Vietnam after war

SOLDIER
stories
The Decatur Daily
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2009
Vietnam war
Soldiers remember battles abroad
while some Americans protested
and spit at vets returning home
“I was scared to death. I could see the bullets
flying. I thought I wasn’t going to make it out.”
Mike Smith, Army
Bruce Kimbrell, Marine Corps
“You can tell when someone is shooting
at you; the bullet sounds different.
That’s when you get paranoid.”
Dr. Dyrc Sibrans, Army
“All hell broke loose, and it was fierce
fighting all night. ... Bombs were
practically dropping right on top of us.”
Joe Bongiovanni, Marine Corps
Les Hornbuckle,
Air Force
Joe Bongiovanni, Marine Corps
SUNDAY
MONDAY
WEDNESDAY
World War II
KOREAN WAR
Gulf war, Afghanistan, Iraq
2 The Decatur Daily
www.decaturdaily.com Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Soldiers say they just wanted to win the war
By Deangelo McDaniel
dmcdaniel@decaturdaily.com
340-2469
Spc. Benjamin Harris, 19, of
Hillsboro died June 4, 1969, in
the jungles of South Vietnam
when fragments from an enemy
mortar riddled his body.
Cpl. Billy Wayne Earp, 22, of
Decatur died Aug. 19, 1969, in
Quang Ngai, Vietnam. The U.S.
government called him a
ground casualty. He was married.
Sgt. Bobbie Herald Brewer, 24,
of Athens was also married. He
died Feb. 14, 1970, in a helicopter
crash with six others while on a
mission in Vietnam.
Nearly everyone who is old
enough to remember the war
knows someone who was
wounded or killed in the Vietnam War.
Not since the Civil War had
news of battle casualties
brought sadness and anger to
communities and towns in
Lawrence, Limestone and Morgan counties.
‘We called
people like him
riggers. He was
opposed to the war
and meant to kill
one of us. He
packed the
parachute wrong on
purpose. You knew
who your enemy
was during World
War II and Korea.
Vietnam was
different.’
Flint Gillespie
Moulton
Unlike other wars, Vietnam
has become a wound on the
American soul that refuses to
heal. Hardly a year passes that
veterans are not reminded of
the war that they neither lost
nor won.
Vietnam was a time of strug-
gle, of a nation torn against itself, when Americans left to
serve their country, but found a
country not willing to serve
them.
“That’s what so sad about it,”
Flint Gillespie of Moulton said.
“These boys were doing what
their country asked them to do.
They were fighting a war, but
there were no Articles of War.
They didn’t care about the politics. They just wanted to win a
war.”
Gillespie’s feelings are shared
by other Vietnam veterans, who
say they fought for a nation that
hated them and returned to a
country that scorned them.
News reports
“We got newspapers and
heard news reports,” said
Fletcher Owens, whose tour in
Vietnam ended June 1967. “We
knew about Americans spitting
on returning soldiers and
throwing rocks. It made you not
want to come home. Some soldiers didn’t handle it well.”
America’s involvement in
Vietnam began when President
Dwight D. Eisenhower sent advisers with economic aid to
strengthen South Vietnam.
This was in response to the
North’s threat to overthrow the
South Vietnamese government.
Ho Chi Minh, a skilled guerrilla fighter, was lending military support to a group of communist insurgents in the North.
As Ho- supported insurgents
made inroads in the south,
Eisenhower’s successor, President John F. Kennedy, committed American support troops to
South Vietnam.
In 1962, the president sent
4,000 troops and the United
States became directly involved
with the political affairs of the
South Vietnamese government.
By 1969, more than a half million American soldiers were
committed to the Vietnam enterprise.
In April 1975, however, communist forces finally captured
Saigon, the South Vietnam capital, and renamed it Ho Chi
Minh City.
Vietnam
veteran
sickened
by war
smarsh@decaturdaily.com
340-2437
Vet helped returning soldiers
By Tiffeny Hurtado
“Instead of going into the
Army, I joined the Marines,
Moore explained. “At the time,
the Marines had a thing called
the ‘buddy system’ and four of
us all went in under that. We all
went to boot camp together, and
after that we went four different directions. We never saw
one another again.”
Moore was 18 and had finished high school. His buddies
were young, too.
“We were a bunch of kids,”
he said.
The buddies went through
boot camp at San Diego at what
was called the Marine Corps
Recruit Depot.
They had 12 weeks of basic
training followed by two weeks
of rifle range. From there he
went to Camp Pendleton, Calif.,
for eight weeks of infantry
training.
“Then, I came home on a 30day leave and went back to
Pendleton after that. Then, I
went through what they called
staging, which prepared you
for Vietnam.
thurtado@decaturdaily.com
340-2440
“From there I went to Vietnam in a handbasket, which relates to an old saying, ‘Going to
Vietnam is hell in a handbasket.’ ”
Moore’s unit patrolled the
border that separated North
and South Vietnam.
“Our objective was to stop
North Vietnamese from bringing supplies such as food, ammunition and clothing into
South Vietnam,” he explained.
“We were told that we were
fighting to help keep South
Vietnam from becoming communist — to keep the North
from taking over the South.”
Most of Moore’s time was
spent on the battlefield, with
Please see Moore, page 3
The images of Vietnam are
still fresh for the veterans who
survived the jungles and rice
fields.
“We think about the men who
didn’t make it home,” Wayne
Booth of Hartselle said.
He was a field artilleryman
between 1970 and 1971.
Booth calls himself fortunate,
even though fellow Americans
called him trash and baby killer
when he returned from Vietnam.
“I survived, and I know so
many who didn’t,” he said. “I
know we were looked down on
for being over there. That’s awful.”
Like so many veterans, Booth
said, they were serving their
country, fighting an enemy that
was sometimes standing next to
Courtesy
photo
‘Buddy system’
Handbasket
Images of war
Joe
Bongiovanni
served in the
3rd Marine
Division, 1st
Battalion,
Bravo
Company.
Bongiovanni
said he has no
regrets about
his service in
Vietnam, and
he continues
to support the
military,
especially
other
Marines, and
keeps in
touch with
other
veterans.
By Sheryl Marsh
Each battle of the Vietnam
War left Jerry Moore feeling
nauseated.
Over the years following his
departure, elements of the
war
would
make him a
disabled veteran.
“I was on the
front line. I
was right there
Moore
in the middle
of it,” Moore said. “As an infantry soldier, we were called
grunts or ground pounders in
the Marines. After the smoke
cleared from each firefight or
battle, I would get sick to my
stomach, and I’d throw up and
cry. We knew we had to pick up
our rifles and go on, because if
we were going to get to come
home we had to do whatever we
had to.”
A military draft was in force
in 1968, and to avoid being
drafted, Moore and some
friends joined.
What remained was the realization that more than a dozen
years of American financial
and military support had accomplished little more than prolong the inevitable.
Joe Bongiovanni watched
American soldiers hoist the
flag over Iwo Jima every night
as television stations signed
off and dreamed of the day he
might join their ranks.
Born in Italy, raised in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and now residing in Decatur, the Vietnam
veteran said he always wanted
“to join the best: the U.S. Marine Corps.”
Bongiovanni said when he
came home from the war, he
was lucky to be welcomed
warmly by his hometown, but
he knew of others who were
shunned and hated upon their
arrival stateside.
As a veteran of an unpopular
war, Bongiovanni said, he wanted to make sure soldiers coming home from the conflicts in
Iraq and Afghanistan felt appreciated for their service and
sacrifice for their country.
“When those men and
women join the military, they
are giving us and this country
a license to their lives,” he said.
As an executive board member of the Semper Fi Community Task Force, Bongiovanni
helped organize bringing 16
soldiers from the Wounded
Warrior Regiment from Washington, D.C., to the Tennessee
Valley to enjoy a fishing tournament, a Veterans Day parade and a Tennessee Titans
football game in Nashville
among other activities as part
of a Veterans weekend celebration in November 2008.
“It was a wonderful experience, and I think our community truly showed those men
and women a good time,” he
said.
With the success of last
year’s veterans weekend, he is
looking forward to an even big-
Daily photo by Brennen Smith
Joe Bongiovanni said when he came home from the war, he was
lucky to be welcomed warmly by his hometown.
ger and better
turnout and
more events.
“The kids
that
came
down
here
were
just
blown away
by how welBongiovanni
coming and
appreciative people in our area
were about their service,” he
said of the Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans.
He said many of the men
and woman from other parts
of the U.S. were taken aback by
the Southern hospitality they
received from Decatur residents.
Bongiovanni became close
friends with one of the injured
Marines, John Herman, and
they continue to stay in touch.
Herman gave Bongiovanni the
medals he received from fighting in Iraq, which included a
Purple Heart. He keeps the
medals in a frame that’s hanging on his wall at his business.
Bongiovanni said he signed
up at age 19 in 1967 to join the
Marines, knowing he would be
sent to fight in Vietnam.
“At that age you think you’re
invincible, but I was proud to
be an American and I wanted
to serve my country,” he said.
Bongiovanni served in the
3rd Marine Division, 1st Battalion, Bravo Company and
spent most days and nights in
the rain, sun and sweltering
jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam.
He said as first squad leader
he saw a lot of combat action
during the Tet Offensive, and
on one occasion, he endured a
night fire fight he would never
forget.
In February 1968 at the
height of the Tet Offensive,
Bongiovanni was given orders
to go out with a small group of
soldiers into the jungle to find
and kill Viet Cong.
“All hell broke loose, and it
was fierce fighting all night,”
he said. “We were calling in air
strikes, and bombs were practically dropping right on top of
us.”
He also spoke about the transition from living and fighting
in a foreign country to coming
home to friends and family in
September 1968.
“It was strange at first,” he
said. “One day you’re in combat, and the next day you’re
coming back to the world. It
took a bit of an adjustment.”
Bongiovanni said he has no
regrets about his service in
Vietnam, and he continues to
support the military, especially
other Marines, and keeps in
touch with other veterans.
“Freedom is not free,” he
said. “I see it as a privilege to
serve this country, and I’m
thankful to live in a place
where other people appreciate
that.”
them, but hard to identify.
The enemy was sometimes
stateside as Gillespie, a veteran
of World War II and Korea and
Vietnam, learned while training
Special Forces at Fort Bragg.
He was jump master and was
training Green Beret for a secret
mission in Vietnam. After all
the men were gone, Gillespie
bailed out of a C123 plane at
1,250 feet.
His parachute opened, but
something was wrong. Falling
at 100 miles an hour, he had seconds to open his emergency
parachute. He hit the ground almost instantly, but avoided injury.
A soldier who had been drafted and opposed the war had
packed the parachutes, Gillespie
learned.
“We called people like him
riggers,” he said. “He was opposed to the war and meant to
kill one of us. He packed the
parachute wrong on purpose.
You knew who your enemy was
during World War II and Korea.
Vietnam was different.”
Redstone
command
activated
Aug. 1, ’62
By Bayne Hughes
hughes@decaturdaily.com
340-2432
After losing its space-related
missions with the forming of
NASA, Redstone Arsenal was
the center of U.S. Army missilery as the country began
helping Vietnam.
A year after the formation of
NASA, President John F.
Kennedy ordered help for the
South Vietnamese against the
Viet Cong in late 1961.
According to the Redstone Arsenal history Web site, the military established U.S. Army Missile Command at Redstone on
May 1962. It activated Aug. 1.
The missile command had 19
major missile systems, eight under project management and
the rest under commodity
(product) managers. Upon activation, the command gained jurisdiction over three Class II industrial plants and ordnance
plants in North Carolina and
Michigan.
The missile command selected Hughes Aircraft Co. as the
prime contractor for development of the tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missile system.
President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and
two plane loads of NASA and
congressional leaders toured
Redstone Arsenal on Sept. 11,
1962.
Funds
The Aircraft Weaponization
Project Office provided missile
command from January to
March 1963 with funds for an inhouse research and development project on a rocket weapon
system for Army helicopters.
In 1965, the Office of the Chief
of Research and Development
asked Aircraft Weaponization to
procure eight smoke screen systems for operational use in Vietnam.
These adapters fastened onto
the XM3 rocket launcher and
dispensed smoke grenades to
lay a smoke screen for use in
troop landings.
The first XM3 subsystems
were also deployed in 1965 to the
U.S. Army in the Pacific and
Vietnam.
The increased support to the
logistics buildup in Southeast
Asia in July 1965 required more
personnel. Missile command requested 863 emergency spaces
to handle the additional workload, but Army command
only authorized some “unvouchered” spaces as an interim measure.
Hawk battalions
Two continental U.S. Strategic Army Corps Basic Hawk
battalions (eight firing batteries) were deployed in Oct. 15,
1965, marking the first surfaceto-air missile system to be
placed at the front in the Vietnam War.
The batteries were never fired
in combat during this conflict,
but their radars were used in air
defense surveillance.
