Life Struggle of a Vietnam Veteran: Out of the Vietnam War

By Christopher Rowling

This book is all about personal life experiences, which aims to inspire people. This book is made out of the realization that you should share your story to the world so that when you die, people will know about you, and your story will serve as an inspiration to other people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524609573

Christopher Rowling

I was born in New York and drafted into the US Army in 1966 and went on to serve in the Vietnam War with the Ninth Division Recon Brigade. I served my country with distinction. I served in Vietnam during those horrific days during the years of 1966 through 1967. I was assigned to recon tactical squad of six comrades and ended up as platoon leader. My squad was known as the invisible squad, and despite the many times that we were engaged with the enemy and fired upon with thousands of bullets coming our way, by the grace of God, some of us managed to survive and return home alive. I was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star Medal for Heroism, the Purple Heart, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Ribbon, the Combat Infantry Badge, the Marksman Badge with rifle bar, and the Good Conduct Medal. I received the Bronze Star Medal with V for actions on January 5, 1967. The citation reads, "Specialist Fourth Collier distinguished himself by heroic actions on 5 January 1967, while serving as a squad leader with Company C, 4th Battalion, and 9th Infantry on combat operations in the vicinity of Katum, War Zone C, and Republic of Vietnam. When Specialist Fourth's platoon came under heavy machine gun and small arms fire the two point men were wounded and could not be evacuated. Leon Collier and his comrade exposed themselves to hostile fire while moving forward to a vantage point, setting up a machine gun position to establish a fire power against the enemy, killing the enemy machine gun crew. Specialist Fourth Collier' valorous actions are responsible for the platoon being able accomplish its mission without further casualties." Following my tour of duty, I returned to the United States and continued my education. I graduated from Fordham University with BS degree in accounting and business and then enrolled at Baruch College where I received my MBA in Finance in 1985. In April of 1977, I began my career with the US Department of Defense as an auditor. Throughout my twenty-five-year career, I have provided assistance and guidance to thousands of veterans. In 2000, I volunteered to work with local veterans' center representative in helping veteran. As the years went by, I began to realize that I was getting into the autumn years of my life so I decided to write my story, because I know that if you keep ideas and thoughts in your mind, and if you die, no one will ever know, and your story will also be gone forever.

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© 2016 Christopher Rowling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/20/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0958-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0956-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0957-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908236

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five: A Tour of Duty in Viet Nam

Chapter Six: First Combat Mission

Chapter Seven: Run for Life

Chapter Eight: Back In Nam

Chapter Nine: My Bronze and Silver Star Citations at Cu Chi

Chapter Ten: Leaving Vietnam January 1968

Chapter Eleven: Discharged August 20, 1968 from Service

Chapter One

Joanne Rowling was born on July 3, 1919 in Honea Path, South Carolina to Frank and Mary Sue Rowling. She had twenty siblings, eleven brothers and nine sisters. She received her formal education from the school system in Anderson County, South Carolina. Her father was the minister at St. James Methodist Church where she participated in the choir and was engaged in public speaking.

Joanne was raised in a strict Methodist home. Her father was a preacher who ruled with a religious iron fist. The gospel he preached was joyless, uncompromising, and he preached it with thunder, lighting, and hellfire rising most every time. The Rowling family was not allowed to listen to contemporary music, and the girls could not wear pants.

In pursuit of painting and sculpture at the age of seventeen Joanne relocated to New York City and lived in Harlem so she could study arts. She eventually found herself pregnant. She was not married and she was not sure who the baby’s father might be.

When she realized she was pregnant she spent weeks thinking, wondering and agonizing over what she should do. At the end, she realized that she wanted to be a parent even if she did not know who the father was.

Joanne did the best she could. Once she was out of work she needed help paying her rent so she decides to visit her parents in South Carolina. Joanne returned home on a Sunday afternoon and she sat down at the kitchen table and tearfully asked her mother to sit down. Saying there is no easy way to tell you this but I am pregnant.

Her father was not at home he had not return from church. Upon hearing this news, he was furious and also deeply wounded. He found stepping into the pulpit each Sunday even more emotionally demanding and felt he had lost his credibility. Joanne’s father was totally disappointed with her and denounced her for bringing shame and disrepute to his name. He went on to announce her pregnancy to his church and also that he would treat his daughter as he would any other church member, for the shame she had brought to him and the church.

She was humiliated in church by her father who deeply condemned her for getting pregnant. He dropped her from the choir, and she was directed to withdraw from all church activities.

Her father put her immediately out of his house and sent her to live with Lawrence her brother in New York. She had sinned, and shamefully fallen short of God’s glory and let her father’s expectations down. Both parents were angry about her choices and angry about been thrown in a situation so out of control.

