Veterans recount tours

A panel of local Vietnam War veterans spoke about their experiences in southeast Asia, their thoughts on current military issues, especially veterans’ health care and other benefits, and a host of other topics.
The panel discussion was a part of the now-concluded Iola Reads session based on the book “The Things They Carried,” a collection of short stories penned by Tim O’Brien about a platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam.
Iolans Paul Zirjacks, Don Burns, John Sheehan, Duane McGraw and Larry Walsh all spoke about their tours of duty in Vietnam, while Dee Singer spoke about working as a nurse in a Corpus Christi, Texas, hospital where she helped care for scores of personnel who had been injured in southeast Asia.
Moderating the discussion was Iolan Bob Hawk, who was in the Air Force.
“I never set foot in Vietnam,” he said. “The closest I ever came was 14,000 feet” aboard then-classified air missions while in the Air Force.

EACH PANELIST shared a brief biography and synopsis of their experience:
Zirjacks was in Vietnam for a year, from April 1967 to April 1968 and specialized in military intelligence for the Army. He was in Vietnam for the infamous Tet Offensive, where “the battle was won, but the war was lost in that period of time,” he said.
“There are a lot of memories about Vietnam,” Zirjacks said. “The smell of the country is kind of unique.”
Burns, meanwhile, was aboard a Navy gunboat, but “not like those you’d see on ‘Apocalypse Now,’” he recalled. “These were 53-foot gunboats. We were pretty heavily armed.”
They had to be.
Burns was among those who would set up ambushes at night along rivers, canals and other waterways in various parts of the country.
“Don is being too modest,” Sheehan interjected. “What this man and his friends did, they went out in little boats along the river, waiting for people to shoot at them.”

SHEEHAN did four tours in Vietnam as a Green Beret — the special forces.
“It was a wonderful experience,” he said. “It changed my life.”
Sheehan also carries the distinction of serving in Iraq with the 891st Engineer Battalion out of Iola in 2004 and 2005 — at the age of 59.
“My wife kept telling me, ‘You’re too old, and you’re too fat to go to Iraq. You’re not going,’” Sheehan joked. “She said it again as we were getting on the bus to go to Fort Sill. She said the same thing as we were going to the airport.”
“People ask  me what the difference was between Vietnam and Iraq,” he said. “One was wet, and one was dry. If it’s 130 degrees in a lot of humidity, you soak a lot. If it’s 130 degrees in no humidity, you still soak a lot.”

SINGER recounted her time with the Navy Nurses Corp.
“Recruiters promise you a lot of things,” she said. “They had this beautiful new hospital that was going to be open by the time I got there. That didn’t happen. In fact, it wasn’t finished by the time I left. We had World War II Army barracks, with 40-bed bay wards. During my time there, I pretty much worked in every ward and clinic.”
Singer worked primarily with orthopedics to treat returning soldiers returning from conflict.
“You learn some very important things as you care for military veterans,” she said. “If you had a veteran or a patient who needed medication, you did not go up and touch them if they were asleep. You woke them up from the foot of the bed. If you got too close when you woke them up or touched them, you might go flying across the room. They were very sensitive to anything that got close to them, or strange noises.”
Singer had three older brothers in the Navy. Her oldest “was my hero. He was in Vietnam. He came home with two Purple Hearts, neither of which he will wear because some of his friends didn’t come home. He didn’t feel he deserved them.
“We took care of a lot of men who had what now is labeled as post-traumatic stress disorder. We also took care of many young men who were slated to go to Vietnam. Many of them were just scared spitless. They didn’t want to go.
“The other big difference we saw for our veterans when they returned was how they were treated when they came home. In places like Memphis, we saw signs that said, ‘Sailors and dogs keep off the grass.’”
“After World War II we welcomed our veterans home as returning heroes,” Singer said. “After Vietnam, people spit at them. That’s not the way any young men should be treated. They were not given the respect they should have been given as they came home from a war they may not have wanted any part of.”