Please see Redstone, page 4
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 www.decaturdaily.com
The Decatur Daily 3
Moore
He avoided wounds from
gun fire or bombings, but a
chemical disabled him.
From page 2
Injuries
little retreat time.
“We would stay about three
to six weeks in the jungle, and
then they’d pull us back for
four or six days to Dong Ha,
which was a little village that
was pretty much secure.
Then, we would go back into
the jungle.”
“They sprayed us with
Agent Orange, and I got infected, and it caused me to have
heart problems,” Moore
shared.
“I’ve had two open-heart
surgeries, and I’ve got four
stints in me. I also have posttraumatic stress disorder. I am
a 100 percent disabled veteran.”
After discharging from the
military May 15, 1970, Moore
returned to his native Morgan
County.
He worked for a fiberglass
company in Madison until
1994, when he was declared totally disabled.
He and his wife, Janice, live
at Lacey’s Spring.
12-month tour
During his 12-month tour,
Moore saw hundreds of his
comrades go down in battle.
“I probably saw 400 go
down, give or take,” he said.
“Some were wounded and others were casualties. I had close
friends to die. I don’t like talking about Vietnam, especially
the graphics of it.”
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Decatur High School teacher and former basketball coach Mike
Smith served with the U.S. infantry during the Vietnam War.
Smith says he
matured during
Vietnam War
By Patrice Stewart
pstewart@decaturdaily.com
340-2446
Decatur High School social
studies teacher Mike Smith sees
similarities between the Vietnam War he served in and today’s war in Iraq.
While Vietnam was an unpopular war, much like Iraq, “I
grew up and matured in service,
and it taught me how to be a
man,” he said.
“Vietnam was probably the
best thing that could have happened to me,” Smith said.
“But I was very lucky, and a
lot of guys weren’t.”
Smith and his two brothers
grew up in the Birmingham
suburb of Hueytown, where his
dad worked for a steel company.
He had started college but ran
out of money, so his time in the
Army helped him get the funds
needed to earn his degree later.
“That’s how I became a school
teacher and coach,” said Smith,
who came to Decatur High
School in 1974. He was girls basketball coach for 29 years. He
says he plans to retire from
teaching in May, after 35 years
in the social studies classroom.
Smith was drafted in April
1968 and served in Vietnam for
10 months during 1969 to 70.
He remembers arriving there
the same day men landed on the
moon. He hadn’t even been issued a weapon when the ammo
dump at Cam Ranh Bay was
blown up.
“It was several miles from
where I stayed, but it scared the
living daylights out of you,” he
said.
Smith served in the Big Red
One, the 1st Division, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry, about 50
miles north of Saigon.
Missions
“We ran search-and-destroy
missions, looking for the enemy,
the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese,” Smith said. “We ran a
lot of missions with the South
Vietnamese army, trying to
teach them how to defend themselves — kind of like our soldiers have been doing with the
Iraqis.
“We shared fire bases with
them and ran missions with
them. I didn’t necessarily like
that, and I would rather have
stuck with our own soldiers,”
Smith said, because the Vietnamese life was so different. “If
they had good leaders, they
were OK, but if they didn’t have
good leaders …”
He served during the time
when President Richard Nixon
was trying to turn things back
over and reduce forces.
“I had a good unit, with some
experienced guys who supported each other,” said Smith, a sergeant. “We stayed out of trouble
and out of ambushes. We spent
more time getting others out of
trouble.”
Decatur High
School social
studies teacher
Mike Smith’s
mother had wanted
him to go to
Canada to avoid
the draft, he said.
However, his dad,
who had a physical
condition that kept
him from serving in
World War II, was
proud to have a son
serving in the
military.
They also had to adhere to
many rules.
“I have talked to some who
have been in Iraq and said the
same thing,” Smith said. “If
they didn’t have to fight by the
rules, they could have gotten rid
of more insurgents.”
He recalls Vietnam as “a
beautiful country, but it was a
war we didn’t need to be in.
“But I didn’t know any of that
at the time — I was 21 and the
oldest in my unit.”
His mother had wanted him
to go to Canada to avoid the
draft, he said. However, his dad,
who had a physical condition
that kept him from serving in
World War II, was proud to have
a son serving in the military.
“I saw a lot of horrible things,
but a lot of good things, too,”
Smith said.
He sees many similarities
with Iraq, because servicemen
helped children in both countries with schools and other
projects.
In Vietnam, servicemen didn’t go over together to serve as a
unit, he pointed out. Instead, individuals went over to replace
others who were leaving.
“It was a very different war
and situation,” said Smith.
He came home sooner than
expected. His grandmother
died, and back then, the Red
Cross had to contact his superiors “and they had to chase you
down in the jungle.” That took
time, and travel time home
would have delayed the funeral
even longer.
Those in charge told him that
if he stayed instead of attending
the funeral, he could be sent out
soon with a group that was being deactivated, so he did.
“I was proud to serve my
country, and I am a loyal citizen
who still gets goose bumps
when I see the American flag today,” he said.
“I thought Iraq was wrong,
too,” said Smith, but he salutes
the soldiers who serve.
“I taught a lot of them, and
I’ve seen them become men and
women through service to the
country.”
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Sunday, World War II
1. When was D-Day?
2. On what two local air bases did pilots train for World War II?
3. How many combat missions did William E. Rodgers fly?
4. How old was R.W. “Pete” Henderson when he signed up to join the Army?
5. What ship was Bill Fenner aboard when Doolittle’s Raiders launched their B-25 attack on Japan?
Monday, Korean War
1. What did North Korea call the Korean War?
2. Did Joe Sain make it home in time for Christmas?
3. Fletcher Owens is a veteran of how many wars?
4. In what type of aircraft did Robert A. Matasick make an emergency landing?
5. Why did Bobby Johnson join the Air Force?
Tuedsay, Vietnam War
1. What service did Jimmy Smith provide for an air base in Vietnam?
2. Was Jerry Moore drafted or did he join the military?
3. Why did Harold Laverol Pool volunteer several times to be point man?
4. Where did Marshall Lewey get his banjo?
5. Who saved Les Hornbuckle in a bar fight?
Wednesday, Afghanistan and The Iraq Wars
1. What is the longest Michael Claybon went without a bath during Operation Desert Storm?
2. What kind of equipment did Scott Sharbutt work on?
3. How many casualties did Bianca Foreman see in Iraq?
4. What prison in Afghanistan did Jason Threet help guard?
5. When Leroy Ellis Jr. retired, what was his rank?
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www.decaturdaily.com Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tunnel rat sent
guarded letters
home to his girl
By Holly Hollman
hhollman@decaturdaily.com
340-2445
ATHENS — Donna Phillips
yearned each week for a letter
from her boyfriend, but she
sometimes had to endure
months without receiving one.
When she did get one, she
could tell from his writings
that he was guarded. He was
selective in what he had to say.
Her boyfriend, John Cotten,
had a reason. He was a tunnel
rat near Da Nang during the
Vietnam War, stationed on Hill
55. His job with the 1st Marine
Division was to help clear the
roads of land mines between
Hill 55 and other hills, to clear
enemy tunnels and to clear off
mountaintops and build
bunkers.
The Viet Cong boobytrapped the roads and tunnels,
and Cotten lost two close
friends during road sweeps
when the Viet Cong blew
mines as vehicles passed over
them.
When he had to clear a tunnel, which could be miles long,
he never knew what he might
face.
“They sent us in with a .45
and a flashlight, but I never
fired my gun because it would
break your eardrums firing it
underground,” Cotten said.
“The tunnels were so big, they
were connected and like a complex. We would find 700 tons of
rice or numerous weapons.
There were times you could
hear the enemy digging, and
you knew he was down there
somewhere.”
He had to avoid booby-traps
such as sharpened bamboo
stakes and poisonous vipers
tied to ropes or strings.
“The snakes would bite you
as
you
crawled
through,” he
said. “I never
got bit.”
That’s why
Cotten toned
down his letters after his
Cotten
first
few
weeks in Vietnam. He did not
want those images in his girlfriend’s head. Both were
teenagers who met only
months before he went to Vietnam in 1968.
When Phillips got one of
Cotten’s letters, she shared it
with his family and the neighborhood where she lived in
Satsuma near Mobile.
“We would all compare letters because we all knew so
many who were over there
fighting,” she said. “I had classmates who lost their lives
there. My father was a merchant marine and was taking
supplies there, and his ship
was often fired upon. It was a
very stressful time.”
When Phillips wrote to Cotten, she expounded on his sisters’ activities and how she
was doing in college and at her
job as a bookkeeper in a grocery store.
She spent most of her free
time with his or her family,
watching the news each night.
Phillips said her hope was she
would catch a glimpse of Cotten on the news coverage.
The news, however, also was
disheartening because she often saw coverage of war
protests and heard protesters
call the servicemen baby
killers.
“I couldn’t help but be disturbed about it,” she said. “My
Please see Cotten, page 6
Courtesy photo
Jimmy Smith graduated from high school in 1964, just before the
largest U.S. troop buildup in the Vietnam War. In 1968, Smith
was at Phan Rang Air Base in Vietnam.
Redstone
From page 2
After the laser-guided bomb
was successfully demonstrated
during 1966, it was then developed for combat use in the air
war over North Vietnam. The
laser-guided weapon initiated
by the Army saw its first combat as a “smart” bomb for the
Air Force.
The new Stovepipe special
supply support system went
into use in 1966. It was an innovative logistics system with operational readiness as the paramount consideration. It was created because there was no
Army Hawk logistics support
system in Vietnam at the time
of deployment.
The Army deployed the first
missile
command-managed
M22 subsystems to Vietnam for
use by the 1st Cavalry Division.
The M22 Armament Subsystem, the U.S. designation for the
French built SS-11B (the aircraft
armament subsystem modification of the SS-11), was successfully used on Oct. 9, 1966, during
the campaign to pacify the Binh
Dinh Province.
The 2nd Battalion, 20th Artillery (Aerial Rocket Artillery)
of the 1st Cavalry Division fired
M22 missiles, which destroyed
bunkers on the peninsula, resulting in the capture of 55 Viet
Cong without a fight. Additional M22 deployments to Vietnam
were made in 1967 and 1972.
The Army built a life-size
model of a Viet Cong village on
Redstone Arsenal as part of a
training program for personnel
headed for duty in Vietnam.
In addition to the tunnels,
huts, shelters and living facilities
found in a real Vietnamese community, booby traps, mines, bamboo spikes, and other war devices unique to the Viet Cong
made the training more realistic.
The Missile Command’s Research and Development Directorate received the first hardware on Feb. 14, 1968, from the
rocket-propelled grenade-7 and
a Russian-made anti-tank
weapon system captured in
Vietnam. The Army authorized
the following day the start of urgent reverse engineering and
the preparation of a suitable
procurement package. The military would later halt the work.
The military adopted the
Stovepipe system for support of
Hawk systems deployed in Korea on March 1, 1968, because of
the favorable supply effective-
ness results achieved in Vietnam.
This special supply support
system became fully operational in Korea. Missile command also received the first requisition under this plan March
15.
The Tow missile system in its
airborne configuration became
the first American-made guided
missile to be fired by U.S. soldiers
in combat on May 2, 1972. The first
airborne Tow arrived in Vietnam
on April 24, 1972, six days after
missile command received the initial deployment order.
This was a notable achievement considering that the system was still in the experimental stage and only a limited
number of complete subsystems were available. The airborne Tow served in Vietnam
until 1973.
1 of 12 children decided to fly
By Eric Fleischauer
Leds
Hornbuckle
helps an
injured
Vietnamese
boy at Da
Nang in 1971.
eric@decaturdaily.com
340-2435
Courtesy
photos
Morgan man left
farm for Air Force
By the time Les Hornbuckle
was 12, he knew he would enlist
in the military.
He was one of 12 children
who scratched out an existence
on a 20-acre farm in Morgan
City.
“We had cotton and corn. We
lived, but it was barely enough.
I knew I wanted more than
that,” Hornbuckle, now 74, said.
“I enjoyed living on the farm,
but I didn’t see a future there. I
wanted something better than a
struggle to survive.”
Still short of a high school degree, he enlisted in the U.S. Air
Force in 1953.
When Naaman Lester Hornbuckle retired from the military
21 years later, the master sergeant was supervising more
than 300 people — including several with higher ranks — and
had proved his smarts as an
electronics expert on intercontinental ballistic missiles.
With the Korean War winding
down, Hornbuckle’s first overseas assignment was to the
Philippines, near Vietnam.
“I was an aircraft electrician,” Hornbuckle explained.
“We were sending bombers to
the French, and they were using
them to fight in Vietnam.”
Hornbuckle spent most of the
time on the base, but he recalled
a perilous day when he went
into town.
He was drinking a soda with a
young lady, the daughter of the
owner of the bar where they sat.
Four GIs were drinking beer at
a nearby table.
The GIs had an argument
with four Filipinos that ended
when they bodily threw the Filipinos out of the establishment.
