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Specialist 4 Mark Myers, U.S. Army – Three Things to Count On

It’s often said there are only two things in life you can count on, death and taxes. Ask Specialist 4 Mark Myers, U.S. Army, and other young men during the mid-1960s and they would tell you there was a third – the draft. Mark received his draft notice shortly after his college notified his local draft board he was eligible, thus beginning a chain of events that would lead to him patrolling the jungles of South Vietnam in search of the Viet Cong. This is his story.  

Mark was born in November 1945 in Aurora, Illinois, and raised in Naperville, a Chicago suburb located about thirty miles west of the city. His father was a pillar of the Naperville community. Not only was he an attorney and the owner of an insurance consulting business with offices in Naperville and Chicago, but he also served as a Naperville City Councilman and was active in his church. His mother, who had a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, taught English to foreign scientists working in and around Batavia, Illinois. Mark was the third of the family’s five children and, like his two brothers and two sisters, attended Naperville Central High School. As a big kid, he played football and wrestled, competing in the 180-pound weight class. He excelled in both sports, participating for all four years of high school. He also did well in his studies and was inducted into the National Honor Society prior to graduation.

Mark graduated from high school in June 1963. He enrolled in Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in the fall. Duke proved not to be a good fit, so after completing eighteen months, he transferred to Aurora College to be closer to home. Still, he found it hard to focus on his studies, especially since he participated on the college’s wrestling team. After a year, officials at Aurora College determined he wasn’t making sufficient progress and notified the local draft board.

With the Vietnam War raging and the Army and Marines needing more and more young men to fill their ranks, the draft board took swift action. Soon, Mark received a draft notice instructing him to report to the induction center in Wheaton, Illinois, at 6:00 a.m. on August 25, 1966. Although the notice itself surprised Mark, he was excited because he thought it would give him the opportunity to go to Vietnam and serve his country.

Until the report date arrived, Mark worked for a concrete construction company. Then, on Thursday, August 25, he reported as directed to the induction site. The atmosphere was subdued as it was early in the morning, and no one wanted to be there. Mark took his place with the other draftees and the officials told them they needed six Marines. Mark thought about being a Marine, but before he could say anything, six others volunteered. That meant Mark and the remaining draftees were headed for the Army.

Mark Myers out on patrol in Vietnam

The officials at the Wheaton induction center administered the oath of service to all the draftees and then sent them on their way for initial training. Mark was sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but after a week of waiting there, he and those with him were flown to Fort Lewis, Washington, to begin Basic Training. Before boarding the flight, they were weighed, causing Mark to wonder if there was something wrong with the airplane such that the crew had to be careful not to have too much weight onboard. Much to his relief, the plane arrived safely at McChord Air Force Base just outside of Tacoma, Washington.

Mark and the other draftees transferred by bus from McChord to Fort Lewis to commence Basic Training. Mark was tagged almost immediately for a leadership position, Trainee Platoon Sergeant, which he attributes to him being a big guy and in good shape. As Trainee Platoon Sergeant, Mark stood in front of his platoon’s formation and gave instructions regarding formation movements. He also assigned people to KP (“kitchen police”) when it was their turn. Finally, he had to eat last when the platoon went to chow to ensure all his men got to eat. More than once, this resulted in Mark stuffing his mouth full of food when the allotted time for the meal ended and the platoon had to leave the chow hall.

Overall, Mark found Basic Training tolerable. Fort Lewis itself was beautiful, especially with Mount Rainier visible in the distance. Even the weather cooperated while he was there, with the only rainy period unfortunately coinciding with the platoon’s week in the field. No one complained, though, because everyone was in the same boat. Even the physical training proved not to be a problem given Mark’s wrestling experience and work as part of a concrete construction crew. He found rifle training more challenging, particularly because some trainees cut corners to get high scores. Mark was content to play it straight and accept whatever score he earned.

That marksmanship score, together with Mark’s other accomplishments, proved good enough for his platoon sergeant to nominate him for Soldier of the Cycle. Unfortunately, the platoon sergeant didn’t tell Mark about the nomination and only instructed him to report to a particular office at a particular time. Mark did as directed, wearing his usual training uniform. When he arrived, the other nominees were already there looking all spit and polished in their dress uniforms. Although Mark did not get the award, he considered it an honor to have been nominated.

Mark graduated from Basic Training in early November 1966. Pursuant to orders he received prior to graduation, he reported to Fort Sam Houston, located in San Antonio, Texas, for training to become an Army medic. Just as at Basic Training, the sergeants at Fort Sam Houston recognized Mark’s leadership potential and designated him as a squad leader. This gave him administrative responsibilities in addition to his medic training, which consisted of instruction on a wide range of medical skills. Mark learned how to triage illnesses and injuries, administer shots and medication, and even perform basic procedures like initiating an IV and administering an enema. Basically, Mark was trained as a first responder who had to be prepared to keep seriously wounded soldiers alive until they could be evacuated to a medical facility for further treatment by doctors and nurses.  

Mark’s administrative responsibilities weren’t quite as daunting. On one occasion, Mark was directed to inform a soldier in another barracks he had KP duty. Mark found the soldier asleep in his bunk but couldn’t wake him up. He pulled the man to the floor; still the soldier did not wake up. Afraid something might be wrong, Mark alerted the soldier’s sergeant, who was not surprised. Together, they dragged the sleeping soldier by his hands and feet into the shower, where they woke him up by streaming cold water on him. On another occasion, the Army recognized Mark and the other soldiers designated as squad leaders with an evening out at a local brewery for a few beers. This was a memorable event for Mark, as he had very recently turned twenty-one. The next day, it was back to training as usual.

As Mark approached graduation from medic training, he was offered the opportunity to attend jump school to become airborne qualified. Because this would increase his monthly pay from around $125/month to around $180/month, Mark accepted the opportunity and transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. He hoped it would lead to him being assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and sent to Vietnam so he could take part in the action. He arrived at Fort Benning in January 1967, where he learned to parachute from airplanes and operate as part of the Army’s highly mobile airborne forces. He also participated in rigorous physical training, including long runs, which he again excelled at given his history of physical fitness and involvement in sports.

Mark Myers reading a newspaper next to his barracks – note the sandbags around the barracks

After completing the three-week jump school at Fort Benning, Mark earned the right to wear parachutist wings on his uniform. However, instead of joining the 101st Airborne Division and heading to Vietnam as he had hoped, he received orders to report to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for general medic duty. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry, which was part of the 82nd Airborne Division. He lived in the barracks as did most of the other medics, with his sergeant telling them, “If the Army wanted you to have a wife, the Army would have issued you one.” Furthermore, what the Army expected of Mark at Fort Bragg was not very challenging. He served in a pool of medics where each morning, he was assigned to a unit requiring a medic for whatever training activities they were conducting that day. It was not the military experience Mark expected.

Sometimes Mark’s assignments took him out in the field with units on weeklong training exercises. During one such exercise, at about eleven a.m., a jet whizzed by low overhead, breaking the sound barrier and creating a massive sonic boom. The boom startled everyone, shaking everything nearby. The next day, the same thing happened, causing Mark to look over his shoulder every morning around 11:00 in expectation of another sonic boom ready to scare the daylights out of him. Every morning they came, just like clockwork, fraying Mark’s nerves.

On another occasion in the field, a soldier reported to Mark for sick call. Mark had three medications he could dispense, one in a green bottle, one in blue bottle, and one in a red bottle. By accident, he gave the soldier the wrong medication and the soldier spit it out declaring it tasted terrible. Mark then gave him the correct medicine and the soldier left. Mark was afraid the soldier might report him but he never did. Not surprisingly, the soldier never came back to sick call.

On one last occasion, a jeep drove by where Mark was working and he waved to the jeep’s passengers. Unfortunately, there was a colonel in the jeep who thought he deserved a salute from Mark rather than a wave. To help drive home the point, Mark was instructed to dig a large hole, which he did. After that, Mark didn’t wave at any more jeeps passing by.

When Mark had liberty, he enjoyed spending time in Fayetteville. On paydays, he and a friend met at an Italian restaurant for a nice dinner. On one payday when his friend couldn’t meet up with him, Mark went to a bar to grab a beer. There he saw an older gentleman with white hair, dressed in a sport coat and having a drink. The gentleman saw Mark, too, and started a conversation. He introduced himself as Tommy Bartlett, an entertainment celebrity who ran water skiing and skydiving shows in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Upon learning Mark was airborne qualified, Tommy told Mark if he ever visited Wisconsin Dells, he was welcome to jump out of planes there. This was Mark’s one brush with a celebrity during his hitch in the Army.

In the spring of 1967, Mark was unexpectedly transferred to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he joined Charlie Company of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. Even more unexpected, he and his unit were slated to go to Vietnam. And, due to a clerical error where someone mistakenly recorded his MOS (military occupational specialty) as 11B – infantryman rather than 91B – medic, he was issued an M16 and assigned duties as a rifleman rather than as a medic. The Army eventually caught the error and offered Mark the opportunity to revert to medic if he wanted, but since he had been training as an infantry soldier at Fort Campbell, he decided to stick with it. Accordingly, on December 4, 1967 – his sister’s twenty-first birthday – he and the rest of the 3rd Battalion boarded military transport planes and started the long journey to Vietnam dressed in their military fatigues and carrying their M16 rifles, ready for action. They made three stops along the way, the highlight being a 4:00 a.m. breakfast in Manila in the Republic of the Philippines. Then it was back on the planes until they arrived in Vietnam.

Once in South Vietnam, the 3rd Battalion deployed to its new base camp at Phước Vĩnh, located about forty-five miles northeast of Saigon. There they were joined by the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 506th Infantry, also part of the 101st Airborne Division. Once there, Mark’s first assignment was to fill sandbags and stack them around his barracks for protection from shrapnel and bullets in the event of an enemy attack. Then, after a short acclimation period, Mark’s platoon helicoptered to a landing zone where they were dropped off to patrol the surrounding area in search of Viet Cong. This turned out to be a typical mission, with Mark’s platoon or his company often being in the field up to two weeks before returning to the base camp to decompress and resupply.

Although Mark went on numerous patrols during his time in Vietnam, his platoon never engaged in a traditional firefight. Instead, Viet Cong guerrillas approached Mark’s unit under the cover of the jungle, fired at them, and then fled. As a result, Mark never knew when or where the enemy might be taking aim at him. Every step he took could be his last. Only once did he actually see a small group of Viet Cong firing at his platoon. They barely had the chance to return fire before the group disappeared. On another occasion the platoon came close, finding an abandoned Viet Cong camp with warm rice and tea right where the enemy left it before slipping away into the jungle. Faced with such hit and run tactics, Mark and the other members of his unit had to remain alert at all times – their lives depended on it.

Mark Myers with an M79 grenade launcher – he carried the M79 during the latter part of his tour

The enemy wasn’t the only danger Mark had to be wary of. After securing a perimeter to bed down for the evening while out on patrol, Mark was standing next to a soldier armed with an M79 grenade launcher. Without warning, the soldier inadvertently fired the weapon, launching a grenade into the ground just inches from where Mark stood. Fortunately, the grenade had a safety feature that required it to rotate a certain number of times before it exploded, and it did not have time to reach that threshold before it stuck in the jungle floor. Had it gone off, Mark certainly would have been killed.

During another patrol where Mark’s platoon was acting as an ambush unit, a call went out for artillery support. The first round missed the target, so the forward observer gave correcting instructions. Someone somewhere made an error and the second round fell near Mark’s platoon leader and medic. Mark heard the artillery round screaming overhead and took cover just in time. He was covered by leaves from the blast. The man next to him wasn’t so lucky as he was hit by a piece of shrapnel and the platoon’s medic was killed. It was a horrible night Mark will never forget.

On another night nearer the end of his tour, Mark and three or four members of his squad went outside the perimeter of the base camp to set an ambush. Once in position, they each dug a fox hole for protection and then set their weapons out in front of them so they could easily access them in the event the enemy wandered into their trap. When a new soldier next to Mark set out his grenades, Mark noticed he had straightened the grenades’ safety pins making it possible for them to slip out, allowing the grenades to detonate. When Mark told him not to do that, the new soldier told him “Don’t tell me what to do.” The next day, the same new soldier had point and was carrying his M16 at his hip, parallel to the ground with a round chambered and the safety off. When he turned around, his weapon discharged, narrowly missing Mark and the soldier following behind him.

Despite these two clear safety violations, the patrol made it back to the base camp at Phước Vĩnh and resumed their normal duties. That night, while Mark and three others stood watch in a guard tower on the base perimeter, they heard an explosion in the vicinity of the barracks. They soon learned the explosion was not caused by an enemy mortar, but by an accidental detonation of one the grenades carried by the new soldier who had straightened the safety pins despite being told not to do so. Not only was that soldier killed, but another soldier in the barracks near where the new soldier was standing was also killed. It was a tragic incident that never should have happened.

Aside from the danger, going out on patrol was physically demanding. Mark’s rucksack weighed so much from the supplies he needed to carry to survive in the jungle for five or more days, he couldn’t pick it up and put it on. Instead, he set it on the ground and worked into it there, then had to try to stand up with it on his back. During one patrol in particularly hot weather, a tall soldier from California was overcome by the heat and had to be medevac’d by helicopter. Rather than send his rucksack back with him, the platoon sergeant asked for a volunteer to carry the pack with its extra supplies in case they might need them. Thinking if he carried the pack, he might be overcome by heat too and get to go back to the base camp, Mark volunteered. His plan didn’t work and he ended up carrying the rucksack for the remainder of the patrol.

During patrols in Vietnam’s intense heat, water was more valuable than gold. Typically, Mark carried up to a gallon of water split between several canteens. This was usually enough to hold him until a helicopter could resupply the unit with water (and newspapers and candy) in the field, but sometimes the helicopters could not reach them in time. When that happened, they had to find another source of water. Once when the platoon ran out of water, Mark found a bomb crater filled with green and brown water so dirty he would not otherwise have gone near it. Now parched with thirst, he filled his canteen with the nasty water and added an iodine pill to purify it. He then had to wait twenty minutes to allow the pill to do its work. After seventeen minutes, Mark figured he’d waited long enough and drank the water, barely keeping it down. Fortunately, the pill did what it was supposed to and he did not get sick. Not much later, the resupply helicopter arrived with fresh water.

Mark Myers taking a break during a patrol in Vietnam

After a while, Mark developed a routine on patrol. In the evening, the platoon formed a circular defensive perimeter, with each man taking a position about ten meters from the next. Each man then dug a foxhole to bed down in for the evening. Mark always spread out his poncho in the fox hole first, then sat down on it with a hot cup of coffee, three cookies from his c-rations, and music from the Armed Forces radio station in Saigon. One night as he mellowed to the music in his own little world, a shot rang out and Mark instinctively dove for cover, crushing his cookies and spilling his coffee. For the rest of the evening, he had to fight off the bugs crawling into his fox hole trying to abscond with the cookie crumbs he could not get rid of in the dark.

Mosquitoes also posed a hazard because they carried malaria, but red fire ants were Mark’s true nemesis. Whenever shots rang out and he dove for cover, he often found himself popping back up because of painful fire ant bites. The ants were so numerous, sometimes the normally green leaves in trees a quarter of a mile away appeared reddish-green because they were crawling with so many ants. One time Mark caught a fire ant in some rubber tree sap and tried to kill it with a match. Instead of dying, the ant fought with the flame until it extinguished the fire, giving Mark all the more reason to fear the painful pest.

Leaches were another menace, particularly when Mark patrolled through rice paddies. Normally, everyone walked on the berms outlining the rice paddies, but sometimes they had to trudge through the water. Somehow, Mark avoided the leach scourge until his final patrol, when he was serving as point man on a mission through the jungle. When they stopped to take a break, he removed his boots and found a leach attached to his foot just above his big toe. He sprayed it with mosquito repellent and it fell off, providing yet another reason why he could not wait to leave Vietnam.

Sometimes patrols brought unexpected surprises. One day when Mark’s platoon was forging its way through tall elephant grass, they detected someone heading in their direction. Instinctively, they took cover and prepared to defend themselves. When the approaching group finally became visible, it turned out to be five or six bare-breasted Montagnard women carrying large jars of water on their heads. Without an ounce of fear, and despite seeing Mark and the other soldiers pointing weapons in their direction, the women carried on with their chore, smiling broadly as they walked by. The Montagnards were a fiercely independent indigenous people often allied with U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Unfortunately, they were also extremely poor. When Mark’s platoon buried their empty c-ration cans and boxes in the jungle to keep them from giving away their position, Montagnard children living nearby often dug them up in search of something to eat or to shore up their ramshackle huts.  

Mark and Linda Myers at their wedding

When Mark wasn’t patrolling in the field, he was back at the base camp in Phước Vĩnh. There he did lots of reading, wrote letters, and occasionally grabbed a beer at the enlisted man’s club. All the club’s empty beer bottles then had to be broken in two the next day using a trenching tool to prevent the Viet Cong from turning them into weapons like Molotov cocktails. Mark also had to stand duty guarding the base perimeter and perform latrine duty, which was particularly nasty. This involved taking the fifty-five-gallon drums filled with raw sewage from under the latrines and burning the contents with diesel fuel. The only bright side of the duty was it didn’t take long to get the fire started, so it gave him time to relax until the drums’ contents burned away.

Mark finally reached the end of his tour in Vietnam in August 1968. Although Army tours in Vietnam were normally one year, Mark was able to depart after just over eight months because his two-year service obligation was set to expire on August 25. In addition, while he was in Vietnam, he wrote Aurora College and asked if he could be re-admitted, which they approved. When the Army saw this, they scheduled Mark to be discharged two weeks early so he could begin the fall semester at Aurora College on time.

