a BA in political science and history and a master’s in creative writing. So I’ve been in Montana for 35 years.

Q: You’re an avowed environmental conservationist.

That’s not something most people would expect from a Green Beret.

A: There are those who would say the two are counter to each other, but one of the things I learned over time is war does terrible things to the environment as well as to human beings.

One of most recent instances was when Saddam unleashed all that oil in Kuwait in ’92 that did irreparable damage to Kuwait and surrounding areas.

Out of that, I sort of formed the ethic that I would like to do my part to maintain these fragile ecosystems. Did you know the Northern Rockies, which includes Montana, is the last intact ecosystem in the United States, meaning everything that Lewis and Clark saw .... remains intact? It’s something that needs to be protected.

Q: Why’d you stay in the military so long?

A: That’s a good question.

I wouldn’t have stayed if it weren’t for the fine people I was working with. ... I enjoyed the mission, enjoyed the camaraderie. There are certain aspects of military life that are extremely frustrating. The levels of the bureaucracy, I don’t think sometimes people understand. My wife (Maria) said she doesn’t see how I put up with it, but over time you kind of become hardened to it.

Yeah, it’s going to be painful to see up front, but I’m going to burn through it and go on and live my life.

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A22 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Braun awarded Navy Cross after being wounded in ’67 battle comes to help me, we drag a guy out and he’s been hit with shrapnel, so we drag him to the command ‌At the age of 17, Ken post. He dies, so I leave Braun volunteered to be a him there. That was my Navy corpsman. first death.

At 18, after graduatQ: What led to you ing from high school, he receiving the Bronze Star? entered basic training. He A: It was the Antenna turned 19 shortly after Valley, Oct. 23. There were being sent to Vietnam in some Marines in trouble 1966 to serve with India out there, we got called up Company, 3rd Battalion, in the middle of the night 9th Marines.

By the time he turned 21, to hump up there and help them out. he was medically retired We get kind of pinned after being wounded down, and there’s Marines during a March 1967 across the rice padMarine Corps battle that came to be known as Get- dies – one guy was badly wounded and nobody lin’s Corner. would go get him. I told the In front of a crowd of machine gunner to cover about 15,000 in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2005 me and I went out there, with the NVA shooting at – 38 years after the battle me and throwing grenades.

– Braun was awarded I ended up being able the U.S. Navy’s highest to drag him all the way commendation, the Navy back over.

Cross, for his service at Q: What happened to Getlin’s Corner.

During his time in Viet- you at Getlin’s Corner?

A: It’s the end of March nam, Braun also received 1967. We had humped for two Purple Hearts and a a few days to Hill 70. Capt.

Bronze Star with a “V” Mike Getlin was ordered for valor.

“I said, ‘I don’t want any and forced to split his troops up. As soon as he medals. I’m not here for did that, we were hit. It medals, I’m here to do my was about 120 of us, and job,’ ” he said.

800 or so NVA attack Q: What’s the first inci- ing us. Everything they could throw at us, they dent you remember well were throwing at us. In during the war? the end, it’s going to be 15 A: I was involved in dead and something like a couple of different 47 wounded. firefights out in the rice I lost track of time, my paddies, but about a month in, October, we were at An adrenaline was kicking in.

I found a rifle, pulled a solHoa battalion rear area.

Some friends of mine were dier to a senior corpsman.

I went back out to take care playing cards and they of other Marines. I rememasked me to play and I ber saying to myself, for a said, “No, I’m going to hit few seconds, I sure would the rack.” I go next door, lie down and a mortar hits like to go home.

Toward the end of the right where they were. fight, Lt. John Bobo, the We get out and jump into weapons officer, has his leg the trenches. blown off and I’m taking I yell out, “Is anyone care of him as he’s running alive?” and someone yells back. A Marine gets up and out of ammo. We go up the DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

Q: What is your reaction war. Some friends of mine and response to the pubwere at a Marine reunion, lic’s view of the war? they overheard some A: I have PTSD, I am still Marines talking about me. suffering from the injury They were saying, ‘I wish Doc was still here with us, in my back – that’s the remember Ken Braun?’ My price of war. Like they say, friend went over and talked freedom isn’t free.

There’s this about us to them. He said I was still being venerated (pointing alive and gave them my to a guest column that phone number. ran in the Missoulian).

My son came out to the We were never venerated golf course in 2000 and when we got here, we found me, he said there weren’t venerated until were Marines from all after 9/11. These guys that Provided photo‌ over the country calling me. They asked if I got my spit on the Vietnam War Ken Braun was wounded during a March 1967 Marine Navy Cross, I said no. They and protest the war, they Corps battle that came to be known as Getlin’s didn’t do anything. The Corner. He later was awarded the U.S. Navy’s highest told me they had filed the commendation, the Navy Cross. opponents of the war did paperwork, but the base not accelerate the end. If camp had been blown up. anything, they prolonged I went to an India and Gen. Lewis Walt, the hill, and Getlin gets killed the NVA’s will to fight.

