Please describe who or what influenced your decision to join the Army.

Wall Fresco in Vietnam

I'm a second-generation American. Both sets of my grandparents fled Eastern Europe at the beginning of the last century. My father and my uncles proudly served in the military during WWII. I attended a military academy from the 2nd through 5th grades. I grew up on war movies and newsreels.

On my 22nd birthday, March 8, 1965, US Marine ground forces landed in Vietnam. I was not doing well in college, and "wars only come along every so often, so you have to grab them when you have the chance."

I joined the Army in November 1965, because it was there.

Whether you were in the service for several years or as a career, please describe the direction or path you took. What was your reason for leaving?

End of My Tour of Duty

I liked the Army. I liked the structure. I knew my place in it, but I didn't want to have to serve another tour of duty in Vietnam in any capacity.

If you participated in any military operations, including combat, humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, please describe those which made a lasting impact on you and, if life-changing, in what way?

Bandaging Ken Spence, Valentine's Day

Witnessing Weddington getting his foot blown off, breathing my air into McElyea's lungs as he died. Tending to Spence's wounds just after watching Bernard take his last breath, death by "friendly fire" of Miller; April 23rd, 1967; the murder of Batten; and other stuff.

There exists an online interview of me done by Vietnam veteran, Jim Hawks, at OnMyWatch.TV.

Sometime early in 1967, maybe March, while I was a platoon medic with the 199th, I severely sprained my ankle jumping off the back of a truck. At the time, I thought my ankle broken.

I arrived at the 24th Evac Hospital riding in a jeep just as medevac choppers were landing and

James Bernard 1967

off-loading dozens of seriously wounded grunts. I hopped into the hospital on my good foot alongside those broken, bloody, muddy, and maimed helpless looking men. Multiple teams of hospital medics were putting the litters up on saw horses and working on each of them in what had the appearance of practiced efficiency while then guided into another room.

Because I only had an injured foot and had arrived in the middle of all that bloody controlled chaos, I assumed I would be put on hold until things settled down. It only seemed right. But what did happen is that a doctor met me first thing, examined my ankle, and said it appeared to broken.
 

Vietnam 1967 - With Sprained Ankle

I was sent immediately to the x-ray. Shortly after x-ray the doctor met me again, said it wasn't broken, but was a sprain, my ankle was wrapped, I was given crutches, and I was told that it would probably be a couple of weeks before the swelling would be down enough to get my foot back into a boot. An ambulance arrived shortly after that, picked me up, and took me to BMB, where I got a few weeks of light duty in the rear before returning to the field again.

It was the best, most efficient medical attention and treatment I have ever seen or received, and it all took place during a massive combat triage situation. There is no doubt in my mind that those wounded infantrymen got as good as I got, just as timely and just as efficiently. I remain impressed to this day at what took place then and there all those years ago. As ugly as it was, it was a beautiful thing.

Did you encounter any situation during your military service when you believed there was a possibility you might not survive? If so, please describe what happened and what was the outcome.

I was not only aware of the possibility that I might die, but I believed in the certainty that I would die.

I survived a firefight on April 23, 1967, when I was sure I would be witness to my own death.

Of all your duty stations or assignments, which one do you have fondest memories of and why? Which was your least favorite?

USNS General Daniel L. Sultan

My favorite time in the Army was the three weeks I spent on the USNS Daniel I. Sultan, a troopship that carried me to Vietnam.

Hated my last nine months stationed at the Army Hospital at Ft. MacArthur, San Pedro, California. It should have been my best duty station, but it was the worst leadership I experienced in almost three years in the Army.

From your entire military service, describe any memories you still reflect back on to this day.

James Ernest Batten Murdered by ARVN 08-01-1967

There are many that, after all of these years, seem to have had the most impact on me.

The first death that I witnessed to the last death I saw.

The first occurred on February 5, 1967. It was getting dark on a long and hard day. 1st platoon had incurred nine wounded from an enemy claymore. We had been engaged in mini-shoot ups all day. I was near the end of a column as we were trying to make our way back to our perimeter before it got totally dark. We took some fire, and I heard a voice saying, "I'm hurt. I'm hurt."