To put this plan into place, Mark departed Vietnam on August 8, 1968, returning safely to the United States in San Francisco. He was honorably discharged as a Specialist 4 (E-4) two days later, on August 10, giving him just enough time to return to Aurora College in Illinois to begin classes. This time, he had over $2000 in savings from his time in the Army and his GI Bill benefits to help offset the costs of attendance. He also returned part time to his cement contractor construction work, eventually partnering with a friend to start their own company.

In 1976, Mark attended a party his mother threw for an exchange student she was hosting from Japan. Across the living room, Mark saw a pretty girl, Linda Nease, standing in between her mother and father. He summoned up his courage and, with Linda’s mother and father listening to every word, he asked Linda if she would go out with him. Linda’s mother fully supported Mark’s request because she approved of Mark’s family. Linda’s father did not because Mark was twenty-nine and Linda was just nineteen. Linda’s father had the final word that night, but Mark did not give up. He called the director of nursing at the hospital where Linda worked and left a message asking for Linda to give him a call. She did and the two began to date.  

Mark’s work commitments made earning his college degree difficult. In pursuit of needed academic flexibility, he enrolled in a number of programs, including at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, and Control Data Institute, before he finally graduated from Aurora College with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1978. Two years later, an even more significant event occurred – he married Linda Nease. In 1994, they moved to Palm Harbor, Florida, after realizing the Sunshine State’s climate would be a better fit for Mark’s concrete construction business. They also started a home inspection business, with Mark conducting the inspections, although he occasionally employed other trained home inspectors to assist him. Linda ran the business, so she could be there for their growing daughter and son and all their activities and schooling. They finally retired in 2015 but still keep busy with their two children and six grandchildren, who all live nearby. Mark also continues to deal with the fallout from exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Specialist 4 Mark Myers, U.S. Army, for his distinguished service during the Vietnam War. Drafted in 1966, Mark challenged himself as a medic, a paratrooper, and an infantryman, doing whatever it took to allow him to serve in Vietnam. Once there, he performed his duties under fire with courage and commitment, patrolling the jungles of Vietnam in search of a determined foe. For all he has done, and for the effects of the war he continues to endure, we thank him for his service and wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed Mark’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Mark and Linda Myers

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SK2 Donald A. Chivas, U.S. Navy – Father Knows Best

Since time immemorial, children grow up and leave their parents, seeking to chart their own way. For most, that means learning life’s lessons the hard way as they find it difficult to accept their parents’ advice, even though their parents walked in their shoes not so many years before. Storekeeper Second Class Donald A. Chivas, U.S. Navy, bucked the trend and listened to his father, realizing his father’s wisdom could help him navigate a pivotal fork in the road. The result changed Don’s life forever. This is his story.

Don’s father, Norman Chivas, served in the U.S. Army and fought in France during World War II. After the war, he took a job in the maintenance department at a hospital in Detroit. There he met a medical technician, Shirley Myers, who also worked at the hospital. They married and had three children including Don, who was born in April 1946.

When Don was in the third grade, the family moved to Naperville, Illinois, then a small suburb west of Chicago. Don attended Naperville public schools, enrolling in Naperville Community High School (now Naperville Central High School) as a freshman in 1960. He loved sports, and as a big kid, excelled at football, wrestling, and track field events like shotput and discuss. He also was an accomplished clarinetist, having chosen the instrument in middle school because the prettiest girl in his class played clarinet, too. He stuck with it all the way through high school, not only playing in his high school band, but also playing the bass clarinet as a member of the Naperville Municipal Band. As if sports and music weren’t enough, Don worked at the Container Corporation of America in the carton department, shaking printed sheets to help them dry and loading them onto pallets for shipment.

Don graduated from Naperville Central High School in the spring of 1964. In the fall he began classes at Wisconsin State University – Platteville studying mining engineering. He had a lot of fun in Platteville, perhaps a bit too much, because after three years, the university informed him he had not made sufficient progress to continue his studies. Dejected, he went home to tell his father he needed to find another career path.

Don’s father could see the writing on the wall. Every day the newspapers carried headlines from the Vietnam War and with Don no longer eligible for the college deferral from the draft, he knew Don would soon receive his draft notice. Having served in combat in France, he also knew what lay ahead for Don, so he encouraged Don to choose his own destiny by enlisting in the Navy before Uncle Sam chose it for him by drafting him into the Army or Marines.

Don heeded his father’s advice and marched to the nearest Navy recruiting center. When the Navy recruiter asked him what job he wanted to do, Don told him since he had three years of college in mining engineering, he wanted to be in the Navy Construction Battalion, better known as the Seabees. The recruiter said, “the Seabees it is” and Don signed the four-year enlistment contract on the spot. When he got home, his father was waiting for him waiving an envelope. Unbelievably, Don’s draft notice had arrived in the mail that same day. Had he not already enlisted, he would have been drafted into the Army or Marines and on his way to Vietnam.

When it came time to report to boot camp in September 1967, Don boarded a train for the short sixty-mile trip to Naval Training Center Great Lakes, just north of Chicago. As a big guy of over 200 pounds, Don really had to work at boot camp’s physical training, especially running because he could not run far or fast. What he could do was play the clarinet, qualifying him for the recruit band. This allowed him to trade the two-week service portion of his training for time in the band, which he really enjoyed.

USS Sabine (AO-25) – Source: U.S. Navy

Boot camp lasted eight weeks and then it was time for Don’s first assignment. Instead of the Seabees as the recruiter promised, Don received orders to report to the USS Sabine (AO-25), a World War II oiler commissioned in December 1940 and homeported in Mayport, Florida. The Sabine had a storied past, including serving in the task force that launched the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942. Don arrived onboard as an undesignated seaman, meaning he didn’t yet have any job specialty and would have to find one after he gained experience as a sailor. Like most undesignated seamen, he was assigned to the deck department, working hard with other new sailors to maintain the ship and its deck equipment and lifeboats. Deck maintenance work was never ending on Sabine, not only because the ship was nearly thirty years old, but also because of its constant exposure to salt water. Without proper maintenance, the ship would succumb to rust and corrosion. As a result, Don spent his time chipping off old paint from the hull and deck and repainting the surfaces to protect them from the elements.

Don also learned basic seamanship skills each time the Sabine got underway off the east coast of the United States. When the ship conducted gunfire exercises, Don and the other new sailors in the deck department went outside to watch the ship’s big 5-inch/38-calibre guns fire away. The noise was so loud, though, it continues to affect his hearing to this day. Looking back, Don wishes the Navy had provided him and his fellow sailors with hearing protection, both during his time onboard Sabine and subsequently during the small arms training he received, so he would not now be suffering from impaired hearing. 

During one underway period in August 1968, the Sabine crossed the equator heading southward for a port call in Rio de Janeiro. Because crossing the equator is a significant event in any sailor’s career, Don participated in the traditional “Crossing the Line” ceremony, where uninitiated new sailors like Don, referred to as “pollywogs”, become experienced “shellbacks”. Don earned his “shellback” status after completing the ceremony and then had a great time in Rio, although he was disappointed to learn he could not practice the Spanish he had learned in school because the people in Brazil spoke Portuguese.

By the fall of 1968, the Sabine had reached the end of her illustrious career. In October, she sailed from Mayport to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to be decommissioned. This was a busy time for Don, as he and the other members of the deck department had to unload essentially everything from the ship that wasn’t welded in place so the ship could be mothballed. The work was grueling even for someone as big and strong as Don, and he injured himself carrying fifty-pound CO2 canisters off the ship. After two-weeks bed rest, he was back in action to finish the job. The Sabine’s last chapter closed on February 20, 1969, with the ship’s decommissioning.

USS Suribachi (AE-21) – Source: U.S. Navy

Once his work on Sabine was complete, Don reported to another ship homeported in Mayport, the USS Suribachi (AE-21). The Suribachi’s mission was to keep the Navy supplied with ammunition anywhere in the world. Just as he had done on the Sabine, Don started working in the deck department. However, after some time onboard, he met a Second Class Storekeeper (abbreviated SK2) working in the ship’s supply department. The Petty Officer told Don he would make a good SK and Don agreed, so he began “striking” to become an SK. Don was a natural for the SK job field, referred to as a “rating”, especially because his aunt had taught him how to type. That meant he could prepare requisitions and inventory records without having to hunt and peck for the right keys on the typewriter. He did so well, he promoted to SK3 (Storekeeper Third Class) while onboard the Suribachi. 

Although the Suribachi was homeported in Mayport, it spent most of the first four months of 1969 in Mobile, Alabama, in overhaul, including some drydock time. The ship finally came out of the yards in May. Over the next few months, Don spent time underway in preparation for the ship’s upcoming December deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. The underway periods allowed Don to gain valuable experience as a Storekeeper and to visit places like New York City, Philadelphia, Ocho Rios Jamaica, and Guantanamo Bay Cuba, when the Suribachi pulled into port. He especially enjoyed Guantanamo Bay because he was able to visit a high school friend stationed there.

As the time for Suribachi’s Mediterranean deployment drew near, the ship’s captain received notice that the Navy needed him to release four sailors for duty in Vietnam. To Don’s surprise, his name was on the list. That meant instead of deploying to the Mediterranean Sea in December with the rest of the crew, Don headed to Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for survival training and physical conditioning. He also spent time in the classroom and trained on weapons to ensure he was prepared for his new assignment in a war zone.

Don completed his training at Little Creek in January 1970 and boarded a military flight to San Francisco. Another military flight took him from there to Saigon, where he arrived on February 4, 1970. He had been told because he had three years of college, he might be assigned to Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s staff at Naval Forces Vietnam, which commanded a fleet of Navy swift boats operating along the coast and on the rivers in South Vietnam. Instead, he was issued an M16 without ammunition and sent to the Navy base at An Thoi on Phu Quoc Island off South Vietnam’s southwest coast in the Gulf of Thailand.

Don worked on a non-self-propelled barracks barge called Auxiliary Personnel Lighter Thirty (APL-30) which was tied up to the piers at the Navy base. The barge’s mission was to provide berthing and meals for the crews of the coastal swift boats, known as Patrol Craft Fast or “PCFs”, that operated from there. The PCFs departed each day on their missions patrolling the Vietnamese coast and then tied up to the barge at night so the crews could get a hot meal and bed down for the evening. Don, who was now a Storekeeper Second Class (SK2), was responsible for keeping the barge and the PCFs supplied with the food and other supplies they needed to get their jobs done. He even arranged for some movies to be shown to the PCF crews in the evenings after they returned from their missions. As he had seen the PCFs come back with bullet holes in them and evidence of American casualties, he knew just how important it was to support the sailors taking the fight to the enemy.

Coastal swift boats weren’t the only forces operating out of An Thoi; U.S. helicopters did so as well because the base had a 4,000-foot asphalt runway. Occasionally, the aircrews offered Don a ride and he got to fly on their missions. The rides provided a break from Don’s normal routine, but sometimes they proved a little too exciting if the helicopter got tasked with rocketing a Viet Cong target.

Part way through Don’s assignment, the Navy turned over responsibility for the coastal patrols to the South Vietnamese. Rather than turning over Don’s barracks barge as well, the Navy towed it to the swift boat base at Cat Lo, located sixty miles from Saigon on Vietnam’s southeast coast. Don performed the same support functions at Cat Lo that he did at Phu Quoc, except now the crews he assisted belonged to riverine patrol boats. These boats patrolled the Mekong River Delta to disrupt Viet Cong operations and frequently came under enemy fire.

Don’s one year tour in Vietnam ended in February 1971. He departed just as he had arrived, on a flight out of Saigon. As he prepared to board the plane, he mentally said goodbye to Vice Admiral Zumwalt, whom he never got to meet during his tour. Then he flew back to San Francisco and prepared to serve his final six months in the Navy.

When Don had six months left to serve of his four-year enlistment, the Navy offered him an early out option which he readily accepted in March 1971. This worked out well because while he was in Vietnam, he had written Wisconsin State University – Platte and asked to be re-admitted now that he had a more mature outlook toward his studies and his future. The university granted his request, allowing him to enroll in the fall 1971 term. As he had before, Don pursued a degree in mining engineering.

Don and Ginny Chivas

This time, Don’s educational plans worked out. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Platte (the university had changed its name) in May 1976 with a Bachelor’s degree in Mining Engineering. Better still, he used his GI Bill benefits to pay for his education and continued in the Naval Reserve until he graduated. After graduation, he went to work for the AMAX Coal Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, as part of a survey crew. From there he went to the Manley Brothers sand company, helping process sand from the Lake Michigan coastline. He finally found the job he was looking for when he went to work for his father as a manufacturer’s representative selling metal detectors and other equipment to the food industry, certifying their equipment’s status, and even repairing their equipment in the field. He continued in this role until he finally retired in 2022.

The other post-Navy event of lasting significance in Don’s life was his marriage to Virginia Ann “Ginny” Wolf in 1981. They have one son and are enjoying retirement together in Naperville, as Ginny retired from the family’s business at the same time Don did. Now as Don looks back over his Navy service, he is thankful his father channeled him in the Navy’s direction before his draft notice arrived. His father’s advice truly shaped the rest of Don’s life.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Storekeeper Second Class Donald A. Chivas, U.S. Navy, for his distinguished service onboard two Navy warships and for his tour of duty in Vietnam. The hallmark of his efforts was his support to the fleet, always giving the warfighters what they needed to successfully carry out their missions. We thank him for all he has done and wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed Don’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Don Chivas

The post SK2 Donald A. Chivas, U.S. Navy – Father Knows Best first appeared on David E. Grogan.

STG2 David S. Fones, U.S. Navy – Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best

It’s easy to measure success in a basketball game or a race. Just look for the team with the most points or the runners with the fastest times. But what if your job is to be incredibly prepared for something you hope will never happen? Such was the case with Sonar Technician Second Class David S. Fones, U.S. Navy. He spent six years training to hunt and kill adversary submarines, ever vigilant and always ready to be called to action but hoping he never would be because it would mean the world was at war. Yet with all this responsibility, he always served as a positive ambassador for the United States in every foreign port his ships called. This is his story.

Dave was born into a family with a proud military heritage. Both of his grandfathers served in combat in Europe during World War I, while his father, Ted Fones, served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. He was a navigator on a bomber and flew twenty missions over Japan, serving as the lead navigator on seventeen of those missions. After the war, he used his GI Bill benefits to enroll in Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, a small city located about 170 miles southeast of Chicago, to study engineering.

One other thing Ted Fones did during the war was marry Melba Mae Simpson, his high school sweetheart. She worked as a switchboard operator for the local telephone company until Dave was born in August 1948. That meant Dave’s father had to get a job to support his growing family while still studying at Bradley, so he began working for Caterpillar Inc., a heavy equipment manufacturer headquartered in Peoria. Ultimately, he graduated with his engineering degree and rose to the level of Caterpillar’s Director of Research.

Dave’s parents sent him to Catholic schools, including his all-boy high school, Spalding Institute in downtown Peoria, where he began his freshman year in the fall of 1962. Although he ran varsity cross country, he loved playing pick-up basketball games and became quite good. His focus, though, was his grades and he excelled academically. So much so that after he graduated from Spalding Institute in June 1966, he enrolled in Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and began attending classes in the fall.

At Marquette, Dave got involved in Navy ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), a university-level training program designed to qualify participants to serve as commissioned officers in the U.S. Navy. One of the areas he learned about was anti-submarine warfare, which really interested him. This also caused him to think about how the Navy might help him pay for his college education. Because his father was an engineer with Caterpillar, Dave did not qualify for financial aid. That made paying for Dave’s education at a private university like Marquette a strain on the family’s finances, especially since Dave’s parents were still raising his younger brother and younger sister. Accordingly, Dave decided to enlist in the Navy after completing his first year at Marquette so he could use the GI Bill to pay for his education.

Dave followed through with his plan, enlisting for six years in September 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War. After passing his physical and swearing to support and defend the Constitution, he boarded a train in Bloomington-Normal and headed off to boot camp at Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, just north of Chicago. When he and the other new arrivals were divided into companies, Dave was surprised to hear the name of a grade school friend, Rick Heiser, assigned to his company, too. At least he would not be going through the boot camp ordeal alone.

Much to his surprise, Dave did not find boot camp difficult. He already had a crew cut, so the Navy barbers got little satisfaction from the buzz cut they gave him on the first day of training. He had also attended Catholic schools all his life, so it was easy for him to trade the shirt and tie he wore to school each day for a Navy uniform. His Catholic schooling also imbued in him the necessity of following rules, taking the shock of that aspect of boot camp away, too. Finally, he was in great shape and a good swimmer, so he had no problems with the physical training. All this translated into a successful boot camp experience.

Boredom proved to be Dave’s biggest challenge. He found the military adage “hurry up and wait” to be true because in between training activities, he and the other recruits had nothing to do. To remedy this, Dave sent his parents a letter asking them to send him paperback books he could tuck into the back pocket of his dungarees. Then when his company had to sit around and wait, he could pull out a book and read. The solution worked so well Dave vowed he would never be bored again. For the rest of his time in the Navy, he kept a book in his back pocket to call upon when things got slow. Other things that kept Dave from getting bored at boot camp included winning the recruit basketball tournament with his company and standing watch outside in the cold guarding a garbage dumpster to keep enemy spies from stealing anything from it (or so the watchstanders joked among themselves).

Seaman Apprentice Dave Fones

After Dave graduated from boot camp in the late fall of 1967, the Navy put him on the path to becoming a Sonar Technician (abbreviated “STG” for Sonar Technicians serving on surface ships). His first stop was basic electronics “A” school, also located on board Naval Station Great Lakes. Once he had basics down, he transferred to Naval Station Key West in Florida to attend “B” and “C” schools, where he learned how to listen for, identify, and track submerged enemy submarines using sophisticated sonar equipment. He also learned how to program, maintain, repair, and operate a bulky fire control computer to calculate the firing solutions his ship needed to launch weapons to destroy any enemy submarines lurking nearby. Dave described his job as always being ready for the worst in case he was called upon to locate and destroy enemy submarines, but hoping for the best and that war would never come.