Company reunion and right in front of me. He got general of the Marines in We were fighting Gen. Richard Neal, who Vietnam, presented me the Navy Cross. was a four-star general and against communism. with the Purple Heart.

We’re throwing “ChiLike the terrorists now, assistant commandant of Q: How did you end up coms” back at them, and receiving your Navy Cross? the Marine Corps, told me they were trying to take they’re throwing our over the world with their A: I didn’t have any con- he was going to push for a grenades back at us, and I belief system. take Bobo up the hill. We’re tact with the men after the Navy Cross. laying there and a NVA comes up behind us and strafes us with his gun. I rolled one way, Bobo rolled the other, I looked over and to I knew he was dead and I was dead, too. Bobo got the Medal of Honor.

These people were real people, and they ★★★★★★ From Montana’s Army National Guard Recruiting and Retention Station, we want to extend were fighters and they our gratitude to the Veterans of Missoula and surrounding areas. Every member of our were heroes. office has had the honor to serve our great country. SSG Brian Yonts Served in support of I was hit three times in Operation Enduring Freedom just outside Kandahar, Afghanistan from 2012-2013 as a the back, I should have Team Leader attached to Bear Troop 8-1 CAV out of Fort Lewis. SSG Micah Emmons served been dead like Bobo. Jack two deployments, one in Baghdad, Iraq and another in support of Afghanistan as a door Riley, the squad leader, was gunner with Montana’s Aviation unit. SFC Larry Dunlap served two tours in Iraq with the there, and I explained how 163rd Infantry as a Platoon Sergeant and a Tactical Operations NCO. We want to honor our to take care of my wounds. veterans by taking time to reach out and make sure our community’s veterans understand the I gave myself morphine and benefits the Army National Guard can offer them and their families. The National Guard had we retreat to another locaa record high enlistment of prior service members this year from all branches. Putting the uniform tion, a briar patch, and it’s back on part-time is a great way to fulfill that night out. In the movies, sense of comradery that we all miss once we leave they show Vietnam being active duty. Located on the corner of Broadway and so brightly lit at night, Russell, at 1555 Liberty Lane. Swing in any time most nights I was there, it and find out how we can be of any assistance to you. was pitch black.

Listed below are just a few of our incentives.

Finally, a Huey gunship comes in and hits the NVA and we head for a medivac, ★ $50,000 Student Loan Repayment ★ Montana National Guard State stumbling over bodies. I Scholarship ★ Federal Tuition Assistance went to the USS Repose ★ Sign On Bonuses ★ Tricare Healthcare hospital ship for a month,

Thank you Veterans, from your veterans Our

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A23

Thank You William J. Patrick MSgt U.S. Air Force Congratulations on retiring after 22 years of service and 101 trips for the U.S. Air Force.

VETERANS

Donna HodsdonHollorn US Army WAC, WWII Oct. 20, 1944 May 15, 1946 Mom, Thank You!

Glenn L. Parmeter 1925-2005 Dad, Franklin James Green,

Charles Ray Abell U.S. Marine Corps

Robert R. Dozier U.S. Air Force

Vietnam Veteran

Korean War Veteran

Thank you for your service.

Love Karen, Jessie, Matt, Adlin & Isis.

Thanks for serving.

Leonard Cordier U.S. Army

Joe Cordier U.S. Navy 1941-1961

Vic Cordier U.S. Navy

WWII Veteran

WWII Veteran

We Love You Big Brother, RIP.

Thanks for your service and leadership.

Korean War Veteran Awarded the Bronze Star with Valor. Your Family Salutes You, RIP!

Your family.

Age 95, Pearl Harbor Sur Survivor, USS Maryland; Mar Korean War & Naval Reserv Reser eVeteran.

We salute you with honor for your service. ser You are our hero!

Richard W. Sorenson U.S. Marine Corps

Happy Camper US Marine Corps

Vietnam Veteran

Marine Corps Recruit District - 1953

1944-2015 ~ Diligimus Bellator ~

C.R. (Rusty) Cordier U.S. Navy 1952-1956 U.S. Army 1958-1961

Navy the day he turned

Sempre Fi

seventeen.

Charles V. Cordier IV U.S. Marine Corps

Ray Cordier U.S. Army

Vietnam Veteran Thank you for serving, twice!

Joined the U.S.

Thank you for your service.

Vietnam Veteran Father of Four 2 Air Force; 1 Marine; 1 Navy.

A24 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

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VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A25

Bruce Jones flew secret missions with the Green Berets his own airplane.

He re-enlisted to fight communism in 1949. He com‌Bruce Jones, 90, of Hamilton, pleted the year of is a retired colonel in the United pilot’s training, flying F-80As, States Air Force.

America’s first jet, Jones trained to become a Jones in advanced flypilot during World War II, but didn’t get his wings or see action ing school.

His first job was flying as a fighter pilot until Korea.