Looking back, I saw a helmet bobbing just above the water in a ditch next to the berm we were on. I jumped down into the water and reached under the water to pull the wounded man up. As soon as I touched him, he went unconscious. I had trouble holding him up because he was so heavy with all of his gear, and we were still taking fire, and we were in an exposed situation. He had been the last man in the column, and we were all alone except for a photographer who had joined us that day.
 

James F. Mcelyea

He was standing on the berm behind a tree and looking down at me through his camera, taking our photos. I yelled at him to help me with the man I was holding. He kept taking pictures. Finally, I was screaming at him to help. Finally, three guys appeared at the top of the berm and helped me get the wounded guy to the top of the berm.

James McElyea died while I was working on him, and all the while, I was aware of the photographer taking photos even though it had to be too dark for any of them to come out. We called in a medevac saying that the guy was still alive because they wouldn't have evacuated him in the dark otherwise. I made up my mind to kill the photographer once we got back to our perimeter. I discovered that he got on the evac chopper, so we wound up both being lucky. He lived, and I wasn't a murderer.
 

Me with ARVN Medic Counterpart

The last death: August 1, 1967; James Batten.

It was supposed to be my second to last day in the field after eight months. I was going to be transferred to a support battalion and finish out my year as a REMF ambulance driver. We were just coming off a three day sweep with a company of our ARVN counterparts. They were going their way, and we were going ours. We were forming up into boarding groups as choppers were on the way to pick us up. As the ARVNs were walking by, Batten was all happy and jokingly pushed one gently on the shoulder as they were going by, and he said, "Hurry up." The ARVN apparently felt disrespected and emptied a 30 round magazine into Batten point-blank, wounding three others from the bullets passing through his body. I rank that as the worst thing I experienced out of many bad experiences. It turned out that it was my last day in the field.

What professional achievements are you most proud of from your military career?

I am most proud of the fact that I was able to carry out my duties and responsibilities in Vietnam, 1967.

Of all the medals, awards, formal presentations and qualification badges you received, or other memorabilia, which one is the most meaningful to you and why?

Combat Medic Badge, because it symbolizes the honor it was for me to serve alongside infantry made up largely of "citizen soldiers" representing a beautiful cross-section of America.

Which individual(s) from your time in the military stand out as having the most positive impact on you and why?

For outstanding leadership:

Sgt. Trujillo, Drill Instructor Basic Training, Ft. Polk

Cpt. Sellers CO Charlie Co. 4th/12th, 199th L.I.B.

Lt. Yonkers, Plt. Leader, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Co. 4th/12th, L.I.B.

Sgt. Brewer, Plt. Sgt. 2nd Platoon, Charlie Co. 4th/12th, L.I.B.

List the names of old friends you served with, at which locations, and recount what you remember most about them. Indicate those you are already in touch with and those you would like to make contact with.

Cooking Chicken to Supplement C's

Sgt. Lucien Brewer

Woody Woodward

Lenny Piracci

Edward Clinton Miller

Bernie Ford

Ron Legaux

Dennis Wilcox

Cpt. Thomas Sellers

Lt. Roger Yonker

Carroll Reynolds

James Reilly

Lance Oyler

James Moody

Can you recount a particular incident from your service, which may or may not have been funny at the time, but still makes you laugh?

Being an Ambulance Driver With Support Battalion

After eight months in the field as a Combat Medic, I got reassigned to a support battalion as an ambulance driver. One of the other ambulance drivers and I pulled a detail to paint a 4-seater shitter. We decided to paint only the front and two sides. We chose not to paint the back because it fronted another battalion area and figured whoever checked on the job wouldn't bother to check the back, it was never checked. Wonder if the back ever got painted?

Two light moments I can think of from my time as a platoon medic. Both took place during a time when our company was supposed to get a visit in the field from General Westmoreland, Secretary McNamara, and a group from the press corps. It turns out the tour was scaled back because, as I remember it, Westmoreland's mother died, and he went back to the states for her funeral.

In preparation for the visit we built a company-sized perimeter with sandbagged bunkers, roofs, and all. Barbers were sent out to give us haircuts, and portable showers were set up so we would be squeaky clean with clean uniforms. Though I never saw the perimeter from the air, it had was described to me as looking like a castle when coming in on a chopper.

The mortar platoons practiced mortar firing, as a platoon was either going to be leaving on patrol or coming in (can't remember for sure). For our defense, there were so many invisible boonie rats patrolling around us that we were allowed to sit on top of our bunkers and smoke at night.