Hornbuckle stayed put, but
then a dozen Filipinos entered.
A fight started, and when it was
over the GIs resumed drinking
their beer. They had thrown the
Filipinos out.
Not long after, several dozen
Filipinos crowded in, many of
them carrying bolo knives.
Three of the GIs ran. One remained, until a Filipino sliced
his cheek with a knife. The GI
escaped.
“There I was, the only American in there,” Hornbuckle remembered. “They came toward
me.”
In 1971, Les
Hornbuckle
went to
Vietnam to
organize the
cargo-loading
program at a
U.S. military
airport in Da
Nang. His
Alabama
kindness had
not left him,
and he spent
off hours
helping
children at a
nearby
orphanage.
Realizing what was about to
happen, Filipino women surrounded Hornbuckle.
“There must have been 100 of
them. They pushed me out the
door,” Hornbuckle said. “The
Filipinos were trying to get to
me. They were throwing girls
this way and that way, but it
seemed like every time they
threw one girl, four or five others would take her place. They
protected me.”
Eventually police showed up,
and the angry Filipinos left.
Eventually, because of his
growing expertise in electronics, the Air Force transferred
him to Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California. There, he
helped launch 35 of the Atlas Dseries and E-series, early predecessors to the Atlas V rockets
that United Launch Alliance
soon will manufacture in Decatur.
“We were firing targets for the
anti-missile program at an island in the Pacific about 7,000
miles downrange,” Hornbuckle
said. “They were trying to shoot
them down.”
Master’s rating
His North Alabama upbringing helped him indirectly. He
joined the Vandenberg rifle
team, achieving a master’s rating and winning competitions.
“I was raised up shooting
guns,” Hornbuckle laughed. “I
was just having fun.”
Hornbuckle also served a
stint in Little Rock, Ark., where
he was an electronics technician on the Titan II nuclear missiles.
“I worked at keeping it pre-
pared for launch,” Hornbuckle
said. “Those nuclear missiles
were ready to fire within a
minute or two.”
In 1971, Hornbuckle went to
Vietnam to organize the cargoloading program at a U.S. military airport in Da Nang. His Alabama kindness had not left him,
and he spent off hours helping
children at a nearby orphanage.
He retired from the Air Force
after 21 years, but he did not return to the farm. Soon after returning home, he obtained a job
as a veteran employment representative at the Alabama State
Employment Service, in the Decatur office. He retired from the
employment service in 1995.
Hornbuckle lives only a few
miles from the 20-acre farm of
his childhood, but it is a lifetime
away.
Smith found
Christian spirit Heidecker rolled dice, went to ’Nam
in surprising war
By Ronnie Thomas
rthomas@decaturdaily.com
340-2438
By Eric Fleischauer
eric@decaturdaily.com
340-2435
It was his first Christmas
away from home, and he could
not have been much farther
away.
In 1968, Jimmy Smith was at
Phan Rang Air Base in Vietnam. His father, a lay pastor,
and family were back home.
There was no Christmas trees
or tinsel or holly or snow for
Smith.
Instead, Smith was driving
his truck in a convoy to pick up
supplies at Cam Ranh Bay Air
Base, a fellow soldier riding —
literally — shotgun.
Smith graduated from high
school in 1964, just before the
largest U.S. troop buildup in
the Vietnam War.
“I knew I was going to be
drafted, so a friend and I decided we may as well have some
choice in the matter,” Smith recalled. “We joined the Air
Force.”
In October 1965, he found
himself in Texas for basic
training, followed by specialized training in water treatment. Then he spent two years
in North Dakota, working with
nuclear missiles.
Each of those years, he
made it home for Christmas.
“Home” then was Michigan,
where his North Alabama family had moved to find work.
Smith and a friend thought
North Dakota was a boring
place to spend a war, so they
tried to volunteer for transfer
to Europe. No openings there,
but there were openings in
Please see Smith, page 7
Even though the government
dealt Keith Heidecker a low lottery number for the draft during
the 1960s, he believed enlisting
would keep him out of the infantry.
He wanted to get in line for
the GI Bill of Rights that would
pay his college expenses and
also continue his family’s military tradition.
His father fought during
World War II and both brothers
signed up during the Vietnam
era, one in the Navy, the other in
the Air Force.
Shortly after high school
graduation in 1967 in Estherville, Iowa, Heidecker
joined the Army. After basic
training at Fort Lewis, Wash.,
he attended Signal Corps School
at Fort Gordon, Ga.
He didn’t understand until
later the rotation process at Fort
time, he carried a radio.
His first stop after Long Bien
was at division headquarters at
Cu Chi. For once, he thought the
dice had rolled his way.
“They had a bowling alley
and a movie theater,” Heidecker
said. “I thought, ‘This is not too
bad.’ I was there for maybe a
week.”
He moved on to a smaller
base, Tay Ninh, a “kind of an
outpost” for the 25th.
“Our responsibility also included Dau Ting and the Ho Bo
and Boi Loi Woods,” he said.
‘Parrot’s Beak’
“This area was as flat as the
He spent most of two tours in back of your hand, with one noan area called the “Parrot’s table exception.”
Beak,” a mainly dense jungle in
Southeast Cambodia stretching Black Virgin Mountain
He described Nui Ba Den, or
into South Vietnam, 40 miles
west of Saigon. The Viet Cong the Black Virgin Mountain, risand North Vietnamese Army ing 1,000 meters just outside Tay
frequently used the region to set Ninh, a stone mountain pocked
up their base camps and staging with caves and tunnel complexes the Viet Cong used.
areas.
“We had the top of the mounHeidecker’s duties included
telephone cable splicing and tain, where we located radio retelephone installations. For a lay stations, and we had control
Gordon that sent him to Vietnam.
“When one group would graduate during the first week,
they’d go, for example, to Korea,” he said. “The second week,
you remain in the U.S., and the
third week it was to Germany.
The fourth week? Vietnam. As
luck would have it, I graduated
the fourth week.”
After processing at Long
Bien, the Army attached his
unit, the 587th Signal Battalion,
to the 25th Infantry Division.
of Tay Ninh at the bottom of the
mountain,” he said. “The Viet
Cong had everything in between. There was no way on or
off the mountain except by helicopter, which also brought in
our food and clothing. We got a
change of clothing once a week.
I was up there for about a
month.”
Poignant memories
Some of his most poignant
memories of the war evolve
around the mountain. He recalls being on guard duty at Tay
Ninh, the moonlight silhouetting Nui Ba Den eerily in the
background.
“I watched in the darkness as
processions of Viet Cong made
their way up, down and around
the mountain, each soldier carrying a small bottle lamp,” he
said. “They appeared like fireflies flickering in the distance or
rows of birthday candles slowly
moving around.”
Please see Dice, page 11
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 www.decaturdaily.com
The Decatur Daily 5
VIETNAM WAR TIMELINE
laying mines in Haiphong Harbor.
Headquarters for the U.S.
Army in Vietnam is decommissioned.
NVA attack on Kontum is
thwarted by South Vietnam and
the U.S.
1964
August
U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox
and C. Turner Joy are attacked
by the North.
Vietnamese in the Gulf of
Tonkin.
U.S. retaliatory strike destroys
25 North Vietnamese boats at
their bases.
U.S. Congress approves the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
June
South Vietnamese begin an
attempt to retake Quang Tri
Province.
July
NVA attack on An Loc is
1965
February
The Viet Cong launch a guer-
rilla attack on the U.S. barracks
at Pleiku.
March
Operation Rolling Thunder be-
gins.
Two U.S. Marine Battalions
land at Da Nang.
May
Viet Cong attack a U.S. Special
Forces camp at Phuoc Long.
June
Nguyen Cao Ky chosen as
South Vietnamese prime minister.
Nguyen Van Thieu is official
chief of state.
July
Viet Cong stage a mortar at-
tack against Da Nang Air Base.
Johnson promises more
Daily photo
The Decatur Daily front page on Aug. 5, 1964.
north of Saigon.
October
Operation Irving is launched
to clear NVA Form Mountains
near Qui Nhon.
December
The village of Caudat near
Gen. William Westmoreland is
replaced by Gen. Creighton W.
Abrams.
POWS released.
1967
Operation Sealord begins tar-
January
Operation Bolo, a dogfight
over Hanoi, is successfully
launched.
Operation Cedar Falls.
February
August
gins.
Johnson asks Congress for
March
additional $1.7 billion for the
war.
Viet Cong destroy 2 million
gallons of fuel in storage tanks
near Da Nang.
U.S. conduct major air strike
against the Viet Cong.
Operation Starlite begins as
the first major ground strike operation.
Congress authorizes $4.5 bil-
North Vietnamese attack U.S.
July
Hanoi is leveled by U.S.
bombers.
Large scale bombing in
Mekong Delta with Napalm.
troops bringing U.S. military
presence to 125,000.
October
Viet Cong launch “Mini Tet,”
United States responds with air
strikes of high explosives and
Napalm.
Attack at Kham Duc.
Peace talks begin in Paris.
Operation Junction City be-
October
geting NVA supply lines.
Operation Rolling Thunder
ends when Johnson announces
a complete halt of U.S. bombing.
September
Operation Jefferson Glenn begins in Thua Thien Province.
October
South Vietnamese troops being in offensive in Cambodia.
1971
January
Nixon is elected.
January-April
1969
South Vietnamese Operation
January
harbor.
February
April-May
Viet Cong attack targets
Hill fights rage at Khe Sanh.
throughout South Vietnam.
May
March
United States and South Viet-
Nixon threatens to resume
Quang Tri City is attacked.
U.S. repeals the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution.
U.S. troops withdraw from
Cambodia.
U.S. bombs heavily in Laos
and Cambodia.
U.S. bombers target Haiphong
April
June
November
Operation Dewey Canyon the
last major operation of the U.S.
marines begins in the Da Krong
Valley.
Peace talks begin.
lion for the war.
strikes to prevent defeat of
Nol’s troops.
Lam Son 719 begins in an attempt to sever the Ho Chi Minh
Trail.
April
Last of the Marines combat
The Battle of Ia Drang Valley.
September
in the A Shau Valley near Hue.
A retaliatory ambush on the
December
Nguyen Van Thieu elected
August
U.S. presence drops to 156,800
troops.
U.S. bombs North Vietnamese
military installations, citing
bombing halt agreement violations.
U.S. 7th Cavalry.
president of South Vietnam.
December
September-October
Viet Cong terrorists bomb a
Siege at Con Thien.
May
The Battle of Hamburger Hill
After many various talks of
1968
peace, Kissinger secretly meets
with Hanoi in Paris.
Viet Cong begin a new offensive by attacking points
throughout South Vietnamese.
1966
January
September
1972
Operation Niagara I begins.
Ho Chi Minh dies.
January
January
A 77-day siege at Khe Sanh
begins.
Operation Niagara II begins.
Tet Offensive is launched.
Battle for Saigon.
Battle of Hue.
September-December
Operation Masher begins as
Nixon announces an 8-point
peace plan. Hanoi rejects it.
hotel used by U.S. military.
A pause in the bombing of
North Vietnam lasting 37 days.
seek-and-destroy campaign.
April
B-52 bombers are used for the
first time against North Vietnam.
Viet Cong attack Tan Son Nhut
airport.
June
U.S. bombs oil depots around
Hanoi and Haiphong.
July
Ho Chi Minh Trail bombings
intensify.
Operation Hastings is
launched.
U.S. bombs North Vietnamese
Army troops in demilitarized
zone.
August
February
Televised execution of a sus-
pected Viet Cong guerrilla by
South Vietnamese Police Chief
Gen. Nguyen Noc Loan.
American occupation of Imperial Palace.
March
Ambush at Tan Son Nhut air-
port in Saigon.
Operation Quyet Thang be-
gins.
Mai Lai massacre of over 300
Vietnamese civilians.
Johnson announces he will
Vietnamese villages in error.
not seek re-election, calls a partial bombing halt and urges
peace talks.
September
April
Heaviest air raid of the war
Operation Pegasus begins the
U.S. jets attack two South
begins.
September-November
Operation Attleboro occurs as
a search-and-destroy mission
purpose to reopen Route 9 to
Khe Sanh.
May
Battle of Dai Do.
More U.S. troops are pulled
out of Vietnam.
March
1970
U.S. 101st airborne withdraws
February
March-September
B-52s bomb the Ho Chi Minh
Eastertide Offensive begins
when NVA wage all-out attempt
to conquer South Vietnam.
Trail to halt Viet Cong raids.
Kissinger begins secret talks
with North Vietnam’s Le Duc
Tho.
March
Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia
is deposed by General Lon Nol
(he would eventually be ousted
by Pol Pot).
Nol attacks the Khmer Rouge
and North Vietnamese force inside Cambodia.
April
More troop withdrawals announced.
Nixon stuns America, announcing that the U.S. and
South Vietnamese will move
into Cambodia.