In Vietnam, Jones flew a little F-86As, F-94Cs and P-51s in Cessna as a forward air observer Detroit. He went to Korea in 1951 in the 51st Fighter Wing. He working with the Green Berets, becoming an honorary member completed half the tour flying the F-80a and the other half of the elite corps.

Jones enlisted in the Air Force fighting MiGs in F-86s.

“I came home and was in 1943, right out of high school, assigned to an Air Force base and served until 1945 during WWII. He intended to be a pilot, and I flew right wing on the Air Defense Command’s acrobatic but the war ended before his team – forerunner to the Thuntraining was complete. derbirds,” Jones said. “I flew “The war ended in Europe, F-86s for three years. Then the and they didn’t need any more F-86s went to the test program pilots,” Jones said. at Edwards Air Force Base, flyUnable to complete his ing the F-104 model aircraft. I training in the military, Jones delivered the first ones to the Air used the GI Bill to complete Force in ‘58.” his pilot’s license and purchase MICHELLE MCCONNAHA michelle.mcconnaha@ ravallirepublic.com ‌

In 1960, he was reassigned to the German Air Force because they had purchased the F-104 from Lockheed.

“I spent four years with them and was awarded the German Flying Wings,” Jones said.

He returned to Luke Air Force Base and continued training German pilots until 1967, when he was assigned to Vietnam – to the Green Beret special forces, as a lieutenant colonel.

“I spent the whole year in Vietnam supporting the topsecret missions,” Jones said.

“I was flying a Cessna. The military had developed the air war so that the jets were so fast they’d send in this 150-mph aircraft to spot the target. We would fire smoke rockets at the targets, and then the fighters would hit the smoke with rockets and napalm – in-country only. All our work with special forces was top secret, so no one knew anything.”

Another advantage of the

smaller, slower planes was the ability to land on dirt landing strips.

“One time, I had to go around an elephant on the runway,” Jones said. “I’d fly along the rivers and see the lions laying there – it was pretty wild country. It was all jungle.”

Jones said the hardest thing in Vietnam was staying alive.

“One night, we had 260 men trapped and I had the commander in my back seat talking to his best friend on the ground,” Jones said. “His friend was whispering. The commander told his friend he’d return in the morning to get them, but they had to take their dead and wounded across the river two miles while all these bombs were dropping. We went the next morning and rescued every single one of them, plus their dead and wounded. They gave me the Distinguished Flying Cross for that.

“That was the worst war I’d

ever seen.”

Jones said the best time was when he was fighting the MiGs, because they were being flown

by Russians.

“There was a strategy – at that time, we had .50 calibers— we went to rockets and missiles later on,” Jones said. “The 104 went Mach 2. For 10 years, I flew Mach 2. I got awarded the General Electric Trophy in 1958 for setting a record. It was setting all the speed and altitude records – it went to 93,000 feet and over 1,500 miles an hour. I could go from here to Spokane in 14 minutes – that’s called hauling butt.

“Korea was the last war we won – and that’s because the military ran the war. After Korea, the politicians started running the wars. In Vietnam, we had the war won and the politicians made us stop. The next day, we would have done the last five miles. It’s a shame what has happened with our country.”

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A26 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

For Gary Carlson, the war didn’t end when his tour in Vietnam did 1976, nearly 5 million metal bracelets engraved with the names of ‌VICTOR—Gary Carlson captured or missing was a lieutenant with the Americans were distributed to people who vowed 26th Marines who was never to take them off in Da Nang in February until either the soldier or 1969 when the base their remains returned to was overrun during the this country.)

Tet Offensive.

We went from a war in Carlson, of Victor, was a member of Marine Basic Vietnam to now a war in Class 6-67, which lost 43 the States. How do you of its young lieutenants to get the word out that there are people missing the Vietnam War. in action and prisoners “I lucked out and of war and they might be wasn’t one of them,” left behind?

Carlson said.

I have to say that the

news media, the politiQ: How were you cians, pretty much all changed by the war? said that’s a non-issue.

A: When I left there, When the war is over, the I had decided that I would never be apathetic prisoners of war will come again. It was a real-world home, but we said if they situation and I went home are missing in action, they are not listed. We want to thinking we had lost Marines, we had lost good get them listed.

In 1973 then – it was people, and I survived, 1969 when they started and if I survived then I that – in 1973 was the big better do what I can do back in the States and be a release out of Hanoi of 591 (POWs). Joan’s sister’s good citizen. husband did not come The war didn’t really end for us. Because when I back. He was declared came back, I met Joan (his killed in action.

But at the same time, wife). When I met Joan in 1969, her sister’s husband 591 Americans did come back, and one of those was missing in action, who came back met shot down in Laos on June 3, 1967. Not only did Joan’s sister and they were married.