One of my duties as a platoon medic was responsible for a platoon slit trench (a.k.a latrine) whenever we dug in. I could have assigned the job to one of the line guys, but I always did it myself. I liked digging it. I think I probably dug some of the best platoon slit trenches in all of the Vietnam war. They were as wide as an entrenching tool, maybe three feet deep and three feet long, with nice straight walls, etc.

I believe because my latrines were so good, I was given the job of creating the V.I.P. slit trench, for Westmoreland's and McNamara's shit, should they need to go. The latrine was discreetly placed behind a stand of bamboo so they would get something none of the rest of us ever had, privacy. It also had something we never had, a full roll of toilet paper. I dug the trenches, but I didn't carry an entrenching tool, so I would have to borrow from the line. That day I asked an FNG to borrow his entrenching tool and he said, "No!" It turns out that was the only time I had someone else dig the hole, and better than that, he had to stand guard over the hole in full gear

Brigade Main Base - Latrine Duty

and be ready to direct V.I.P.s to the shitter. I still smile at the memory of him standing there at attention in full combat gear as a shitter-guide.

The other light moment took place after we dismantled our "castle' perimeter and were getting ready to saddle up and move out. We had a trash sump dug where we were burning the stuff we weren't going to have to carry. Legaux said he couldn't find a frag grenade that he just got from re-supply. I looked into the burning pit and in the flames, at the top of the pile was a red hot grenade. I rolled away from the hole and was trying to yell, "GRENADE!" but the only thing that would come out of my mouth was "ge," "ge," "ge," until finally, I could spit the word out as it exploded. I was lucky it didn't go off as I looked into the pit.

While serving in Vietnam with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, I had the opportunity to witness fish feeding at a village fishpond.

On occasion, our company would be tasked with conducting what we called a Search & Seal operation. Though it doesn't matter, I have always wondered why it wasn't called a Seal and Search, since that was more reflective of the process.

Our company would wait until dark and then as quietly as possible surround a village so that no one could get in or get out. Later at first light, ARVN troops would arrive and interrogate everyone in the village looking for V.C. and/or deserters from government forces.
 

Me and  Barry Gregory,  Seal & Search

On this occasion, we had surrounded a village that had a pond in the center of the village. It was our understanding that the villagers were not allowed to farm their rice paddies, as the paddies were designated a "free-fire zone." The villagers were dependent on rice brought in by the government, giant land crabs, and fish from the pond along with whatever they could find.

Curiously the pond had what looked to be a diving board extending maybe six or seven feet out over the water.

At first light, an old man came out of one of the village huts and made his way out to the end of the board. He dropped his pants and squatted out over the end of the board and shit. When his turd hit the water, there was a feeding frenzy from fish as they attacked his turd.

It was at that moment I realized why some of the fish that shared on occasion with our ARVN counterparts tasted so weird. Never again did I eat a fish in Vietnam.

What profession did you follow after your military service and what are you doing now? If you are currently serving, what is your present occupational specialty?

I am retired from a career as a School Counselor who worked in public education.

12 Years of War Stories

I never meant to wind up as a counselor. I had planned to be some kind of biologist doing fieldwork out in nature somewhere. In college, I majored in Biology and did all right for the first three years. I got caught up in partying, alcohol, and women, and after two years of being a senior in 1965, I was on academic probation and still six units short of a degree. I dropped out of school and joined the Army.

Three years later, I exited the Army and went back to school and finished the course work and earned my degree an A B.S. degree in Biology. To get a job as a Biologist, one needs an advanced degree, and my poor showing as an undergraduate made that option out of reach for me.

So I got a high school teaching credential and then couldn’t find a teaching job. I worked in different positions until I decided to go back to school on the G.I. Bill. I went after an M.A. in Psychology because it seemed like it would be an easy major, and I would become a School Counselor because they only worked 185 days per year, with every weekend and holiday and summer off. My kind of a work year and the perks were right as well as pensions and health insurance. I got a degree, and I got a job.
 

Nov 11 1984, at The Vietnam Veteran Memorial

A few years later, in 1984, I read in the paper that the statues were going to be dedicated to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, a.k.a. The Wall, in Washington, DC. They were expecting 100,000 Vietnam Veterans to be there, and there would be unit reunions at various hotels. I decided to be one of the 100,000. It was the first time I heard “Welcome home Doc!” and it was from a young African-American Army Captain. I can still remember how good it felt to hear it.

