Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.
Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg – or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity.
Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking. Continue reading
The Vietcong used elaborate tunnel systems to store food and ammunition as well as housing medical and combat facilities. The largest tunnel systems in South Vietnam (some under US bases) could be as vast as 200 kilometers (125 miles) long and were built to withstand bombings, explosions, poison gas etc. Many of the systems were built using forced labor from surrounding villages. Continue reading
On the morning of June 14 about 6:00am outside of our hotel on the first day of our reunion there were Army Platoons doing PT running in the street between the hotel and The Alamo. Carrying banners, shouting cadence and waking us up.
Bill French writes:
Thanks to a fortuitous early morning walk by Ron and Carol Draper the 2012 Reunion attendees were invited to the Retreat Ceremony In Honor of the Army’s 237th Birthday by the Commanding General of 5th U.S. Army and Fort Sam Houston.
While Ron and Carol Draper were taking an early morning walk around the Alamo they were approached by Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the Commanding General, 5th US Army and Fort Sam Houston when General Caldwell noticed Ron’s Vietnam Veteran cap. General Caldwell and a group of Fort Sam Houston Soldiers were assembled at the Alamo in preparation for a celebratory run to Fort Sam Houston in observance of the Army Anniversary. When General Caldwell learned of our reunion from Ron and Carol he extended an invitation to the entire group to attend the reception and retreat.
The retreat was held at the Quadrangle, Fort Sam Houston, Texas which houses the 5th Army Headquarters from 1300 to 1700 hours, June 14, 2012. Several members of the General’s staff and other attendees joined the C/D Company reunion attendees in conversation prior to the ceremony, making us feel welcome and appreciated for our service in Vietnam. It was evident from the conversations we share common experiences regardless of the time and place of our service.
The retreat ceremony started with the traditional Streamer Ceremony where Battle Streams for each important action are attached to the US Army flag guidon by a soldier dressed in the uniform of the U.S. Army for that period. Following the invocation and remarks by General Caldwell the Retreat to Colors was held, complete with a gun salute.
Following the ceremony we were all invited to the 5th U.S. Army Headquarters for refreshments. General Caldwell personally presented the 5th U.S. Army challenge coin to several attendees. This was truly a unique experience for everyone who attended.
The Army’s Human Resources Service Center offers a free service to troops, veterans, military retirees and their family members who need help retrieving information to support claims for entitlements or benefits.
The Center’s operations officer says that many people pay private companies to locate such things as discharge papers or other military records, a service the Center provides at no charge.
“We are here to assist as many people as we can, but the thing is they don’t know about us and that is a shame,” Andrew Dennison said.
All requests must be accompanied by a signed Standard Form 180.
For more information call 1-888-276-9472, email askhrc.army@us.army.mil or access https://www.hrc.army.mil, then click on ASK HRC in the right column.
SOURCE: VFW Magazine June/July 2012
Almost four million people a year visit the national cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where a constant vigil is maintained at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Arlington National Cemetery is the site of the changing of a military guard around the clock daily. A stone coffin bearing the body of an unidentified soldier of World War I — entombed on Veterans Day 1921 — is the visible part of the tomb, while crypts next to it under the terrace bear the unknown American service members of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars (the remains from Vietnam were exhumed May 14, 1998, identified as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, and removed for burial). Each Memorial Day and Veterans Day, a presidential wreath is laid at the tomb.
This may explain why Arlington is America’s most well-known national cemetery, even though it is not the largest or the oldest. Some 230,000 veterans and dependents are buried on the cemetery’s 612 acres. From Pierre L’Enfant, George Washington’s aide during the American Revolution, to American service members killed during Operation Desert Storm, Arlington holds the remains of veterans representing every military action the United States has fought.
