By Richard A. Rose, Captain, US Army retired.
Over the total of my military and civilian careers, I have had the opportunity to work with many men who served in Vietnam. While for most you never knew about their service, except for the wearing of a pin or the First Team (1st Cavalry Division) hat, others with which I worked did let me know tidbits of their time in country.
TOM
I worked with a man named Tom who was every bit the older version of the Marine Corps recruiting poster. He had a razor cut short flat top, barrel chest, the look of a guy who never joked around. Tom had been one of those whose family had always been in the Corps and for whom volunteering was not only expected, but almost required. He said that his big Irish family was made up of Marines and cops. Most of the men were one and then the other. So, when he was of age, the day after his 18th birthday, he went to the recruiter and volunteered. He would be one of the almost 70,000 Marines who, in 1966, were carrying out ground operations against the Vietcong. Tom was an infantryman. His days were filled with movement to contact and search and destroy, and his nights were filled with ambushes, mortar attacks, bad chow, and little sleep. To say that it took its toll on him is an understatement. Tom always talked rather guiltily about that, saying that his dad and uncles had withstood the like of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Guadalcanal, so who was he to complain about Vietnam.
I always thought that Tom was a very religious man because he literally went to church every day before coming to work. It was good thing that our building was basically across the street from a Catholic cathedral because I could look out the window and see him crossing the street from the church every morning. When most people say things like “every day” they are probably using hyperbole, and really mean that is happens a lot. But when I say that Tom went to church every day, it was literally every day.
Tom was in a tough state, it was late 1966 and he had just a few days until his tour in Vietnam was over. He had been wounded and been decorated for bravery. He said that they handed out medals for basically just staying alive. One afternoon, standing in the pouring rain in a three-foot rice paddy, his squad came under withering fire from Vietcong well hidden in the brush. Tom watched his fellow Marines cut down around him for about 15 to 20 minutes. Crouching in the sloppy water, Tom said that he asked God to save him. He said in that in that moment he felt the strongest connection with God he had ever had. It wasn’t being afraid. He said later that he wasn’t afraid, just sure that his time was up unless God intervened. Tom told God that if he got out of this alive and made it home, he would go to church every day for the rest of his life, and he meant it. Almost the second he made his “deal”, a formation of Army UH-1 Iroquois “huey” gunships came right over his position and completely took out the Vietcong firing on what was left of his squad. The evacuation and medical choppers were right behind them.
Tom would say in a plain tone, “God kept his bargain, I keep mine.”
ED
I had the opportunity to work with Ed for about a year, when we were rolling out the AIDS/HIV Counseling and Testing Centers in New York City. Ed was formally trained as a nurse, but I would come to find that his medical training had started in the Navy. Growing up a Quaker, known as the Society of Friends, Ed was and had been his whole life, a pacifist. Core to his beliefs was the rejection of military service and war, indeed the rejection of any form of physical violence. When he said this, my next question was logical, “So how did you get in the Navy?”
Ed, when he told me his story, just smiled, and said that in 1968 he had a problem being an American and also holding on to his religious beliefs. The 60s were a tough time for him personally, as well as the nation culturally. He reconciled the conflicts in himself by taking his draft notice to the U.S. Navy recruiter and letting him know that he would not fight in Vietnam. He was, however, willing to be a Navy Hospital Corpsman on a hospital ship or the like, where he believed that he could fulfill his obligation as an American and uphold his religious beliefs. Ed thought that this compromise was the best and honorable thing to do given that he just didn’t want “conscientious objector status”. By doing this he was going against the thoughts of some members of the Society of Friends, but he believed that he could reconcile it within himself.
While Ed had done a lot of thought about the moral and ethical issues, he hadn’t really understood what he was saying to the Navy. Would they train him as a Hospital Corpsman? Yes, but after that training, Ed was assigned to provide medical support to a Marine Infantry platoon going to fight in Vietnam. The only time that Ed did service on ship was during the trip from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, and then to Vietnam. His tour of duty was being responsible for emergency life-saving medical care to Marines in the middle of fire fights, care to for Marines with jungle foot rot, for Marines with festering infections, and just being the overall “Doc” to his platoon. Through all of it, he never carried a weapon, never fired a weapon, and only acted to save everyone he could.
Ed’s goal to not be around the death of war was a complete failure. He was perhaps more morally challenged than any of the Marines he protected, because as a pacifist, his mere presence amid all of that killing and death felt morally wrong. While serving his tour, Ed realized that the elders were right, that he shouldn’t even be there, but he came to realize in the years later that his experiences in helping to save lives, perhaps made him a stronger and better person. It made him more compassionate and dedicated to peace.