May
May Day Attack.
NVA begin offensive toward
Phnom Penh. U.S. begins air
1975
February
Last U.S. combat troops depart Vietnam.
The final offensive begins as
the NVA attacks Ban Me Thuot.
Ban Me Thuot falls.
President Thieu abandons the
Highlands region and two other
provinces to the NVA.
Shelling begins on the mass
exodus of civilians, this would
be known as “the convoy of
tears.”
Quang Tri city falls.
Tam Ky overrun with NVA.
Hue falls after a three day
siege.
Chu Lai is evacuated.
Da Nang is shelled.
Da Nang falls.
NVA begin the Ho Chi Minh
campaign toward Saigon.
September
Quang Tri City is recaptured
by the South Vietnamese.
U.S. air raids in North Vietnam.
October
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho
agree to peace terms.
Operation Linebacker I ends.
Thieu rejects peace terms.
December
Peace talks between
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho collapse.
Operation Linebacker II begins.
North Vietnam resumes
peace talks.
Operation Linebacker ends.
1973
January
February
Operation Homecoming begins the release of 591 American POWS.
March
The last American troops
withdraw form Vietnam.
September
South Vietnamese troops assault NVA near Pleiku.
December
Viet Cong destroy 18 million
gallons of fuel stored near
Saigon.
April
Thieu resigns.
Xuan Loc falls.
Saigon is surrounded.
General Duong Van Mihn becomes the new South Vietnamese president and appeals
for cease-fire.
NVA shell Tan Son Nhut air
base in Saigon.
Operation Frequent Wind begins, evacuating thousands of
Americans and South Vietnamese
American presence in Vietnam is complete with the departing of 10 Marines from the
U.S. Embassy.
The red and blue Viet Cong
flag flies over the Presidential
Palace as President Minh
broadcasts a message of surrender.
The war ends.
TIMELINES COURTESY OF
WWW.LANDSCAPER.NET AND
WWW.INFOPLEASE.COM.
We salute our veterans and their families for
the sacrifices they have made for our nation.
Our thoughts and prayers go with those
soldiers in harm’s way today.
from Vietnam.
April
Nixon Authorizes the 7th
Fleets to target NVA troops in
the DMZ.
Nixon authorizes a massive
bombing campaign.
Bombing begins ranging 145
miles into North Vietnam.
Hanoi and Haiphong are
bombed by the U.S.
Peace talks resume.
U.S. troop levels drop to
69,000.
May
South Vietnamese abandon
Quang Tri City to the NVA.
Peace talks are suspended indefinitely and 125 warplanes
are ordered to Vietnam.
Operation Linebacker I
commences with U.S. jets
North Vietnam violates the
Paris Peace Treaty by invading
Phuoc Long Province in South
Vietnam.
March
The Paris Peace Accords are
signed.
Draft has ended in favor of
voluntary enlistment.
November
December
August
October
bombing.
The Politburo in North Vietnam decide to invade South
Vietnam in 1975.
NVA military leader General
Van Tien Dung secretly
crosses into South Vietnam to
take command of the final offensive.
Peace talks are successful.
nam battle the North Vietnamese for the first time in the
Demilitarized Zone.
Special Forces camp a Plei Ke.
October
thwarted by South Vietnam and
the U.S.
Paris Peace talks resume.
South Vietnamese troops begin major counter-offensive in
Binh Dinh Province.
units leave Vietnam.
President Thieu is re-elcted in
South Vietnam.
Members of U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division refuse to go on patrol, which was only one in a series of ground troops engaging
in “combat refusal.”
First Viet Cong POWs are released by Saigon.
1974
Avion Inc.
7067 Old Madison Pike
Suite 170, Huntsville
(p) 721-7006 (f) 721-7007
6 The Decatur Daily
www.decaturdaily.com Tuesday, February 24, 2009
“We would
clear a road
that morning,
and that very
night, they
would come
back and put
more mines
down,” John
Cotten said.
“Sometimes we
would wake up
the next
morning and
find bamboo
stakes with
slits cut in
them and filled
with
propaganda.”
Gained friends, college and a wife
Kimbrell says
3 of best things
came out of war
By Bayne Hughes
hughes@decaturdaily.com
340-2432
Courtesy photo
Cotten
From page 4
boyfriend, my father, my
friends were having to face
such horror over there, and
these people did not appreciate
what they were going through.
Whether they agreed with the
war or not, these men were dying or watching their friends
die.”
In her hometown, she said,
most folks were supportive and
flew American flags. Friends
could tell when she was depressed or had been crying and
would take her shopping or to
the movies.
To keep her mind occupied,
Phillips said, she also prayed,
went to church services and
taught a youth group.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend
was learning that the Americans owned the daylight in Da
Nang, but the enemy owned
the night.
“We would clear a road that
morning, and that very night,
they would come back and put
more mines down,” he said.
“Sometimes we would wake up
the next morning and find
bamboo stakes with slits cut in
them and filled with propaganda. One time they managed to
plant a flag in our camp. That’s
an eerie feeling to know they
had been there, and we never
heard them.”
One piece of propaganda that
Cotten kept was a poem with
grammatical errors. It read:
There’s a mother in Califor-
nia, who heart is aching now.
There’s a girl in Indiana who
feels the same somehow.
There’s a guy far away at the
place they call Danang.
And it s his absence that the
cause of all this pain
Cotton got far away from Da
Nang when his enlistment ended in 1972. He flew into San
Francisco, where protesters
met the plane and spat upon
him, threw things at him and
asked him how many babies
he had killed.
“It was not a good homecoming,” he said.
He flew from there to Jackson, Miss., where a police officer who was a former Marine
approached him and said, “I
just want you to know, I appreciate your service.”
A convoy that was traveling
from Alabama to Mississippi
also brought Phillips to Jackson. When she saw her
boyfriend, her first words were
“I’m so glad you are home.”
The two married, eventually
settled in Athens, and had two
children, Amy and Michael.
He said he never questioned
serving his country, even
though it could have meant he
might never have had a chance
to start that family.
“I was born on a military
base in Battle Creek, Mich.,”
Cotten said. “My mom and dad
were both in the military, as
was my uncle. I come from a
family of Marines. I consider
all of my family as heroes. Me,
I didn’t try to be a hero. I did
my job so that I could come
home safely.”
Bruce Kimbrell said three of
the best things in his life came
out of his service in the Vietnam War.
The Trinity native found a
wife willing to wait for him to
return from the war and made
three great friends. The GI Bill
paid for his college education.
When Kimbrell got his draft
notice in March 1969, he talked
to the U.S. Air Force, Coast
Guard, Navy and Marines. The
first three wanted him to leave
in April for a four-year stint,
while the Marines said he could
wait until August to go on two
years of active duty and four
years in the reserves.
Kimbrell said these extra
months were particularly valuable as he dated his girlfriend,
Cynthia. She would later become his wife of 38 years. Five
days after his 20th birthday, he
left for boot camp in San Diego,
Calif.
He then spent six weeks in infantry training and three weeks
in cook school before returning
home for Christmas.
His orders with the 2nd Battalion’s 7th Marine Regiment
and 1st Marine Division
shipped him to the Western Pacific.
“My orders were a good clue
that I was bound for Vietnam,
but I wasn’t sure,” Kimbrell
said. “Some got to stay in Okinawa (Japan).”
Kimbrell landed in Da Nang,
Vietnam, on Jan. 27, 1970. After
a day in Da Nang, a truck took
him to a landing zone and a helicopter tried to take him to LZ
(landing zone) Baldy but a fire
fight forced the helicopter to return to Da Nang.
“The pilot wasn’t going to
land in a hot LZ,” Kimbrell said.
Courtesy photo
Bruce Kimbrell’s active duty ended Aug. 4, 1971. He was a member of the Marine Reserve for the next
four years.
“I was scared
to death. I
could see the
bullets flying. I
thought I wasn’t going to
make it out.”
Kimbrell finally made it to
Kimbrell
LZ Baldy the
following day. He spent the next
six months sleeping outside in a
foxhole at LZ Baldy or LZ Ross.
The military didn’t want them
sleeping in the buildings because they were afraid the enemy would send a rocket or gunfire into them.
He used a crate and a tarp to
turn his bunker into his own little home.
“It was miserable when it
rained all night,” Kimbrell said.
“Even at 60 degrees, you’re cold
when you’re soaking wet.”
His job was feeding the company, which meant little off
time. He was on hole watch
every third night, watching for
the enemy trying to sneak
through
the
compound’s
perimeter. He worked listening
patrol once a month. He went on
patrol outside the compound
about six times.
Kimbrell said he fired his rifle
only a few times while on hole
watch. His company got into
one firefight while on patrol, but
he never fired his weapon.
Occasionally, he would fly
warm food to the men out on patrol. The helicopter would drop
him off and then pick him up
the next day.
“They loved seeing me coming,” Kimbrell said. “They’d
been eating K-rations and C-rations every day, and I was bringing them a hot meal.”
Kimbrell met the “best
friends that you would ever
want to meet” — Gary McDonald and Thomas Bruzzezie of
Woods
recalls
lack of
respect
Sibrans oversaw
medics during
battle of Dak To
By Catherine Godbey
cgodbey@decaturdaily.com
340-2441
“You can tell when someone is shooting at you; the bullet sounds different,”
said Dr. Dyrc Sibrans. “That’s when you
get paranoid.”
Paranoia set in for Sibrans on a field in
Dak To, Vietnam.
Considered by the Army as one of the
toughest battles during the Vietnam War,
the Battle of Dak To lasted 19 days, killed
376 U.S. soldiers and wounded 1,441.
As battalion surgeon, Sibrans oversaw
16 to 20 combat medics, four of whom
served with units involved in the Dak To
battle.
Three of the medics were killed and
one was injured.
“We couldn’t get the wounded up the
hill fast enough, so we were treating
them where they fell,” Sibrans said.
As Sibrans dragged a wounded soldier
to safety, a bullet pierced his canteen.
Three inches, the thickness of the canteen, deflected the bullet from Sibrans’
body. But the shrapnel and mortar round
pierced his left leg, bruising his peroneal
nerve and temporarily paralyzing his
foot.
16 months earlier
Sixteen months before his injury in
Vietnam, the 30-year-old graduate of The
Citadel in South Carolina was completing
his residency in internal medicine at The
University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Sibrans applied for admittance into the
Berry Plan, a government-established
program created to meet the needs of
both the military and the hospital residency research programs. The plan allowed accepted doctors to defer military
service as they completed residency.
But in the mid-1960s the military’s
needs superseded the hospitals’ needs
and Sibrans arrived for basic training at
Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio in
July 1966. After basic training, he trained
as a paratrooper at Fort Bragg in North
Carolina.
“They told us if we trained as paratroopers we would not be sent to Vietnam,” Sibrans said. “In March 1967, I received my orders for Vietnam.”
A month later, Sibrans arrived in Bien
Hoa, where he participated in searchand-destroy missions that would last
from six days to three weeks. Sibrans
served with the 2nd Battalion of the
503rd Air Infantry Regiment in the 173rd
Airborne Brigade.
Two months into the Bien Hoa mission, the brigade received orders to Kontum in the Central Highlands.
“There was trouble in the Central
Highlands with the Viet Cong and the
North Vietnamese hitting troops more
frequently,” Sibrans said. “The 173rd
were considered the firemen. They were
sent wherever there was the biggest fire
and the biggest fire was in the Central
Highlands.”
By Melanie B. Smith
msmith@decaturdaily.com
340-2468
Firefight
Twenty-five miles north of Kontum,
the 173rd encountered the firefight in a
small town called Dak To.
For six months, the North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong prepared for the Battle of
Dak To by fortifying bunkers and trenches. The preparation created the intended
effect — an advantage for the People’s
Army of Vietnam.
Of the 110 American soldiers in the
2nd Battalion who participated in the initial ambush, only 29 survived.
The final night of the battle, Sibrans
feared the enemy would conquer them.
“We were down to only a few men who
could fight. The reason we didn’t get
overrun is because they didn’t know just
how weak we were,” Sibrans said.
The following morning, an air assault
pounded the enemy, clearing the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops from
the area.
Out of morphine and intravenous fluid, Sibrans pleaded with army officials
for a replenishment of supplies, which
helicopters would transport.
“When the helicopters landed, what
comes out of the first one but five reporters and no medical supplies,”
Sibrans said. “The supplies did arrive,
on the second helicopter.”
After the battle, the Army transferred
the injured Sibrans to B Med, an emergency area where doctors treated soldiers before being transported to hospitals.
In January 1968, the 2nd Battalion,
with Sibrans, left for Tuy Hoa. After
eight months fighting on the front lines,
the Army considered this a reprieve
from combat.
The reprieve failed to arrive as the
Boston and Gary Gaberdale of
Cleveland — while in Vietnam.
After 11 months, the Marines
moved his unit to the USS Juno.