The cemetery’s origins go back to just before the Civil War. George Washington Parke Custis, adopted son of the first president, owned a 1,100 acre plantation and constructed on it a memorial to Washington named Arlington House, which held the world’s largest collection of memorabilia related to the president. Ownership of his estate passed to Custis’ daughter, who had married Robert E. Lee, and they lived in Arlington House for more than 30 years. The Lee family fled when the Civil War was imminent. The Union seized the property because of its strategic location overlooking Washington. Because of the bitter grudge against the South that Union Brig. Gen. Montgomery Meigs bore, and the need for burial space for the Union dead, this commander of forces at Arlington urged the federal government to convert 200 acres of Lee’s property to a cemetery. Meigs ordered burials near the house to make the grounds uninhabitable after the war.
The first soldier was buried in Arlington in May 1864. By war’s end, 16,000 graves filled the spaces close to Arlington House. Though the Supreme Court ruled finally in favor of the heir to the property, the eldest Lee son ceded title to the government for $150,000 and renounced any thought of living in Arlington House. From the portico of the mansion, the first official Memorial Day was proclaimed in 1868.
Whereas after the Civil War, only the poor or unidentified were entombed at Arlington, now it is a burial site particularly coveted by veterans and their families. Space for inground burials is restricted to those who die on active duty, have had 20 years of service, or earned certain military decorations, and their spouses and dependents. Any honorably discharged veterans and dependents may have their cremated remains inurned in Arlington’s columbarium. Honors are rendered daily by military units bearing a flag-draped coffin, firing a rifle volley and performing taps.
Numerous veterans and civic groups hold memorial services in the cemetery’s marble amphitheater. Monuments have been erected from time to time to memorialize specific groups of military members or veterans buried there.
Presidents John F. Kennedy and William H. Taft;
World War I General of the Armies John J. Pershing;
Generals Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall of World War II;
Generals Daniel “Chappie” James and Maxwell Taylor of the Vietnam War.
During World War II, Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam, a nation on the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia that had been under French administration since the late 19th century. Inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism, Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam, to fight both Japan and the French colonial administration. Japan withdrew its forces in 1945, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam. Ho’s Viet Minh forces rose up immediately, seizing the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president.
Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Bao and set up the state of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in July 1949, with Saigon as its capital. Armed conflict continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 ended in French defeat by Viet Minh forces. The subsequent treaty negotiations at Geneva split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th parallel (with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South) and called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in 1956. In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN).
Vietnam War: U.S. Intervention Begins
With the Cold War intensifying, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam. With training and equipment from American military and police, Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were tortured and executed. By 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging South Vietnamese Army forces in firefights.
In December 1960, Diem’s opponents within South Vietnam–both communist and non-communist–formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were non-Communist, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi. A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help confront the Viet Cong threat. Working under the “domino theory,” which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention. By 1962, the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops, compared with fewer than 800 during the 1950s.
Source: Vietnam War. (2012). The History Channel website. Retrieved 6:22, April 6, 2012, from http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war.
The most unforgivable oversight of TV is that her shows were not taped.
This is a great story about a great woman. I was unaware of her credentials or where she is buried. Somehow I just can’t see Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, or Jessica Simpson doing what this woman (and the other USO women, including Ann Margaret & Joey Heatherton) did for our troops in past Wars. Most of the old time entertainers were made out of a lot sterner stuff than today’s crop of activists and whiners.
The following is from an Army Aviator who takes a trip down memory lane:
It was just before Thanksgiving ’67 and we were ferrying dead and wounded from a large GRF west of Pleiku. We had run out of body bags by noon, so the Hook (CH-47 CHINOOK) was pretty rough in the back. All of a sudden, we heard a ‘take-charge’ woman’s voice in the rear. There was the singer and actress, Martha Raye, with a SF (Special Forces) beret and jungle fatigues, with subdued markings, helping the wounded into the Chinook, and carrying the dead aboard. ‘Maggie’ had been visiting her SF ‘heroes’ out ‘west’. We took off, short of fuel, and headed to the USAF hospital pad at Pleiku. As we all started unloading our sad pax’s, a ‘Smart Ass’ USAF Captain said to Martha…. Ms Ray, with all these dead and wounded to process, there would not be time for your show! To all of our surprise, she pulled on her right collar and said…..Captain, see this eagle? I am a full ‘Bird’ in the US Army Reserve, and on this is a ‘Caduceus’ which means I am a Nurse, with a surgical specialty….now, take me to your wounded. He said, ‘yes ma’am…. Follow me.’