I come back after going He was in Hanoi for 5 to Vietnam, now we got 1/2 years. He was up at caught up in the idea of the Chinese border just what do we do about her before the big release brother-in-law who was missing in action? So the with over 200 Americans war didn’t end for us, but who had been shipped up there. They were not in a sense it changed. going to come back if Q: So what was your the government had not course of action? negotiated a settlement A: Her sister started – they would have been writing letters to the kept out of it. media and then we got Q: Did the bracelets involved in the prisoners make a difference? of war/missing in action A: Those 591 prisoners issue. We were two of will tell you that it did. It the eight who started made the issue big enough the bracelets. that it couldn’t be pushed (Between 1970 and PERRY BACKUS pbackus@ravallirepublic.com‌

to the side. It became an issue that our government negotiated. We had to get the prisoners back before all the troops left Vietnam. That was one of the conditions. If the troops would have come back first like some people wanted, our brotherin-law would not have come back.

That part of the Vietnam War, we talk battles and that sort of thing, but the war really continued for a lot of people back in the States in a different way.

Q: (to Joan Carlson): What was it like when you saw those prisoners step off the airplane?

A: There was a sense of joy of knowing that we really did help get more of the POWs out and more accountability for those who were listed as MIA. One of the things we were striving for at the time, before the negotiations, was to improve the treatment they were getting.

They had been held in solitary confinement for the most part before it became an issue in the public eye.

The POWs can practically say what date, and relate it to when their treatment became an issue in this country, that their conditions improved.

Initially, there were people high in our government who didn’t even know what MIA stood for. The education came from the family members and concerned citizens educating many of our government people. Many of our families were told to just go home, we’ll take care of it, just be good little citizens. But they weren’t addressing

the issue.

Q: Was there a moment when you knew you were on the right track?

A: Ronald Reagan was governor of California at that time. We were in his office. Joan and I and Joan’s sister and her son were there. Her son was born after her husband went to Vietnam. He never saw his son, which is a tragic story.

We were in Gov. Reagan’s office. Todd pulled on Reagan’s coat – he was 3 at the time – and Reagan said just a minute. So he left, and he and Todd went back in another room and when they came out, the governor was crying. He said let me tell you what happened. We were back there and Todd said, “Will you help bring my daddy home?”

And Ronald Reagan began to cry. He came out and shared that with us and said, “Whatever you folks want, I’ll do.” So when he became president, he was an ally of the families and did whatever we wanted.

He wore our brotherin-law’s bracelet. John Wayne wore our brotherin-law’s bracelet. And Johnny Cash wore one.

Q: Does the war still impact you today?

A: The war in Vietnam didn’t end when you finished with your tour. The Vietnam War has been something that has hung on for everybody. I think about it every day.

When you are in life situations like that, you can’t get over it. Every enlisted guy in the valley who I’ve met, they still

think about Vietnam and they think about the fact that they were serving and the country was not necessarily behind them.

They served in what they thought was a war for their country, which I still do. It was right.

I’m not one of the antiwar people.

When you see combat and you see people killed, you feel like the whole country is going off and doing their sporting events, and everything else just continues.

You come back out of war and now everybody says you need to see a psych. You’re the one who needs help. The people who served over there say, “Wait a minute, I think the people back in the country need to see the psych.”

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VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A27

Haddon Hufford served as combat cameraman CORY WALSH cory.walsh@missoulian.com‌

‌Haddon Hufford, a native of New York, served as a combat photographer for the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1970, when he was 19 years old.

After he left the military, he developed a career in movies in New York, working as a set builder and a dolly and crane grip on about 75 feature movies, including “Crocodile Dundee,” “Angel Heart,” “Once Upon a Time in America” and “Jack Knife.”

After tiring of the long hours of the movie industry, he developed a second career as a silversmith.

While most of his art is shown and sold out of state, his handiwork was on display in the entrance of the Missoula Art Museum in 2012.

He has since retired and 10 years ago moved to Frenchtown and then the Rattlesnake Valley.

Q: Did you enlist or were you drafted?

A: I was going to be drafted. And at the time if you were drafted it was two years, and I was in the Army during the height of the war. There were over 500,000 soldiers there at that point, so everybody was going. There’s a good chance if you got drafted you were going to wind up in the Army or the Marine Corps and you were going to wind up as a grunt, which wasn’t something I was interested in. The war had been going on long enough that I understood what was going on over there.

If you enlisted in the Navy or the Air Force or the Marine Corps, it was a four-year enlistment, and with the Army if you enlisted it was a threeyear enlistment. So I opted for the three years to go to school. I was trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

During World War II, my father was in the art department. He was a portrait painter and an illustrator. So I knew this kind of job existed in the service. I was going to the Parsons School of Design studying graphic design.

I was taking a course called film communication. I was interested in movies, so I looked into (it). Maybe I could go to school and become a cameraman in the Army, so that was in fact what I did.

I figured I’d better get something out of this after I was done with my service. In fact, I would recommend any young person today, if they’re finding themselves in the service, that they’d better take advantage of everything they can from the experience.

Q: What did you shoot on?