He spent about a month aboard
ship before moving again to the
Philippines, where he worked in
a Naval mess hall for the next
two months.
Kimbrell rotated back to the
Camp Lejune in January 1971.
His active duty ended Aug. 4,
1971.
While protesters greeted his
return in January, Kimbrell got
a hero’s welcome from family in
August.
He was a member of the Marine Reserve for the next four
years. He said it took about a
month to adjust because he didn’t suffer the health or mental
problems that other Vietnam
vets did.
“It turned out to be a good
deal for me,” Kimbrell said of
his service.
Daily photo by John Godbey
During the down time, Dr. Dyrc Sibrans volunteered at local hospitals, an Australian
hospital in Bien Hoa, a leper colony run by French nuns and a Montagnard hospital
in Kontum.
first Tet Offensive, with Tuy Hoa as a target, occurred soon after the 2nd Battalion arrived.
“We had a lot of casualties coming in.
The first two days and nights I was continuously in pre-op care preparing soldiers for surgery and helping with surgeries as other surgeons got tired,”
Sibrans said.
Helicopter shot down
From Tuy Hoa, Sibrans left for Ban Me
Thout, an area already surrounded by
the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
troops. Enemy troops shot down Sibrans’
helicopter, which landed safely.
“Ours was the last helicopter that flew
into Ban Me Thout for days,” Sibrans
said. “We stayed there three days. It was
a very difficult time with heavy casualties.”
After three days, the Army transferred
Sibrans to Pleiku, where he stayed until
April 1968, the end of his tour.
“Combat was 98 percent pure boredom
and 2 percent sheer terror,” Sibrans said.
During the down time, Sibrans volunteered at local hospitals, an Australian
hospital in Bien Hoa, a Leper colony run
by French nuns and a Montagnard hospital in Kontum.
Dr. Pat Smith from Washington State
ran the Montagnard hospital, where doctors treated tropical diseases.
“I had learned about tropical diseases
in medical school, but I saw more in the
six to eight weeks at that hospital than I
ever did in my training or since,” said
Sibrans, who treated patients for leprosy
and elephantiasis.
While Sibrans returned safely to Alabama, many of his combat medics did
not. In the first eight months of his deployment, from April to November,
Sibrans reported his combat medics’
turnover rate at 400 percent.
“That is four people in each position
who were either killed or injured,”
Sibrans said. “The combat medics and
MedEvac pilots were the bravest men I
ever met. They would run into fields of
fighting to help a soldier.”
As a member of the Air
Force during the Vietnam
era, Roy F. Woods made a pact
with a buddy, he said, regarding
how
civilians
sometimes
treated
members of
the military.
They wondered if they
might have
trouble trav- Woods
eling through the San Francisco airport returning from
Vietnam, he said.
“We decided if anybody
spat on us or cursed us, we
would jump on them,” he
said.
Wood said that, thankfully,
they did not encounter disrespect. Otherwise, he said, he
might have ended up in
prison.
What he did experience
was a sort of discrimination
while serving at Hamilton
Air Force Base in California,
Woods said. The base was
near San Francisco, and the
time was the height of the
hippy “flower child” movement.
He said that in shops, people would see his haircut and
tell him, “You can’t find that
as cheap here as you can at
the PX,” or, “Get out of here.”
Woods volunteered for Vietnam, but as a clerk on a base
in Saigon, he never saw combat. He worked in the mailroom.
Woods said that vivid images of Vietnam remain in
his memory, though, of body
boxes stacked on runways
twice a week. Those killed in
the war were put in the boxes
Please see Woods, page 7
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 www.decaturdaily.com
Putman
proud of
Vietnam
service
After a year of combat in Vietnam, U.S. Navy
Petty Officer Marshall Putman returned to the
states under cover of darkness.
His plane landed at about 1 a.m. to avoid the
demonstrators who had hurled insults and spat
upon other returning soldiers.
There was no welcome committee, no appreciative crowds.
It was not the welcome befitting a serviceman who had captained a river gunboat on the
treacherous rivers and canals of Vietnam, frequently engaging in raging gunfights with unseen enemies, on waterways too narrow to maneuver.
But for decades after the war ended, Putman
said, the war and the men who fought it remained unpopular with much of the American
public.
“A Vietnam veteran wasn’t really liked all
that much, even though we did what we were
told to do,” he said.
Today, Putman says he is proud he served his
country, and would not trade the experience.
Commendations
He displays commendations for two medals
in his office — the Navy Commendation Medal
and the Navy Achievement Medal. Both were
awarded for combat actions undertaken by his
boat.
But Putman also recalls the horror of war.
On most missions, his boat would lead a column of troop transports up waterways too narrow to turn around. Fire fights were frequent
as he worked to draw fire from unseen enemy
forces on both banks away from the transport
vessels.
“It would be like running an Indian gauntlet,” he said.
During one mission, his gunboat detonated
an enemy mine.
The impact was so forceful it lifted the 50-foot
gunboat from the water, but did not disable it.
As the resulting smoke clouded his field of
Please see Putman, page 8
Smith
From page 4
Southeast Asia.
“We asked the choices there,
and they listed Guam, the
Philippines, Okinawa. They all
sounded like exotic places, so we
signed our name on that.”
He should have checked a
map first.
“Three weeks later we got orders for Vietnam,” Smith said.
“We went to personnel and said,
‘I don’t think we signed up for
this.’ ”
Tough luck. Next stop, Phan
Rang.
Smith ran the water-treatment plant at the 12,000-man air
base, drawing water from a river two miles away. He worked 12
hours a day, seven days a week.
“We used lots of chlorine,” he
said, for water that came from a
river that also was the local
bathtub, laundry and animal
pond. “It tasted pretty bad.”
As Christmas approached, he
measured his distance from
home in more than miles. Poverty outside the air base was extreme. Huts of mud or tin provided shelter for the local residents. Excursions off the base
left soldiers coated with Vietnamese dust on sweat.
And, of course, no churches
or other signs of Christianity in
a country dominated by Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
“I was homesick,” Smith said.
“Nothing seemed right.”
Reminder of God
The reminder that God was
present, even in these squalid
surroundings, came on a day
that remains vivid for the Hartselle man, who now works part
time as a pastor in a Somerville
church.
The convoy was headed north
from Phan Rang to Cam Ranh
Bay Air Base to pick up lime for
the treatment plant. The 40-mile
trek was on a twisting dirt road
that passed between the South
Woods
‘It’s something that boils my skin to this day,’ says Booth
and stored until planes arrived
from the Philippines to take
them back to the U.S. He remembered them stacked on pallets 10 or 12 feet high.
“I thought, ‘Here I am not in
combat, and there they have
been killed out in the bush,’ ” he
said.
Woods said he felt safe, but because it was wartime, never
knew if a rocket attack might
happen. He was there in 1970,
about three years after the Tet
Offensive launched by the enemy in Saigon and all over Vietnam.
“Looking back, I had it made.
Nothing happened,” he said.
The poverty of the Vietnamese has always stuck in his
mind, Woods said.
“The poor people in America
are rich compared to the poor in
other countries,” he said. “I saw
that and have been thankful for
what I’ve had ever since. It’s
hard to imagine children and
adults dying in countries like
that from hunger unless you see
it.”
A 1966 graduate of Decatur
High school, Woods said he always wanted to be in the military. However, because a motorcycle ran over him at age 13, he
had a metal plate in his leg. The
Army, Marines and Navy all rejected him, but the Air Force
waived the part of the physical
he could not pass, he said.
He was 19 when he left for basic training at Lackland Air
Force Base in Texas. His duty
stations included the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Colorado
and Mississippi. After retirement as an Air Force master
sergeant, he settled in Biloxi
near Keesler Air Force Base.
He separated from his wife,
Linda Hodges Wood, he said,
and she and their daughter, who
suffers from spina bifida, were
living in Biloxi when Hurricane
Katrina hit. They evacuated to
Egland AFB, Fla., and spent
three months there, he said. The
house is rebuilt, he said, but he
lost all of his military photos
and memorabilia.
Woods said that because he
had suffered a stroke, he was living in a VA group home in Kiln,
Miss., when Katrina struck. The
manager did not evacuate,
Woods said, so they spent weeks
without electricity and were
grateful when the National
Guard came to help.
Woods now lives in Decatur,
where he has relatives. He said
he loved what he did and was
proud to have served, especially
in combat command areas overseas where he felt judged by his
work, not military spit and shine.
nglasscock@decaturdaily.com
340-2443
evanb@decaturdaily.com
340-2442
Courtesy
photo
Public’s actions wounded
By Nancy Glasscock
By Evan Belanger
Harold
Laverol
Pool
graduated
from
Hatton High
School in
1965. He
died in
1967.
The Decatur Daily 7
While today’s veterans receive a
hero’s welcome when they return to
the United States, Vietnam War veterans often returned to an unappreciative public.
The reaction still troubles Decatur
Vietnam veteran Wayne Booth.
“It’s something that boils my skin to
this day,” he said. “We got frowned
upon back here. There were riots in
the streets and killing at colleges
protesting the Vietnam War. It never
was looked up to because you were
there.”
Booth, who served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, said the Vietnam and
Iraq wars are similar because the U.S.
shouldn’t have entered either.
He said a bad marriage prompted
him to enlist in 1969, but that he didn’t
volunteer for Vietnam.
He received basic training in Fort
Knox, Ky., field artillery training at
Fort Sill, Okla., and was in jump school
in Fort Benning, Ga. He made five
jumps at 1,250 feet to receive his wings.
Booth said he never became accustomed to jumping out of a plane. You
either jumped on your own, or someone pushed you out, he said.
“It was an experience,” he said.
“You’re scared as much on the last one
as the first one.”
After jump school, Booth spent 10
months in Vietnam, where he was a radio telephone operator. He said fighting had “slacked off a little bit” by the
time he arrived.
Unpopular
Booth said the Vietnamese people
didn’t want U.S. soldiers there, and the
war was also unpopular with many
soldiers.
“It sort of made you feel bitter,” he
said. “We were there to protect them,
but they’re not wanting us there.
“The whole Vietnamese War was
pitiful. It went on many years before
we were there, and I don’t feel we had a
right to be there.”
Experiences during the war left
some men unable to “straighten out”
physically or mentally after returning
home, Booth said.
Courtesy photo
Wayne Booth said he was fortunate to survive the war mentally and physically.
After the war, he was a mechanic.
Booth was riding in a helicopter
with a friend who was a door gunner
when gunfire barely missed him and
struck the door gunner in the leg.
He said the experience instilled the
“fear of God” in him.
Corpses routinely littered the roadside of Highway 101, he said.
“We had one road there,” he said. “It
went north and south all the way
through the country. It was nothing to
pass a village and see a dead body
somewhere along side the road. I felt
bad for the people. I really did.”
Booth said he was fortunate to survive the war mentally and physically.
After the war, he was a mechanic.
A native of Detroit, he spent the majority of his life working as a carpenter
before retiring.
Hatton graduate was 1 of 9 from Lawrence to die in Vietnam
By Deangelo McDaniel
dmcdaniel@decaturdaily.com
340-2469
HATTON — There’s probably no soldier who wrote more letters than Pfc.
Harold Laverol Pool.
He wrote weekly to his parents, sisters
and several high school classmates. He
China Sea to the east and endless tiny huts to the west.
“The dust was awful. It was
hot. There were mud huts like
igloos along the side of the road,
with smoke coming from the top.
Tin shacks. I was 23, and I had
never seen people living in such
desperate conditions before that
day,” Smith remembered.
Dust, heat and fear. An attack
was possible. Those not driving
in the convoy were perched on
the trucks, weapons clutched in
their hands.
The first thing he noticed was
color forcing its way through
the dust-filled haze. It came from
30 yards off the road, next to a
tin hut. There was no grass by
the hut, just bare dirt, maybe
some trash.
“At first I thought I was seeing
toys, because of the bright colors. I could tell it was plastic.”
never told any of them about the hell he
was living in the jungles of Vietnam.
No, he didn’t because that wouldn’t be
Pool. He was an old-time patriot who believed you served your country when it
called and you didn’t complain, no matter the conditions.
The 1965 Hatton High graduate was
one of nine from Lawrence County
He slowed his truck to get a
better look.
As the swirling dust settled,
he realized the colors came from
a Nativity scene. In this frightening place, half a world away
from home, he had discovered
Mary and Joseph, donkeys and
baby Jesus in a manger.
“In the middle of nowhere, in
the middle of war and desperation and loneliness, was a familiar scene,” Smith said, his face
lighting up as it did four decades
ago.
Smith did not make it home
that Christmas of 1968, but the
miles evaporated when he saw
the Nativity scene.
“God placed it there,” he explained. “There in the midst of
the fear and the dust, the heat,
the homesickness. It gave me a
moment of joy. It assured me I
was not alone.”
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killed in Vietnam.
His death, however, changed a community and a family.
His parents, Sterling and Myrtle Pool,
were never the same after their only son
died.
