Vietnam Revisited

By Skip Vaughn

Vietnam Revisited shares the personal stories of America’s sons and daughters who fought the most unpopular war in our nation’s history. They answered America’s call to arms to fight the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. While antiwar sentiment and protests raged at home, many Americans volunteered to serve in the Vietnam War. Many were drafted. But the Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era veterans put their lives on the line to do their nation’s bidding. And when they returned home, they came back to an ungrateful nation. Many returning military members were shunned verbally and physically. They were called baby killers and murderers for their service. To right our past wrongs, the United States government proclaimed a commemoration of fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War. This inspired the author of Vietnam Revisited to interview Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era veterans weekly since January 2015. To view Skip Vaughn's September 1, 2017 interview on CBS television affiliate WHNT, Channel 19, in Huntsville, AL, please click HERE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640273351

Book preview

Introduction

Time heals most wounds, but not all. The physical and mental scars sustained by many Americans in the Vietnam War remain to this day. When they returned from that unpopular war, they were generally shunned by their countrymen. They were called baby killers and confronted by protesters in airports and in the streets.

I grew up during that era. I remember the antimilitary attitudes. I remember the protests against the draft. I remember when a high school classmate, and fellow cadet in our Air Force Junior ROTC program, decided to join the Army’s Rangers. I was saddened after he got killed during a night mission in Vietnam.

After graduating from high school in 1972, I attended Auburn University and graduated in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. I was a news reporter for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Alabama, for four years before becoming a public affairs specialist at our Army post, Redstone Arsenal. I serve as editor of the installation’s weekly newspaper, the Redstone Rocket.

In January 2015, the Rocket began a series of articles on Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era veterans as the United States commemorates fifty years since the Vietnam War. Our series continues to this day. In these articles, we share the life stories of true American heroes. They are extraordinary people who answered our nation’s call and did amazing things during a difficult time. Until now many of these men and women had not talked about their Vietnam experiences for fifty years.

This book shares their inspiring stories as these heroes finally receive the welcome home they deserved five decades ago.

Greg Arndt

Greg Arndt remembers getting off the bus at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport after returning from Vietnam.

Protesters behind a chain-link fence jeered him and his fellow Vietnam War veterans. This was his reception after serving a year in combat as a door gunner on a helicopter gunship.

Of course not everyone treated him that way. There was also the guy who bought him a beer in a bar.

It’s much better today, Arndt said. When I came back, they kind of snuck us back into the country.

Arndt, 66, has plenty of time these days to reflect, sleep late, and enjoy sports. He retired in early January 2015 as an intelligence analyst from the Missile and Space Intelligence Center after forty-five years of service.

He was born July 18, 1948, in Womack Army Hospital at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and grew up in an Army family.

He was the oldest of three sons of Albert and Grace Arndt. His dad was a Marine in World War II and an Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division after the war.

The family was later stationed in Germany. His dad went to electronics school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and subsequently came to Redstone as an instructor. Arndt attended Lee High School, where he played football until breaking his arm, and he graduated in 1967. His family owned a pizza shop, where the boys learned the nuances of slinging pizzas.

With the draft looming, Arndt joined the Army in March 1969. He decided to get into aviation, helicopters, without telling his dad, who preferred a noncombat branch for the oldest son.

I’d been with the military all my life, Arndt said. I just wanted to do something. Probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do in the world, but I don’t regret it.

He served in Vietnam, stationed in Chu Lai, from November 1969 to November 1970. He was in a combat unit that flew missions nearly every day, wherever and whenever needed. At twenty-one, he was one of the older guys.

We flew combat missions, so it was bad at times, the former specialist 5 said. At that time, Vietnam was going full bore. We lost a lot of ships, a lot of people. I went down twice, wounded. But getting shot down in a helicopter wasn’t out of the ordinary. I mean, everybody got shot down at least once. I had some close calls.

There was the time an enemy rocket blew up beside his gunship, and he got hit by a piece of shrapnel. Another time, a .51-caliber machine gun round came up through the floorboard, beside his foot. The round severed the microphone cord, which was attached to his helmet, and missed his head by a matter of inches.

The first guy he met in the unit, a crew chief, was killed in the war. One crew got captured, and a few of those Soldiers spent five years in a prisoner of war camp. Arndt left the military after three years. He entered civil service at Redstone in early 1972 under a veterans’ hiring program. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math, with a minor in computer science, in 1979 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

His wife, Linda, died from cancer about four and a half years ago. Their son, Mike, 44, who was nine months old when Arndt returned from Vietnam, is a truck driver in Birmingham.

Since 1984, Arndt has served as an assistant coach for the boys’ soccer team at Grissom High School. The Tigers have won eight state championships (1992, 1994, 1996–99, 2000, and 2010).

