I enlisted in the Army in January, 1967. I felt a patriotic calling and sense of adventure. I was bored with college. I was trained as an airborne infantryman and assigned to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In 1968, I was accepted into the Army’s Engineer Officer Candidate School (OCS). I graduated as a new Second Lieutenant. While in OCS, I applied for the Army’s helicopter flight school. At that time, almost all-active duty military, particularly the combat arms branches, were sent to Vietnam.

I thought flying would be relatively more safe than stomping through mosquito-infested jungles and rice paddies. I had no idea that helicopter pilots and crewmembers had the highest causality rate of any military occupational specialty in the Vietnam War.

After graduating from flight school I married the love of my life. Sixty-three days after we were married, I was flying combat missions in Vietnam as my wife returned to college. We sent letters and cassette tapes back and forth, sometimes not hearing from one another for weeks or months at a time.  

I’ll never forget my first day flying in combat. I was filled with excitement and anxiety. For the first time in my life, someone was actually going to try to kill me. I was twenty-two and convinced that I was “bullet proof”. The first day was so exhausting that I could hardly drag myself out of my armor-plated pilot seat at the end of it. In flight school, we would normally fly two to three hours a day. My first day in combat, I spent nine hours piloting a vessel.

Experience in combat created a certain sense of brotherhood that difficult to explain, but is clearly understood by everyone who lived it. As pilots, our lives depended on our enlisted crew to maintain the aircraft and our door gunners to provide suppressive fire as we entered “hot” landing zones. Once we took off, that special bond and trust transferred to the cockpit where the crewmembers depended on the pilots not to do something careless that could have jeopardized the safety of the aircraft and its crewmembers…

War was and is an equalizer. When the bullets started flying, no one cared what rank you were, the color of your skin, what branch of the military you belonged to, where you were from or where you were going.  You were an American, you were in a tight spot, and we were coming to get you. Period.  The willingness to die for others had little to do with patriotism, although many of us initially joined the military out of some sense of it. Once we were in combat, we did what we had to do to get our job done and come home in one piece, along with the many “brothers and sisters” who depended on us. It was and is a truly special, unspoken bond.    

I was wounded on Mother’s Day, 1971 while flying an aerial reconnaissance mission in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. Our mission was to fly low level, less than 50 feet above the ground, and spot enemy positions. Once identified, we would throw out a smoke grenade, marking the target for the supporting Army, Navy and Air Force gun ships to engage.    

After being shot, I was air-lifted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D. C. On the long trip home, the first stop we made in the United States was Scott Air Force Base, near Saint Louis in order to deplane a few patients. It was the end of May, and they had just mowed the grass between the runway and taxiway. When they opened up the back of the aircraft, that sweet smell of freshly mown grass was so exhilarating. I can remember that smell like it was yesterday and it always brings a smile to my face.  

Because I came back on a stretcher on a specially designed Air Force MEDIVAC plane, I didn’t experience the harassment that many of our returning Vietnam veterans received as they flew home after their one year Vietnam tour. People would spit on them, throw food at them and call them “baby killers”.

I spent a total of four months recovering from my injuries. While on convalescent leave, during this recovery period, my wife and I went out for lunch. I was still on crutches at the time. The waitress that served us asked me why I was in a full leg cast. She thought I might have injured myself water skiing.  When I told her that I had been shot flying helicopters in Vietnam she said, “It’s too bad you didn’t get killed”.  Those exact words are burned in my brain to this day. I have forgiven her, but that memory of how I was treated will remain with me forever.

Although we try not to dwell on this, many of us, to this day, resent the lack of support we received by many American people when we returned home. We believed in our hearts that we were preventing the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.  

I would like to applaud WHRO for their outstanding initiative on the Vietnam war and it’s effect on thousands of its veterans. Veterans of the Vietnam war, as a rule, don’t talk publically about their experiences and we tend to internalize our thoughts and feelings. The venue that WHRO is providing, with it’s Vietnam initiative has given me the opportunity, for the first time since my return from Vietnam in May of 1971, to express my innermost thoughts and personal feelings about that experience.

The WHRO Vietnam initiative has helped me feel a deeper connection to the 58,200 Americans who were killed in Vietnam and the estimated 304,400 who were wounded. I had the honor of doing a remembrance reading for Army Special Forces Captain “Rocky” Versace for WHRO’s Stories from the Wall project.

I felt a connection with “Rocky”, as I replaced his fellow POW, First Leutenant, James “Nick” Rowe later in his military career. Then Colonel Rowe was assassinated by Communists guerillas in Manila, Philippines. I was one of Nick’s replacements. “Rocky’s” reading was very personal for me.

WHRO and the stories they have uncovered from the Wall have inspired and motivated me to do everything I can to ensure that the sacrifices that these dedicated American Patriots, men and women alike, from Vietnam, and every military conflict, will never be forgotten.