As a tropical paradise, Key West offered distractions from the weighty training Dave engaged in during the normal workweek. On weekends when they had liberty, Dave and a friend explored the warm waters of the Caribbean searching for Langosta “spiny” lobsters. They took their catch to the Enlisted Club on base and the cooks prepared the lobsters for free. Dave also played basketball, with his team winning the base championship, and he enjoyed swimming at the base pool at the end of the workday. Still, life at Key West wasn’t all training and fun, especially before the start of each school. During those interim periods Dave and the other sailors waiting for classes to begin did janitorial work, mopping floors, stripping wax from the floors, and then rewaxing them. It was a small price to pay for living in Key West.

After graduating from Sonar Technician “C” school in the summer of 1968, Dave transferred to his first ship, the USS Robert H. McCard (DD-822), homeported in Charleston, South Carolina. The McCard was a destroyer commissioned in October 1946, a year after the end of World War II. Although it had been built at a time when German and Japanese submarines were the ship’s intended targets, McCard’s ability to detect and track Soviet submarines, and destroy them if necessary, made the ship a critical component of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Given Dave’s newly earned expertise in operating the sonar equipment underlying the ship’s warfighting capabilities, he immediately became an essential member of the ship’s crew.

Dave reported for duty on the McCard’s quarterdeck around 3:00 a.m. The duty section checked him in and assigned him to the top rack in the corner of his new division’s berthing spaces. Because it was so early in the morning, no one in his division knew he was there so they did not wake him up in the morning. He woke up later on his own, feeling very seasick. He tried to find a head (the Navy’s term for a bathroom) but didn’t know where one was. He started to climb up a ladder to get out of the berthing compartment but threw up before he could leave. At that point he decided the best thing he could do was go back to his rack to sleep until he felt better. He was awakened not long after by a call reporting someone had thrown up on everyone’s clothes in a laundry basket. Just a few hours on board and he’d already left his mark.

Dave’s primary responsibility when he first reported onboard involved conducting preventive maintenance under the watchful eye of an experienced First Class Petty Officer (E-6). This meant performing certain daily, weekly, and monthly checks on the sonar and fire control systems to ensure they were always in working order and prepared for war. The experience he gained soon made him an expert on the ship’s sonar equipment and its Mark 114 underwater fire control system. In fact, Dave had enlisted for six years to obtain his advanced “B” school and “C” school training right after “A” school. Other new sailors in his division had enlisted for only four years, so they did not have the same advanced training. It was Dave’s job to train them to conduct the required preventive maintenance on all their gear.

The Navy tested Dave’s expertise when the Robert H. McCard left Charleston to participate in NATO exercise Silvertower in the North Atlantic during September and October 1968. The North Atlantic seas proved treacherous, battering Dave and the rest of McCard’s crew throughout the exercise. At one point, a helicopter approached the ship with supplies but had to turn away because it was too dangerous to attempt a transfer. The rough seas also made it difficult to keep the ship’s sonar equipment calibrated, requiring Dave to spend countless hours working to maintain its operational readiness. Even the ship itself was damaged, so at the end of the exercise, it had to put in at Portsmouth, England, for repairs. This worked to Dave’s advantage because as a reward for the work he’d done during the exercise, he was granted leave in London. While there he took in all the major sites, including the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square, as well as Lord Horatio Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, in Portsmouth harbor.

Dave returned to Charleston on the McCard, which then went into the shipyards for an overhaul from December 1968 to April 1969. While the ship was in the yards, the fire control computer Dave worked on had to be replaced. Given the computer’s mammoth size, shipyard workers had to cut a hole in the deck above the computer. Then a crane lowered four hooks at the end of wire ropes to connect to four big eye bolts on the top of the computer console. Dave labeled and disconnected all the computer’s wiring so it could be reconnected to the replacement unit. Finally, the crane hoisted the computer out of the ship and onto a waiting truck. The process was reversed when the replacement unit arrived a few days later.

After the yard period, the McCard began workups off the U.S. Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean in preparation for an upcoming deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. This training period gave Dave the opportunity to practice the sub hunting skills he’d learned at “C” School, including using his sonar equipment to listen for submerged U.S. submarines making practice attacks against U.S. Navy surface vessels. The job was part skill and part art, as Dave had to calibrate both the equipment and his ears to discern whether a submerged submarine was approaching his ship, departing the area, or heading on a parallel course. Then he worked closely with those manning the ship’s weapons – torpedoes and ASROCs (anti-submarine rockets) – to successfully simulate an attack on the submarine. Data extracted from the dummy weapons used in the simulation measured Dave’s success. In the event of war, his success would be measured instead by the lives he saved from an attack by an enemy sub.

Once McCard and her crew completed their training requirements in the Caribbean and made port calls at area islands for some much-needed stress relief, the ship returned to Charleston. Then, in September 1969, McCard got underway for a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea, where it conducted operations with the ships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

Dave and the McCard returned to Charleston on March 28, 1970, after completing their Mediterranean assignment. Later that year, the ship began the workup cycle again, training off the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean to prepare for yet another deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. This time, Dave and the ship left Charleston on April 15, 1971, and returned on October 16, 1971, completing Dave’s second sixth-month deployment in less than two years.

USS McCard (DD-822) in 1968. Source: Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

During both “Med” deployments, the McCard made port calls in various allied countries, demonstrating U.S. resolve and capability during some of the tensest times of the decades long Cold War. Two examples illustrate the roles Dave and the McCard played in what often turned out to be a cat-and-mouse game at sea.

On February 3, 1970, the McCard was operating together with the light cruiser USS Little Rock (CL-92), when the Little Rock made sonar contact with a suspected submarine. The McCard was called in to prosecute the contact, with Dave’s team of Sonar Technicians taking center stage. The McCard conducted a simulated attack on the submarine, using it as a training event to hone its sub hunting skills. The reality of the situation came to light when a submarine’s periscope was sighted nearby.

On another occasion, intelligence reports indicated the Russian helicopter carrier Moskva would soon emerge from the Black Sea through the Turkish Straits. McCard was given the task of trailing her in the Mediterranean until she was relieved by another ship to continue the trail. As the intelligence report did not indicate exactly when the Moskva would emerge, McCard took station off the coast of Turkey and waited. After about a week, the Moskva appeared, and McCard shadowed the Soviet ship at a safe distance. While Dave found this exciting at first, the excitement wore off quickly when McCard started to run out of fresh fruits and vegetables and other supplies. While McCard was supposed to be relieved by another Sixth Fleet ship, conducting a turnover rendezvous was difficult because only the Moskva new where she was going. Eventually the turnover occurred, but not before Dave and the rest of the crew had eaten mostly powdered eggs and “bug juice” (generic Kool-Aid) for days.

The best parts about Dave’s two deployments to the Mediterranean Sea were the port calls McCard made and the countries Dave got to visit. These included stops in Spain, France, Italy, and Greece, with each country’s culture and history being older than the last. Dave particularly enjoyed his time in Greece, where two events stand out.

The first involved an excursion to tour Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics in Greece. He rented a car to drive there himself, but missed a sign along the way telling him to turn right. After going some distance in the wrong direction across paved, then cinder, and then dirt roads, he came upon a family spreading grapes from their farm onto tarps to let the sun turn them into raisins, their primary cash crop. He got out of his car and asked the family if they could show him how to get to Olympia. The father of the family smiled – he had been a merchant seaman and not only spoke some English but had worked with Americans before. Plus, he saw this as an opportunity for his teenage daughter to practice the English she was learning in school with a real American. “Of course,” he said, “but you must stay and have dinner first.”

Thinking this would be a memorable experience, Dave returned with the family to their home, a small adobe hut with an awning covering an open front porch. Inside the hut was the kitchen and the place the family’s children slept, while the farmer and his wife slept on a brass bed on the open-air porch.

To prepare for dinner, the farmer sent his son and Dave to the nearby river to catch some fish and to bring back two beers he kept cool in the river. When they returned, they found the farmer’s wife preparing a fresh chicken. Dave ended up having a wonderful dinner with the family, experiencing Greek life in a way he never expected. When Dave was finally ready to go, he thanked the family and asked how to get to Olympia. The farmer replied they would get him on his way, but not until the next morning. That night, the farmer gave Dave the brass bed under the awning on the open-air porch, while the farmer and his wife slept inside with their children. The next day, they sent Dave off in the right direction after Dave bought them breakfast and said goodbye. He continued to correspond with the family for years afterwards.

The second experience involved a trip Dave made to the southernmost point on Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. After touring the ancient Greek amphitheater in Epidaurus, he arrived in a coastal town around 9:00 p.m. to check into a family-run hotel where he had made reservations. He found the front desk manned by a teenage boy who told him they thought he wasn’t coming because it was late, so they had given his room away. Dave said he understood and left to find another room in town. As he started to drive slowly through the town’s streets, he saw a commotion in the rear-view mirror and children running after him. He circled back to see what was going on and learned the town’s families were arguing about who would get to host the tall American visitor. Needless to say, Dave had no trouble finding a place to stay that night.

Both these experiences occurred because of Dave’s approach to port visits. Using travel guidebooks he’d acquired along the way, he planned each visit to take advantage of every opportunity a country had to offer. He especially loved meeting local people and learning about their culture. For these two reasons, he considers his Greek experiences priceless.

USS Fiske (DD-842). Source: Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

After returning from his second deployment, Dave transferred from the USS Robert H. McCard to another Gearing class destroyer, the USS Fiske (DD-842). This meant moving north because the Fiske was homeported in Newport, Rhode Island. Dave’s duties onboard were essentially the same as those onboard the McCard, although now he was an experienced Sonar Technician Second Class (STG2). His expertise, however, extended well beyond sonar. The Fiske’s commanding officer recognized this by presenting Dave with a letter of commendation for the many hours he put in as a member of the ship’s ASROC handling team preparing the ship for its nuclear weapons acceptance inspection at the end of 1972.

Dave did one deployment onboard the Fiske, which began in January 1973. The ship was initially headed for the coast of Vietnam, but when it was announced on January 27, 1973, that all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam within sixty days, the ship’s mission changed. Instead, after crossing the equator in the Atlantic Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, the ship headed north through the Indian Ocean to Pakistan.

During this cruise, the Fiske made two port visits that are especially memorable for Dave. The first was in Mombasa Kenya, where Dave finagled two weeks leave. Normally, leave for such a long period during a deployment was impossible, but the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) had recently released a memo saying too many sailors were being discharged with large leave balances, requiring the Navy to pay them for their unused leave on their way out. As Dave was scheduled to be discharged as soon as the ship returned to Newport, Rhode Island, and had a large leave balance on the books, he submitted the CNO’s memo with his third leave request, the first two having been denied. He was subsequently told to report to the captain’s office, where both the captain and the executive officer grilled him about his plans. Finally, they asked “what are you going to do if the ship’s schedule changes and you can’t get back to the ship before we pull out of port?” Ready for the question, Dave produced his credit card and said he could make the necessary travel arrangements to rejoin the ship later. Satisfied Dave had a plan and could handle himself, they approved Dave’s leave.

Dave’s photo of an elephant charging his vehicle during his safari in Kenya

As a result of his persistence and planning, Dave spent two exciting weeks in Kenya. He started by taking a taxi with five other people to Nairobi, located 300 miles away. During the drive, he sat next to a professional photographer, who told him how to take pictures of animals in the wild. Dave put the lessons to good use during a safari, where he saw and photographed elephants, lions, giraffes, cheetahs, and zebras. One of the cheetahs even posed by laying on the hood of his Land Rover, apparently enjoying the engine’s warmth. Dave also saw lion cubs playing under the watchful eye of their mother and an alligator sunning himself on a flat rock. The alligator was invisible until his guide pointed it out and explained the danger alligators posed to villagers filling jugs of water along the river’s banks. In addition to the many photos he took, Dave hauled back to the ship a large shield and two spears he purchased in a remote village, all three items being used by young boys as part of their test to cross the bridge to manhood.

The other notable port call was in Massawa, Ethiopia (today Massawa is in Eritrea), where Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie came onboard the Fiske. The emperor inspected the crew while onboard, passing directly in front of Dave, who towered over him as the emperor was very small in stature.

The Fiske returned to its homeport in Newport, Rhode Island, in July 1973. By that time, Dave had less than ninety days to serve on his six-year enlistment, so he qualified for an early discharge. This he took in August 1973 after passing his discharge physical. He then loaded up his car and headed back to Peoria, Illinois.

Once back in Peoria, Dave used his GI Bill to pay for his college education, enrolling in Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. While there, he met a dormitory management assistant named Ari who had a Greek accent. Dave asked him where he was from and Ari replied the southern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece. When Dave asked what he did there, he said he worked at his family’s hotel. Then, by incredible coincidence, they realized Ari was the teenage boy who told Dave they had given away his room at the hotel when he arrived later than expected after visiting the amphitheater in Epidaurus.

Dave and Susie Fones

Dave met one other significant person at Illinois State, a graduate student named Susie. They fell in love and were married in 1977, the year after Dave earned bachelor’s degrees in Physical Education and Marketing Education. Since then, Dave has had a successful career in business and teaching, including coaching both tennis and basketball at the high school level. Moreover, he and Susie have two boys, one who followed in Dave’s footsteps by joining the military (Army) and the other who followed in Dave’s footsteps by becoming a teacher.

Dave and Susie are now retired, but Dave remains active, particularly in support groups helping people deal with serious health challenges similar to those he has experienced. In fact, Dave serves as an Ambassador for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, giving presentations to organizations about head and neck cancer to promote awareness and provide support for those suffering from the disease. In addition, he walks five miles every day and has covered 15,000 miles since he began in 2016 after his father died. He also speaks publicly about his military experience and that of his grandfathers, his father, and his son, reminding the public of what it means to serve.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Sonar Technician Second Class David S. Fones for his dedicated service in the Navy from 1967-1973. Sailing on two destroyers across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, he maintained constant readiness to protect the fleet from adversary submarines. He went wherever and whenever the Navy called, putting his civilian life on hold and serving as an outstanding ambassador for America in every country he visited. We thank him for all he has done and wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed Dave’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The post STG2 David S. Fones, U.S. Navy – Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best first appeared on David E. Grogan.

Sergeant Harold P. Jantz, U.S. Army – When Being Right Counts

Everyone understands soldiers follow orders. They must or their military organizations will devolve into chaos and fail. What makes the U.S. military unique, however, is it expects its soldiers to think and take the initiative, seizing opportunities that might otherwise be lost. Such was the case with Sergeant Harold P. Jantz, U.S. Army. When a far superior enemy force engaged his platoon during the Vietnam War, he charged into the fray and brought to bear the necessary firepower to defeat his foe. Without his quick thinking and forceful action, his entire platoon might have been destroyed. In the aftermath, he left no U.S. soldier behind. The events of that day were the defining moments of his life, molding him into the man he is today. This is his story.

Harold was born on Good Friday in April 1949 and spent his earliest years in North Merrick, a small town on Long Island, New York. He was one of six children and had four sisters and one brother. His father was a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Italy, while his uncle “Doc” Jantz fought with the 82nd Airborne Division across northern Europe. After the war, Harold’s father and many of his relatives worked for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation in Bethpage, providing his family with a solid middle-class income.

Harold’s high school graduation photo, June 1968

When Harold was seven, the family moved a short distance to Bellmore, Long Island, putting down permanent roots. Harold attended Bellmore Public Schools, including his first two years of high school at Wellington C. Mepham High School. However, when the new John F. Kennedy High School opened its doors in September 1966, Harold transferred there to complete his last two years. He was an outstanding athlete, having played baseball, football, and wrestling at Mepham, but he especially excelled at football. His football coach at John F. Kennedy High School immediately recognized his athletic ability and leadership skills and made him the team captain for both his junior and senior years. Harold reciprocated by fully committing to football and dropping the other two sports.

Football wasn’t his only love in high school. During his junior year, he met Valerie Dvorak, who was one year behind him, and they began to date. Their relationship was straight out of a high school storybook – the football captain dating the prettiest girl on the school’s “kickline team”. They dated all through high school and continued even after Harold graduated in June of 1968.

With his diploma now in hand, Harold followed in his father’s footsteps and started working at Grumman. Defense contractors like Grumman needed lots of workers to keep America’s fighting forces in Vietnam supplied. However, America’s need for soldiers trumped Grumman’s requirements, as Harold found out when he received his draft notice in early 1969.

On May 17, 1969, Harold reported for service as directed by his draft notice. He and the other draftees from his region traveled by bus to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, where they were sworn in as the newest members of the U.S. Army. They then boarded buses enroute to Newark International Airport, where they caught a flight to Columbia, South Carolina. When they arrived, they again boarded buses, this time headed for Fort Jackson and Basic Training.

Harold’s induction into the U.S. Army began in earnest at Fort Jackson. He joined a host of other draftees in an in-processing assembly line that continued for three days. At one point early on, he waited in line in his civilian clothes to enter a building. When he emerged from the building at the other end, he was wearing an Army uniform and carrying a duffle bag full of gear. His civilian clothes, and his civilian life, were things of the past.

After in-processing, the real Basic Training began. Harold and his fellow draftees moved to worn out, beat up, World War II era barracks in an area known as “the hill”. They trained there during May, June, and part of July, baking in the South Carolina sun. Harold was assigned to Company C62, led by Sergeant Citron from Panama, who despite being only about 5’2”, was “tough as nails”. Word was he’d had two tours in Vietnam. If that wasn’t enough, he was also the Army’s lightweight boxing champion. He made it clear no one should mess with him and no one did because everyone was afraid of him. He also told them they were going to Vietnam, and he was going to make sure they were ready.

