With Memorial Day soon arriving, my thoughts go back many
years now to the time when I volunteered to go into the Army out of high
school. I was raised in a family that encouraged patriotism to our country, and it seemed a good thing to do, to fight for
our country that is. My father and uncle
fought in World War II and they felt that it was important to support our
country in a time of need. The year was
1970 and I was heading into the Army, away from my little sleepy town of
Jackson, Minnesota.
With the advent of TV and radio, small towns such as Jackson
were not immune to the news from the outside world. Vietnam was now raging on for about 5 years
and people were being touched in our small community by the loss of individual
lives in the war. We could feel the
tension in our school as former upper classmates were being listed as “Killed
in Action” over in Vietnam. We as young
students didn’t really understand all the politics of the war, and we couldn’t
have understood what it meant for the families that lost a son in this faraway
land.
When I got to basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, I
was put in a unit of all volunteers like myself, which is with one exception, a
young man who was going back into the National Guard in his hometown. Many of us were happy to serve in the
military, but as reports of more deaths were coming back to us, the thoughts
lingered in our minds if we would soon be one of them.
Our drill sergeant was a man who had three tours of duty in
Vietnam, and he had convinced each of us that we were heading overseas to
Vietnam, and that we had “better learn our “stuff” or we would become another
casualty. Reality of what was going on
was hitting each of us, and we took our training seriously. Given little sleep each day, and sloshing
through rain and snow, we were as a unit wearing down very quickly. I remember our D.I. (Drill Instructor) telling us that he was
going to make it so tough on us that Vietnam would seem easy. In retrospect, he was trying to save our
lives in the event of being sent to war.
Each day we got back to our barracks wet and cold. Spinal meningitis was traveling very rapidly
through the units, so we had to have our barrack’s windows open every night, so
the time that we got any sleep was slim at best. Many of us were getting sick and having to be
shipped to the hospital, some having pneumonia.
Moral was getting lower each day while the demands for
completing our tasks seemed to increase.
Some were reaching the breaking point and I could see it by the looks on
their faces. One man from Chicago who
grew up on the South side, was one such individual. He was talking about ending it all by taking
his life. I was concerned, so I
requested to see the First Sergeant.
Unfortunately nothing was done and my friend got a hold of a bottle of
pills, and he took them. I ran to the
sergeant in charge and my friend was rushed to the hospital. A couple of days later he was sent back and
was talking again about ending his life once more. I snuck out of our battalion area that night,
knowing that it was forbidden to do so, but I was desperate and I was looking
for the unit chaplain in a desperate attempt to find help for my friend. I found the chapel, but it was empty and
closed down for the night. I then
pleaded with the First Sergeant again, and again nothing was done. My friend attempted another suicide and this
time he almost completed his task. He just
made it, and again was later sent back to our unit with nothing being
done. To make matters worse, we were told that in the battalion
close to ours that a man emptied his weapon into his drill sergeant. This only drew our unit further down. For myself, I was getting sick with a bad cough and my
arches had finally collapsed one evening.
I took my wet boots off one night and found that I couldn’t walk. I tried to go down a set of steps, but found
myself falling down the flight with no support in my feet. Something was torn loose in my ankles and I
knew that I needed to see a doctor. I
went the next day and he told me to wear my dress shoes instead of my wet
boots. That obviously would not work
since the rain made the ground a wet goo of mud and ice that would go over my
socks. The problem started when we had
to polish our boots each night so that didn’t give the leather time to
dry. This in the end, it left our boots
useless to support our weight, and so consequently, my arches collapsed, offering no support for my feet. I was
determined not to get behind by going to sick calls so I grinned and bore it. I found it harder though to carry my 40-pound
pack and rifle since my feet were struggling to support the extra weight. It is strange what a person can do though
when confronted with unusual challenges.
A few days later, we had our force march into the mountains
towards the end of our training, that was the most difficult time of
basic. We transitioned from rain to snow
in a matter of hours, and that change made it difficult since the paths were
full of round rocks covered in snow, which made it very slippery to
navigate. The medics followed us and picked
up those that could not make it. I was
determined that this would not be my day to collapse. I compelled myself to climb, stumble and
forced myself each step until we reached our destination. When finally stopping, it was so dark that
none of us could see our hand in front of our faces; we had to feel our tent
halves to snap them up. We undressed in
the sleeping bag all the while leaving our clothes in the bag with us to keep
them warm. If we left our clothes on, we
would have frozen due to the fact that our own clothes would have insulated our
body heat and kept it from reaching the sleeping bag. After we got into our bags, our D.I. told us
to pack up, we heading another 8 miles up the mountain. We ended up reaching the site in the middle of
the night, each of us pounding tent stakes into the snow and ice, since we
couldn’t find any earth beneath us.
Many things happened to each of us in basic that would change
our lives forever. My friend for
instance, who attempted in taking his life, I was told that he became a door
gunner in Vietnam. I do not know if he
survived or not. Others were sent to
other bases for further training like myself.
I will write more about that later.
After all that, was I as patriotic as before? Well, I had many questions to answer for
myself. For example, was this war a just
one? Why were we not winning the war
since we had a better army and we had a better equipped military? Would I be one of those men that never came
home? I just turned 19, would I live to
see 20? I was only one of many of thousands
of men that were facing these same challenges.
For myself, I was not alone in my questions, but I knew one thing, each
of us supported one another and looked out for the other guy. I knew too that men were in Vietnam and they
had it much worse than myself. I
wondered if anyone back home really understood what was going on, and why this
war was being fought. For myself, I knew
at that point that I did not. One thing
I did know though, I loved my country and I would be willing to die for it, but
was this cause a just one?
