“For the next 1,742 days, he endured torture, starvation, desolation, disease, and one stretch of 20 months in strict solitary confinement.”
“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors.” —Joseph Story (1833)
I didn’t know much about Vietnam at the time Americans were fighting and dying there — 58,220 KIA, to be precise. My two older brothers were of draft age, and one of them was sent to Germany at the end of the war, but I was the youngest of the boys, and the draft had ended by the time I reached 18. I do recall a sense in the late 1960s that there was unrest across our nation — protests related to racial disparity, and those “hippie” people who denounced and dodged a war in a far-off land.
My life on our East Tennessee mountaintop then was more like growing up in the fictional town of Mayberry, simple and unencumbered with such heavy concerns. I call our mountain “Sugar Hill” because it is such a sweet place to live. As kids, we were consumed with elementary school activities and afternoon chores — and then building forts, exploring caves, or seeing who had the loudest “engine” on their bike, courtesy of the playing cards mounted where the rim spokes would strike them. We lived dangerously — no seatbelts, no bike helmets, no fear of secondhand smoke, and no safety goggles when we hunted big game with BB guns.
Though my hero, my Dad, was a WWII Veteran, I don’t recall him saying much about Vietnam. My Mom was an artist (my daughter who creates special-edition art for The Patriot Post got her talent), and I do recall a heaviness in one of her otherwise joyful Christmas card messages during the Vietnam era: “This Christmas we offer our heartfelt prayer, For all whose lives seem filled with despair, Especially for soldiers on a far distant shore, For the aged, and the weary, the hungry, and poor…”
However, in my teenage years, I became very aware of Vietnam, hearing first all about jungle warfare from my Marine infantry neighbor who returned in 1972. (He was “messed up” before going to Vietnam.) I graduated from high school in 1975, just a week after the fall of Saigon.
Two decades after the first U.S. advisers were sent to South Vietnam, and 27 months after U.S. combat troops were withdrawn following the 27 January 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the mass evacuation of more than 7,000 Americans and allied personnel, Operation Frequent Wind, took place on 29-30 April 1975.
In the years that followed, I met many Vietnam Veterans, some of whom would significantly influence my life.
I graduated from college in 1979, in the middle of Jimmy Carter’s Iran hostage debacle and preparations for war in the Middle East. I was determined to follow in my father’s footsteps as a Naval Aviator, but that aspiration was cut short by a severe hearing loss due to a close-quarters gunfire incident as a uniformed police officer during my college years.
As for war with Iran, in what amounts to a textbook example of a foreign adversary fearing the return of a powerful American president, on January 20, 1981, as President Ronald Reagan was 10 minutes into his 20-minute inaugural address, the Iranian regime announced that all of the American hostages were being released.
Smart move, Ayatollah, and not unlike what we have seen by some Middle East adversaries in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
I never put on a military uniform, but I took my third oath “to support and defend” the Constitution as a Reagan administration appointee to a national defense post, and I had the opportunity to train with the best in our military ranks over the next 25 years.
There are countless sources about the end of the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon. For many who served there, demoralization lingers to this day. While the 58,000 American deaths in Vietnam were less than some previous foreign wars (and significantly so as a percentage of population), including 405,399 dead in World War II and 116,516 in World War I, those wars had unified national support, as well as well-defined purposes and objectives; the lives tragically lost were part of a necessary national sacrifice.
Vietnam was not that, perhaps more akin to the loss of 36,574 Americans during the Korean War. For many Veterans, the retreat from Vietnam weighs heavily on those who survived combat there. It is not unlike the disastrous and deadly Biden/Harris regime’s surrender and retreat from Afghanistan, leaving OEF combat Vets with a sense that the 2,459 lives of their brothers KIA, and the 20,700 who were wounded, were for nothing.
What I want to convey in this column is my deep sense of gratitude to the Vietnam Vets who have not only served our nation with honor and distinction but who have had an enormous impact on my life.
That would start with an early mentor, Col Roger Ingvalson (USAF). In 1968, Roger was flying the F-105D with the 34th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Korat Royal Air Force Base, Thailand. The air war over Vietnam was in its third year, and the pilot casualty list already included Roger’s wingman and best friend, LtC Wayne Fullam, who was shot down in late 1967. (Wayne was MIA until his remains were recovered and identified in 1987.)
On 28 May 1968, Roger took off on his 87th combat sortie, leading a mission to destroy a bridge in North Vietnam. With 1,600 hours in the F-105, he was confident that this mission would be a success. As he pulled off the target, an air controller requested that he hit an enemy truck convoy nearby. Roger’s tactical preference was for high speed and low altitude engagement in order to assure accuracy. He located the convoy of Soviet-built trucks near Dong Hoi and rolled in at more than 500 knots. At about 100 feet above the hard deck, he fired a long 20mm burst into the convoy.
Moments after strafing the convoy, Roger was shot down. For the next 1,742 days, he endured torture, starvation, desolation, disease, and one stretch of 20 months in strict solitary confinement. Three years into his horrendous internment, Jane Fonda showed up in Hanoi to collaborate with Roger’s captors, posing for laughing propaganda photos on the same type of anti-aircraft gun that downed Roger’s plane.
Needless to say, he harbored some “resentment” toward the traitorous “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and also for enemy collaborator John Kerry. There is a special place in Hell awaiting each of them.
In lighthearted retrospect, Roger told me that it is very important on combat missions to keep the number of takeoffs and landings equal. I encourage you to read the rest of his remarkable life story after Vietnam, and you will understand how, second only to my father, I treasure the example he set.
In the years that followed, I was humbled and blessed with very close friendships with two other Air Force POWs, Col Leo Thorsness and especially Lt Col Bill Gauntt, who was like a big brother to me.
Among a handful of other Vietnam Vet mentors would be “Point Man” Sgt Roger Helle (USMC), who just participated in an Honor Flight to DC and who wrote this week about the fall of Saigon. Roger’s Vietnam service overlapped with that of his twin brother, Ron Helle, a Navy Cross recipient, and they are now writers for The Patriot Post. I invite you to read more about the Heroic Helle Brothers.
Beyond those men, I am eternally grateful for the Vietnam Vet exemplars who are Medal of Honor recipients. You can read about many of them in our Profiles of Valor.
Among those would by my longtime friend CPT Larry Taylor, and more recent friendships with SFC Sammy Davis and PFC “Doc” McCloughan.
Finally, I know there are Vietnam Vets reading this who still carry an enormous burden, those for whom the war has never ended. I heard from one of them recently who found one of Ron Helle’s devotional columns to be lifesaving: “I Know What You Did!”
Brothers and sisters, Veterans of all conflicts, we hold you in the highest esteem! God Bless and Keep You one and all.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776