Sergeant Citron made good on his promise. Sometimes he would wake up Harold’s company in the middle of the night and have them “low crawl” under the nasty vermin and spider-infested area under the barracks. He drilled into them they had to be prepared for anything and that they could not afford to hesitate because doing so might cost them their lives. He also assigned the men KP (“kitchen police”) to teach them to follow orders, but for Harold, he reserved an especially monotonous task – cleaning weapons in the armory, day in and day out. Surprisingly, Harold appreciated the assignment. He became an expert in disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the M16 and other weapons like the M60 machine gun. He learned which parts failed frequently and what spare parts he needed to carry to repair his weapon in the field. A year later, Harold wrote Sergeant Citron, thanking him. He told him his experience in the armory really helped prepare him for combat in Vietnam.

Overall, Harold had a positive experience at Basic Training. Having been an excellent athlete in high school, he adapted well to the physical training. He also enjoyed meeting and working with the other draftees, who came from all walks of life and all regions of the United States. His company bonded well together, helping each other get through the ordeal.

Harold graduated from Basic Training in July 1969, but his training at Fort Jackson wasn’t over. His next stop was Advanced Infantry Training (AIT). There he became proficient with the M16 rifle, the M60 and .50 caliber machine guns, and hand grenades, and learned how to operate as part of an infantry unit in the field. He also moved into a newer and more comfortable barracks than the one he lived in during Basic Training, but his instructors still enforced strict discipline. Harold and everyone else knew their next assignment was Vietnam, so they took their training seriously. Their lives literally depended on it.

Harold at graduation from Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) in September 1969

Harold completed AIT in early September 1969 and returned home to Bellmore on thirty days leave. To keep his mother from worrying, he told her the Army was sending him to Germany, a very believable scenario given U.S. commitments to NATO and the ongoing Cold War with the Soviet Union. His father wasn’t fooled. He knew Harold was going to Vietnam. He played along anyway, allowing Harold to have an enjoyable visit.

Harold said goodbye to his family and flew to Oakland Army Base in Oakland, California, on October 4, 1969. There he exchanged all his existing gear for new jungle gear, which he packed in his duffel bag for his flight to Vietnam. When his name was called, he took a bus to Travis Air Force Base, then boarded a charter flight to Japan. He changed planes in Japan and flew to the U.S. Air Base at Bien Hoa, located about sixteen miles northeast of Saigon, arriving on October 6, 1969. His tour in Vietnam had officially begun.

As if being sent halfway around the world to fight in a war wasn’t stressful enough for a twenty-year-old, Harold and most of the other young men on the plane had to do it alone. That is, they weren’t part of a unit that had trained together, bonded together, and then deployed to the war together. Instead, they were replacement soldiers, filling in at a unit for someone who had either gone home at the end of their one-year tour of duty or who had been wounded or killed in action. So, as Harold disembarked the plane at Bien Hoa, he had no idea where he was going or what he would be doing. He simply went where he was told and hoped he would fit in.

Along with the other newly arriving replacement soldiers, Harold boarded a “deuce-and-a-half” truck for the four-and-a-half-mile trip to Long Binh, the Army’s largest installation in South Vietnam. He checked in with the 90th Replacement Battalion, which would tell him where he would be assigned. That meant waiting a couple of days until they called his name and announced his assignment. When he finally heard his name, he learned he’d been assigned to the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), known as the “Redcatchers” because their primary mission was finding and destroying Communist forces in Vietnam.

Harold reported to the 199th’s headquarters unit at Long Binh for in-processing. There he had to turn in all the jungle gear issued to him at Oakland Army Base. In return, he received yet another set of jungle gear. At the end of about three days, just long enough for Harold to start to acclimate to the weather, the 199th issued him his M16, his allotment of ammunition, and a knapsack filled with field supplies. They then put him in a helicopter to Fire Base Mace, located at the foot of Signal Mountain, about forty miles east of Saigon in an area permeated by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong activity. Signal Mountain was so named because of the important U.S. communications facilities at the top, making it the target of frequent enemy attacks. Part of the mission of the forces occupying Fire Base Mace was to make sure those enemy attacks never succeeded.

Once at Fire Base Mace, Harold learned he would be joining the 1st platoon of Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, of the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), which was currently conducting operations in the field. Armed and ready, Harold boarded a helicopter, which ferried him to a landing zone (LZ) in the jungle. To his surprise, his new platoon was engaged in a firefight, which he was now expected to jump into after only a few days in country and having never even met anyone he would be fighting alongside. He felt sheer terror as he disembarked the helicopter and joined in the engagement. Once he survived that experience, fear completely left him. For the rest of his time in Vietnam, he was afraid of nothing, because in his mind, nothing could ever be as terrifying as his first encounter with enemy fire.

PFC Lynwood Thornton (left) and PFC Harold Jantz (right) with a radio on the ground between them

After the firefight, Harold got to meet the men in his unit. His lieutenant, Roger Soiset, was from Georgia and a graduate of The Citadel, a prestigious military academy in South Carolina. As the lieutenant had a thick Georgia accent which was hard to understand on the radio, and as Harold had an equally thick New York accent that was easier to understand, Lieutenant Soiset immediately designated him his new radio telephone operator, or “RTO”. This meant in addition to carrying his weapon and his personal gear, Harold had to carry a twenty-five-pound radio on his back together with a supply of batteries. It also made him a priority target for the enemy because if they could kill a unit’s RTO, they could more easily isolate and destroy the unit. When Harold said he had no idea how to operate the radio, the lieutenant replied, “You’ll learn.” From that point on, Harold was the RTO for the platoon’s first squad, while Private First Class Lynwood Thornton served as the RTO for the platoon’s second squad.

For the first three months of Harold’s assignment, his platoon operated out of Fire Base Mace. Their primary responsibility was to patrol in the vicinity of the Fire Base to locate and destroy enemy forces. Patrols lasted anywhere from three to ten days, depending upon the specific mission. Since a patrol involved the platoon trekking through the jungle on its own, the men had to carry everything they needed with them, including food, water, and ammunition. As there was no way they could carry enough supplies for the longer patrols, helicopters had to resupply them at designated LZs. If no LZ was readily accessible, the choppers dropped the supplies in the platoon’s vicinity, hoping enemy soldiers wouldn’t find them first.

During the dry months, water in particular, was a problem, because the streambeds ran dry, robbing the platoon of a ready source of drinking water. The solution involved helicopters dropping plastic mortar tubes filled with water to the thirsty soldiers. In contrast, during the monsoon season, water was not the issue – staying dry was. At times Harold stayed so wet his clothes literally started to rot off his back.

Eating in the field posed its own challenges. Harold and the others in his platoon packed and ate “C” rations while on patrol, which were canned foods that could be eaten hot or cold right out of the can. Harold took a photo of the label of one of the cans he was issued. It indicated it was canned it 1943, over twenty-five years before! Harold also sent a box top dated 1943 to his father, who was in the Army-Air Corps at the time, and told him he had forgotten to eat one.

When Harold wanted to heat his food or heat water for a cup of coffee, he didn’t use a Sterno can because those were just additional things he would need to carry. Instead, he rolled a small bead of C4 plastic explosive, which when lit burned with a hot blue flame. The trick was not to step on it to put out the flame, because it would blow up and cause serious injury. It simply had to burn itself out.

Harold (laying down) and other members of his platoon

Navigating through the jungle also proved a challenge, especially when the thick undergrowth made it impossible for the platoon members to see more than a few feet in any direction. Making matters more difficult, the only tools for navigation were compasses and maps, and a skilled point man who could count steps and keep the platoon headed in the right direction. Periodically, Harold called over the radio for a white phosphorous round, known as “Willie Pete”, to be fired at a known location so the platoon could confirm where it was. Sometimes even this proved difficult because radio signals had to be sent line of sight, which meant bouncing the signal off an Australian Cessna “Bird Dog” aircraft circling in the vicinity or climbing a tree with the radio to send and receive a signal.  

When the platoon identified where it would bed down for the evening, it had to ready its position in case of attack. This meant setting Claymore mines on nearby trails to prevent the Viet Cong from sneaking up on their camp at night, although sometimes they were roused by monkeys setting off the Claymore mines along the trail. Bravo Company headquarters also conducted hourly radio checks throughout the night to make sure the platoon was okay. Every hour, the call came over the radio, “Bravo Company, radio check.” Harold responded by clicking the microphone three times to signal all was well. He never responded verbally because doing so might give his position away if enemy forces were nearby.

To sleep at night in the jungle during the monsoon season, Harold and the other members of his platoon slung hammocks about a foot off the ground. That was just high enough to let the jungle’s snakes slither below them rather on the top of them. To stay dry, they covered themselves with their ponchos. Although this worked well, they still had to contend with giant centipedes and spiders with bodies the size of a closed fist. And while the snakes usually passed under the sleeping soldiers, if one did bite, they could prove deadly.

Sleeping wasn’t the only time Harold’s platoon had to contend with pests. After wading through rice paddies or streams, they often had to burn blood-sucking leaches off their bodies. And, after patrolling through the jungle’s underbrush, they had to check themselves carefully for ticks. On one occasion, they even heard tigers tracking them for several days.

After completing a patrol, the platoon returned to Fire Base Mace for a hot meal, a shower, a change of clothes, and a good night’s sleep. Then after a couple of days rest, and perhaps even a beer, the platoon would gear up and start on another patrol. It was a never-ending cycle.

On January 16, 1970, Harold’s platoon set out on another such patrol, this time in the Long Khanh Province, located about fifty miles northeast of Saigon. The platoon patrolled all day without incident. The next morning, a new lieutenant flew in by helicopter to join the platoon. He divided the platoon, sending one squad led by a sergeant in one direction, while he led the other squad in another direction. His intention was to search for the enemy in a cloverleaf pattern. Before Harold had walked 100 yards, firing erupted from the direction of the lieutenant’s squad. Harold, who was in the squad led by the sergeant, immediately tried to raise his counterpart, Private First Class Lynwood Thornton, on the radio, but received no response. He also did not hear the other squad’s M60 machine gun firing, so he knew there had to be trouble.

Harold talking on the radio in the jungle

Acting on instinct, Harold grabbed the platoon’s medic, Richard “Doc” Uhler, and ran with him toward the firing. As they ran, they could hear bullets whizzing by their heads amid the roar of other gunfire. Harold returned fire with his M16, while Doc ran with him toward the lieutenant’s squad. After crossing a dry creek bed, they found the other squad engaging a vastly superior enemy force defending a base camp and hospital complex. They could see Lynwood was dead and that the M60 machine gun operator, Private First Class James Thonen, was gravely wounded. Doc set about rendering aid to Private Thonen while Harold took to his radio to summon help.

Harold’s first call was for a medevac helicopter to transport Private Thonen to safety. The helicopter arrived quickly, but with no LZ available and a major firefight in progress, its only option was to extract Private Thonen using a jungle penetrator to hoist him to safety. As he was too badly wounded to make the trip by himself, his best friend, Private First Class Jim Lunde, went with him into the chopper. Private Thonen died in his friend’s arms once they made it onboard.

Back on the ground, Harold called for fire support. He asked for “the world”, which meant all available artillery and aircraft should pummel the enemy position. Soon thereafter, high explosive shells rained down on the enemy, while both the platoon’s squads continued to fire. Battered by the overwhelming U.S. firepower, the enemy retreated, leaving Harold’s platoon to regroup and return to base. Before doing so, the Bravo Company commander radioed Harold and told the platoon to head to the LZ. When Harold told him they had one soldier killed in action, the company commander told him to leave the body there and get the rest of the platoon to safety. They would go back and get the body later.

Recognizing the enemy had retreated and they were now relatively safe, Harold had no intention of leaving Private Thornton’s body behind. Not wanting to get the other members of the platoon in trouble for violating the company commander’s order, he picked up Lynwood’s body and began to carry it toward the LZ. When the other men asked what he was doing, he told them the situation. All agreed they needed to take Lynwood back and they fashioned a stretcher from bamboo poles and their ponchos. They then carried Lynwood to the LZ four kilometers away, where they were extracted by helicopter and returned to the base camp.

Once back at the base camp, the Bravo Company commander berated Harold for disobeying his direct order. He told Harold he gave that order to prevent the platoon from suffering any further casualties in an uncertain and fluid situation. Harold replied he was certain the engagement was over and that they could bring Lynwood’s body back safely, as they had. He added, “if it was your body out there, wouldn’t you want us to bring you back for your family?” The discussion ended.

Harold (right) talking on the radio while on patrol

In March 1970, Harold’s platoon operated closer to home out of Fire Base Mace. During this time, the North Vietnamese started to climb the back side of Signal Mountain, hoping to overrun the U.S. communications facility at the top. Harold’s platoon was part of the Army’s response, maneuvering around the mountain to stop the North Vietnamese before they reached the top. After searching for two days, they spotted North Vietnamese soldiers in the jungle ahead and took them under fire. Harold then called for artillery support at “plus 100”, which meant the artillery should direct its firepower at a location 100 yards in front of Harold’s platoon.

For some reason, the artillery fired at Harold’s position, rather than the “plus 100” as requested. Three men in the platoon were wounded, one seriously. Harold called for a medevac flight, but none were immediately available. The commander of the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), General William R. Bond, apparently overheard the request and dispatched his personal helicopter, which was brand new, to pick up the wounded soldiers. However, when the helicopter landed and the pilot saw all the blood, he said he could not transport the wounded because this was the general’s new helicopter.

When Harold heard this, he walked to where the pilot was sitting and brandished his M16. He told the pilot, “You’ve got no choice. You are taking these men.” The pilot looked at Harold and said, “Your serious, aren’t you?” He then allowed the wounded to be loaded and flew them to safety. Shortly thereafter, General Bond was killed by a sniper’s bullet while inspecting troops in the field about seventy miles northeast of Saigon. He was the fifth general officer killed in action during the Vietnam War, and the first and only commander of the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light) to die from enemy fire.

Around April 1970, Harold’s assignment changed from platoon RTO to company RTO, where he worked as the RTO for the Bravo Company commander. At that point, the company moved from Fire Base Mace to another fire base in the mountains. Then, in late April, Harold joined elements of the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light) as part of an incursion into Cambodia to stop the flow of enemy supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He later wrote his father and said he was in Cambodia, to which is father replied, “the news says there are no U.S. forces in Cambodia”. Not long thereafter the news changed, acknowledging U.S. forces had fought in Cambodia, and that the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light) was among them.

After Cambodia, Harold’s company passed through Fire Base Nancy, located in the Quang Tri Province in the far north of South Vietnam, just west of the city of Hue. By coincidence, Harold had a friend from Wellington C. Mepham High School, Pete Kuchar, who was assigned there, so he started to ask around to see if they could meet up. As luck would have it, Pete had left shortly before and would not be back before Harold had to depart. They would see each other again, though, as Pete ended up marrying Harold’s sister.

After Cambodia, Harold continued to progress, becoming the RTO for the 3rd Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bibb A. Underwood. He stayed in this position until near the end of his tour of duty in Vietnam. With two weeks left to go, he transferred back to Long Binh to await his flight. He also promoted to sergeant (E-5), just in time for his return to the United States.

Finally, after surviving a year of combat, Harold departed Vietnam on October 5, 1970, on a flight out of Bien Hoa Air Base. The North Vietnamese weren’t finished with him yet, though, as the plane was apparently hit during takeoff and had to make an emergency landing in Guam. After six hours in Guam, the plane took off again only to make another emergency landing in Alaska, where they waited for another twelve hours and a new plane to complete the final leg of the journey. They finally arrived safely at Travis Air Force Base and were transported by bus to Oakland Army Base for processing. Harold’s tour in Vietnam was officially over.

Harold and Valerie at JFK Airport on October 6, 1970 – the day Harold arrived home from Vietnam

Once at Oakland Army Base, Harold was issued his Army dress green uniform adorned with his new sergeant stripes. He also received his ceremonial steak dinner for having survived his tour but jokes it very well may have been horse meat rather than steak. Whatever it was, it tasted better than anything he’d eaten in Vietnam. After completing his processing, he boarded a commercial flight in San Francisco and flew to New York’s JFK International Airport, where his high school sweetheart, Valerie, waited for him. He was finally home.

The town of Bellmore welcomed Harold with open arms. Every house on his street flew the American flag in recognition of his safe return. No one, however, asked him about his experience. In fact, his father had warned his siblings not to ask about it, so they never did. As a result, Harold never talked about it and tried to put his experience behind him.

Before he could do that, he had to finish his obligated service to the Army. Because he had more than ninety days left on his two-year commitment, the Army sent him to Fort Meade, Maryland, along with thousands of other soldiers who had served in Vietnam, to serve out their remaining time. As a sergeant, Harold had to stand duty at night, dealing with soldiers who’d gotten themselves into trouble. Recognizing they had just returned from Vietnam, he just made sure they got back to their barracks safely. He wasn’t about to cause problems for anyone who had just been through what he’d been through.

In March 1971, Harold came within ninety days of the end of his obligated service and qualified for an early discharge. With his honorable discharge in hand, he used his GI Bill benefits to enroll at Long Island Tech and pursued a two-year degree in architectural engineering. A professor at the school helped him get a job at a millwork shop, where he became a millwork draftsman. Over time, he honed his skills in construction, working as an independent millwork contractor, starting with small office buildings and eventually working his way into high rise contracts for buildings in Manhattan. He always prided himself in getting jobs done on time and on budget.

Harold and Valerie Jantz on their 50th wedding anniversary

As for his personal life, Harold married Valerie in 1973. They have three sons, and so far, six grandchildren. Harold attributes his survival after the Vietnam War directly to his family, but especially to Valerie, who stuck with him and helped him get through some difficult times. Despite trying hard to bury his Vietnam experience, he lived with it every day, and continues to do so today. However, in 2019, an event happened that helped bring some peace to Harold, so many years after his experiences in Vietnam.

