Viet Nam Vets 40 years later

Viet Nam 40 years later…
Area vets tell their stories at last

One wrote a song, another a book of poems. Another still wakes from dreams 40 years later while still another discarded all reminders of his service. All are veterans, Vietnam veterans. All served time “in country” during one of the most controversial wars fought by the United States. Each had his own experiences, carries his own memories and each returned to his family and life after the war in his own way. But one thing is true about all of them. Each carries the weight of a country’s war personally for every other American, for those who never went, who watched from their living rooms, who read about it now. For these men it’s personal and the burden of Vietnam that still weighs heavily on a country’s conscious lies no lighter in the minds of those who were there.
Wautoma’s Fred Kaiser graduated from Fond du Lac High School in 1964. After a year in college, he enlisted in the US Army and trained as a medic. Different from today’s all-volunteer army, the draft was in effect during the Vietnam War. Many young men chose to join the service instead of waiting for their “number to come up.” The policy in 1964 was to draft the oldest draft-aged men first, but from 1969 to 1972 a lottery was used to assign draft order to eligible men. The number matched your birth date and the lower your number, the sooner you’d be called.
“Everyone figured you’d spend time in Vietnam,” he said about joining the Army.
He was right. Kaiser spent 15 months in Vietnam with the 332nd Dispensary. The clinic was responsible for thousands of troops and ran 2 evacuation hospitals plus the jail for American soldiers. He also helped secure portable hospitals like the 24th Evac. Hospital. After he returned home, Kaiser finished his degree and worked as a licensed social worker for years. Today he’s the Veteran’s Service Officer for Waushara County and helps veterans of all wars connect to services they need.
“War is terrible,” he said. “But I had an overall good experience because of my job. I got to help people which many soldiers didn’t get to do. I learned medical skills and treated the injured. On weekends we’d go out to villages and give medical care to the South Vietnamese villagers.”
Most vets, he said, didn’t have positive experiences and didn’t get supported when they got back home. There was no transition and no deprogramming and Vietnam vets were seen as anything but heroes. Vietnam service men and women didn’t go over as a unit as they did in WWII and as they do today in Iraq. They went over as individuals and the rotation of service meant new soldiers coming in regularly as others left.
“The government didn’t reach out and vets didn’t trust the government,” he said. “Some Vietnam vets are just starting to deal with what happened to them. Many self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. Many just never talked about it.”
The building of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. in 1982 began a journey for many veterans to deal with the difficult memories of their service in Vietnam. On October 9-12, the “Moving Wall,” a half-sized replica of the Washington D. C. memorial will be installed on the grounds of Princeton High School. Open 24 hours a day with continual reading of the names of the men and women killed during the Vietnam war and with special services on each day, the vets who have worked to bring the wall to Princeton are hoping for 2 things. One, that Vietnam vets will visit and begin or continue their healing from Vietnam and two, that the public will recognize the price of war and will honor veterans, especially those who served in Vietnam.
If Ken McGwin from Montello were to visit the wall, he’d be able to touch the names of 25 of his fellow sailors who died on the USS Westchester County on November 1, 1968. It was the Navy’s greatest single incident combat loss during the entire Vietnam War. For his actions that day, McGwin received the Bronze Star with Combat V, but for him, like so many service men, it remains a memory that he revisits only in unwished-for dreams.
When McGwin was drafted in 1967 he chose the Navy, believing he’d get to see some of the world.
“I was thinking of the Mediterranean, France, Italy, Spain,” he said. “I was 19 years old. How little I knew and how unworldly I was.”
He trained as a Machinist’s Mate and was assigned to the USS Westchester County, an LST (landing ship, tank) assigned to the Army/Navy Mobile Riverine Force on the Mekong and adjoining rivers. The ship moved up and down the Song My Tho River supporting, refueling, and overhauling faster and smaller gun boats. There were many encounters with the Viet Cong and the crew did their job of “making life miserable for the enemy.”
Then one night Viet Cong frogmen managed to attach explosives to 2 sides of the hull of the Westchester exactly where the men were bunked in for the night. McGwin had just begun his watch in another area of the ship when 2 explosions tore through the vessel, blowing the berthing compartments upward and, “In an instant, visibility within the ship was reduced to zero as lighting was knocked out and the air filled with clouds of choking steam and vaporized diesel fuel,” according to an account in the VFW magazine.
The ship’s gunmen began firing and the crew fought fires and tried to get to men trapped below. More than 300 tons of explosives were stored in the lower decks, now a threat to everyone aboard.