Several times at the Army Field Hospital in Pleiku, she would ‘cover’ a surgical shift, giving a nurse a well-deserved break.
Martha is the only woman buried in the SF (Special Forces) cemetery at Ft. Bragg.
Access Made Easy by eBenefits
The Pentagon and VA now allow troops, veterans, and their families and survivors ready access to information about benefits. Now you can go to a single and secure website to obtain that information, apply for benefits and perform numerous self-service features.
The eBenefits portal (http://www.ebenefits.va.gov) was initiated in March 2007 as recommended by the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors. It suggested a web portal to provide wounded, injured and ill service members and veterans with a single sign-on, central access point for benefits-related online tools and information. eBenefits has continued to evolve, providing a host of resources and self-service capabilities tailored to their needs.
BASIC AND PREMIUM ACCOUNTS
The eBenefits portal can be accessed by anyone. However, users must register for either a Basic or Premium account to take advantage of all of its features.
• Basic Account: With a Basic account you can view benefits information and customize it to your particular needs and preferences. It can be used to calculate retirement and insurance needs based on your current situation.
• Premium Account: With a Premium account you can access the status of pending disability claims and appeals, payment history and some military records, such as a DD-214 form.
There are online courses for the Transition Assistance Program, too, that allow transitioning service members and veterans to explore VA benefits at their leisure. You also can apply for Veterans Group Life Insurance, and—based on eligibility—access Tricare, your disabled civil service preference, commissary, service verification and benefit verification letters using the Letter Generator. Hearing aid batteries and prosthetic socks also may be ordered through eBenefits.
IN THE FUTURE
Future enhancements include partnering with veteran service organizations (VSOs). This collaborative effort will allow veterans to obtain their Premium-level eBenefits account through their local VSO, as well as complete and submit VA Form 21-22, Appointment of Veterans Service Organization as Claimant Representative, online.
Other planned enhancements include an improved online application process for benefits, making it easier to manage the list of dependents claimed on a veteran’s profile. You also can check the enrollment status of education benefits under the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The key to unlocking all of these features is obtaining a Premium-level account. With each quarterly release of eBenefits, new tools and services are made available. More information on eBenefits can be obtained at www.ebenefits.va.gov.
SOURCE: VFW Magazine, January 2012
| State Home of Record | Number of Records |
| Alabama | 1,207 |
| Alaska | 57 |
| Arizona | 623 |
| Arkansas | 588 |
| California | 5,573 |
| Canal Zone | 2 |
| Colorado | 620 |
| Connecticut | 611 |
| Delaware | 122 |
| District of Columbia | 242 |
| Florida | 1,952 |
| Georgia | 1,582 |
| Guam | 70 |
| Hawaii | 276 |
| Idaho | 217 |
| Illinois | 2,934 |
| Indiana | 1,532 |
| Iowa | 853 |
| Kansas | 627 |
| Kentucky | 1,055 |
| Louisiana | 882 |
| Maine | 343 |
| Maryland | 1,014 |
| Massachusetts | 1,323 |
| Michigan | 2,654 |
| Minnesota | 1,072 |
| Mississippi | 637 |
| Missouri | 1,413 |
| Montana | 268 |
| Nebraska | 395 |
| Nevada | 151 |
| New Hampshire | 227 |
| New Jersey | 1,484 |
| New Mexico | 399 |
| New York | 4,121 |
| North Carolina | 1,609 |
| North Dakota | 198 |
| Ohio | 3,096 |
| Oklahoma | 988 |
| Oregon | 709 |
| Pennsylvania | 3,144 |
| Puerto Rico | 345 |
| Rhode Island | 207 |
| South Carolina | 896 |
| South Dakota | 193 |
| Tennessee | 1,291 |
| Texas | 3,415 |
| Utah | 366 |
| Vermont | 100 |
| Virgin Islands | 15 |
| Virginia | 1,304 |
| Washington | 1,050 |
| West Virginia | 732 |
| Wisconsin | 1,161 |
| Wyoming | 120 |
| Other (non-U.S. home of record) | 121 |
| Total | 58,193 |
Record counts provided for informational purposes only, not official statistics
After 10 years of searching for Dennis Jones we finally located him. After we posted the story about Dennis during Tet in Kontum when he pulled an NVA soldier through a window, Bud Roach suggested we contact the local newspaper in Pocatello, ID where Dennis was from. We sent the “Ivy Leaf” article to the newspaper and after a telephone conversation with the reporter a news item ran in the Idaho Standard Journal recently as follows:
Since members of his outfit in Vietnam began holding annual reunions about 10 years ago, Fred Childs says attendance has grown more than 10-fold. But there’s one person the group is still trying to track down. He’s the solider who braved a hail of bullets and knocked a Viet Cong solider cold with one punch.