On July 10, 2019, Senator Lindsey Graham presented Harold with the Bronze Star with “V” for valor for his heroic actions on January 17, 1970. The award had been approved by the Secretary of the Army in May, forty-nine years after the events giving rise to the award transpired. In addition, the Secretary of the Army also approved the Bronze Star posthumously for Private First Class Lynwood Thornton. Lynwood’s award was presented to his family in Thomasville, Georgia, and Harold, Lieutenant Soiset, Doc Uhler, and Robert Kenney, attended the ceremony. There they were able to answer many questions Lynwood’s family had about his death, bringing a degree closure for everyone.

Now fully retired, Harold and Valerie enjoy spending time with their family and friends, but especially their grandchildren. Harold also remains active in American Legion Post 269 and VFW Post 2913, both in Patchogue, New York. And he continues to get together with Lieutenant Roger Soiset, Doc Uhler, Robert Kenney, and other members from Bravo Company of the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), as they work through the events that took place all those years ago.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Sergeant Harold P. Jantz, U.S. Army, for his service during the Vietnam War and his bravery under fire. He rose to the occasion when his platoon needed him most, calling in fire support that likely saved everyone’s lives. He then ensured his fallen brother was not left behind. All we can do is thank him for upholding the honor of those who serve in the U.S. military and wish him fair winds and following seas.

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The citation for Harold’s Bronze Star with “V” for valor

The post Sergeant Harold P. Jantz, U.S. Army – When Being Right Counts first appeared on David E. Grogan.

AD3 Ignacio Rodriguez, U.S. Navy – Hunting Hurricanes and Protecting Pilots

Those who come to America seeking a better life have a long and distinguished history of serving our country. Beginning with the Revolutionary War and continuing in every war since, immigrants have served in every branch of our Armed Forces, willingly putting their lives on the line for their adopted home. Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class Ignacio Rodriguez continued that proud tradition, enlisting in the U.S. Navy in 1964. He flew as an aircrewman on EC-121 Super Constellations hunting hurricanes in the skies over the Western Pacific and operating out of Da Nang and Chu Lai during the Vietnam War. He earned his U.S. citizenship the hard way – by serving our country during time of war. This is his story.

Ignacio was born in Tanhuato, a small town in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. He lived with his mother, his two brothers, and his three sisters on their family farm, while his father worked in the steel mills in Chicago to earn money for the family. By the mid 1950s, his father had grown weary of the long trips to Mexico to visit his family and the even longer periods of separation they had to endure. So, when Ignacio was around ten years old, his father brought the entire family to the southeast side of Chicago to live with him permanently.

The family’s living arrangements were typical of the many Mexican, Serbian, Croatian, and Polish immigrants settling in Chicago’s southeast side. They moved into Ignacio’s aunt’s house, making for crowded living conditions. The men left the house early each morning, heading to their jobs at U.S. Steel. They worked hard and earned enough to provide for their families and live a middle-class life, but they were far from rich. Still, it was better than the life they had in Mexico, so they persevered, including with the requirements that they re-register as immigrants every year to maintain their legal status.

At first, the transition to America proved difficult for Ignacio. Although he had been in the third grade in Mexico, he was put into a remedial education class because he did not speak English. When the teacher saw how advanced he was in mathematics relative to the other children, including reciting his multiplication tables through twelve times twelve, she knew he didn’t belong there. Still, he had to learn English to advance, so his parents purchased books that helped him read, write, and learn to speak English, and made him practice with the books every day until he became fluent in his new language.

Ignacio’s parents also made sure he remained connected to his Mexican heritage. They still owned their farm in Tanhuato, where they raised cattle and horses and grew corn. They took Ignacio and his siblings back to Tanhuato every summer to work on the farm and maintain it. They saw the farm as a safety valve in case their American experiment ever failed. Sometimes, this meant staying in Mexico through the fall and having the children continue school there. Although this interrupted Ignacio’s schooling in the United States, it preserved his fluency in Spanish, making him completely bilingual.

Ignacio Rodriguez (left) standing with General William C. Westmoreland (middle), former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and Carlos Arambula (right), an Army Vietnam veteran, at the ten-year anniversary of the Chicago Vietnam Veterans Parade

When it came time for high school, Ignacio attended Chicago Vocational High School. He did well in school, although growing up in Chicago’s southeast side was tough. His neighborhood was very diverse, with people primarily from Mexico, Croatia, and Serbia, and Ignacio got along well with everyone. However, if he and his friends strayed from their neighborhood, things could be dangerous. He made it through, though, and as graduation neared, Ignacio’s father asked him what his career plans were. Having enjoyed high school, Ignacio responded he would like to pursue engineering. Then, one week before the graduation ceremony, Ignacio’s father was killed by an Illinois Central Railroad train when he was on his way home from a double shift at the steel mill.

Ignacio’s father’s death put the family into a tailspin. His mother was devastated, not only because she had lost her husband, but also because he was the family’s sole breadwinner. Normally, responsibility for the family would have shifted to Ignacio’s older brother, but he was in the Army and could not come home. Ignacio was next in line, but he had recently received his draft notice and had to report for duty in June after graduating from high school. As he had no choice, and the money he earned would help his mother, he reported as directed, just as the conflict in Vietnam was getting ready to turn into a full-scale American war.

Ignacio reported for the draft in June 1964 with a manila envelope containing his draft notice. It looked initially like he might be inducted into the Marines, but as he waited in line, he was approached by a Navy recruiter who asked him to take an aptitude test. Ignacio scored so high on the test, thanks to the education and training he received at Chicago Vocational High School, that the Navy recruiter guaranteed him in writing if he enlisted for six years, he would receive two years of nuclear power training and then serve on nuclear submarines for the remaining four years of his enlistment. The recruiter also promised him that immediately upon his discharge from the Navy, he would be swept up by Westinghouse to work in a nuclear power plant working for big money.

Ignacio was sold and he signed the enlistment contract on the spot. After swearing Ignacio in, the recruiter gave Ignacio the option of reporting for active duty later in the year, an option Ignacio appreciated because it would give him time to help his mother get back on her feet after his father’s death. He chose October 1964 as his report date and then returned home to get his family’s affairs in order.

In October, Ignacio reported for boot camp at Naval Training Center Great Lakes, just north of Chicago. He found boot camp challenging not because he couldn’t do what was required, but because he was “stubborn” and didn’t like to take orders. Despite this, his company commander saw Ignacio had the potential to be a strong leader, so he called Ignacio aside and told him he was choosing him to be the Recruit Petty Officer, or RPO. Ignacio asked what that was, and the company commander told him, “When I’m not here, you make sure everyone stays in line.” Then he added, “If they step out of line, you’ll pay for it.”

That was all the guidance Ignacio needed. He told the other recruits in his company, “If I’m going to get punished, so will everyone else. So, let’s get this done together or we’ll all end up suffering.” It worked and the company pulled together and made it through to graduation. Not only that, but they also earned the right to carry the efficiency flag, having achieved the highest overall average in all the areas of recruit competition.

Graduation proved bittersweet for Ignacio. Although he had successfully completed the Navy’s rigorous training and was now officially a Navy Airman (E-3), after the graduation parade, all the other new Navy sailors celebrated with their families and friends. Ignacio had no one to celebrate with – no one from his family had made the short trek from Chicago’s southeast side to the Naval Training Center on the north side. Instead, Ignacio sat alone with his sea bag, waiting for transportation to his follow-on training. Moreover, the follow-on training was not what he had been promised. Because he was not yet a U.S. citizen, he did not qualify for nuclear power school. Instead, he received his second choice – working on aircraft as an Aviation Machinist’s Mate, which the Navy abbreviated as “AD”.

In January 1965, Ignacio departed Recruit Training Center Great Lakes, boarded a train, and headed for Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington, Tennessee, to attend Aviation Machinist’s Mate “A” school. There he learned to perform routine aircraft maintenance, to prepare aircraft for flight, and to assist with handling aircraft on the ground. After completing his training at Millington, he transferred to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for advanced Aviation Machinist’s Mate training, where he learned to work on multi-engine aircraft, as well as on powerful single-engine tactical aircraft like the A-1E Skyraider.

Upon completion of the training in Corpus Christi in late 1965, he and six other newly qualified Aviation Machinist’s Mates received orders for their first permanent duty station in Alaska. Ignacio was unhappy about the orders and asked why he was being sent so far north. He was told they needed six airmen in Alaska and since he was from Chicago, they thought he would enjoy the cold weather. Ignacio explained that was definitely not the case, especially since he had grown up in the sub-tropical heat of Michoacán in southwest Mexico. Armed with this new information, the detailers served up a much more acceptable set of orders. Ignacio was headed to the tropical island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean.

Navy EC-121 Warning Star in flight

Ignacio reported to Airborne Early Warning Squadron ONE (VW-1) at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, in early 1966. The squadron flew the EC-121 “Warning Star”, the military version of Lockheed’s successful four-engine civilian airliner, the Super Constellation. The squadron’s mission was to search the skies of the Pacific for potential Soviet threats, and to fly weather reconnaissance missions tracking typhoons, earning them the designation as “Hurricane Hunters”.

When Ignacio first arrived, he was responsible for fueling the giant EC-121 aircraft, for checking their hydraulics systems for leaks, and for general aircraft maintenance, including monitoring repair logs to ensure scheduled maintenance was conducted on time. If planes were to be deployed when the scheduled maintenance came due, Ignacio would ensure the necessary parts were on hand to conduct the maintenance early rather than have a plane be designated as non-mission capable while deployed far from home. Once Ignacio and the other maintenance personnel completed the necessary maintenance, the Quality Control Chief checked their work to make sure it had been done correctly. Only then would the aircraft commander sign off on the repairs because the safety of the aircrew was at stake every time the airplane took off.

Ignacio soon learned unless he became aircrew qualified, he would spend his entire enlistment on the ground in Guam. However, if he qualified as an aircrew member, he would get to fly on the squadron’s missions as part of the planes’ aircrew. Accordingly, he applied for and was accepted into flight crew training. Topping that, he also applied for and became a U.S. citizen. He wore his Navy uniform during the ceremony, which the judge conducting the ceremony noted as he described what it meant to be a U.S. citizen.

Flight crew training meant going to Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) School in San Diego, California. There Ignacio learned what to expect if he was ever captured by enemy forces. He was treated like a POW, blindfolded, interrogated, allowed little to no sleep, and punished for made up infractions. While all this was going on, Ignacio and the other trainees had to avoid providing information to their captors that might prove harmful to their shipmates or the United States. The training felt real and was hard to endure, but Ignacio understood it was for his own good should the unthinkable ever occur.

After SERE School, Ignacio was sent to the Philippines for Jungle Environment Survival Training and then to Okinawa for Sea Survival Training. After completing all this training, he returned to Guam and joined Aircrew 6, one of VW-1’s twelve aircrews, each of which had approximately thirty-two men assigned. Occasionally, he would fly a mission with another aircrew if they were short a man. Some missions took off and landed in Guam, while others involved interim stops at airfields across the Pacific, including in Okinawa, Taiwan, Wake Island, Midway, and Thailand. When the plane landed at one of those destinations, Ignacio was responsible for making sure the plane was fueled and ready to go for the next leg of the mission.

Still wanting to do more, Ignacio qualified as an EC-121 Crew Chief. Everyone had a job to do on a mission, from flying the plane to monitoring radar and other electronics equipment in flight. The Crew Chief’s job was to make sure every crewmember had what they needed to get their job done. This could mean anything from getting food for someone who could not leave their station to covering for someone at a radar screen while they stepped away.

Two types of missions proved particularly dicey. When Ignacio’s plane was surveying a typhoon, it meant flying through the turbulent feeder bands into the eye of the storm, recording storm data, and then transmitting it to fleet units around the Pacific before making their way home. During such missions, the rides could be very rough, battering the aircraft and the crew for the hours it took to enter and exit the storm. During one such flight, Ignacio’s plane was tasked with a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission, to see if they could locate an Okinawan fishing boat lost somewhere in the storm. Miraculously, they found the boat in the eye of the storm and helped guide it back to safety. In August 1966 alone, Ignacio’s crew tracked six named storms.

Ignacio and Joyce Rodriguez in 1986

The other dangerous type of mission deployed Ignacio and Aircrew 6 into the middle of the Vietnam War. On such deployments, Ignacio’s plane would operate out of either Da Nang or Chu Lai in the Republic of South Vietnam. Because the big planes were obvious high-value targets for Viet Cong mortar and rocket attacks, immediately after they landed Ignacio began refueling and prepping the plane so it could take off on a moment’s notice. Missions originating in Da Nang and Chu Lai typically began at 5:00 p.m. and lasted all night, with the EC-121 flying at 25,000 feet on Yankee Station over the Gulf of Tonkin. The plane’s purpose was to track U.S. bomber and attack aircraft flying over North and South Vietnam and to help them avoid North Vietnamese air defenses, including surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Because U.S. carrier aircraft returned to their aircraft carriers at sea after an attack in North Vietnam, they headed away from the coast observing strict radio silence. If the radar observers on Ignacio’s plane could not confirm whether they were a U.S. aircraft or a North Vietnamese fighter heading towards them, the plane would have to take evasive action by diving from 25,000 feet to just above sea level until radio contact confirmed the approaching aircraft was friendly. These were tense times for everyone on board.

Not all of Aircrew 6’s missions were to Vietnam, allowing some time for fun. In fact, the crew, which consisted mainly of young men from seventeen into their early twenties, always carried their bathing suits in their flight bags because their destinations often included locations near pristine beaches. When crewmembers showed photos of the crew having a good time at the beach on Wake Island, others thought their lifestyle looked pretty good. Still, they were on the go all the time and the beach forays offered a brief escape from the serious business they were so often engaged in.

Ignacio continued flying with VW-1 until October 1968. At that point, he either had to reenlist or be discharged back to civilian life. He initially intended to reenlist as he thought he could get a follow-on assignment in Rota, Spain. However, his command made it clear, if he reenlisted, he would stay in Guam because he was too experienced to let go. Ignacio didn’t want that, not because he didn’t love what he was doing – he did. But his job at the squadron had become routine, with every day feeling like the day before. So, in October 1968, Ignacio was honorably discharged from the Navy and he returned to civilian life in Chicago.

The transition back to civilian life proved difficult. His family and friends were not supportive of his experience in the Vietnam War and none of them wanted to talk to him about it. Ignacio did want to talk, so he started getting together with a group of veterans from his neighborhood at a local park to discuss their experiences. This turned into a lifelong involvement in veterans’ organizations. He also earned a little extra spending money by maintaining his flight status through the Naval Reserves at Naval Air Station Glenview, Chanute Air Force Base, and Grissom Air Force Base, but the Reserve activities at these facilities soon closed leaving Ignacio with no alternatives.

The part of the transition that did go smoothly was Ignacio’s entrance into the civilian workforce. He initially took a job with Delta Airlines at O’Hare International Airport, but after four years of working on the flightline during Chicago’s grueling winters, he took a position with the City of Chicago maintaining vehicles and snow equipment. He retired from that position after thirty-five years.

Two other events took place in the 1980s that set Ignacio on a steady course. First, in 1985, the Windy City Veterans Association decided to hold what they hoped would be the biggest ever parade in honor of Vietnam veterans. Ignacio jumped into the planning effort with both feet, working on the committee that sent letters to veterans’ organizations across the country, and even to allied veterans in Australia. On the night before the parade, Ignacio and other members of the Windy City Veterans Association set out markers at Chicago’s Navy Pier to help organize the marchers. The next day, June 13, 1986, as the marchers began to assemble, Ignacio could not believe his eyes. Tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans arrived to participate from as far away as Australia, marching from Navy Pier, along Wacker Drive, down LaSalle Street, and on to Grant Park. An estimated 500,000 people lined the parade route, cheering the veterans on as they passed along the same streets where anti-war protests echoed less than two decades before. Construction workers and Chicago Policemen, many of whom had also served, joined the ranks of the marchers as the parade passed their worksites. Finally, all the Vietnam veterans came together in Grant Park, reuniting with friends, sharing experiences, and remembering lost comrades.

Ignacio Rodriguez (center) with Medal of Honor recipient Sammy Lee Davis (right) and John Steer (left), a decorated Vietnam veteran and former Army paratrooper

Ignacio marched in the parade carrying a POW flag on a bamboo pole. As he did, Medal of Honor recipient Sammy Lee Davis from Indiana took the flag and began waving it around. Ignacio met Sammy as a result, and they became lifelong friends. In all, the parade proved an emotional experience for Ignacio and many others, and something Ignacio is immensely proud to have been a part of.

Two years after the Chicago Veterans Parade, the second significant event of the decade occurred: Ignacio married his wife, Joyce. They have now been married over thirty-five years and are living happily together in retirement.

Ignacio continues to be heavily involved with his fellow veterans. He belongs to the Windy City Veterans Association, as well as American Legion Post 845 in Schererville, Indiana; Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 153; Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 6448 in Dyer, Indiana; and the Howard County Vietnam Veterans Organization in Kokomo, Indiana. And, because he suffers from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam, he is a member of the Disabled American Veterans of America Chapter 17 in Hammond, Indiana.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class Ignacio Rodriguez for his distinguished service in the U.S. Navy. Even before he became a U.S. citizen, he answered his new country’s call, flying airborne early warning missions in the Vietnam War and surveillance and weather missions across the Pacific Ocean. Since then, he has spent his life welcoming veterans home and serving his community through multiple veterans’ organizations. We thank him for his lifetime of service and wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed Ignacio’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story and a new podcast directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Ignacio and Joyce Rodriguez at the Kokomo Veterans Reunion

The post AD3 Ignacio Rodriguez, U.S. Navy – Hunting Hurricanes and Protecting Pilots first appeared on David E. Grogan.