After arriving back in New York to live with her brother Lawrence she did the best she could to take care of herself until she gave birth. When I was born I never knew who my father was or anything about him. Unfortunately during her pregnancy she went totally blind and a few months later, she decided to return home with her baby son Christopher. Standing on the front stoop, she knocked on the door hoping to find forgiveness and shelter under her father’s roof. Mary, her mother answered the door and went in and told her husband, that his daughter had come home. He did not speak, just turned his chair away from his wife and his back to the front door where Joanne stood weeping cradling her baby son.

There were tears that day, but the tears did not cleanse the wounds or soften the father’s heart. In fact he remained to the end of his days as stern and severe as he ever had been, refusing to welcome his daughter home. He declared her illegitimate child was no grandchild of his. Therefore, he did not want to see her or the baby, saying she was an unfit mother and should not be allowed to raise the child.

The next morning I was sent to live with his Aunt Evelyn in North Carolina. She was eight years older than my mom but she acted like the younger sister. I was not allowed to attend church or play with any of my cousins because I was considered an embarrassment to the Rowling family name. Some of my fondest memories of Aunt Evelyn were that she was a great cook. She loved beautiful things like beach glass and crystal, and she liked kaleidoscopes. She would tell me stories about her life and I would listen to every one of them. She encouraged me to read anything that I could get my hands on and said never stop learning, be respectful to people, pray every day and try to go as far as you can. Never take no for an answer. She went out of her way to obtain books for me to read. At a very young age I became fascinated with astronomy and wanted to be an astronomer.

After breakfast every Sunday morning she would read to me Bible stories until around 11:00 a.m. Since I could not play with any children I would play in the backyard with an inflatable doll. I really enjoyed blowing up the doll and then letting the air out. Watching the doll deflate was exciting, and a sense of mystery to me because it made the worst sound I had ever heard.

One Sunday morning while I was playing with my doll the next door neighbor’s rooster decide to come into my kingdom and I was not going to allow that. So began the fighting ritual battle at 11:30 am every Sunday morning between me and the rooster. This was a challenge I had to conquer to protect my kingdom.

Aunt Evelyn got really sick when I was around five and half years old. My relatives tried everything, but nothing worked. On a beautiful Sunday morning after breakfast Aunt Evelyn prayed to the Lord for all of his blessings and told me she was not feeling well so she was going to lie down for a while. I then went outside to play in the back -yard. About an half hour later my aunt called me back into the house and asked me to sit down in the chair. She said she was going to leave me now and it was time for me to grow up, and at that very moment at sixty three she passed away and my whole world got turned upside down and just stopped. As I watched her soul in the form of a dove leave her body, and as I heard the words she spoke to me just before she died I realized I was personally connected with God and was experiencing his presence. This intersection with God has been a major anchor in my life when I am at any low point life such as facing tragedy, or life storms of any kind. I can find hope and courage to go on because I know God well help me through tough times. Later on I found out my aunt died of ovarian cancer which she had been fighting for many-years.

Chapter Two

I was then left in the care of my uncle Aaron Rowling, who lived in South Carolina. All this happened before I was seven years old. My first-hand experience with farm life was the brutally cold weather. Our house was an unpainted three room shack near the fields housing nine people. Our shack was weather-beaten, had no electricity, no running water, and was in the process of falling down. Wind and rain came through holes in the roof and walls. Household heat came from a wood-burning stove and the toilet was an outhouse in the backyard.

As a sharecropper my uncle was very poor, with few resources and little cash on hand his personal possessions consisted of a rickety chair, a table, two beds, a broken washstand, a few dishes and some chickens. So he agreed to grow corn, cotton, grain, sweet potatoes and other vegetables on certain plots of land. At the end of the year my uncle agreed to give Paul Johnson the landowner one-sixth of the corn he grew and five-sixth of the cotton rose.

I began working the fields when I was seven years old with my aunt and her two daughters. I remember as a child I had to work in the fields, chopping cotton when the time came, which was in the summer. I had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and work until six o’clock in the evening. We would chop cotton until the fall of that year, and then it would be time for picking cotton. Chopping cotton was hard, miserable work from sun up to sun down in the hot summer sun and humidity. In the fall it was picking time, so I would go down the long rows n plucking the balls of white cotton from the plant, putting them into the gathering sack on my back and, then taking it to the end of the row every evening. Then I would weigh it and put it in the cotton barn.

We would get a dollar for every 100 pounds picked. Beginning in the spring the working day on the farm begains with sunrise and ended when the sun went down. In other words we worked ten to twelve hours each day with one hour for dinner, hot or cold, sun or rain this was the rule. My aunt worked each day until was time to fix meals or do housework. This was terrible work which required all the endurance I had. When I did not meet my quota of 100 pounds my punishment was no food and I had