Page 106 - Stand Down Vietnam

When I went over there, I felt like my country had
called me and I had a job to do. I done the job at the
best of my ability.

I always told everybody that we were winning when I
left in 1969. I think as a nation, we showed that we
were not going to be pushed around. I think we more or

less gave up and let the North Vietnamese take over. I
didn’t like that part of it because I figured we lost
all those lives.

I had sixty-nine guys, that went through the schools
with me and within two months only five of us was left;
all the rest of them had been killed. I was one of the
five that came back that wasn’t all shot up and
everything. When I went into country, I weighed 240
pounds. When I came back from Vietnam, I weighed 132
pounds. I lost 108 pounds while in Vietnam. I was
just like a dead person walking around.

I still have problems with my stomach today, but I
learned to cope with it. I went out on patrol right up
to the time they had to medevac me out. I was
medevac’d to the field hospital.

When I got out of the service, I wasn’t tired of
helping people. I still wanted to help people. That’s

why I got into the National Guard. We worked all kinds
of disasters; Barbados, Honduras, Dominican Republic,
Columbia. We built schools in the jungles, and I
enjoyed it. When we went to Honduras, they didn’t know
what sports was, before we got that school built, we
had those kids taught how to play football. We had
taken a football and a basketball with us. Before we
left country, they were playing, we left the balls for
the kids.