His nephew Spc. Brandon Barbee, of the 82nd Airborne Division, returned to Fort Bragg from Afghanistan in early December 2014. The Decatur native’s homecoming was much different than the one Uncle Greg received after Vietnam.

I think any kind of remembrance or accolades that vets can get is good, Arndt said. I mean, I just have a lot of support for them. I’m patriotic. What can I say?

Mike Roddy

As a young captain, Mike Roddy had an unsettling first night in Vietnam in January 1970. He was kept awake by the horrible nightmares of Soldiers who’d been in the war zone for multiple tours.

I’m thinking, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ Roddy recalled.

But the two and a half years he spent in Vietnam proved to be personally fulfilling. Roddy decided to stay in the Army and retired as a colonel in 1996 after thirty years.

The thing that stands out in my mind [about Vietnam] is the quality of the people you were working with, he said, whether it was enlisted men when I as a company commander or senior officers when I was down at Long Binh. Everybody had a job to do, and they did it to the best of their ability.

Roddy, an Ordnance officer, served as commander of C Company, 704th Maintenance Battalion. Later he became a staff officer at the Army’s headquarters in Long Binh.

He once delivered a briefing to a roomful of general officers that included Gen. William Westmoreland, chief of staff of the Army, on Westmoreland’s farewell retirement tour.

The mortar attacks from the enemy were constant. Occasionally these mortars would hit close by, Roddy said. He recalled that a young Soldier he worked with was killed.

During rest-and-relaxation trips, Roddy took advantage of the opportunity to see the world. He visited Hong Kong and Australia, among other places. And he had the chance to meet Soldiers with whom he would reunite later in his career.

Roddy left Vietnam in April 1972. This was a different era. Unlike today’s celebratory receptions for Soldiers returning from war, there were protests against America’s involvement in Vietnam. I would say I experienced almost no reaction, Roddy said of his return.

He appreciates that today’s veterans are being welcomed back with open arms. I’m so pleased they’re being recognized where our generation wasn’t, he said.

Roddy, 70, grew up on a farm near Nebraska City, Nebraska. He was the oldest of six children—five sons and one daughter—of Mike Jr. and Catherine Sullivan Roddy.

His father was a farmer who served in World War II as a sergeant. His mother was a registered nurse.

He was in ROTC and graduated from Notre Dame in 1966 with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. He got his master’s in mechanical engineering from Notre Dame in 1975.

His thirty-year Army career included three tours at Redstone. He attended missile training here in 1966, served with the old Viper program from 1979–82, and was the Javelin project manager from 1992–96. Roddy worked with industry after leaving the military. He retired in March 2014 as director of Army business development for Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc. in Huntsville.

Roddy resides in Madison, where he attends St. John’s Catholic Church. He serves as secretary of the Redstone-Huntsville Chapter of the Association of the US Army and as secretary of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Space and Missile Defense Working Group. He is also a member of the Kiwanis Club of Huntsville.

I think we possibly could’ve won the war [in Vietnam] if we had let the military run the war instead of the politicians, he said. I think it was a sad time in our Army to leave without winning the war.

Hal Swanson

The Illinois native dropped out of high school and joined the Navy. Within five years, he was on a destroyer in Vietnam.

Today, Hal Swanson has his doctorate and is president of the veterans’ nonprofit Rolling Thunder, Alabama, Chapter 2. He’s also executive vice president of the North Alabama Veterans & Fraternal Organizations Coalition.

I went from high school dropout to that, Swanson said laughing.

He has seen the nation change from the days when service members returning from Vietnam often encountered hostility. This was in contrast to today’s welcome-home receptions for returning war fighters.

Swanson would wear his Navy uniform when he went ashore at liberty ports overseas.

But when we came back over here [to the States], we couldn’t go ashore in uniform anymore, he recalled.

He confirmed another Vietnam veteran’s assessment that they had to sneak us back into the States.

I mean you were basically marked by the fact you had a haircut, Swanson said. Hostile [reception]—that’s the best word to describe it.

Growing up in Elmwood Park, Illinois, he was one of those kids who thought they knew everything and that nobody in high school could teach them anything. So he dropped out of Libertyville High School and joined the Navy in 1964. Swanson had two tours in Vietnam, although he never set foot ashore. He first went there aboard the USS Bordelon from late 1969 until mid-1970. His second tour was aboard the USS Duncan from January–July 1971.

Sometimes we were there in the Mekong Delta. And sometimes we were off the coast of South Vietnam or North Vietnam, he said, throwing shells and keeping the Marines out of trouble.