I spent the better part of three days and three nights sitting above the panels that carry the names of the men who died in 1967. Every day, all day, people were looking up at the names on the panels. Many of the people were obviously family members, and their tears were flowing. For me, it had been 17 years since I had been in Vietnam, but I was touched by all the pain I saw. Then it hit me? “I am a Vietnam vet, and I am a counselor.” Maybe I should counsel vets?

When I got home, I went to the closest Vet Center, about 60 miles from where I live, and volunteered. For the first year once a week, I drove to the Vet Center and co-facilitated “Rap Groups” of Vietnam vets who had been diagnosed with the new term, PTSD.

After a year, the Vet Center staff asked if I would do a “needs assessment” in the area where I lived. They suggested that I identify local Vietnam veterans by establishing a chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., and in that way, develop some knowledge of the local veteran population. Chapter #368, VVA, was born. At one time, the chapter had over 100 dues-paying members and a mailing list of over 400 local Vietnam vets. The need was established, and I was hired by a local non-profit counseling clinic under contract with the V.A. to provide PTSD assessment and counseling for veterans and their families.

I was a vet counselor between 1985 and 1996 and had the privilege and honor to know and hear the stories of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, as well as WWII vets, Atomic vets, Korean War vets, and vets from every other engagement between WWII and 1996. I retired from the counseling gig because it got to the point where I couldn’t separate my own stories from the stories I was hearing. I wound up becoming a V.A. patient instead of a V.A. therapist. It was a heck of a ride and my journey continues.

THE VIETNAMESE SHUTTLE

During April of 1975, I was a bus driver for Associated Charter Bus Company. It was the 3rd of three years that I drove a school bus in and around Palm Springs, California.

Watching TV, I was a witness to the fall of Saigon: Vietnamese clamoring to get onto airplanes and helicopters; choppers being dumped off of U.S. ships into the ocean because there wasn’t room for them; an NVA tank crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, etc. It was a weird and terminal scene.

Shortly after, many other drivers and I were driven down to the El Toro Naval Air Station and assigned to drive busloads of Vietnamese who would be arriving that night down to USMC Camp Pendleton, where a tent city was set up to receive them.

My adrenaline was flowing to be a part of this. It was a much bigger deal than hauling school kids back and forth between their schools and their bus stops. Our dispatcher gave us a speech that we needed to guard our personal belongings against the thieving Vietnamese, and the female drivers needed to safeguard their purses. My thought was, “What does this guy know about Vietnamese?” These people are fleeing for their lives and will have been traveling all day and night, and the first thing they are going to do when they land in America is to steal their bus driver’s stuff. WTF?

I had the luck and the privilege to be driving the lead bus in the first convoy down the San Diego Freeway, speeding in the left lane through a cold, foggy night behind a California Highway Patrol Car with its lights flashing and a convoy of buses behind me all loaded with Vietnamese. While I was driving down the highway, a Vietnamese man behind me was chatting with me in perfect English: telling me that he was a doctor; that he was grateful to the American people for letting them come into our country; that he hoped the American people would be proud of them; and that he hoped that one day they would be able to return home to their own country.
 

Camp Pendleton Vietnamese Tent City

When we got to the tent city, a USMC Sergeant stepped onto my bus and asked if there was anyone on the bus who spoke English to translate what he was going to say. The man who had been chatting with me stood up and introduced himself to the Sgt. He said that there was no need for a translation as everyone on the bus spoke English. The Sgt. pointed his finger at the man and yelled for him to “TRANSLATE!” The man responded, “Sir, there is no need to translate; everyone on the bus speaks English.” Sarge’s response, “YOU! TRANSLATE!” So as a welcome to America and his new home, the good doctor translated to the other passengers on the bus that as they got off and that they would be checked in and assigned to their temporary quarters. Their welcome to America sounded a lot like my welcome to Basic Training at Ft. Polk ten years earlier.

I have no memory of how many busloads of Vietnamese we transported that night and into the next day. I have no memory of how long we were driving with no real rest break. I do remember that the Navy coffee was by far the worst coffee I have ever had.

On another note, there was a small, circular, chain-link fenced compound with a small shed in the middle and with an M-14 armed marine walking the perimeter inside the fence.
 