“Mother aged overnight,” Pool’s sister,
Please see Pool, page 8
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8 The Decatur Daily
Pool
From page 7
Joyce Randolph, said.
“Daddy,” she said, “was like
most fathers of the era. He felt
like there was something he
should have been able to do to
protect his son.
“My sister and I hugged Daddy,” Randolph recalled. “We assured him that he was a good
daddy. He cried. This was the
only time I saw him cry.”
To understand Pool’s loyalty
to his country, you have to go
back to the Civil War when his
great-grandfather, Roddy Pate,
was a veteran. Nine uncles after
Pate served in wars.
These uncles visited the Pool
home while on furlough and
talked about their service. Randolph said this is when her
brother learned that it was his
duty to serve his country no
matter what.
“You didn’t question things
back then,” she said.
The Army drafted and inducted Pool on Sept. 1, 1966. His
uncles had enough clout and offered to get him assigned to a
military band.
Pool refused.
“I remember him telling them
they had fought and he should,”
Randolph said. “He felt strongly
about that and there was nothing anyone could do to change
his mind.”
After eight weeks of basic
training at Fort Benning, Ga.,
Pool completed six weeks of
jungle warfare training at Fort
www.decaturdaily.com Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Lawrence
Vietnam War
casualties
Harold Laverol Pool was one
of nine Lawrence County soldiers to die in the Vietnam
War. The others were Herman Lee Cooper, Willie Frank
Garner, Benjamin Harris, Arie
Terry, Jeffrey W. Smith, Ray
Anthony Rhodes, Charles Minor Woodall Jr. and Billy
Michael Holliman.
Polk, La.
When he arrived in Vietnam
on Feb. 2, 1967, the government
assigned him to A Company,
2nd Infantry of the 1st Infantry
Division. They were stationed at
Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam.
Most of the men in his unit
were married, so Pool volunteered several times to be point
man.
This was the case on April 30,
1967, when Pool’s unit was on reconnaissance patrol and he was
killed.
Letter to family
Almost two months after his
death, Capt. Albert W. Jenrette
wrote a letter to the family explaining what happened.
“The squad, hampered by the
thick jungle vegetation, suddenly came upon a heavily fortified
base camp occupied by a numerically superior enemy
force,” he wrote.
“Harold and the rest of his
squad opened fire immediately,
and the enemy response was instantaneous. Harold was caught
in the fire of an enemy machine
gun and died instantly.”
The family got another account of what happened in 1989
when Roger Hoskins, a soldier
who was in the fight with Pool,
visited Lawrence County.
He corroborated stories about
Pool volunteering for point man.
“Point man was a job nobody
wanted,” Hoskins said, in 1989.
“Laverol volunteered for it a lot,
even though we were supposed
to take turns.”
Hoskins said that two days before his death Pool received the
birthday cake Randolph had
mailed.
An Army ROTC instructor
from the University of North
Alabama brought the news of
Pool’s death to the tiny hamlet
of Wolf Springs.
“It was awful for our family,
but I remember the community
being so supportive,” Randolph
said.
Well-wishers from every corner of North Alabama came to
the Pool home. It took the Army
three weeks to return his remains. About 3,000 attended
Pool’s funeral at Hatton High
School. The family buried him
in Providence Cemetery near
Hatton.
Randolph has most of the letters Pool mailed to his parents.
She also has unopened letters
Sterling and Myrtle Pool mailed
to their son.
The family won’t open the letters, she said.
“They are his letters,” Randolph said. “They are sealed just
like the day they were delivered.”
“I’m proud
that I served.
I was in the
service when
the war
started, and I
did my duty,”
U.S. Navy
Petty Officer
Marshall
Puttman
said.
Courtesy
photo
Putman
From page 7
sight, Putman continued pushing forward despite the jarring
blast. He used moonlit tree tops
to guide him away from the
near disaster.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,”
he said. “You just do what you
have to do, and afterward you
think about it.”
Looking back, Putman says
the American people learned an
important lesson in Vietnam:
While a war may be unpopular,
it’s not the fault of the soldiers
who are ordered to fight.
He says he’s proud that the
American people remembered
that lesson with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’m proud that I served. I
was in the service when the
war started, and I did my duty,”
Putman said.
Marshall
Putman says
the American people
learned an important
lesson in Vietnam:
While a war may be
unpopular, it’s not
the fault of the
soldiers who are
ordered to fight.
Montgomery:
‘We chose not
to win’ Vietnam
By Eric Fleischauer
eric@decaturdaily.com
340-2435
Courtesy photo
Roger Rommens, a highly decorated soldier with medals that include a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Unit Citation, also
served in the Korean War.
Return to Vietnam after war
40 years later, decorated soldier went back to country he fought in
By Tiffeny Hurtado
thurtado@decaturdaily.com
340-2440
Roger Rommens had a much
more pleasant stay in Vietnam
in 2008 than he did as a soldier
during the Tet Offensive in 1968.
Rommens returned to the
country 40 years later on a 12day vacation with his wife that
took him to Ho Chi Minh City,
Hanoi, Da Nang and places in
between.
He was amazed how much
had changed since he was fighting with the Army’s 1st Cavalry
Division.
“Where there were just open
fields in 1967, there are now
buildings, houses and shops,”
he said.
Rommens, a highly decorated
soldier with medals that include
a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart
and a Presidential Unit Citation,
also served in the Korean War.
At 33 years old, he entered the
Vietnam War as a chemical warfare specialist in July 1967.
The Battle of Hue in February 1968 remains with him. Hue,
a crucial point in the supply line
for U.S. troops, became known
as the one of the bloodiest fights
in the Vietnam conflict.
Rommens said as part of his
division’s Third Brigade’s 2½
cavalry, he was given orders to
undertake a relief mission Feb.
2, 1968.
He and his fellow troops
moved southeast alongside
‘You wouldn’t
believe it was
the same place. It
looked completely
different from how I
last remembered it.’
Roger Rommens
At site of intense battle
Highway 1, which ran through
Hue, “to close the enemy’s back
door to the city and link up with
the Army of the Republic of
Vietnam or ARVN and U.S.
Marines.”
Pushing troops through to
Hue “was too great a task for one
battalion,” he wrote in a note
summarizing the battle, which
he keeps in a scrapbook filled
with pictures from his time in
Vietnam in 1968 and 2008.
Desperate fighting
“During the night of Feb. 3
and 4, the 2½ cavalry was surrounded, desperately fighting to
stave off annihilation” when his
unit decided to make a “precarious night withdrawal.”
In the note, Rommens stated
11 soldiers in the cavalry were
killed during the fighting.
His battalion moved north,
crossing over the Bo River to
Highway 1 near PK 17, an
ARVN Regiment headquarters
about 10½ miles north of Hue.
On Feb. 5, 1968, Rommens was
given the task of rounding up
soldiers from the First Cavalry
Division’s Chemical Support
Platoon along with new filters
for protective masks.
Rommens said when he
crossed the Bo River, the old filters became wet and unusable.
“I departed our battalion command post at Camp Evans with
new filters and six men on a CH
47 helicopter, flying water and
ammunition to the battalion
next to the An Lo’ bridge,” Rommens stated in the note.
After they arrived at the designated site with the equipment
and troops, Rommens said, he
was given orders to walk back to
Camp Evans, which he called “a
pile of mud,” because of the lack
of available helicopters to transport him and his men back.
“I was assigned as the sergeant in charge of a radio operator, six personnel, and 21 men
who could not walk back — a total of 29 men plus all the water,
ammo, and protective mask filters and assorted other equipment,” he said. The men who
could not walk were injured
during the battle, he said.
Rommens said three hours later, two helicopters began transporting 10 men at a time back to
Camp Evans. He said it took
three trips to get the men, ammo
and supplies back to safety.
On his trip back to Vietnam,
Rommens and his wife stopped
to visit Highway 1 and the PK 17
command post, which saw such
intense fighting 40 years earlier.
“You wouldn’t believe it was
the same place,” he remarked.
“It looked completely different
from how I last remembered it.”
He said an old Vietnamese
man living nearby invited him
into his home to show him and
his wife his collection of war
memorabilia.
“He wanted us to take pictures of his collection, which included a piece from a U.S. helicopter,” Rommens said.
Recollections
The man was 40 years old during the fighting and told the
Rommens he remembered
when a war plane was shot
down nearby his village.
“To tell you how much things
have changed there, me and that
man were wearing the same
brand jacket when he told us
that story,” he said.
Along the trip, Rommens visited what came to be known as
the Hanoi Hilton, where many
U.S. troops were tortured during
the war.
“There’s a modern high-rise
hotel that sits right where a part
of the old building used to be,”
he said.
Rommens said the country
has tried to move on from its
ugly past by getting rid of any
remnants from the Vietnam War.
“You won’t see any bunkers
or monuments or anything that
would remind people of what
happened there 40 years ago,”
he said.
Mud and water filled 26-yearold Paul Montgomery’s boots
in 1967 as he hiked through the
former rice paddy, a flat expanse bordered by a banana
grove.
With a wife and child back
home, Montgomery was one of
two Americans hiking through
the steamy field with 40 South
Vietnamese soldiers. The mission: to take up a position
flanking Vietcong troops located 1,000 yards to his right, invisible in the grove.
Sweat dripped underneath
his floppy hat. U.S. aircraft
roared overhead, dropping
bombs and Agent Orange over
the location of the enemy
troops. The smell of chemicals,
gunpowder, decay and body
odor surrounded him, trapped
in a humid bubble.
And the sound of gunfire.
Constant gunfire, escalating as
the Viet Cong tried to disable
the low-flying airplanes, escalating more as the second lieutenant approached his troops’
destination, about 150 yards
from the banana grove.
Montgomery was hiking toward the Viet Cong, increasingly sensing bullets striking
the water around him, occa-
sionally hearing the subtle
but terrifying
“pop” as bullets missed
him by inches.
No shrubs
Montgomery
or trees to
provide cover. No hills or
trenches. Even lying down not
an option because of the foot
of water sucking at his feet, the
mud thwarting his desire to
run. For 750 yards, the hike
slowed as men he could not see
loaded and fired, loaded and
fired.
Montgomery was one of six
U.S. advisers at a South Vietnamese base in the village of
Kien Van in Kien Phong
province, in the Mekong River
Delta. He was there for a year.
For two months, after an English-speaking Vietnamese interpreter died, Montgomery
was the closest thing to a translator. That after a few weeks of
language training at Fort Bliss,
Texas.
Montgomery and the South
Vietnamese troops made it
across the paddy, heading into
fire. They accomplished their
mission and secured a spot 150
yards from the hidden Viet
Cong.
Please see Adviser, page 9
Tardy continued
family’s legacy
of military service
By Tiffeny Hurtado
thurtado@decaturdaily.com
340-2440
Randall Tardy’s father and
uncle fought in World War II,
and when Tardy began college,
he decided to continue his family’s tradition of military service.
“I felt it was a military obligation, since two members of
my family had served in wars,”
Tardy said. “I felt if my country was calling me to go to this
conflict (Vietnam), then I’ll go.”
The 23-year-old joined the
ROTC as a student at Michigan
Technology University and
graduated with a degree in civil engineering. Tardy began
his service in Vietnam as a
staff officer with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. He
remembered the flight to Vietnam in August 1967 on a Boeing 707.
“For safety
reasons, we
had to make a
steep
approach when
coming into
the country,
unlike when
you’re in a
Tardy
civilian area,”
he said. “I remember seeing
the poverty the people of that
country were in. I saw a house
constructed completely out of
aluminum beer cans folded together to form walls.”
His most vivid — and terrifying — memory is the night
the Viet Cong forces initiated
an ammunition dump during
the Tet Offensive.
“I was sleeping in the barrack when I heard a loud explosion, and then the sky was
orange,” he said, referring to
Please see Tardy, page 9
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 www.decaturdaily.com
The Decatur Daily 9
Veteran looking
for pilot who
gave him a banjo
By Nancy Glasscock
nglasscock@decaturdaily.com
340-2443
Jim Hogan Adviser
joined Air
Force, went
to Vietnam
From page 8
By Bayne Hughes
hughes@decaturdaily.com
340-2432
Like so many men in 1968,
Jim Hogan hoped to avoid the
Vietnam War by joining the U.S.
Air Force before he got drafted.
The 1967 Austin High School
graduate had
heard about
the horrors of
the war and the
high causalty
rates, but soon
he would live
his biggest fear.
“We really
didn’t under- Hogan
stand why we were there,” said
Hogan, now the Eva postmaster.
In his first year, he completed
basic training at Lackland Air
Force Base in Texas and went
through aerospace ground
equipment technician training
at Chanute Air Force Base in
Illinois.
The war “just exploded” with
the Tet Offensive in 1968. July
assignments came out in late
June and listed Hogan as at
Phan Rang Airbase in South
Vietnam. Phang Rang is six
miles from the South China Sea
and about 30 miles south of
Cam Ranh Bay.