As we worked on the establishment of AIDS/HIV Counselling and Testing Centers during the AIDS crisis this strength came through. While he had seen worse in his lifetime, his compassion and ethical strength made him a guiding beacon for so many in such a difficult time.
MIKE & BOB
A long-range reconnaissance patrol, or LRRP, is a small, well-armed reconnaissance team that patrols deep in enemy-held territory. By April 1966, each of the four Battalions of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had formed LRRP units. By 1967 formal LRRP companies were organized, most having three platoons, each with five six-man teams. LRRP training was notoriously rigorous and team leaders were often graduates of the U.S. Army’s 5th Special Forces Recondo School in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Such was the Vietnam experience of Bob and Mike; the Recondo legends. Bob was the tall lanky distance runner type while Mike was more the 5’8” super muscular stereotypical commando. Both were field medics and had gone through basic jump school at Ft. Benning in the same class after completing Army medics training. They had met while in Medic’s school and were sent to Airborne. Mike and Bob had been rivals competing for top honors in Medic’s school and competing against each other for the Iron Mike trophy in Airborne. When they graduated from Airborne, they were both assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade (“Sky Soldiers”). The brigade was the first major United States Army ground force deployed in Vietnam, serving there from May 7, 1965, to 1971 and losing 1,533 soldiers. Brigade members received over 7,700 decorations, including more than 6,000 Purple Hearts. Both Bob and Mike would be among those Purple Heart recipients, as well as earning Bronze Stars.
The rivalry would continue in the 173rd, as each was assigned to a different LRRP. Their patrol areas were different, rarely overlapping and they would only reconnect when they arrived at the base camp. There they would share stories of missions, compare the remarkable feats of military medicine that each performed in patching up their patrol members and generally complain that the other just wasn’t as good as they were.
When their tour ended, they were scheduled to fly back to “the world”. Both had been talking about going home. For Bob, home was western Pennsylvania, with its coal mines, steel plants, and farms. For Mike, home was back to west Texas and the wide-open spaces filled with cows and oil wells. But something had happened in their time in the Army. Indeed, something had happened in Vietnam. Neither had been from Hawaii, but both had decided as the plane landed in Honolulu, that they were not going back to their pre-Vietnam homes. It just wasn’t home anymore. The first leg home became their last flight anywhere.
As civilians, they had transitioned to Honolulu Emergency Services as Emergency Medical Technicians and had both gone through the Mobile Intensive Care Technicians (MICT) training program. Always gently competing and keeping each other on their professional “toes”. Both had families, as stable or not as each could handle. When I met them, at least six years after returning from Vietnam, they were still playfully handing out jibes about which one was the better this and the better that. All said with a smile and a pat on the back. Bob and Mike were truly friends who had been able to survive by having a friend who had gone through it with them. Their comradeship was their greatest strength.
LEWIS
I had worked with Lewis for a few years and always found him to be able to see the nuance in practically any situation. Lewis was the Vietnam age but remarked on a few occasions that he didn’t go. I suspected that the reason was a college deferment, or some other mechanism that lots of people used who avoided military service. We were travelling on a train from New York City back to Albany and somehow the subject of my service in the Army came up. He said that I must have been crazy to actually volunteer.
For some reason he talked quietly about the matter-of-fact version of how he avoided going to Vietnam. Lewis had received his draft number and could see the writing on the wall. He knew that he had three choices, two of which he discussed with his parents. He talked about just going and probably being sent to Vietnam, it was 1970 and things didn’t look good. He also talked about escaping across the Canadian border to evade the draft, becoming a criminal and draft dodger. Strangely, his parents were ok with this option because they had no desire to see their son needlessly lose his life in what had become a confusing mess of a war. The third option, which Lewis only spoke about in very hushed terms, was the option he took.
Somehow, he was able to get medical documentation for a condition which would prevent his service in the military. In other words, he made himself look medically unfit. While he never did say how he did this, he did say that there were contacts that, in those days, could for a fee, have a medical history prepared which would pass examination and give him medication that would, for a short time, mimic the condition. So, he reported, handed in his paperwork, and was subsequently declared unfit. He never said what medical condition he supposedly had, nor how the actual process worked to get the documents, but apparently the “underground” was well situated to make it happen.
Did he feel bad about his choice those many years ago? No, for he too had the feeling that if he gone to Vietnam, he would have never returned alive.