Buses of Vietnam Refugees Arriving at Pendleton Compound

The compound was between the parked buses and the bad, but necessary coffee in the terminal building. At the time, I wore my hair long and had a full beard, which apparently wasn’t a very marine corps like look.

On one of my walks by the compound, the guard yelled, “HALT!” and I heard the sound of an M-14 being locked-and-loaded. My 1st thought was, “is he yelling at me?” And my 2nd thought was that I was going to die by some dumb-ass marine in Orange County, California. I stopped, turned around, and discovered that it was indeed me he had yelled too. He called the O.D., who came over, and we quickly worked out that I wasn’t an enemy saboteur. And so it goes.

What military associations are you a member of, if any? What specific benefits do you derive from your memberships?

Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., Jewish War Veterans of America

In what ways has serving in the military influenced the way you have approached your life and your career? What do you miss most about your time in the service?

Everything that I think that I know about anything is from lessons I learned in Vietnam.

Lessons About Death

When I was a kid, I heard about death. When I was in second grade, there were twin brothers in my class, then one day, there was only one. I heard that one had died having his tonsils removed. I do not remember having any kind of emotional reaction. I knew my mother’s parents had both died, my mother’s mother died when my mother was four years old, and her father died when she was eight. No emotional connection it just was.

Along the way, I knew my parents would occasionally attend funerals of their friends, including my father’s parents, who I never got to know. In high school, I knew of some students who had died, but I was untouched by their deaths. I had a friend who drowned while snorkeling off the coast of Palos Verdes, and even though I knew him well, I was relatively untouched by his death.

Then I joined the Army. Before I even got to my basic training company at Ft. Polk, one of the guys who was part of our group died in his sleep. It was maybe my second morning in the Army, and I was still untouched. I went through basic training, AIT, and Ft. Benning with the 199th, all the while practicing killing and singing cadence songs about death and destruction and still not feeling it. On the ship crossing the pond, a Redcatcher jumped overboard never to be seen again. Interesting, but yet no emotional connection.
 

Vietnam Bound '66,  Lapente Bunk on USNS Sultan

Once we left the ship and boarded trucks and locked and loaded, I felt a shift in my relationship with the idea of death. It began to feel like something real. Then we humped the boonies, and we started to take casualties. I became witness to the ugliness of seeing young, healthy men, some of whom I had known and lived with 24/7 for more than six months, sustain horrible injuries and horrible ugly deaths, in a horrific and nasty circumstance.

Sometimes I even had their blood and flesh embedded in my uniform for hours and days until the next rain or river crossing. Instead of getting used to it, it got worse until I thought my brain would explode. The last death I witnessed in Vietnam on my last day in the field was the murder of a friend by an ARVN. In some ways, my brain did explode.

I made it back to “the world.” I got stationed in an emergency room in a small Army hospital that catered mostly to retired veterans and the families of active-duty soldiers. There on a few occasions, I was witness to the death of a few old retired soldiers, though probably not as old as I am as I write this, usually from heart attacks or some such thing. My thought was that seeing old and infirm people die in a hospital bed was much more comfortable and more natural than seeing my young friends with shredded bodies dying in the mud.
 

Army Days

Somehow it gave me a kind of hope. I also was witness to the death of newborn babies and had the duty of carrying their still warm and lifeless little bodies to the hospital morgue. Thanks to the Army, I was able to feel and respond to death. It probably would have happened anyway, but I can’t imagine that the lessons would have been so profound.

Years ago, my parents died, and over the years, I have lost friends and acquaintances, and the local obituaries often carry the names and life stories of people I know.

Now that I am in my seventies, even though I am lucky enough to still be of good health, I can sense my death lurking out there in front of me like a minefield that I have to cross. Looking back, because most of my life is now behind me, not in front of me, I feel lucky, because even though I know, I won’t get out of old age alive. I did make it to being what the newspapers might call an “elderly gentleman,” and that makes me appreciate and celebrate my life each day.

Based on your own experiences, what advice would you give to those who have recently joined the Army?

Learn all the positive lessons you can and take them with you for the rest of your life.

In what ways has TogetherWeServed.com helped you remember your military service and the friends you served with.

I like being able to document some of my stories in the hope that they might be of interest somehow, someway, someday.

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