After graduating from training, Hogan spent about a month
at home with girlfriend and later wife, Katie Donnelly, and his
family. He reported to McChord
Air Force Base in Seattle on
Aug. 29, 1968.
Humidity
After 20-hour flight that included a stop in Japan, Hogan’s
flight landed at steamy Phan
Rang.
“I’m from the South so I’m
used to the humidity,” Hogan
said. “But when we walked off
that airplane, it was like walking into a sauna.”
Hogan trained to fix airplanes, but, as the youngest and
lowest ranked man in the 318th
Special Operations Wing, he
ended up doing mostly grunt
work.
Phan Rang was a free-standing base with no Army or Marine protection. He spent 30 days
on guard duty, working 12-hour
shifts in the guard towers that
overlooked a wire line and then
wide open field. He wore a helmet and flak vest and carried an
M-16. Dogs walked the wire line,
Please see Hogan, page 11
Marshall
Lewey plays
gospel, blue
grass, country
and folk music
and has performed with
such local
musicians as
Luke Slaton,
who is the
Lawrence
County Industrial Board
director, retiring county
Circuit Judge
Philip Reich,
and Robert
Montgomery.
had something he wanted to
show him, and left the club.
“He said, ‘I’ve got something
I want to give you,’ ” he said.
“He left, and a few minutes later,
he came back with this banjo.
He said he didn’t have time to
play it, and he wanted me to
have it.”
Lewey said he gave the pawn
shop banjo to a man in the front
of the crowd who closely
watched him perform, and who
said he loved banjos. The next
morning, Lewey tried to return
the banjo to Brown, who had already left for a bombing mission.
The men in Brown’s quarters
told Lewey that Brown wanted
him to have the banjo. Lewey
said he continued looking, unsuccessfully, for Brown after the
war to tell him how much the
banjo means to him.
MOULTON — Marshall
Lewey could probably buy a better banjo than the one he played
sitting in his porch swing recently with his German shepherds Sophie and Boots at his
side.
Lewey, an Army Vietnam veteran, said he might buy a new
banjo, but he will always keep
the one a Navy pilot gave him 35
years ago.
“I’ll never get rid of it,” he
said. “It will always be special to
me because of the way I got it.”
Lewey spent his final two
months in Vietnam in Special
Services, performing in the
Westerneers band. The group
played for officers clubs across
South Vietnam. The bass player
of the band was on tour with
Merle Haggard when he was Music
Lewey plays gospel, blue
drafted, and a guitar player, Jim
Heard of Nashville, was also ex- grass, country and folk music
and has performed with such loceptionally talented, he said.
cal musicians as Luke Slaton,
Pilot’s gift
who is the Lawrence County InWhile playing at a Navy offi- dustrial Board director, retiring
cers club at the Ton Son Nhut county Circuit Judge Philip Reairbase, Lewey met a pilot serv- ich, and Robert Montgomery.
ing his third tour in the war,
When Lewey was drafted, he
Buck Brown.
was a football coach at East TenBrown was also a banjo play- nessee. He said he had a “bitter
er. At the time, Lewey per- taste” about the war when he
formed with a banjo he bought left Oct. 19 in the middle of footfor $60 at a pawn shop in Flo- ball season.
rence.
Lewey said he could have
Lewey said Brown said he served 18 months in Alaska or
“We had them surrounded,”
Montgomery said. “They were
confined to 5 or 6 acres.”
And then Montgomery waited for the attack. He waited for
the lull in U.S. airplanes that
would signal it was time to surround the Viet Cong, to take the
banana grove.
They would attack after dark,
decided the South Vietnamese
commander. Montgomery waited. A little longer, decided the
commander.
At 1 a.m., maybe 2, Montgomery heard a flock of geese
flapping through the banana
grove, scared up by something.
Finally they marched in, but the
party was over. The Viet Cong
had left, taking almost every
trace of their presence — including their dead — with them.
Did the Viet Cong win or lose?
Montgomery and his troops had a
banana grove, but no evidence of
casualties and no prisoners.
Montgomery had a hat with a bullet hole through it. He found a Viet
Cong sandal made of a U.S. tire.
With nothing left to do, they
left the banana grove and hiked
back to the compound in Kien
Van.
Courage, fear, misery — and
then nothing. It was a microcosm of a war in which U.S. soldiers showed incredible bravery,
died in horrible numbers, conquered and re-conquered geographical squares that meant
nothing to their enemies. And
then went home.
“We didn’t lose that war, we
chose not to win it,” Montgomery said in his Decatur
home recently.
It is a familiar comment
among those who endured the
torment of Vietnam. Whatever
the reason, though, Montgomery recognizes we lost it. The
Americans left, and the South
Vietnamese were vanquished.
The “collaborators” — Vietnamese who helped fight the
Viet Cong or North Vietnamese
— were killed or placed in “reeducation” prisons.
Montgomery, however, takes
solace in an addendum to the
lament of defeat.
In 1995, the head of human resources at Amoco returned to
Vietnam. His first stop in the ostensibly communist country
was Tan Son Nhat International
Airport, formerly a U.S. military airstrip. What greeted him
made the whole trip worthwhile: billboards, advertising
everything from televisions to
air conditioners.
“What I was looking at was
not socialism.”
Montgomery smiled.
Vietnam is changing, believes
Montgomery. Not fast, and not
necessarily because of the war,
but capitalism has a toehold in
the country. Communism,
Hal Lee
provided
cover for
troops
By Nancy Glasscock
nglasscock@decaturdaily.com
340-2443
Marshall Lewey, a
Vietnam veteran,
with the banjo given
him by a pilot during
the war. Lewey has
never been able to
find out who the
pilot was to even be
able to thank him.
Daily photo
by Gary Cosby Jr.
Germany, or one year in Vietnam, so he chose Vietnam to finish the tour as soon as possible.
Lewey was stationed in Da
Nang and Quang Tri.
“That was the worst part of
my tour,” he said. “Da Nang was
a big military base and pretty
well secured but Quang Tri was
more or less a fire base and close
to the DMV too. It was quite a
‘A trick the Viet
Cong would use
is if they were
between two
American units,
they would fire on
one and then return
fire, so the Americans
were (unknowingly)
shooting at each
other.’
Paul Montgomery
flawed, is a tragedy for those
who must endure its grip. He believes a free market will extend
its presence in Vietnam, eventually improving the lives of those
who live there.
“I think this should be an encouragement to Vietnam veterans,” Montgomery said. “Although we didn’t win, it’s going to
turn out all right. The free market
economy is gaining rapidly.”
If Montgomery’s terror in the
rice paddy is a symbol of the
ambiguity of U.S. gains in Vietnam, another adventure is a
symbol of the U.S. being its own
worst enemy during the war.
“A trick the Viet Cong would
use is if they were between two
American units, they would fire
on one and then return fire, so
the Americans were (unknowingly) shooting at each other.”
They used this tactic against
Montgomery. While he and others were on patrol, Viet Cong
troops fired on a nearby U.S.
Navy patrol boat. The boat
turned its 50-caliber machine
guns in the direction of the
threat and fired away.
“I was face-down on the dirt
with nowhere to go,” Montgomery said. “I couldn’t even
get to a radio. Finally they just
quit shooting.”
The problem in Vietnam, as it
is in Iraq, was that the United
States placed too few troops in the
country to secure its gains. The
only solution, suspects Montgomery, is to reinstitute the draft.
“The people will be loyal or
subservient to whoever can
maintain their security or, lacking that, whoever is most likely
to kill them,” Montgomery said.
Villagers in Kien Van were
friendly with U.S. troops during
the day, but let Viet Cong put
anti-U.S. booby traps on their
property at night.
Montgomery
remembers
hearing a nearby gunshot when,
100 yards from the U.S. base,
Viet Cong assassinated a man
who had become a U.S. collaborator. They had already cut off
his mother’s legs.
“Insurgency,” Montgomery
said, “is cheap, easy and effective. We can win every battle,
but if we don’t provide security
for the people we are defending,
and the Viet Cong or whoever
can come in that night with an
effective threat, that’s who is
controlling those people.”
bit more active.”
Lewey spent 10 months in the
infantry before joining the
band, and finished his tour in
1971. He retired from Muscle
Shoals Schools in 2005, and is a
part-time physical education
teacher at the Judy Jester
Learning Center.
Lewey said he has no regrets.
“Our family is very patriotic,”
he said. “Freedom is always
something we will have to fight
to defend.”
His father, James L. Lewey,
fought in World War II, and his
son, James W. Lewey, is a Green
Beret. Marshall Lewey and his
wife, Rosemary, have a daughter,
Katie Beth, who will graduate in
May from Cumberland School
of Law.
Tardy
under fire while building, Tardy
said it was hard to ever feel comfortable in a war zone.
“It felt like the enemy could
basically be standing right next
to you, and you just couldn’t
tell,” he said. “You just couldn’t
trust any one unless they were
in a uniform.”
Tardy said he remembered
when he and other officers
would travel to Saigon, and
many times someone driving a
scooter would run into a building, causing an explosion.
“It just got common,” he said.
“You got used to it.”
Tardy returned from Vietnam
in September 1968, after just over
a year of service, but he said it
took him several years before he
trusted people easily again.
“I plan on going back in March
of this year with my wife on a
cruise,” he said. “Vietnam is a
beautiful country with coastlines
just like Florida. Perfectly clear water, and the food, which is pretty
much French cuisine, is good too.”
From page 8
the artillery blasts. “It was not
a very good feeling to be standing there without a weapon. I
felt defenseless. And I was in a
place that was supposed to be a
safe and secured area.”
Tardy lived through that
night, but his office at U.S.
Army base at Long Binh, just
outside the city then called
Saigon, sustained damage. He
still has the pictures of the
building’s ceiling falling in the
morning after.
Tardy also served as a platoon
leader of the construction unit
for the 62nd Engineering Battalion and was in charge of allocating funds and resources for
the building of the cantonment,
which he described as a “secured, walled little city.”
Although his platoon was not
issued weapons and never came
HARTSELLE — When American soldiers were attacked by
the North Vietnamese Army
during the Vietnam War, Hal
“Buster” Lee’s unit flew into the
battle with a barrage of gunfire,
saving the lives of men the enemy might have
killed.
“If guys on
the
ground
were getting attacked
and
thought they
were going to
be overrun by
the enemy, they Lee
would call us, and we would fly
out,” Lee said.
“It was very devastating to
the enemy if we were called.”
At one outpost that was about
half the size of a Decatur city
block, eight crews and five airplanes, including Lee’s, provided fire support at night for 45
nights. He said the air crews
prevented the Americans from
being overrun every time they
responded.
After
graduating
from
Auburn University in 1968, Lee
was in Vietnam from November
1969 until October 1970, flying
an AC-119 gunship to Vietnam
from Guam, where he was stationed. In 1971 and 1972, he was
a B-52 bomber pilot.
Lee said that, technically, he
enlisted.
“Vietnam was going hot and
heavy, and I had gone through
the advanced ROTC program at
Auburn,” he said. “I knew I
would wind up going to Vietnam because I was in excellent
health. I didn’t see any choice
but to go to Vietnam.”
After leaving the Air Force in
1975, Lee joined his father in operating a dairy farm near
Massey, where his wife, Jane
Ann, a native of Montana,
joined him.
Lee said adjusting to civilian
life wasn’t especially hard. He
said that unlike others, enemy
forces didn’t shoot at him on a
daily basis, and when he returned to the United States, no
one spit on him.
“If they had ever spit on me,
they wouldn’t ever spit on anybody else,” he said.
When Lee left for Auburn in
1963, he swore he would never
become a farmer, but nearly two
Please see Lee, page 11
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10 The Decatur Daily
www.decaturdaily.com Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Titop beach on Ha Long Bay. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. A James Bond movie was filmed here.
Vietnam today
Some things change;
some things remain the same
David Benoy, classified advertising manager for The Decatur Daily, said he and his wife, Kathy, travel frequently but had never visited Vietnam.
“We had been all around the area, Thailand, Hong Cong and China, for example, but never to Vietnam or
Laos,” Benoy said. “The country had been on our list of places to go for a long time.”
The couple took the opportunity go there when they visited their son and daughter-in-law in Shenzhen,
China.
David Benoy in Cu Chi tunnels, about 43 miles northwest of Ho Chi
Minh City (Saigon). The tunnels were the location of several
military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet
Cong’s base of operations during the Tet Offensive in 1968. The
digging for the tunnels began in 1948 in Vietnam’s fight with the
French.
Farmer “flowering” rice paddy with water buffalo in Cua Hai. Cua Hai is on the bank
of the Cau Hai River and at the foot of Bach Ma National Park.
Ben Thanh Market in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The market was developed from informal markets
created by early 17th century street vendors gathering near the Saigon River.
Junks along the Perfume River in the ancient city of Hue. Hue was the capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945.