A: I was a motion picture cameraman. The camera I used in Vietnam was a Bell and Howell Filmo. It was 16 mm reversal film and the camera had a turret with three Angenieux lenses. It was a hand-cranked camera. It was a very strong camera.

This is all handheld, wild action kind of shooting.

Q: What division did you serve with?

A: I was attached

to the 1st Air Cavalry Division, a helicopter, air-mobile division. I spent an awful lot of time on helicopters, what was called combat assaults.

Basically, if you’ve ever seen “Apocalypse Now,” remember the Robert Duvall character? “I love the smell of napalm in the morning? Smells like victory.” That was the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

I did a lot of team photography with a guy named Mike Newsom.

We were really good buddies during our time in Vietnam. He got there about a month before I did. We got really close.

We had a lot of fun. We used to go into Saigon to get our film processed at the Air Force base. We edited our film there, and got our film put on AFEN, which was the military station. Remember the movie “Good Morning Vietnam”? That station.

After I arrived, J.D. Coleman (who grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and attended the University of Montana journalism school), he called us his “Mo-Pics.”

His motion-picture guys.

Mike was “Mo” and I was “Pic.” He said that he wanted for us to do about an hour-long movie about the operation of the 1st Cav. So we traveled all around the area that we were operating in – kind of like north and west of the Saigon area. Our unit saw a lot of action because it was the supply route from the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Q: What did you do after the war?

A: I stole all the original

footage that I shot.

When I came back, I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, for a year. And I was there with the 4th Army Photo Lab, and they liked me there and they gave me keys at night and I put together a film of my own about my experience there. It was about a 10-minute film.

In hindsight, I was glad that I had some time to get readjusted to civilian life. I think a lot of guys that were drafted, after they did their Vietnam service ... they were in Vietnam one day and spit out in the streets of wherever in the States a day later. I think it was quite a psychological shock. I think the fact that I had a year to get readjusted

to the real world, so to speak, helped.

Q: Have you ever gone back to Vietnam?

A: In 1995, when they first opened up relations with the government again and allowed people from the States to go back to Vietnam, (his wife) Taylor and myself went and spent eight days there.

I spent time in Tay Ninh and in Saigon, and we took day trips to My Tho, which is down in the Mekong Delta – so they were places in Vietnam that I knew.

Q: How did it feel being back?

A: I confess that I wept a little bit when the plane was landing because I saw Núi Bà Đen, the Mountain of the

Black Virgin, through the plane window. That kind of welled up some emotions, because I’d done some operations on that mountain.

Q: Did you talk about the war when you got back?

A: When you come out of a war situation, there’s two ways to go and some people will choose to not talk about it – that’s their decision. Then other people, the way they deal with it is to talk about it openly, and that’s the way I decided to go. When I came back, I said I was going to talk about war, what our government was ordering us to do.

My opinion about wars, I think it’s the absolute worst thing that human beings get engaged in.

Thank you to those who have sacrificed their lives for this country! We salute you!

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A28 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Wayne Heggen built roads, bridges, bunkers in Vietnam little to eat, you go for four or five days straight,” he said.

Q: Where were you assigned after entering the service? ‌Wayne Heggen went from A: I was sent to Germany. working construction jobs I moved there with my wife, with his dad in Montana to Arlene, and my son, Eric, who building bridges and roads in Vietnam during his time in the was six weeks old. We flew to Fulda, Germany, and spent two U.S. Army. great years there with the 58th Heggen, 73, grew up in Kalispell, where his dad worked Engineer Company.

There was a big draw-down as a contractor, and went to to send troops to Vietnam, and Bozeman for college to study mathematics at Montana State they drew all of our officers except me.

University, enrolling in ROTC. So I was the only officer “It was either that or get left in the whole company, drafted,” he said. and I was then the company After graduating from commander. I was promoted school as a second lieutenant, to captain, and then I got my Heggen entered the Army in orders for Vietnam.

November of 1964, volunteerQ: When do you go ing for Ranger School and to Vietnam?

Airborne School.

A: It was 1967. My wife was “Ranger School was three pregnant, and the day I got months, and it was probably the hardest three months of my my orders, she ended up going to the hospital and going into life. That’s not a fun place to go. At Ranger School, they put labor and had my daughter Kirsten. (Heggen’s daughter you to the test. No sleep, very DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

is Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst.)

After Kirsten was born, we headed to Montana for 30 days of leave and then I headed to Vietnam.

Q: Where in Vietnam were you sent?

A: I went to a place called Long Binh. This is a big, big fort and there’s a lot of people there. At that time, it was called the Pentagon of Vietnam, and had about 50,000 troops.

In all, I was in Vietnam from August of ‘67 through August of ‘68, assigned with the 62nd Engineer Battalion.

It’s a construction battalion with three construction companies and a maintenance company.

We were working on everything from building roads to bunkers to bridges to schools.

We were in charge of all types of construction.

It certainly was a better job

than infantry.