Captain Jack E. Helmann, U.S. Navy: A Career on Navy Destroyers

Much has changed on Navy ships over the centuries – sail converted to steam, steel replaced wood, and missiles supplemented guns, just to name a few. Yet with all these changes, fundamental truths remain. Navy ships carry the U.S. flag to the four corners of the globe, serving as ambassadors in the countries they visit and as strong reminders of U.S. military power and resolve. Navy ships also require a team of special people pulling together to accomplish the ship’s mission, enduring the perils of the sea, long separations from family, and the risks associated with war. Captain Jack E. Helmann, U.S. Navy (Retired), knows these challenges all too well, having served on five Navy destroyers over the course of his twenty-four-year Navy career. He also knows the strains and responsibilities of command, having been the commanding officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Berkeley (DDG-15) for over two years. This is his story.

Jack was born and raised in Hardin, Montana, a small town located about seventeen miles from the Little Big Horn Battlefield, where General George Armstrong Custer made his famous last stand. Jack’s father was a jack-of-all-trades, doing carpentry, selling insurance, running a seed and feed store, and even building a 1,000-hen egg ranch, where Jack learned about hard work shoveling chicken manure as a boy. Jack’s mother was a schoolteacher who took a break from teaching while her three children were young. She returned to teaching after Jack’s brother, who was ten years younger than Jack, started school.

Jack attended Hardin public schools, including Hardin High School. He enjoyed sports and played football, basketball, and track, while still managing to do well in school. He graduated in June 1956 and enrolled in Montana State College in Bozeman in the fall. Again, he did well, graduating in June 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Attending college gave him a deferment from the peacetime draft, but as graduation neared, he knew he would have to give the Army two years of his life or find another service alternative. He initially looked at the Air Force, but because he wore glasses, the Air Force said no. He then visited the local Navy recruiter, who gave him a one-hour written exam. After scoring Jack’s exam, he simply told Jack “You’re in.”

Jack Helmann as an officer candidate in Newport, Rhode Island, in November 1960

Although it sounded like a done deal, Jack still had to pass a physical, which he flew to Seattle to take. After passing the physical, he returned to Hardin to do carpentry work until it came time to report to Officer Candidate School, or “OCS”, in Newport, Rhode Island. On his way to OCS, he ran into a high school buddy who was heading there, too. They were both assigned to Kilo Company, where they learned the basics of being a Navy officer, including engineering, navigation, weapons, damage control, and naval etiquette. He graduated twenty-third in his class in December 1960 as a newly commissioned ensign (O-1) in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He also received orders to join the crew of the USS Farragut (DLG-6), a brand-new guided missile destroyer leader just commissioned on December 10. He reported to the ship in December 1960.

In the spring of 1961, Jack got underway on USS Farragut from its homeport in Mayport, Florida, to conduct training in the Caribbean, including gunfire support training at the Culebra Island firing range, located about fifty miles from San Juan. The ship also made port calls to the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was sailing off the south coast of Cuba on April 17 when the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs occurred. USS Farragut was told to be ready to provide gunfire support when directed, but the order never came. Accordingly, the ship completed its training and returned to Mayport without incident.

Since Jack was the most junior officer on Farragut and had no prior Navy experience, he was assigned all sorts of odd jobs until he had been onboard six months. Then the ship sent him to Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) School to learn how to operate and manage Farragut’s ASW capabilities. When he returned, he became the ship’s ASW Officer, responsible for the ship’s team of skilled enlisted sonar operators whose mission it was to locate any submerged Soviet submarines that might be lurking in the vicinity.

By November 1961, USS Farragut was ready for her first cruise. She set sail from Mayport headed for northern Europe after a quick stop in Bermuda. The first stop was Portsmouth, England, where the ship spent a few days before heading to the crew’s favorite destination, Malmo, Sweden. There Farragut’s captain, Commander Roger Spreen, established three sections for the officers to rotate through: the duty section for those officers needed to keep the ship operational at all times; the liberty section for those officers who were free to enjoy all the city of Malmo had to offer; and the party section for those officers who would represent the ship at any official events in Malmo. Jack and the other officers fell in love with the city and its young ladies and hated to leave.

After Sweden, USS Farragut headed to Copenhagen, Denmark, and then to Hamburg, Germany, where the ship spent ten days. The stay in Hamburg was so long, and the sailors enjoyed it so much, that by the end, the crew had grown tired and was happy to stand watch on the ship rather than go ashore on liberty. Things got better during the next port call, which involved a return visit to Portsmouth, England, just in time for Christmas. A British ship hosted Farragut’s visit and the executive officer (XO) of the British ship invited Jack to his house to meet his family. Unfortunately, on Christmas Day, Jack had duty and had to stay on Farragut along with four or five other officers on duty. It turned out to be not so bad, though, because the commanding officer of the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal invited Jack and the other officers on duty to his ship for a drink or two (unlike U.S. Navy ships, Royal Navy ships serve alcohol onboard). After clearing the excursion with Captain Spreen, Jack and the rest of the officers in the duty section celebrated a little Christmas cheer together with Royal Navy officers onboard Ark Royal.

From Portsmouth, USS Farragut sailed to Lisbon, Portugal, and then to the Island of Minorca – the birthplace of Admiral David Farragut’s grandfather – in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain. Then it was time for Farragut to operate with the other ships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, which it did for the next two months. During this time, the ship made additional port calls in Naples and Sicily and stopped to drydock in Toulon, France. Finally, it came time to head back across the Atlantic to the ship’s homeport in Mayport, Florida, which proved exciting because the ship had to steam through a hurricane for twenty-four hours.

Jack grew in confidence and experience throughout the cruise, not only as the ship’s ASW Officer, but also on all the various aspects of seamanship new officers must master to operate a warship in combat, should the time come. Captain Spreen recognized Jack’s exceptional talents and one night, while Jack was on the bridge standing Junior Officer of the Watch, asked Jack if he had considered applying for the regular Navy. Before Jack could answer, Captain Spreen added, “If you don’t, I’ll make you the 1st Lieutenant,” which meant he would be responsible for the general upkeep and maintenance of the ship – a never-ending and thankless job. Not quite sure whether the captain was joking, Jack replied he’d do it. He put in a package to convert from the U.S. Naval Reserve to the regular Navy and it was approved. Jack was now officially part of the Navy’s career officer corps.

USS Farragut arrived in Mayport in late spring 1962 and soon detached Jack to attend Destroyer School in Newport, Rhode Island. Not only did he improve the skills he’d learned on the job thus far, but he also spent a lot of time learning about a destroyer’s engineering plant, something he had little experience with. In fact, part of the training involved getting underway and actually running an engineering plant, a job normally reserved for the ship’s enlisted crew. The class also practiced damage control skills on the USS Buttercup, a full-size mock-up of a section of a ship floating in a pool inside a building where instructors introduce a series of flooding events that start to sink the ship. The class’s assignment was to stop it from sinking, which the instructors made sure never happened. This time, though, Jack’s class learned about the event ahead of time, so they went into the Buttercup with a plan. Although they won the battle by saving the ship, they lost the war because the instructors made them do the event again. This time, the instructors were ready, and the Buttercup sank despite the class’s best efforts to prevent it.

Jack completed the six-month Destroyer School in December 1962 and reported to USS Jonas Ingram (DD-938), another destroyer homeported in Mayport, Florida. He was now a Lieutenant Junior Grade (O-2), having promoted while at Destroyer School after completing two years as an ensign. He was assigned as Weapons Officer, responsible for the ship’s three big 5-inch/54-caliber guns, four 3-inch guns, six torpedo tubes, and all the depth-charge and hedge-hog launchers.

Jack’s promotion put extra money in his pockets, so he purchased what every young Navy officer should have – a Triumph TR4 convertible two-seat sports car. It didn’t last long, though, as he wrecked it in an accident a year later, breaking his ankle and wrist. It turned out to be a good thing because when he was at Naval Hospital Jacksonville recovering, he met a Navy nurse, Lieutenant Cynthia Snyder, who was also being treated at the hospital in the same ward, and they began to date.

Jack gained valuable operational experience onboard USS Jonas Ingram. After workups in the Atlantic and the Caribbean during the latter part of 1963, the ship deployed to the Mediterranean Sea, operating with the aircraft carriers and other ships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. During down times, Jack and the rest of the crew enjoyed some great liberty during port calls on the French and Spanish Rivieras, a perk of spending many months deployed on a Navy ship away from family and friends. Jack spent almost two years onboard USS Jonas Ingram, qualifying as Officer of the Deck and Command Duty Officer.

In the fall of 1964, Jack detached from USS Jonas Ingram with orders to report to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he earned a master’s degree in operational research. During Jack’s time at Monterey, he married Cynthia, the Navy nurse he met at Naval Hospital Jacksonville. Cynthia also gave birth to their first daughter, Susie, at Monterey, yet Jack still somehow managed to play golf at the great courses in the area, including Pebble Beach. Jack detached from Monterey in June 1967, heading back to sea at the height of the Vietnam War.

Jack Helmann as a Lieutenant

Jack received orders to report to USS Waddell (DDG-24), a guided-missile destroyer homeported in Long Beach, California, for his Department Head tour as the Weapons Officer. The ship was equipped with Tartar surface-to-air missiles, which were designed to shoot down any enemy aircraft that might threaten the ship or other allied forces operating in the vicinity. To learn how to operate and manage the Tartar system, Jack attended a twelve-week missile school in Vallejo, California. When Jack finally reported onboard USS Waddell, the ship was undergoing an extensive overhaul, including a Tartar missile system upgrade, at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. By chance, both the commanding officer and executive officer were on leave the day he reported. Because he was then then the senior officer onboard, he immediately became the acting commanding officer even though he’d never stepped foot on the ship before. His time as acting commanding officer didn’t last long, but it did foreshadow the major responsibilities he would assume as the ship prepared to deploy in support of the Vietnam War.

USS Waddell emerged from the shipyard in February 1968. It then began training off the coast of California to get the crew back to full fighting capability. The ship earned a letter of commendation for its successful missile firings before sailing in July with the other ships of Destroyer Squadron 13 to Yokosuka, Japan, via Pearl Harbor and Midway Island, for a change of homeport. This meant Cynthia and Susie also moved to Japan, because from the day the ship arrived on August 1, Yokosuka would be the place Waddell’s crew called home.

Shortly after arriving in Yokosuka, USS Waddell got underway again, this time to conduct combat operations off the coast of Vietnam. The ship loaded ammunition, including thousands of rounds for its two big 5-inch/54-caliber guns, and then headed for the “gun line” off the Vietnam coast to provide fire support for U.S. and allied troops ashore fighting North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Over the course of the next year, Waddell would be repeatedly called upon to shell enemy positions.

As Weapons Officer, the gun line assignments put Jack and the men operating the Waddell’s guns to the test, night and day. Not only did they fire thousands of rounds over the period, but at one point, they were the only ship with usable ammunition able to provide the fire support the troops ashore so desperately needed. That occurred after fuse problems with the 5-inch shells caused barrel explosions on two allied ships, resulting in an order to cease using the ammunition until the issued could be rectified. When the problem was traced to a faulty gas seal in the base of the shell, Waddell returned to Subic Bay so Jack and his men could inspect over 10,000 rounds to find ones without faulty seals. Finding around 2,000 good rounds, they loaded the shells on Waddell and headed back to the gun line to parse out the shells across the many calls for support they received in the absence of other ships with usable ammunition.

During one fire support mission, Jack received a desperate call from a Marine ashore asking for help. He told Jack their position was being overrun and he needed rounds right on top of their position immediately or they would be wiped out. Normally, fire was restricted to be outside a certain distance from allied ground forces, but as Jack could hear the gunfire over the radio, he knew this instance called for an exception to the rule. He told the Marine he would do it and directed the ship’s 5-inch guns to put their ordnance on the Marines’ position. As the Marines would be expecting the shelling, they could at least take cover to attempt to protect themselves from the explosions. The enemy would not have the same advantage. The tactic worked and the Marine radioed back that the enemy retreated once the shelling started. He then thanked Jack for the ship’s support. It was one time Jack knew Waddell’s actions were making a difference. He gets emotional when he talks about the event to this day.

Firing thousands of rounds of 5-inch high-explosive and other types of shells around the clock was dangerous work. The constant firing made the gun barrels so hot the paint peeled off. When the guns misfired, the barrels had to be flooded with water to reduce the chances the errant shell still somewhere in the barrel would explode. Making matters more complicated, the guns were fully automatic, being loaded by a conveyer of trays carrying powder charges and shells from magazines located below decks. At any given time, up to twenty powder charges and shells might be on trays somewhere between the 5-inch gun and the magazine. If a round exploded anywhere along the way, it could set off a deadly chain reaction leading to the magazine blowing up and taking the rest of the ship with it.

During Jack’s time as the Weapons Officer onboard USS Waddell, a member of the crew wrote a song about him entitled Mad Jack, which he sang to the tune of the song Sixteen Tons.

Jack experienced a particularly difficult misfire on Waddell’s aft 5-inch gun. Everyone in the stern of the ship was evacuated except the men in the engineering spaces because they had to keep the ship running. In addition, a damage control firefighting team was stationed all the way at the stern. Then, Jack and two gunner’s mates entered the gun mount and painstakingly began clearing the trays in the conveyer of ammunition. It required meticulous care and attention to detail because a single spark could have ignited the powder and blown up the turret, killing Jack and his two gunner’s mates, not to mention sinking the ship.  An hour later, they removed the problem shell and powder charge from the gun and threw them over the side. Shortly thereafter, the gun was back in action firing rounds to the shore.

Most often, USS Waddell provided ground support fire off the coast of South Vietnam, including as far south as the Mekong River delta, but on occasion it operated off the coast of North Vietnam. On one occasion in September 1968 near the “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) between the South and the North, USS Waddell and the heavy cruiser USS Saint Paul (CA-73) closed to within two-and-a-half miles from shore to rescue the crew of a downed U.S. attack bomber.

Another ship on the gun line at times was the mighty battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62). The New Jersey was the only World War II battleship to be recalled for duty during the Vietnam War and Jack got to see it providing fire support with its nine 16-inch guns firing high explosive shells over twenty-miles inland. At one point, USS Waddell moved between the coast and the New Jersey to fire its own 5-inch guns. As it did, Jack could hear the blast from the New Jersey’s huge guns and watch their rounds arc overhead on their way to the targets ashore. It was an awesome display of firepower from a bygone era.

To keep USS Waddell on the gun line, the ship frequently replenished at sea rather than returning to port to load ammunition, food, fuel, and other supplies. This meant coming close alongside an oiler or other supply ship to run cables and hoses between the two ships to conduct the resupply. It’s one of the most dangerous maneuvers at sea as it requires expert ship handling on the part of both ships, and Jack and the rest of USS Waddell’s crew became quite good at it because they had to conduct the maneuver two or three times each week to keep the ship supplied. Occasionally, though, Waddell did return to port. Such was the case in December 1968 when she returned to Yokosuka for an overhaul and the Christmas holiday. The break was short-lived, as Waddell was back on the gun line in January and would remain in the waters off Vietnam for much of 1969.

By the time USS Waddell had finished its 20-month stint on the gun line off the coast of South and North Vietnam, it had provided 192 days of gunfire support during 614 missions and fired 24,141 five-inch rounds. Jack was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal with a “V” for valor for his service, and he also earned the Combat Action Ribbon because the ship had come under enemy fire when it operated close to shore.

Jack detached from USS Waddell during the summer of 1970 and transferred to Arlington, Virginia, to work for the Director of Anti-Submarine Warfare on the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) staff. While Jack was assigned there, Cynthia gave birth to their second daughter, Kathy. Jack followed his year on the OPNAV staff with a year at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He completed his course work in June 1972.

Jack Helmann (far right) as XO of USS Lynde McCormick. The CO is the person second from the left.

Now a Lieutenant Commander (O-4), Jack received orders to be the executive officer (XO) of the guided missile destroyer USS Lynde McCormick (DDG-8), homeported in San Diego, California. As the XO, he would be the second in command of a warship manned by over 350 sailors and armed with Tartar surface-to-air missiles, two 5”-inch/54-caliber guns, torpedoes, and anti-submarine weapons. He reported in the summer of 1972 while the ship was undergoing an overhaul in the yards. Thereafter, the ship completed its refresher training and deployed to the Western Pacific.

In October 1973, war broke out in the Middle East as Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel to begin the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The USS Lynde McCormick, still in the Western Pacific, joined with the aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CVA-19) and other U.S. ships in the battle group to speed across the Indian Ocean to be on scene in case the carrier’s air power was needed to help Israel. As no replenishment ships accompanied the battle group, the smaller ships like USS Lynde McCormick had to get their fuel and supplies from what was available aboard the much larger aircraft carrier. Lynde McCormick ran so low on provisions that they held a fishing contest from the stern of the ship and the mess cooks served up the fish they caught to the crew. Eventually, the battle group came within range of Diego Garcia, a U.S. Navy base on a small but strategic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, where replenishment ships refilled the destroyer’s near-empty fuel tanks and stores.

When the battle group arrived in the Red Sea, the Lynde McCormick’s crew put on battle dress and cruised with the other U.S. ships toward the conflict. Although the situation was tense, U.S. Navy intervention was not required, so the Lynde McCormick made a port call in Massawa, Ethiopia (today, Massawa is part of Eritrea). The Ethiopian people welcomed the ship with open arms, but they were very poor. Jack saw an Ethiopian destroyer (a former U.S. Navy ship) at the Ethiopian Navy Base in Massawa. It was remarkable because a house had been constructed on its stern for Emperor Haile Salassie. Jack enjoyed eating an Ethiopian dinner onboard the ship. The Lynde McCormick also chartered the only plane owned by Ethiopian Airlines to fly half the crew to the capital in Addis Ababa and back on one day and the other half the crew on the next day to do some shopping and enjoy a little liberty.