McGRAW grew up in Colony and was drafted, then assigned to specialize in water purification. A friend of his then volunteered McGraw as a typist for a group of officers, a lieutenant colonel, a major and a sergeant.
The assignment had its benefits and drawbacks. He was granted a 30-day leave for Christmas.
But he also knew if the officers went into an active combat zone, they were prime targets for the Viet Cong, “and I was standing there with them.”
He recounted going on a supply mission and being warned to watch for children standing alongside the road with their hands concealed.
“As you pass they may throw something in your truck,” he recalled. “And it may be a grenade.”
I asked the driver, “How fast can we go through this village?”
His typist duties may have later saved his life. His water purification unit suffered casualties — three dead, two wounded — after a mine exploded. His childhood friend, David Blubaugh of Welda, was among the injured. Blubaugh lives in Fort Scott.
He also recounted one instance in which he was at his desk when he heard a zip. It was bullet striking his desk, missing his leg by about three inches.
“I was looking for blood,” he said.
Foxholes also were a necessary evil, McGraw said, even though they were frequently populated with scorpions.

WALSH served two tours in Vietnam, the first of which at Fu Bai as a carpenter.
As a non-combatant, Walsh’s unit had M-16s, but never took them along while they worked.
Their barracks were at the bottom of a hill — in a free-fire zone, it turned out.
A free-fire zone is an area in which the Americans would fire artillery to ensure there was no nearby enemy buildup.
A Howitzer round fired by the 1st Marines Division hit a barracks about four buildings from Walsh’s.
“When we built the barracks, we hadn’t made it to the gunnery maps,” he explained.
Following the Tet Offensive, the 101st Air Cavalry moved into Walsh’s neighborhood. “They parked helicopters wherever they could.”
It also became a target for the enemy.
Walsh recalled one gentleman who was killed around noon, less than an hour before he was to go to the airport to fly home.
Walsh’s second tour was in Da Nang, near a POW camp they helped construct.
“One night we heard a war break out,” he said. “We watched the war across the street. The Viet Cong came in, set up machine guns and ended up calling in helicopters and wiped out the camp.”
He recounted sleeping in a barracks in which an artillery shell went through his building and then exploded upon striking a nearby tool trailer.
“God kept this one from exploding as it went through the barracks.,” he said. “I was ready to go home.
“I have zero regrets of serving,” he continued. “I’m proud to say I served my country. I’m sad to say our country didn’t serve the men. Yes, I lost some friends, yes I knew some of those who died. It was a sad place, it was a sad thing. You just did your job.”

HAWK was an officer in the Air Force and volunteered for typhoon reconnaissance missions — flying into mammoth tropical storms to gather weather information — before being assigned missions over Vietnam.
The since declassified missions were to spray materials into clouds along the Ho Chih Minh Trail to make it rain, Hawk said.
Hawk served for seven years in the Air Force, and an additional 18 with the Air National Guard in Tulsa.
“It was a great experience, but I feel a bit odd, never setting foot in Vietnam,” Hawk said. “When I talk to people like Paul, who was in the Army for 30 years, I always feel like I had to give a qualifier, but a total of 25 years was enough fun for anybody.”

THE PANEL fielded questions about food and accommodations.
Sea rations — old, occasionally rusted canned food — was the fare of choice early on, Sheehan said.
Occasionally, Americans would find indigenous Vietnamese who had water buffalo for sale, Burns added. “You could buy about 150 pounds of meat for $1.50.”
Burns slept mostly on his gunboat, where the biggest surprise every night might be the 6-foot python kept aboard as a pet.
Morale among nurses was good, Singer said, although among returning veterans, it occasionally wasn’t as good.

THE PANEL also was asked about the state of the military today, with budget cutbacks and other issues such as obesity causing staffing cutbacks.
Such a drawdown is nothing new, Walsh said. It occurred after every other major American conflict, he said.
“There are people ready to serve, ready to enlist,” Walsh said. “I don’t think there’s anybody stupid enough to attack us again.”
Others weren’t so sure. Zirjacks said good soldiers are being kicked out regularly to get staffing numbers down because of tighter budgets.
It’s often hard to get a perfect-size military force in a rapidly changing world, Hawk said.
“We’re either offering early-outs or incentives to get back in,” Hawk said. “I’d hate to see us back to pre-World War II levels,” which is the current trend.
Singer said her issues weren’t with staffing levels, but to make sure those who serve are properly cared for.
“I have strong opinions about what the military promises people who serve, then waiting and changing the rules after they’ve played the game. There’s a lot of care that’s not being given. They can call it budgetary, or saving money, but that care was promised. Our country owes it to our veterans to deliver that care.”