Much of the time he was on watch as a fire control technician, for six hours on and six hours off. This was in addition to his regular job duties.

The destroyers would shoot their shells toward the enemy ground forces and evade the counter battery from the Viet Cong guns. Now, we’re talking big guns. We’re not talking rifles here, Swanson added.

Fortunately, they never got us, he said. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure they got anybody over there, which is a good thing. The guys on the ground had it a hell of a lot rougher than we did.

One of his closest calls came when his destroyer struck a mine off the coast of North Vietnam. It didn’t do any real damage but did lift the ship’s stern out of the water. The crew speculated that this may have been a US mine that had just broken loose and drifted into the destroyer’s path.

Swanson, 67, retired from the Navy in 1998 as a lieutenant commander at Norfolk, Virginia, after twenty-four years, seven months, and seventeen days. He served from 1964–72, got out and then returned in 1980 through officer candidate school. He earned his GED in 1966. Swanson got his bachelor’s in political science in 1980 at the University of Oklahoma before reentering the Navy. He earned a master’s in public administration in 1995 and a master’s in management in 2000, both from Troy University. He got his doctorate in 2009 in organization and management through Capella University, an accredited online program.

His nearly twenty-five years in the Navy included about eighteen years of sea duty. A sailor’s place is on a ship and a ship’s place is at sea, he said. After leaving the Navy, he went to work for Boeing, where he retired in April 2014.

He married Laurel, a redhead from Rhode Island. He has three grown children and six grandchildren.

Swanson is pleased with how America welcomes today’s returning veterans, compared to back in his Vietnam era.

It’s what they deserve, it really is, he said. And of course these guys coming back today, they’re fighting IEDs and all of that. I think warfare in general is tougher today than it was back then, because at least we knew who we were fighting back then.

Ivory Whitaker

Ivory Whitaker volunteered for the Army in 1965, served two yearlong tours in Vietnam, and says he would do it again.

I would rather fight on foreign soil than fight here at home, said Whitaker, a senior logistics analyst in the Aviation and Missile Command’s Operations Center.

He served thirty years in uniform, from June 9, 1965, until July 1, 1995. He retired as a command sergeant major and commandant of the NCO Academy. The academy left for Fort Lee, Virginia, in 2011 as part of the move of the Ordnance Munitions and Electronic Maintenance School under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure decisions.

Whitaker arrived in An Khe, South Vietnam, in April 1966 as an eighteen-year-old infantryman with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry (Airborne), part of the 1st Cavalry Division.

It was frightening in the way the aircraft came into the Air Force base with all the replacements for those Soldiers that were rotating back to the States, he said. "Originally I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade. But the 1st Cavalry Division had been involved in a major battle, in which they lost a lot of men. All of us that were slated to go to the 173rd were diverted to the 1st Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division.

When you arrive in country, initially you’re caught between apprehension and being afraid. You don’t know what to expect.

Within two weeks, he was involved in his first mission, a major battle called Operation Crazy Horse. His unit had a reconnaissance element that had come under fire and was pinned down by a large enemy concentration. Whitaker’s brigade commander decided to send his Soldiers in to retrieve that recon team. The battle occurred in May 1966 in the A Shau Valley.

Whitaker’s unit was in the valley for about two weeks performing search-and-destroy missions. Once the contact with the enemy subsided, the Soldiers were told they were going to move, and the battalion commander told them to march to their new location. In doing so, they had to leave their mortar platoon on the landing zone to be airlifted off LZ Hereford.

Whitaker and his fellow Soldiers marched down the mountain and into the valley. But when they reached the base, they heard weapons fire coming off the landing zone. The enemy had surrounded their mortar platoon.

The battalion commander ordered Whitaker and the others to return to the top of the hill. When they arrived at the landing zone, most of the twenty members of the mortar platoon were dead.

We couldn’t tell whether the blood trails were from our Soldiers or the blood trails were from the enemy. But we went out in search of whoever caused the blood trails, Whitaker said. And we were able to find quite a few Viet Cong that had been killed in the battle on the hill.

The battalion commander directed them to stay on the hill until they were able to account for all of the mortar platoon’s Soldiers. They were able to find everyone including the platoon sergeant and about three other Soldiers, all of whom were wounded, none seriously.

Whitaker later learned that his cousin Pfc. Henry Benton had been among the mortar platoon members killed at LZ Hereford, also known as the Battle of the Saddle, on May 21, 1966.

Also during that first tour, Whitaker was wounded by shrapnel from an enemy hand grenade. The December 1966 night after his unit did an air assault into Valley 506, his platoon sergeant called the four squad leaders into a huddle for a briefing. A Viet Cong fighter hiding in a nearby tree threw a concussion grenade into the