“We haven’t had any contact with Dennis (Jones) since Vietnam,” said Childs via telephone from his Pasadena, Calif., home. “We just have not been able to locate Dennis.” The only thing Childs really knows about Jones is that he was originally from Pocatello.
That first reunion of men from the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, 4th Division who served in Vietnam from July of 1967 to August of 1968, consisted of five guys, Childs said. This year, at the reunion planned for June in San Antonio, Texas, he’s expecting 60 to show up. Each year, Jones is a topic of conversation. And each year, no one knows anything new about where he is. Childs says there weren’t many ways that Jones stood out. In fact, he says most of the men in the outfit, which was in a forward area much of the time, were pretty much all about business.
But there was one thing about Jones that made him legendary — something he did that even caught the attention of the U.S. Army’s journalists.
According to the story, Jones rushed an armed member of the North Vietnamese Army who was continuously firing at his outfit. “It was during the Tet Offensive in February of 1968,” Childs said. “We were in a compound in Kontum where there used to be an old language school.” The NVA had overrun Kontum and Childs and his comrades were sent there to clear the opposing forces out of the area. They were dropped into Kontum on Feb. 1, 1968, and the following day were trying to make a sweep through the old language school.
Childs said there was a sniper in the steeple of a nearby church who was shooting at them, another NVA soldier in a building shooting at them through a window and several others in a nearby field. Although they had managed to kill the sniper, and were taking fire from those men in the field, Childs says it was the NVA soldier in the building who was pinning them down.
“He just kept firing at us through a window. No matter if we fired back, he just kept firing,” Childs said.
At some point, Jones decided enough was enough. He decided someone had to do something. “All of a sudden he just took off,” Childs said of Jones. “He just got up and ran across the compound.” It was about 50 meters, or 165 feet that Jones ran to reach the NVA soldier, and when he did, there was no hesitation. “He pulled this guy out of the window and hit him,” Childs said.
In a story forwarded via email by Childs that was written about the incident at the time it happened, a fellow soldier Roger Ziegler, is quoted as saying that Jones, “pulled this North Vietnamese Army soldier right through the window and bagged him with a good hard right.” Looking back on the incident, and remembering Jones, Childs said it was something you could see Jones doing, but not something he ever did with the exception of that single incident.
Also quoted in the story is a J.R. Farmer, another member of what is known as “Charlie Company.” Both Farmer and Ziegler, Childs said, died three days later during another battle in Kontum. [Farmer is still living, Roger Ziegler KIA 4/27/1968 and Gary Campen quoted in the story KIA 2/5/1968]
Childs is hoping Jones himself, or someone who knows him, or knows of his whereabouts, will reach out to him. He has a website dedicated to Charlie Company, which he says served continuously in Vietnam from 1966 to 1972. The website, charliecompany.org, is filled with pictures of and stories about some of Charlie Company’s Vietnam veterans. Childs can be reached through that site.
Now for the rest of the story…
We received 5-6 responses from this article which I forwarded to Bud. One of them was from Dennis’s daughter. Bud contacted her and obtained the telephone number to contact him. After talking to Dennis, Bud invited him to our reunion. Dennis will be there.
Charlie Company Vietnam 1966-1972 