With the situation in the Middle East resolved in Israel’s favor, the Lynde McCormick retraced its steps across the Indian Ocean and then the Pacific Ocean, arriving back in San Diego in January 1974. Jack stayed onboard as XO until he transferred in the spring of 1974 to become the Chief Staff Officer for Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 13. The DESRON commanded a squadron of eight destroyers and embarked on USS Berkeley (DDG-15) as the squadron’s flagship. As the Chief Staff Officer, Jack was second in command, responsible together with the commander for making sure the ships in the squadron were manned, trained, and equipped in a combat-ready condition when it came their turn to deploy.

Jack with daughters Susie and Kathy

Jack spent eighteen months as Chief Staff Officer of DESRON 13 before transferring to shore duty with the Navy Materiel and Manpower Command in San Diego. There he promoted to Commander (O-5) and was selected for command. He then transferred to Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) School in Newport, Rhode Island, to learn what he needed to know to command his own destroyer. When he spoke to his detailer to learn what ship he would get command of, he was given two choices. The first ship he described as a “basket case” and not one he wanted. The second was USS Berkeley (DDG-15), a ship he was intimately familiar with because it had been DESRON 13’s flagship when he was the Chief Staff Officer. The only issue was Berkeley would be in the shipyards being overhauled for much of his time in command. Having spent a lot of time in the shipyards with his previous ships, he knew what to expect, so he chose USS Berkeley.

Jack assumed command of USS Berkeley at a change of command ceremony in January 1977. As commanding officer, he was wholly responsible for the 3,300-ton warship and its crew of 354 officers and enlisted sailors. The ship sailed under Jack’s command to Bremerton, Washington, in May 1977 to offload its weapons and then proceeded to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for a one-year overhaul. As the crew’s berthing spaces were being refurbished, as well, the crew could not live onboard. Accordingly, the enlisted crew moved to a berthing barge. Immediately, complaints started coming in from the crew that the berthing barge was a “shithole”. Jack took up the issue with the shipyard XO who said nothing could be done and there were no alternatives.

Jack found the XO’s answer unacceptable. He reported the berthing barge conditions to his DESRON commander and then to the staff of Commander Naval Surface Force Pacific, a two-star admiral who apparently expressed Jack’s displeasure to the shipyard commanding officer in no uncertain terms. Shortly thereafter, the shipyard commanding officer upgraded the berthing barge and its machine shop so Berkeley’s crew could make some of the parts the ship needed for the overhaul. While the incident made Jack unpopular with the shipyard commanding officer, it made him very popular with his crew because they knew he would go to bat for them. They, in turn, would do the same for Jack.

This proved to be the case when Berkeley completed its overhaul almost a month early on May 1, 1978. Jack started a rigorous training schedule to get the ship back to fighting condition after the time in the yard, with underway periods for refresher training, weapons acceptance training, and general warfighting training. Most important was preparing the ship for its Operational Propulsion Plant Exam, or “OPPE”. The OPPE inspection focuses entirely on the ship’s ability to run its engineering plant and is a make-or-break event for commanding officers. Ships that pass the OPPE continue with their training schedule. Ships that fail their OPPE retake it, but usually with a new commanding officer because the one in charge when the ship failed the OPPE is relieved. Jack’s crew rose to the occasion and passed the rigorous OPPE inspection with flying colors, making Jack very proud of all they had accomplished.

Jack made sure the families of his crew knew how proud he was of Berkeley’s sailors. Every quarter he sent out a newsletter to the crew’s spouses and parents, keeping them informed of what was happening onboard USS Berkeley and highlighting the work of individual sailors. After one such quarterly newsletter went out, Jack received a letter from the mother of a sailor Jack commended in the newsletter for doing a good job. Among other things, the letter said, “thank you for making my son the man I knew he could be.” Jack never forgot that letter. He had it framed and hung it in his office until he retired, reminding him of the serious responsibility he had been entrusted with as a leader to not only accomplish his military mission, but also to take care of his people and develop their full potential.

After his successful command-at-sea tour and a change of command ceremony aboard USS Berkeley in February 1979, Jack returned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) staff to serve as the czar for all Tartar missile systems worldwide. Many allied nations, including The Netherlands, France, Italy, Japan, and Australia, had installed the Tartar surface-to-air missile system on their navies’ ships. Jack worked with all these navies to help manage their Tartar missile programs. He often traveled to visit allied navies to address any questions or issues they were having with their Tartar systems, calling on his many years of experience working with the missiles onboard U.S. guided missile destroyers. On occasion, Cynthia, Susie, and Kathy could accompany him, so the entire family got to see England and Germany together. Jack also served on the design committee for the Navy’s next generation of destroyers, the USS Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers, using his vast experience with destroyer weapons systems to help shape the design of Navy destroyers for years to come. 

In 1984, it came time for Jack to transfer again. This time, his detailer wanted him to take orders to Seal Beach in Southern California, near Los Angeles. Because he wanted sea duty and did not want to inflict yet another cross-country move on his family, Jack decided to retire. On July 31, 1984, Jack retired as a Captain (O-6) after twenty-four years on active duty in the Navy.

Jack pinning the silver oak leaf on his daughter Kathy’s uniform during her promotion to Commander

Immediately after retirement, Jack played a lot of golf. Then he signed on with the Vitro Corporation, a major U.S. defense contractor, working on software for missile systems and eventually becoming a vice president. In 1993, Vitro merged with Tracor Applied Sciences, giving Jack the chance to try something new. After he and Cynthia moved to Pinehurst, North Carolina, Jack went back to college at Sandhills Community College to study golf course management. The program was exceptional, giving Jack the opportunity to work at the Augusta National Country Club, the home of the Masters Tournament, from January through May of 2000. After Jack graduated from the Sandhills program in June 2000, Jack went to work for the Forest Creek Country Club in Pinehurst, overseeing Course 2 design and installation. He even began teaching courses at Sandhills Community College and worked the U.S. Men’s Open Tournament at Pinehurst and the U.S. Women’s Open Tournament at Pine Needles Golf Club.

Jack retired from golf course management in 2011. He remained active in his community, serving on a part-time citizens patrol for the Pinehurst Police Department. He and Cynthia are now enjoying full retirement, keeping up with their daughters, Susie and Kathy, and their families. In fact, Kathy followed in her father’s footsteps and joined the Navy, now serving as a Captain and active-duty attorney in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Captain Jack E. Helmann, U.S. Navy (Retired), for his many years of service to our country. Not only did he serve during the height of the Cold War, but he also went in harm’s way on the “gun line” on ships off the coast of South and North Vietnam, providing supporting fires to troops on the ground and saving American lives during the Vietnam War. We recognize the sacrifices he and his family made – the family separations and wartime deployments when he stood the watch, defending our nation. For all he has done, we wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed Jack’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story and a new podcast directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Jack & Cynthia Helmann

The post Captain Jack E. Helmann, U.S. Navy: A Career on Navy Destroyers first appeared on David E. Grogan.

Colonel Tom Thompson, U.S. Army: From Vietnam to Hollywood – Forging a Unique Army Career

It takes a special person to endure a long career in the military. Wartime deployments, long family separations with missed birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, and the strain of command compete against the strong sense of duty, camaraderie, and public service officers feel as they decide whether to continue in the military or leave to pursue a civilian career. Colonel Tom Thompson, U.S. Army (Retired), experienced all these factors and more as he navigated his twenty-six-year career in the Army that included two combat deployments to Vietnam. Throughout it all, he balanced duty and family to make both sides win. This is his story.

Tom was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in July 1943. His father was an enlisted soldier in the Army whose job at the time was to escort the remains of servicemembers killed in action to their hometowns so they could be buried near their grieving families. Soon thereafter, his father would complete Officer Candidate School (OCS) and celebrate his twenty-first birthday on D-Day in England, having helped prepare for the invasion. Once World War II ended, Tom’s father got out of the military and tried college, but after a year he rejoined the Army as an officer, setting the stage for Tom’s childhood as an “Army brat”.

In 1949, the family moved to Sendai, Japan, as part of the post-World War II occupation forces. Life was good until June 1950 when the Korean War broke out and Tom’s father was shipped, along with many other U.S. servicemembers, from Japan to South Korea to shore up the country’s crumbling defenses. Tom’s father was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in North Korea, where he returned six wounded soldiers to safety after a daring escape in a jeep through enemy lines.

In 1951, Tom’s father was reassigned for a short period to Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, but then was sent to Babenhausen, Germany. Tom attended fourth and fifth grade in Aschaffenburg, a thirty-minute bus ride away, however he was able to attend the sixth grade in Babenhausen. His father, who was an artillery officer, had a young officer in his battery named Jonathan Bush, the son of Senator Prescott Bush and the brother of future President George Herbert Walker Bush. Tom got to meet Senator Bush and his wife, Dorothy, because Tom’s mother hosted the Bushes at their quarters. Jonathan Bush also coached Tom’s sixth grade basketball team.

After Germany, Tom’s father transferred to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where the Army trains soldiers and officers in the art of field artillery. His father’s job was to teach soldiers how to fire artillery pieces – the Army’s biggest guns. He so loved his job that he used to sit with Tom at the kitchen table showing him how to use a slide rule to compute firing data. To complete the lesson, he sometimes took Tom with him when his students practiced adjusting live fire on the base range. Tom also received a more conventional education at Fort Sill, where he completed the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades.

From Fort Sill, the family moved back to Germany, this time to Dachau, about twenty miles northwest of Munich. Tom attended the Munich American High School, where he played basketball and ran track. During his senior year, he also started dating a junior named Leanne, but the romance ended after Tom graduated in 1961 and his family returned to the United States for Tom’s father’s next assignment at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

COL Tom Thompson, U.S. Army (Retired), standing with his son, Command Master Sergeant John Thompson, U.S. Army, at John’s retirement ceremony in 2021

During Tom’s high school years, he often spent summers visiting his mother’s parents in Colorado and his father’s parents in Oklahoma City. In Oklahoma City, he became close to a cousin his age who convinced him they should both attend the University of Oklahoma, which they did in the fall of 1961. They also rushed a fraternity together. Unfortunately, Tom only lasted two years. He was taking a heavy course load hoping to go to medical school, but with the workload and his fraternity commitment pulling him in opposite directions, he decided not to go back after his sophomore year.

As he had done over the previous two summer breaks from college, Tom returned to Fort Huachuca to live with his parents and work for a company moving soldiers’ household goods on and off post. His father suggested he might do better at school if he attended someplace closer to home, so he enrolled at the University of Arizona, which was only an hour away in Tucson. He also met a young woman whose father was a senior civilian on post and they became engaged. They were married a year later at the post chapel, but the wedding heralded the return to a heavy workload for Tom. Now, in addition to attending school full time at the University of Arizona, he worked nights at the Tucson Country Club to earn enough money to make ends meet. He also participated in ROTC, which meant in return for assistance covering the cost of his college expenses, he owed the Army service as an officer once he graduated.

As graduation approached, Tom learned the Army had designated him to serve in the Air Defense Artillery. Wanting instead to follow in his father’s footsteps, he petitioned to be permitted to go into the Field Artillery. The Army approved his petition and, after graduating from the University of Arizona at the end of 1965, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (O-1) in February of 1966, just as the Vietnam War was escalating. The nomadic life he’d enjoyed as an Army brat was about to enter a new cycle, this time with his own Army career – not his father’s – driving the moves.

In the summer of 1966, Tom moved his wife and their newborn son to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, so he could begin the Basic Officer Course for field artillery officers. He rented an apartment for $90/month and purchased a new Volkswagen Beetle for $1600, both significant investments since he only earned $300/month. As he neared completion of the six-month training, he and his wife were both excited to learn they would be moving to Germany for his first permanent duty assignment.

Shortly thereafter, the staff pulled Tom and eleven others aside and said their orders had been cancelled. Instead, given the Vietnam War’s growing need for new officers, they were being assigned as Tactical Officers (TACs) to train new officer candidates to become artillery officers. They would do this for two years and then be discharged from the Army with no further service obligation. While this was good news for some, it was not the news Tom wanted to hear. He wanted to stay in the Army and knew if he took the TAC job, he would never progress. Still orders were orders, so he began the assignment, looking for a way out.

As it turned out, the new job impacted more than his career – it destroyed his family life. As a TAC, he had to be with his trainees from the time they woke up early in the morning until the time they went to bed in the evening. That left Tom’s wife and infant son at home alone all day and they were miserable. Eventually, Tom’s wife left him and took their son back to Arizona to live with her parents and file for divorce. It was a very painful period in Tom’s life. Fortunately, a First Sergeant (E-8) who saw Tom struggling stepped in to help him get through the ordeal.

Now on his own, Tom took leave and drove to visit a friend at Fort Mason in San Francisco, where his friend’s father was the bandmaster. They decided to host a get together and started calling friends to come, wherever they were. Tom called his former girlfriend, Leanne, from Munich American High School, and the two reconnected. Soon, he was running up big telephone bills calling Leanne from Fort Sill and even visited her and her family in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was as if he’d been given a new lease on life.

Back at Fort Sill, the First Sergeant who took Tom under his wing told him a new artillery battalion was forming up for duty in Vietnam and he wanted Tom to be part of it. Tom put in the transfer request, walked it around the post to get the necessary signatures, and it was approved. He was now part of the 1st Battalion of the 27th Field Artillery Regiment (1st/27th), which had ninety days to form, train on its M109 self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzers, and be ready to deploy to Vietnam.

By February 1967, the battalion was ready to go and Tom was ready to go with it, but not before doing one very important thing. Two weeks before his departure, Leanne flew to Fort Sill from Williamsburg, Virginia, and the two were married. Tom then flew with an advance party of the 1st/27th to Oakland, California, to receive and load the unit’s guns and equipment onto a waiting ship. Once the rest of the unit arrived, the entire unit boarded the ship and headed for Vietnam. The ship stopped in the Philippines and Okinawa enroute, finally arriving in the port of Vung Tau, about sixty miles south of Saigon. From there, the men loaded onto Air Force C-130 transport planes and flew to Phu Loi, the operating base for the Second Brigade of the First Infantry Division (the “Big Red One”) and its supporting units, located about twenty-miles north of Saigon.

In Phu Loi, Tom, now a First Lieutenant (O-2), and the rest of the newly arriving battalion learned the lay of the land, including what allied units were in the area and what their missions were. Tom was the Fire Direction Officer, which meant he was responsible for training his battery’s Fire Direction Center to put ordnance on target. Given the unit only had ninety days to train before leaving Fort Sill, Tom had worked with the Fire Direction Center team throughout their voyage across the Pacific. The training continued while the unit waited for its self-propelled guns to be unloaded from the ship and brought to the base camp at Phu Loi.

Once the unit’s guns arrived, Tom proceeded with Bravo Battery, consisting of six of the M109 guns, to a base camp at Tay Ninh. There the unit provided artillery support to U.S. infantry units operating in the vicinity, most often the 25th Infantry Division fighting around Cu Chi. Also, an extinct volcano, Nui Ba Den, known as “Black Virgin Mountain”, was just within range of Bravo Battery’s guns. The year before, the U.S. had established a communications station on the top of the mountain, but the Viet Cong controlled the base of the mountain and the surrounding area. As a result, the communications station could only be supplied by helicopter and was constantly under siege by the Viet Cong. Tom’s battery helped keep the Viet Cong from reaching the peak by pouring artillery fire onto the mountain below the communications station’s perimeter.

For one such barrage, Tom’s battery moved to a firing position on the far side of the mountain and fired concrete-piercing shells at Viet Cong positions while the Australian Air Force pummeled the Viet Cong from the air. At the same time, U.S. infantry forces assaulted the Viet Cong at the base of the mountain. The engagement continued for seventy-two rain-soaked hours, during which Tom never slept. When it was over, he crawled into the back of an M548 cargo carrier strewn with empty gunpowder canisters and finally fell asleep.

1LT Tom Thompson, then battery Executive Officer, opening a Christmas box in 1967 with his battery’s Fire Direction Center, a howitzer, and trucks in the background

At about the six-month point in country, the executive officer from Alpha Battery had to be medevac’d out of Vietnam. Because this was a key position that had to be filled, Tom left Bravo Battery to assume the executive officer job. Two months later, he got the chance to go to Hawaii. As it was monsoon season and Tom had to pitch his tent on sandbags to keep him above the six inches of standing water in the camp, he jumped at the opportunity. Even better, Leanne was able to meet him in Hawaii, where they had time for the honeymoon they didn’t get when they were married. After a week, it was back to reality in the jungle around Saigon.

On January 30, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated attack against military and civilian targets throughout South Vietnam, including in Saigon itself. Known as the 1968 Tet Offensive because it took place during the Tet holiday festival, the brazen attack turned the tide of U.S. public opinion against the war even though U.S. and Allied forces beat back the onslaught and inflicted such heavy losses that it took the North Vietnamese years to recover. When the attack began, Tom’s battery and another battery were in a firing position at a rubber plantation at Dau Tieng. Both batteries were ordered to return to the base camp at Tay Ninh. While Tom’s battery was ready to move, the other battery’s M109s were not fully mission capable, so Tom’s guns had to tow them back to Tay Ninh. After Tet, Tom’s battery returned to Dau Tieng, where it remained for the rest of Tom’s tour.