“Some men were alive and we couldn’t get to them,” McGwin said. “Some drowned in diesel fuel. We couldn’t use torches to get to them because of the vaporized fuel. We tried to pump compartments out under the worst conditions. No light, steam, fuel vapors.”
McGwin received the Bronze Star for helping rescue 2 men trapped below deck in sleeping quarters. Working with hospital corpsman John Sullivan, McGwin pulled 2 men out of the wreckage. In the account of the incident, Sullivan said, “We didn’t obey a whole lot of first-aid rules on moving victims. At the time, it was just a matter of getting them the hell out of there.” The screams of the men are still part of the horrible memory McGwin carries with him today.
“I thought it would get better as I got older,” he said quietly, “but it doesn’t, it gets worse. But there were so many who had it so much worse.”
About his Bronze Star with combat V he says, “We were ordinary people in extraordinary times. I’m glad I won it for saving people.”
The loneliness of Vietnam added to the sailors’ stress. The longer they were in Vietnam, McGwin said, the more cynical they became. “The longer we were there, the farther away from home we felt,” he said. “Sometimes you wondered if anyone remembered you were there.”
A Christmas tree sent by his sister was a treasure. When he returned home he, just like most veterans, didn’t talk about his experiences and saw the world differently.
“Things stayed the same, but they were different,” he said. “It was like I was seeing things through different eyes.”
He credits his wife for bringing him back to reality and his family for giving him the focus to move forward. But still he has his dreams, smells the smells, and hears the sounds of that horrible night on the Song My Tho River on the other side of the world 40 years ago.
For Ken Tennessen of Wautoma, it was his family, too, that helped him move ahead after returning home from Vietnam. Tennessen grew up in Ladysmith, but his wife, Sandy, was from Wautoma. He was happily studying entomology at UW-Madison when he was drafted in 1969. From studying insects the soldier studied guns and communications and became an infantry mortar man.
He was with the 25th Infantry Division at Cu Chi base camp. His mortar squad would go out for weeks or months at a time and provide support for ambush patrols.
“It was always confusing,” he said when recalling the war operations. “It was confusing mentally and physically. Things happen fast and you didn’t know where you were. But you’re responsible for your buddies so you do what you have to keep each other safe.”
Letters from home were so important and he received them regularly from Sandy who was at her parent’s home with their 2 sons, one born while Tennessen was in country. He sadly related the suicide death of a soldier in his unit when he received a “Dear John” letter from his wife.
“I built a mental wall to shut things out,” he said. “I worked hard to do the best I could at what I did.”
What he did was manage communications with the patrols and calculate where to put the mortar rounds for support. One night, huddled under a poncho in the rain with only a flashlight to see his equipment, Tennessen argued with a Lieutenant whose patrol was being over run by the Viet Cong. Tennessen was sure the coordinates the Lieutenant was giving him would put the mortars on top of the Americans, but the officer, with gun shots ringing in the back ground demanded that he send the mortars now. The first shells were sent, just beyond the coordinates given. The Lieutenant called in more direction and more shells were sent closer to the Americans. Tennessen waited. No radio calls. Then, to Tennessen’s relief, the Lieutenant called in to say they’d laid the mortars on top of the enemy.
News of the protests against the war reached the soldiers fighting in Vietnam as did stories of returning soldiers being spit on and called names.
“We snuck home,” said Tennessen. “We took our uniforms off as fast as we could and got back to our lives.”
It took him a year, though, to re-enter his life fully and he had the same recurring dream for 10 years. It took him 30 years to begin writing about Vietnam. He knew there were words there and once he started writing poetry about his experiences, they began to flood out onto the page. The more he wrote, the more he remembered. He remembered the whistling sound of an RPG “cooking your way sounding like it’s coming directly for the top of your head.” He’s written and shares dozens of poems about Vietnam now, but he hasn’t been to the memorial wall. When asked if he’s been there he gasps. “No, I can’t. I’d fall down and never get up.”
But he’s written a poem about the wall he’s seen only in pictures.
Black Granite
She chose black granite
so to reflect
and then they chiseled
into it.
Just the names.
58,000.
Neatly aligned like
headstones at Arlington,
all in one place
remembered.
The nation needed to heal
and it was late.
……….
Some who’ve come think
about how close they came
to being on it.
Some even wish
their name was on it
as if it were built
for guilt.
The etchings show
who doesn’t think about it
who doesn’t wish it.