We built other things, too, including a general’s officers club. It had bars, restrooms, tennis courts, a swimming pool and the whole thing was airconditioned. The generals knew how to fight a war in comfort.

Q: What else was your maintenance company working on?

A: We would use what they call tree crushers. They weigh 100-some tons, they are 30 feet high and can cut a 24-foot-wide swath. Part of our company’s job was clearing forests, then hauling gravel to build roads.

After about three months, I was transferred to Company D, one of the construction crews.

They sent us down into the Ben Luc area; we’re down south in the delta because the VC blew up some bridges.

The VC had attacked a little village where the bridge was and killed four of the local guys, then they had laid out the

guys on the new bridge.

Their instructions to the villagers was they had to leave them there as an example for 48 hours.

Q: Was your company near any of the combat?

A: At Ben Luc, there was a Vietnamese regiment there that had an American colonel as an adviser.

Typically in the Army, they don’t plan things out too well, and the colonel didn’t have contact with air support, so he would have to call me and I would call them.

All hell would break loose when they would come in, jets coming in and strafing, helicopters with their machine guns, and planes we called “Puff the Magic Dragon” with a .50-caliber machine gun, rockets and auto-firing grenade launchers. Every fifth round is a tracer and it’s always at night when they are doing it.

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VIETNAM Seeley Lake seem awful tame.

Q: What was your experience coming back as a returning veteran?

A: I never experienced the problem of rejection. I was a pretty confident person, and I don’t think anyone would come up and spit on me.

I would have knocked them on their ass, to tell you the truth.

When I went to Vietnam, I was really sold on what was being done.

The idea was to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnam people, and that was a thought I carried with me.

Then I learned one important thing. After World War II, all of the conflicts have been totally in vain. I don’t think we’ve fought anything since that was worth the cost. These things are all political wars, and in my opinion were a total waste of lives.

I would say to please stand against the politicians who have never seen a war they didn’t love.

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A29

Merle Johnston served in unit that chased VC KATHRYN HAAKE kate.haake@missoulian.com‌

‌Just 10 days after receiving his degree in history from the University of Montana, Merle Johnston went into the Army.

It was June of 1968 and the Plains native figured he would rather volunteer than wait to be drafted. By November, he was on the ground in Vietnam.

“I’ll never forget that first night after arriving,” he said. “Tracer rounds and the ‘whump’ sounds of mortars, riding in a green school bus with wire windows to prevent grenade attacks, and filling out papers. One asked if the Army was to notify our parents if we were slightly wounded. That was a wake-up call.”

The world around Johnston has evolved since coming back to a nation filled with anti-war sentiments in 1970. With that evolution, the retired history teacher has been able to

Courtesy photo‌

Merle Johnston was in the 9th Infantry Division with the 1/84th Artillery. They used 155 MM howitzers on tracks called M109’s. share his experience and the experience of other Vietnam veterans with his students through the Frenchtown

Vietnam Symposium.

Q: What was your assignment in Vietnam?

A: I was trained in fire direction for artillery, but eventually ended up being an RTO (radio/telephone operator) and an armored personnel carrier driver. I operated firing charts also.

Q: What are the lessons you learned when you were there?

A: I got in the back pocket of the guys who had been there the longest. They had experience. The new guys didn’t last long if they didn’t listen. I also learned to be good at what I did and stay alert. I don’t think I slept more than six hours in a 24-hour day.

Q: What was the most difficult thing about the war?

A: I was attached to the 9th Infantry Division with the 1/84th Artillery. Our artillery unit was 155mm howitzers on tracks called M109’s. They looked like big tanks. We didn’t

have a base camp for months, just moving from one area to the next.

In January 1969, we moved 28 times in 31 days. We fired point blank at VC bunkers to support the South Vietnamese Army. (I had) very little sleep.

(There was) a lot of artillery firing, mostly at night. (We) didn’t shower for weeks, (and) shaved out of our helmets. One of my squad guys was killed by friendly fire, another guy was killed in a convoy. My vehicle broke down and he was behind me. He pulled out around me, went down the road about 1/4 mile and ran over a mine. The 60-ton M109 he was driving ran over a buried artillery shell with a command detonator on it. It blew his vehicle off to the side. If my vehicle had hit it, all of us would have been killed.

Q: Was there anything fun about your time in Vietnam?

See JOHNSTON, Page A31

A30 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

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VETERANS’ VOICES

Bob Whaley saved lives in Vietnam long before 1965 I was doing. I wouldn’t have been happy being any other place at any other time. They knew that. ‌Bob Whaley, a retired Q: You flew medevac Missoula stockbroker, retired as a lieutenant col- helicopters rescuing the onel in 1979 after 21 years wounded in your first and second tours. What was in the U.S. Marine Corps, a span that included three that like?

A: I was fortunate to tours in Vietnam as a participate in the very first helicopter pilot.

