LAHARPE — There was a time when the LaHarpe Veterans of Foreign Wars post housed one of the largest civic organizations in Allen County.
In its early days, the VFW’s rolls were filled with soldiers fresh out of World War II, and it had more than 200 active members, Doug Northcutt noted.
Those numbers have steadily dropped, as that generation grew older, and veterans of more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been less likely to join, explained Northcutt, commander of the LaHarpe VFW post.
“I was probably the same way,” said Northcutt, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.
“I really didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it. But as you get older, you learn about what they do, and you want to get involved.”
He hopes to convince others to join, and soon.
While the LaHarpe post still has 86 members, “active members is another story,” Northcutt said.
Those can be counted on one hand.
“We probably have two or three who show up for our meetings every month,” he said.
That’s because most of the 86 members are in their 70s or older.
“They’d be willing to come and help if they could, but they just can’t any more,” Northcutt said.
Northcutt hopes a benefit dinner open to any military veteran Monday evening will help bring potential new members to the VFW.
The dinner will be served at 7 o’clock at the post home along U.S. 54 in LaHarpe. The meal is being provided by the VFW Auxiliary.
Northcutt noted other VFW posts in Iola, Moran and elsewhere closed decades ago.
Others in LaHarpe and elsewhere continue to limp along.
“It’s not unique to us,” he said.
ANY veteran who has served in a hostile area is eligible to join.
“We have a lot of younger veterans who can join,” he said. “All those who went to Iraq with the National Guard, they’re eligible.”
The VFW’s mission is to serve other veterans through a number of means.
“We donate to the Wounded Warriors, things like that,” he said. “We’d like to do more, but we just can’t.”
Northcutt said the VFW Auxiliary — which recently expanded to include males since a large number of military veterans are now women — continues to go strong.
Both the VFW and Auxiliary meet the second Monday of each month.
“We’ll have two or three guys, and they’ll have a room with 17 or more,” Northcutt said. “They’re doing a great job.”
To sign up for the VFW, veterans must have their DD-214 discharge papers.
Northcutt may be reached at (620) 496-2266.
NORTHCUTT’S military career took shape before his senior year of high school, but only after he was given a promise by an Army recruiter. “I told him if I couldn’t get on a tank, I wasn’t going to join,” Northcutt recalled. “He said, ‘No problem. We’ll get you on a tank.’”
They did.
Northcutt trained at Fort Knox, Ky., before moving to a base in Schwinfurt, Germany, for about two years.
He was planning to return to Fort Knox as a tank instructor before his orders changed abruptly.
“Of all the places in the world they could have sent me, they picked Fort Riley, Kansas,” he said with a laugh.
There, he toiled until Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991.
“When I got to Fort Riley, they had enough men in our company for 1 1/2 platoons. They were just short on tankers.”
SOON, Northcutt found himself on the Iraqi border, awaiting word that Operation Desert Shield would become Desert Storm.
He and the rest of the 2nd Battlion, 34th Armor Regiment cooled their heels as American bombers pounded Iraqi forces for about a month in early 1991.
Even though the general consensus was the coalition forces had greatly damaged Hussein’s military infrastructure, the ground forces were still uncertain of what laid ahead.
That’s because Iraqi tanks outnumbered the Americans’ by a 4-to-1 margin.
“We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into,” he said.
WHAT occurred was a rout of historic proportions.
Northcutt’s M1-Abrams was part of the initial breach into Iraq during the famed 96-hour war.
The newly developed tank had never been used in battle before, and there were concerns from things other than the enemy. “You had no idea how they’d handle the sand with their turbine motors,” Northcutt said. “It handled it just fine.”
Plus, the Abrams had a firing range of about 3,000 yards, nearly twice the distance as those from the older Iraqi machines.
“We’d watch them fire at us, but they were so far out of range, their shells couldn’t get to us,” he said. “But we could get to them.”
Northcutt, the tank’s gunner, estimated he fired between 60 and 70 120-millimeter shells at Iraqi armor during battle.
“Pretty much all of them hit what we were aiming at,” he said. “That tank was pretty accurate.”
There was one close call.
The battle had moved into an area filled with large dunes, greatly handicapping the crew’s ability for long-range firing.
“We come over one dune, and my commander hit the override, swung the gun to the side and hit an Iraqi tank right next to us, and they were getting ready to fire,” Northcutt said. “I just couldn’t see him from my screen.”
The concussion of the blast could be felt inside the Abrams.
“If they’d have fired, it would have hurt,” he said with a sheepish laugh.
BUT FOR all of the resistance the tanks found, Northcutt saw as many or more would-be opponents having surrendered.
“We couldn’t hold ‘em, so we just sent them to the back,” he said. “You kind of felt bad for them. He (Hussein) just left them out there to starve.”
The ground campaign ended less than four days after it began.
The tanks held their position in Iraq until the Iraqi and coalition governments negotiated a ceasefire.
Northcutt remembers the consensus that the American forces should have continued their trek to Baghdad, to remove Hussein from power altogether. (A move the U.S.-led coalition did 12 years later.)
“We could have done it pretty easily, but we’d have still had to deal with all of this crap they have now.”
NORTHCUTT earned his discharge upon Desert Storm’s conclusion and his return to the United States.
He worked at H.K. Porter in Chanute until opening his own business, Doug’s Welding, in LaHarpe. He’s maintained that business for the past 16 years.
“I was proud of my service,” he said. “I’d do it again.”
Especially if he gets to keep working with tanks..
“I guess I just liked their power,” he said, “their dominance on the battlefield.”