Statue of Ho Chi Minh in downtown Saigon. The Vietnamese fondly refer to Ho Chi
Minh as “Uncle Ho.”
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 www.decaturdaily.com
Dice
From page 4
He also remembers the stillness of the nights in Vietnam
being interrupted by incoming
rockets and outgoing artillery.
“It was truly amazing how
you could sleep through a loud
explosion and an outgoing whistle of the big guns,” he said, “but
reverse the process and you
were immediately scurrying for
the protection of a bunker.”
Heidecker experienced his favorite moments of the conflict
during a lull, when he traveled
from his base camp to Cu Chi, to
watch the 1968 Bob Hope Christmas Tour.
“What a performance,” he
said. “Bob’s entourage included
Miss World Penny Plummer of
Australia, Ann-Margret and
Roosevelt Greer.”
For the worst, Heidecker rolls
back the clock to the first of that
year, to Jan. 31, and the start of
the Tet Offensive.
“They overran our base
camp,” he said. “We lost our
company commander and four
or five other folks.”
Changed mind after Tet
Heidecker joined the Army
for a three-year commitment,
but Tet caused him to change
his mind about staying in Vietnam longer.
“If you stayed until you had
five months left in the service,
you could get out five months
early,” he said. “I wanted to do
that and signed up for another
six months, the length of each
extension. When Tet hit, I decid-
Hogan
From page 9
sniffing for the enemy.
On Jan. 26, 1969, the North
Vietnamese attacked the base.
Hogan was in a bunker with
other men until a commander
The Decatur Daily 11
Vietnam hero
Hooper buried
at Arlington
ed against it. So I came home in
September 1969 after 18 months,
basically wasting the extension
for what I had planned.”
Ugly return
And coming home, Heidecker
said, was the toughest time of
all.
He recalled flying into Oakland, Calif., and processing
through the Army facility at
Presidio, facing protesters spitting on him and flashing
derogatory signs in his face.
“All we were doing was serving our country, doing what our
country told us to do. I was very
proud to wear the uniform, but
being treated like that? I couldn’t get out of there quick
enough and change into civilian
clothes,” he said through tears
and a trembling voice. “But we
all had short hair, and they
knew who we were.”
Heidecker said it stirs his
heart to be in airports today and
see how warmly most Americans treat soldiers returning
from Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I go over and thank them for
their service,” he said. “And
sometimes when I’m flying and
get drink coupons, I see a soldier, and give them to him.”
Part of Heidecker’s plans
paid off. He got his GI bill, returned home and graduated in
1973 at Iowa State University
with a degree in industrial engineering.
He moved to Decatur in 1986
from Seattle, and retired at Boeing after 29 years. He is now a
systems engineer contract
worker with Stinger Ghaffarian
Technologies at Redstone Arsenal.
took out to the perimeter and
spread them out on the ground
with their M-16s. Hogan said the
base had 14 guys injured while
fighting off the attack that ended about an hour before dawn.
“It was a long night,” Hogan
said. “As an Air Force guy, I didn’t expect to be doing anything
like that.”
By T.J. Ray
Courtesy photo
At one outpost that was about half the size of a Decatur city block,
eight crews and five airplanes, including Hal Lee’s, provided fire
support at night for 45 nights.
years before his discharge, he
had changed his mind. It was
peacetime, and Lee had reached
a point in his life when he said
he needed to do something different.
His father, who had been a
dairy farmer since 1957, was
thinking of leaving the business
because it had become too much
for him to handle. That was until Lee came home to farm.
“As a young man I swore I’d
never return to farming,” said
Lee, then 36, in a 1980 newspaper article.
“I guess I prove that you can
take the boy out of the country,
but you can never take the country out of the boy. …”
Lee is still a cattle and poultry
farmer. His operation is between Hartselle and Massey.
Hogan stayed in Vietnam a
year before returning in the fall of
1969. He’ll never forget landing in
Seattle and seeing the war
protests. He said protesters spit on
his group and called them names.
“I was totally shocked,”
Hogan said.
While his family and close
friends were happy to see him,
Hogan saw the looks and heard
the disappointing comments.
He wouldn’t tell people he was a
veteran.
About two years ago, Hogan
became sick with a nervous disorder. He wrote a book, “On Butterfly Wings,” about his military
service. He now often speaks
publicly about Vietnam.
Lee
From page 9
Dickens writes about war
By Sarah Thomson
sthomson@decaturdaily.com
340-2447
Vietnam was just a year out of
my life, now that I’m 64. … “War
is hell” — I’ve heard hundreds of
times during my days of conflict.
Don Dickens wrote those
words in a poem about his time
as a sergeant during the Vietnam War.
He didn’t expect to be a writer,
nor did he plan to go overseas in
the ’60s to Vietnam. But in 1965,
the young man from Spanish
Fort became one of the thousands shipped to Asia to fight in
the controversial war.
“Back then they had the
draft,” he said. “I didn’t want to
go to Vietnam, so I enlisted.”
The Army needed men to
fight, and Dickens soon left for
Fort Ben Harris in Indiana. He
attended finance school there
and was selected to go to Vietnam.
“Everything happened so
quickly to be processed,” he
said. “Physicals, tests — it all
happened so fast. I drove home
to say goodbye and then I left.”
Recently, Dickens, who now
lives in Decatur, flipped through
a worn scrapbook from his days
in Vietnam. Black-and-white
photographs show daily life on
the streets with flower stalls and
open air markets.
Men in coolie hats sold wares
on the side of the road, fixed bicycles and stacked bags of rice,
and women carried small children on their backs.
“Their way of life was totally
different,” said Dickens. “You
don’t see that in Decatur or Mobile. They chop up firewood and
carry it on their backs.”
At nearly 6 feet 4 inches tall,
Dickens said he was a spotlight
among the locals. Most men
came only to his chest, but that
didn’t deter him from meeting
his neighbors.
He walked the streets regularly, talking to locals in the villages and learning Vietnamese
phrases.
“I enjoyed getting out with the
people and making friends with
them,” he said, flipping through
photographs.
But not all of Dickens’ memories of Vietnamese life are
pleasant. His hand rested on a
picture of the Victoria Hotel.
“That was blown up shortly
after we left,” he said, then
turned the page.
He paused at another picture
of a street scene. Dickens explained that although security
existed around the base, a mine
exploded at a bus stop not far
Daily photo by Brennen Smith
When he returned home, Don Dickens enrolled in a creative writing
class at The University of South Alabama to channel his emotions.
from where he and his men
lived.
“That morning we didn’t
make it to the bus stop when we
should have, and the mine took
some lives,” he said.
Dickens worked in payroll for
the Army, and he has pictures
of his desk and the stacks of paperwork he completed during
his year in Vietnam.
He remembered seeing flares
and tracers go off in the fields
beyond his office and watching
the war through a window.
His photographs show pictures of impromptu celebrations at the barracks to ease tension.
Once the men were shipped
home, they found a somber
awakening waiting them.
“I found that prior to the military, I was kind of a happy-golucky person,” he said. “But
when I got home, I didn’t feel
like I needed to be there.”
The soldier felt uneasy back
in Spanish Fort. Life in the United States had continued without
him, and he felt that his service
went unappreciated by fellow
Americans.
“I didn’t want to watch TV in
those days because it was full of
If you happen
to be in Section
46 in Arlington
National Cemetery,
give pause and
remember that
many of us are here
now because people
like them were
there when it
mattered most.
Special to The Daily
protesters and praising people
who went to Canada. We did
what we had to do,” he said.
Trying to cope
He saw his friends from the
war turn to alcohol and drugs to
ease the psychological traumas
and fears, and his family couldn’t understand the changes in
the young man after his service.
When he returned home, he
enrolled in a creative writing
class at The University of South
Alabama. He channeled his
emotions on paper and has been
writing steadily since.
In 1968, Dickens gave a speech
at the Lebanon Rotary Club in
Lebanon, Ind., on his time in
Vietnam, including a slideshow
of his photographs. The last
slide was a casualty of the war,
and a man commented that
Dickens gave a great presentation until the last slide. Dickens
remembered telling the man,
“War is hell.”
In a prose piece he wrote on
his time in the military, Dickens
repeats that sentiment after
each line.
“Today, I’m thinking back remembering more than 58,000
American soldiers who died,
and countless enemy losses, that
is hell,” he wrote.
Dickens said he came back to
the U.S. a bitter man. Now he is
more interested in creating a
peaceful world through acceptance of different faiths and cultures. He can remember the
thousands of Vietnamese killed
by countless attacks — victims of
governments fighting for power.
“Why do people destroy others, innocent people?” he asked.
“I don’t think anyone has an answer to that.”
He also doesn’t understand
those who protest the Iraq war.
“Today they’re all volunteers,” he said. “So why do we
protest what other people want
to do? Even though they volunteered, there is a difference in
people’s attitudes. But what’s
the difference in a life lost in
1971 and a life lost today?”
With his writing, Dickens explores war themes and the conflicting views of governments
across the globe.
“This world will always have
turmoil because of people and
differing cultures,” he said.
“We’re a good country, but we
have so many that dislike us.”
However, his thoughts are always with the victims of war —
the mothers, fathers and children
who lose loved ones in battle.
“Mothers around this world
weep tears in the same way for
their lost child,” he wrote. “People in other countries also have
feelings, even if we disagree
with their religious beliefs or
their cultural heritages. They
are born who they are, where
they are in their countries, and
we need to respect that truth.”
Should you find yourself
sightseeing in Washington, D.C.,
please take the time to visit Arlington National Cemetery, perhaps gravesite 656-77.
The soldier buried there was
born in August 1938 and died in
May 1979. A few graves away lies
a soldier born in June 1926 who
died in May 1971. And just across
the well-kept grass is one more
(of many) soldiers of distinction.
He was born in December 1887
and died in September 1964.
Dates, of course, don’t tell us
very much about a person.
These three men all lived
through days so significant to
many men around them that
their final rest pales in comparison.
The first of the three, Sgt.
Alvin York, performed a deed
that led to these words in his
Medal of Honor Citation:
“After his platoon suffered
heavy casualties and 3 other
noncommissioned officers had
become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command.
Fearlessly leading 7 men, he
charged with great daring a machine gun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire
upon his platoon.
“In this heroic feat the machine gun nest was taken, together with 4 officers and 128
men and several guns.”
The great day in his life was
Oct. 8, 1918.
The second of the three heroes was Sgt. (later Maj.) Audie
Murphy.
These words conclude his
CMH Citation: “then made his
way to his company, refused
medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw.
His directing of artillery fire
wiped out many of the enemy;
he killed or wounded about 50.
“2d Lt. Murphy’s indomitable
courage and his refusal to give
an inch of ground saved his
company from possible encirclement and destruction, and
enabled it to hold the woods
which had been the enemy’s objective.”
This action from a soldier
who had been refused by the
Marines and paratroopers, who
said he was too short!
Day of courage
His day of supreme courage
was Jan. 26, 1945.
The last of the three noted
above served as one of the pallbearers at Audie Murphy’s burial, surely not knowing he
would one day return for the
same honors, was Sgt. (later
Capt.) Joe Hooper, whose widow,
Faye Hooper, lives in Decatur.
Faye Hooper accepted the Audie Murphy Patriotism Award
on behalf of Joe Hooper at last
year’s Spirit of America Festival.
Having served in the Navy,
Hooper joined the Army and
found himself in Vietnam as a
staff sergeant. The close of his
CMH Citation reads thusly:
“He then established a final
line and reorganized his men,
not accepting medical treatment until this was accomplished and not consenting to
evacuation until the following
morning. His supreme valor, inspiring leadership and heroic
self-sacrifice were directly responsible for the company’s success and provided a lasting example in personal courage for
every man on the field. His actions were in keeping with the
highest tradition of military
service and reflect great honor
upon himself and the United
States Army.”
His outstanding deeds happened on the very long and
bloody day of Feb. 21, 1968.
Our Nation “celebrates”
Armistice/Veterans day on Nov.
11, and you will probably think
these words are months late.
Let me assure you they are not
because every day there are
men and women in an American uniform who may well rest
one day in Arlington.
At this moment we can’t
know who will be the most decorated soldier of this rotten war,
as the above three were the most
decorated heroes of World War
I, World War II and the Vietnam
War.
And now, all those airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines are volunteers, volunteers who too often
come home to a place where no
one but their loved ones even
know what they have experienced, too often returning to a nation that no longer needs them
and can’t seem to find the resources to give them the support
they earned on the battlefield.
But for a moment, think of
the hillbilly from the Tennessee
hills, Alvin York, the short guy
who would become a movie star,
and the soldier who kept enlisting in the service.
And if you happen to be in
Section 46 in Arlington National Cemetery, give pause and remember that many of us are
here now because people like
them were there when it mattered most.
T.J. Ray lives in Oxford, Miss.
Her column is reprinted with
permission from The Oxford
Eagle.
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12
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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