A 1954 Missoula County night medevac mission of the Vietnam War in May High School graduate, Whaley spent three sum- of ’62. We thought it was a little bit hairy because mers in the late 1950s as they had campfires at a Forest Service smokenight, and as you’re flyjumper out of Missoula.

He enlisted in the Marines ing in there you couldn’t tell if the flickering was out of Carroll College in campfires or fire from the 1958, and was accepted bad guys that were around. into Officer Candidates It was surrounded by terSchool in Quantico, Virginia, before spending two ritory heavily infested by Viet Cong guerillas. Comyears in flight training in bat operations in this area Pensacola, Florida.

Whaley piloted medevac had accounted for over 100 Viet Cong casualties flights in the Mekong in the previous 12 hours, Delta at the south end of so they were around, but I South Vietnam in 1962, don’t think they expected nearly three years before us to come in at night the first American troops because nobody had ever arrived. His second tour done that before. ended when the Huey he This was flying the was flying was shot down H-34 transport. As far as during an operation in I’m concerned, that tour December 1965, resulting and my second tour in in a six-month stay in a 1965 with Hueys flying Naval hospital in Califorgunships and medevac … nia. Whaley turned 34 in the medevacs were far and the midst of his longest away the most rewarding. tour of 13 months in 1968 Absolutely. Going in and and ’69 on the fringes of getting the guys out. the Demilitarized Zone Q: In 1962, you were near North Vietnam.

Whaley’s cadre of med- supporting the Army of als includes a Bronze Star, South Vietnam troops and villagers against the Viet two Distinguished Flying Cong, who had a reputaCrosses, a Purple Heart, and 40 single-mission air tion as ruthless fighters.

What was your experience medals representing over with them?

800 missions.

A: One thing I saw, we Q: You’ve said you’d went into a village that never exchange your experience in the Marines. we’d supported and got What did your loved ones to know the village chief.

They’d been overrun and back home in Missoula think when you kept going we went in to provide support and pick up wounded, back to Vietnam? and there by the soccer A: My family was behind me the whole time. field was the village chief’s head stuck on a stake.

They knew I loved what KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌

They did that kind of stuff to warn the villagers and anybody else around not to comply with the government of Vietnam and to support the Viet Cong.

They were intimidating all the time. Very intimidating.

Q: Describe the events when you got shot down in December 1965.

A: I was the leader of four Huey gunships we had supporting the troop helicopters. We were covering a pickup in Operation Daggerthrust, flying off the USS Valley Forge down in the central coast area. H-34 helicopters were doing transport back to the ship after their mission had been completed and we waited for everybody to leave.

The last group had lifted off and they (the enemy) unloaded on us.

We got hit at about 1,100 feet. They shot off our whole tail rotor drive shaft. All of our crew survived, fortunately. We were the first ones, they said, that ever survived that type of catastrophic aircraft incident. We all had serious compression fractures of the midthoracic vertebrae. I used to be 6-4 (laughs.)

Q: You were initially reluctant to be interviewed about your Vietnam experience, but said you changed your mind because you wanted to get some things off your chest. What things?

A: I take nothing away from the Greatest Generation, but when young Americans answer the call their country makes when the citizenry at home are against it, it shows a tremendous amount of patriotism, particularly when the cause is unpopular. Anyone who shows

up when you’re backed by friends and fellow citizens … that’s easy to do under those circumstances. But it takes courage to show up when you’re being disparaged by those you are allegedly protecting.

They bring us home and then they spit on us, they insult us, call us all baby killers. We were not baby killers.

My god, we saved so many lives. That first tour, I can’t tell you how many women and children we saved from these villages that had been pillaged and raped by the Viet Cong down there in the Mekong Delta. It just was unheard of some of the things that were done to these people. And we saved these lives, life after Courtesy Bob Whaley‌ Lt. Bob Whaley, 27, by a punji stake wall in the Mekong life, family after family.

And a lot of our guys died Delta in May 1962, during his first of three tours in Vietnam as a Marine helicopter pilot. doing it.

O

honoring our heroes O

To those who gave so much, we salute you, honor you and, most of all, thank you.

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VIETNAM

VETERANS’ VOICES

Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 — A31

Rich White flew Hueys in combat missions, earned Flying Cross White, who lives with his wife in the Seeley Lake area, was just a 23-year-old kid who had always dreamed of flying ‌As a Huey helicopter pilot airplanes when he volunteered during the Vietnam War, Rich for the Army in 1966.

White has both proud and terHe was assigned to the 187th rible memories of his 21 months Assault Helicopter Company of service in the Saigon area.

– the Blackhawks –and began He took heavy fire during flying combat missions after combat missions, and came within seconds of crashing in a four weeks of “ash and trash” (non-combat) missions. rice paddy after an equipment

failure. He earned the DistinQ: What was it like to take guished Flying Cross for saving the life of a two-star general by fire during a combat mission?

A: This one time we were evading ground artillery with quick reflexes. He has been able hauling the South Vietnamese Army. We did not like it because to help younger veterans with in ’67 they had so many Viet their struggles to cope with Cong infiltrators in their units their experiences.

However, his time in the war that they always knew where we were going, what was going came with a price. Many of his friends were killed. Once, when to happen, everything. So we had this body language thing. If he flew home, he was walking through the airport in his dress they were sitting there drinking blues when a teenage girl came Cokes and eating candy bars, up and spit on his uniform and nothing’s gonna happen all day long. But if they’re cleaning called him a “baby killer.” their weapons, getting extra White, a man of strong ammo and extra grenades, Christian faith, doesn’t have you know you’re going to step any proof that he ever killed into it. So we picked them up anybody, but he did fire into that morning and they were treelines to suppress enemy all getting extra ammo and we fire. His experiences led him thought, “Oh man.” So we’re to develop post-traumatic doing search and destroy and stress disorder nearly 40 years we do six inserts that day, all after the war, mainly triggered over this place, leapfrogging. by watching movies in which The gunships are checking the families have to deal with the LZ. Nothing’s happening. aftermath of the death of a So end of the day, we go to loved one.

DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com‌

have it immediately after combat, others it’s later. There’s no rhyme or reason for it.

Part of the therapy for that was to join the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association.

When you join, you have access to a website of names and addresses and you can find out where guys were at. And the three I knew I had lost turned into a dozen friends that I had lost. I didn’t know that had happened. Five of them were friends I flew with all the way through flight school and the rest were guys that I got to be friends with in the units we flew in. So that was something laughing hilariously. The crew pick them up in a combat forto work through. in the back thought we had mation. The idea is the greater Q: Was it therapeutic to flipped out. It was one of those firepower on the heavier side attend events with the Vietnam funny moments. can hit the Landing Zone. The Helicopter Pilots Association?

Q: Did you develop PTSD troops are on the ground, ready A: They had an event in for the pickup, and it’s 6-foot- after the war?

A: I came home knowing that California, and my wife and high elephant grass. And we’re daughter went to that with I lost three friends over there. down to 30 miles an hour and me, and it was really special. about 100 feet over the troops. Over the years, I had gone to They do a lot of work helping several schools and talked to We’re settling into the grass veterans get back on track. A and we start taking fire through kids about being in Vietnam lot of those guys have been and everything, and it didn’t the helicopter. And lead calls, through a lot. They had a Miss“Get out of here, the LZ’s hot!” seem to pose a problem. But in ing Man Dinner. There were 2010, I started having, I found and helicopters are zigzagging 1,100 people there. They had a out later, PTSD. Forty years all over the place. We’re going single small table with a place out the other side. Our seats are after the fact. There’s a very good counselor in town that has setting and a rose on it and that armored and we wear ballistic was almost enough to get you helmets, which can stop a small done a lot of work with PTSD. to break down. But then the I said, “What’s wrong with me round. But I start crouching that it happens after 40 years?” New York Police Department down in my seat and I look bagpipe band came in playing He goes, “Rich, for anybody over at my co-pilot and he’s that’s been in combat, it’s not if “Amazing Grace,” and everydoing the same thing and he’s looking at me and we both start it will happen, it’s when.” Some body lost it.

FROM PAGE A29

Johnston Continued

A: The war wasn’t obviously, but the countryside in the Mekong Delta was incredibly beautiful.

The greens were almost vibrant. At night, the stars looked almost as if they were about to explode. No electricity for miles, so the sky was so brilliant. I served with some great guys. We became great

storytellers to each other. I only saw two American women there in nine months. They were called “donut dollies,” handing out goodies to us. We stared at them for the longest time.

Q: What did you learn coming back?

A: When I got out of the Army in 1970, I enrolled at the University of Montana for my master’s degree. I learned quickly that I was not welcome.

The only person I found who

was friendly and treated the vets with care was Emma Lommasson, who handled the veterans’ GI financial papers.

She was a wonderful woman.

The campus shut down due to the invasion of Cambodia.

I was excited because the U.S. was on the offensive for once.

The students were protesting and because I had short hair, out-of-date clothing and bronze skin, they knew I was a vet and one kid called me a

“fascist pig.” I learned to keep my mouth shut about my military days.

Q: If you could do it again, would you? Why or why not?

A: I would. I grew up really fast, and I believe my character was forged to what I am now. I have confidence in who I am, and I am proud to have served.

I had some close calls and was lucky I guess.

I am extremely proud of all the vets and anyone who enters

the military.

Q: If you had the opportunity to return to Vietnam, would you?

A: I would like to go back to Long An Province where I was, and look for some of the villages I was in. I would like to do something that is constructive. My son was actually in that same area as a civilian when he was with a Christian youth group traveling through Vietnam.

A32 — Missoulian, Wednesday, November 11, 2015

For your service and sacrifice, thank you.

We honor the past and present members of America’s Armed Services this Veteran’s Day. We salute you and are grateful for your service. First Security Bank branches will be closed on Veteran’s Day.

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