Once the situation stabilized, Tom got the opportunity to take some R&R (rest and relaxation) in Hong Kong. To start his journey, he hitched a ride in a Bell two-seat bubble-cockpit helicopter heading to Saigon. What he didn’t know at the time, though, was the pilot was on a mission to find something. After they took off, they flew low and slow, dodging about the trees, trying to find whatever the pilot was looking for. Tom started to think he’d made a mistake by taking the ride, as now he wasn’t sure he was going to make it to Saigon alive. Fortunately, they arrived without incident. Tom caught a flight to Hong Kong, where shopping next to actor Lee J. Cobb, he bought a Minolta SLR camera, enjoyed the food, and just relaxed. When he returned to his unit, he learned it had been rocketed and found holes in his bunk and footlocker from shrapnel from the attack. He was glad he had been on leave.

As the 1st/27th approached the one-year anniversary of its deployment, the battalion’s leadership realized they had a problem. All the men were on one-year orders to Vietnam, so if they transferred all at once, the unit would not be able to continue its mission. To address this, the call went out for volunteers to extend in country for six months to allow for a turnover of responsibilities as replacements arrived. Feeling a strong sense of obligation to his men and the unit, Tom called Leanne to see what she thought of him extending his tour in Vietnam. Having seen her husband for only two weeks before he left for Vietnam and a short leave period in Hawaii, she did not think extending was a good idea. Tom honored her position and did not extend. When his time came to return home in March 1968, he boarded a Huey helicopter and flew to Saigon, where he caught a flight back to the States on a plane loaded with happy soldiers.

When Tom arrived in San Francisco, Leanne was waiting for him. They stayed with a couple they knew and celebrated in the city for a few days before heading to Fort Huachuca to visit Tom’s parents and pick up his Volkswagen Beetle. From there, they drove to Tom’s next duty station at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. On April 5 as they were getting ready to pass through Memphis, Tennessee, they heard Martin Luther King had been assassinated there the night before. Believing the city would be in turmoil, they stopped and stayed outside the city for a day until they were sure it was safe to pass through. Then they continued to Fort Campbell, where Tom found the base’s main focus was on riot control.

Since Tom had recently promoted to Captain (O-3), he was assigned to be a battery commander for a new artillery unit supporting the proposed 6th Infantry Division. The battery consisted of six M110 eight-inch self-propelled howitzers, an even bigger gun than the M109’s Tom fought with in Vietnam. As the unit was just forming up, Tom found it difficult to train the men assigned to his battery because it was hard to find the equipment they needed. For example, they didn’t have radios, so they had to lay wires for telephones whenever they needed to communicate in the field.

On one afternoon, Tom and his first sergeant left their unit firing practice rounds while they scouted out a new firing position in a jeep. When they returned to the guns, they found the Division Artillery Commander, a full colonel (O-6), waiting for them. He told Tom, “Your battery just fired a round out of the safety zone. I need to know what happened.” Tom knew this was a big deal. He immediately went to the gun in question and found both the firing officer and the safety officer had laid out the gun incorrectly, allowing an illumination round to be fired out of the safety zone. Once the illumination round detonated, the base plate fell from the sky, going through the roof of a bar and landing in the corner pocket of a pool table. Fortunately, no one was injured. Tom reported human error caused the incident and the event blew over, although it was a good learning experience for everyone involved. The unit also made a plaque out of another base plate and established the “Base Plate in the Corner Pocket” award to recognize future operational missteps.

Once the unit completed training, everyone was sent on leave, expecting to go to Vietnam when they returned. Instead, they learned the decision had been made not to activate the 6th Infantry Division and they would not be going to Vietnam. Accordingly, Tom transferred to a new combat arms group, consisting of three infantry battalions and one artillery battalion. Tom assumed command of a battery of 105-millimeter towed howitzers in the artillery battalion. He did this for a couple of months before being elevated to serve as the battalion’s executive officer. In this position, his biggest taskings were orchestrating a formal dining in for the battalion’s officers and planning and executing the battalion’s change of command. On the personal side, Leanne gave birth to their first daughter, Susie, on Christmas Day of 1968.

In 1970, Tom returned to Fort Sill for the six-month Officer Advanced Course. There, he and other career-minded captains were called aside and told to take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) so they could attend graduate school at a civilian college or university—after another tour in Vietnam. Tom surprised himself by getting a high verbal score but did not do as well on the math. He then set his sights on his next assignment as an advisor with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV).

CPT Tom Thompson as a MACV Advisor in 1970 with his South Vietnamese counterpart

Tom reported to Saigon in the summer of 1970 as President Richard Nixon was gradually withdrawing U.S. combat forces from the Vietnam War. After several weeks of instruction, he was detailed as the Deputy District Advisor for the Province of Binh Dinh in the city of An Nhon, located about twenty miles west of the coastal city of Quy Nhon. He lived together with the District Advisor, who was a Major (O-4), and an Intelligence Officer, in a fabricated team house with an adjacent trailer on a compound they shared with a Korean Army communications contingent and the village chief and his family. The compound also had a concrete underground bunker available in case of emergencies. Tom and the major’s tasking was to get out of the compound and talk with the local village chiefs to help win the hearts and minds of the people, and to go out on patrols with South Vietnamese forces to enable their missions.

As Tom got to know the local chiefs, they began to trust him. Once as water began to rise in the area during the monsoon season, a village chief told Tom he needed Tom to take him somewhere in his jeep. With the water still rising into the jeep, Tom obliged and dropped the chief off at his destination but was then left to his own devices to get back to his compound. Although he made it back safely, the rain continued, later washing a two-and-a-half-ton truck (“deuce and a half”) off the road and drowning its passengers.

Tom was able to take leave over the Christmas holiday in 1970 and made it back to Williamsburg to visit Leanne and Susie. This time, the culture shock from being in a village in a war zone one day and then in Williamsburg the next proved too much to overcome. Also, knowing he had to leave his family to return to Vietnam right after Christmas cast a pall over his visit and he just couldn’t get into the Christmas spirit. As he boarded his flight to head back to Vietnam on New Year’s Eve, both he and Leanne agreed it had been a mistake for him to come home. He just needed to finish his tour and leave Vietnam behind for good.

Toward the end of January 1971, all the local villages began to prepare for the annual Tet holiday. In one village Tom had worked with closely, the people set up a stage and loudspeakers to begin the celebration. As the village chief approached the stage to take his seat of honor, the Viet Cong detonated explosives hidden in the loudspeakers, decimating him and his family and everyone else nearby. Tom and his interpreter, who never left Tom’s side, responded to the scene as soon as they learned what happened and began to call in helicopters to ferry the wounded to hospitals for treatment. The scene was chaos, as people tried to cling to the departing helicopters to escape what they feared was just the initial stage of an ongoing attack. The village chief was gravely wounded in the attack and did not survive. Tom couldn’t help but blame himself for the incident because he was sure the chief was targeted because he had been friendly with the Americans. It was clear to Tom the direction his team had received from the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support office in Saigon to get out in the field and work with the local population was ill-conceived, at least at this stage of the war.

The remainder of Tom’s tour in Vietnam was uneventful, aside from another short R&R period in Hong Kong. He departed Vietnam in the summer of 1971 and returned to Williamsburg to spend time with Leanne and Susie. There he learned that, thanks to Leanne, he would be able to begin graduate school at Old Dominion University in the fall. While he was in Vietnam, Leanne had shopped around his transcripts and test scores with the faculty at Old Dominion, trying to find a place for Tom when he returned. Because he had scored well on the verbal portion of the graduate entrance exams, the chair of the Old Dominion English Department gave him a slot. For the next year and a half, Tom lived at the library, earning his master’s degree in English. He graduated in February 1973.

Immediately after graduation, Tom shifted from full-time student to full-time faculty, teaching in Old Dominion’s ROTC program. This offered a well-needed change of pace and allowed for family time, especially since Tom and Leanne lived within walking distance of the university. The slower pace came at just the right time, as their first son, Matthew, was born in April 1972, and their second son, John, was born in June 1973.

One of the challenges Tom faced as part of an ROTC program at the end of the Vietnam War was attracting students to participate. To tackle this problem, he and a fellow instructor developed a summer program for freshmen in conjunction with the university’s Department of Physical Education. The program consisted of three days of instruction on campus in repelling, ground navigation, and surviving in the field. They then took the group to the George Washington National Forest in the Shenandoah Valley to practice their new skills. The program worked. Of the three groups they ran through the program that summer, half enrolled in ROTC, and two of them eventually became generals in the Army.

Major Tom Thompson (right), then battalion Executive Officer, with the Operations NCO, Fred Sexton, in 1979

By the summer of 1976, it was time for Tom and his family to transfer again. Before he had to report to his new assignment, he went to jump school and earned his Parachutist Badge, and drove coast-to-coast and back again with his family in a twenty-five-foot RV, staying in national parks along the way. Then it was on to Nuremburg for duty with the 1st Armored Division in the Division Artillery headquarters. He reported to the Fire Support Office, just one month before the massive annual NATO REFORGER exercise, when U.S. based units tested their ability to quickly deploy to Europe, man their prepositioned equipment, and defend the western alliance in the event of a Soviet attack. Now a Major (O-4), Tom served as the Fire Support Officer in the exercise’s Tactical Operations Center, responsible for bringing to bear artillery support, including tactical nuclear options, wherever it was needed.

After the REFORGER exercise, Tom returned to Division Artillery headquarters, where he served as the Operations Officer and later the Executive Officer of the 1st Battalion of the 94th Field Artillery Regiment. He stayed in that position until the summer of 1979, when he transferred to the Marine Corps Command and General Staff College in Quantico, Virginia, as one of a cadre of ten Army officers participating in the one-year course of study. Aside from a great education, he ran incessantly with his Marine counterparts, helping him stay in shape and serving as a welcome diversion from the classroom.

As payback for getting the Command and General Staff College assignment, Tom was expected to take a follow-on tour at the Pentagon. His class had done a few field trips to the Pentagon to learn about various aspects of joint military operations and his impression was “the Pentagon didn’t look like fun.” Moreover, he was afraid his family’s budget would require him to live some distance away, forcing him into a long daily commute. When coupled with the long hours Pentagon staffers worked, Tom believed he wouldn’t have much time with his family, which now included a new baby girl, Abby.

The solution came in the form of a job advertisement in Army Times, a weekly newspaper popular with Army soldiers. Unbelievably, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point needed an English instructor – the very subject Tom had his master’s degree in – so he applied for the job. He also sent along a handwritten note explaining how much he wanted the position. He interviewed with the English Department Chair who offered him the position and he accepted on the spot. Then the Department Chair handed him back his handwritten note with a couple of mistakes circled in red. He told Tom half smiling, “When you report here for duty, you’ll have to raise you game.”

Despite being told by the detailers that accepting the West Point position instead of the Pentagon assignment would make him unpromotable, Tom took the instructor position and moved his family to their new post in New York. He taught three sections of fifteen cadets each, two of Plebe English and one literature course. To make sure the cadets could write well after they graduated, they each had to write two essays every week, one in class and one for homework. That meant Tom had to grade ninety essays each week in addition to his in-class teaching responsibilities, so he was very busy. Still, he loved his work and the time he had with his family living on the historic West Point campus overlooking the scenic Hudson River.

Tom Thompson (second from left) promoting to LTC at West Point in 1982 with his family

After his one-year teaching assignment ended, Tom transferred to the Academy’s Public Affairs Office. He broke into the position by writing a speech for the Academy’s new Superintendent, Lieutenant General Andrew Goodpaster, a former NATO commander and Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces in Vietnam. Tom’s other responsibilities included working with the media, organizing biannual board meetings with major New York public relations firms, and even escorting former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes while he recorded vignettes about General George S. Patton. And, despite the naysayers, Tom promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) while he was there.

When it came time to transfer in the summer of 1983, Tom’s detailers now said he could still make full colonel, but he would have to take a one-year unaccompanied assignment in Korea to get his career back on track. Believing that would be too hard on his family, Tom turned down the assignment and instead took a follow-on position as the Director of Public Affairs for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) headquarters in Munich, Germany. It turned out to be one of the best assignments of Tom’s career. He led a staff of about twenty persons and visited almost every country in Europe with the AAFES Europe commander, a one-star general. Tom’s kids got to attend the Munich American High School, the same school Tom attended twenty years before. They even had some teachers in common. Tom was also able to participate in the Army War College correspondence course, allowing him to graduate from the distinguished Army War College program after transferring from his AAFES assignment back to the United States and spending a summer in residence at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.

Tom’s next assignment can only be described as something out of the movies. Tapping into his public affairs experience, he took the lead role in the Army’s West Coast public affairs office, reporting directly to the Army’s Chief of Public Affairs in the Pentagon, Medal of Honor recipient Major General Patrick H. Brady. In his new position, Tom was responsible for interacting with television and motion picture studios seeking Army support for their productions. The Navy had recently scored big with the 1986 release of Top Gun and Tom’s mission was to find the Army equivalent. Tom’s office was in the federal building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, giving him ready access to producers, studios, and talent. He was involved in the production of The Presidio, a 1988 movie starring Sean Connery about a murder on The Presidio Army base in San Francisco, and the production of Fire Birds, a movie released in 1990 by Touchstone Pictures about elite Army Apache helicopter pilots operating in South America. Best of all, and contrary to those who said his unique career path would make him unpromotable, Tom promoted to Colonel (O-6) during his tour.

Before leaving Los Angeles, Tom spent six months in a “training with industry” assignment working with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Century City. His mission was to learn the ins and outs of the advertising business in preparation for his next assignment as the Director of Marketing, Operations and Public Affairs for the Army’s ROTC Command, located at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. In that position, he would oversee the command’s $16 million advertising contract with the Young & Rubicam advertising agency in New York City. Tom’s time at J. Walter Thompson gave him the critical insights he needed to help him succeed in his new role.

Tom moved back to the East Coast to take the ROTC position in the summer of 1989. The move was particularly timely because Leanne’s mother lived nearby and her health was failing, so the new assignment gave Tom and Leanne some precious time with Leanne’s parents. Tom remained in the ROTC position until he retired from the Army in August 1992.

After retiring, Tom worked for several defense contractors on a range of projects and contracts, including managing a program supplementing East Coast ROTC programs at colleges and universities with experienced retired officers and non-commissioned officers, and developing a variety of computer-based instructional modules for the Army and Air Force. He finally retired in 2011 after serving as the Vice President and General Manager of an Anchorage-based company with several hundred employees throughout the country.

With lots of family nearby, Tom and Leanne settled into retirement in Williamsburg, Virginia. Sadly, Leanne passed away in July 2019, but Tom has the loving support of their four children, eighteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren to keep a smile on his face. And, his son John retired in 2021 from the Army as a Command Sergeant Major (E-9). Tom has also been an ordained permanent deacon in the Catholic Church, serving his parish community in that capacity for twenty years.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Colonel Tom Thompson, U.S. Army (Retired), for his distinguished twenty-six-year career in the Army. Not only did he serve two combat tours in Vietnam and play operational roles in Europe during the height of the Cold War, but he also worked with officer candidates in OCS and cadets at Old Dominion University and West Point, training the nation’s next generation of Army leaders. Although we can never repay him for all he has done and for the many sacrifices he and his family made over his long career, we thank him for his service and wish him fair winds and following seas.

Tom Thompson as a MACV Advisor holding the local village chief’s children

The post Colonel Tom Thompson, U.S. Army: From Vietnam to Hollywood – Forging a Unique Army Career first appeared on David E. Grogan.

Commander Tom Jones, JAGC, U.S. Navy (Retired) – Serving at the Edge of Law and War

When people think of Navy lawyers, the image of courtrooms and court-martials comes to mind, conjured up from movies like The Caine Mutiny and A Few Good Men. Although those images are accurate as far as they go, they paint but a small part of the picture. No career illustrates that better than that of Commander Tom Jones, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Navy (Retired). Tom left the courtroom behind early in his career to serve with the Navy SEALs in Iraq, charting the course for all future Navy attorneys embedded with special operations units. Where others might see roadblocks, Tom saw opportunities. Throughout his distinguished twenty-year Navy career, he never avoided challenges – he embraced them. This is his story.

To say Tom’s childhood was unique would be a gross understatement. He was born in Baltimore in 1975 to a mother Tom describes as the quintessential hippy. His father was out of the picture by the time Tom was four or five, so his mother bought a school bus/camper to live in and they hit the road. As a young boy, Tom and his mother spent time in Newfoundland, Florida, West Virginia, Colorado, Washington, California, and Arizona, raising money any way they could. Tom remembers at one point his mother sold turquoise at swap sales. In California, they picked crops as migrant farmworkers. In Bisbee Arizona – an old copper mining town – Tom’s mother ran a “flop house”, providing a place for the growing Bisbee hippy population to stay cheaply, although Tom is not sure his mother ever charged anyone to stay there as he never saw money exchange hands.

Tom started first grade in Bisbee but didn’t like it, so his mother decided to home school him using what Tom readily describes as a non-standard curriculum. When he was about seven, he remembers his mother going to court and the judge giving her two options: close the flop house and leave Bisbee within twenty-four hours or go to jail. Not seeing it as a choice at all, Tom’s mother loaded Tom and his younger sister into the bus and drove back to Baltimore. Eventually Tom would have two more younger siblings.

Tom’s mother had little money, so she moved the family to the only place in Baltimore she could afford—a rough neighborhood in the inner city. As the schools in the neighborhood were bad, Tom went to live with his grandparents on weekdays in a blue-collar area where the schools were better. Tom loved his grandparents and describes them as the rock and foundation upon which he was able to build his future life. The time he spent with them growing up allowed him to figure out who he was and who he wanted to be. He describes them as having Depression era values and progressive. His grandfather was a union man, and he fought to integrate the union’s locker room. Tom is very proud of his grandfather for that.

In 1989, Tom began high school at Baltimore City College, a college preparatory school and the third-oldest active public high school in the United States. He enjoyed school, mostly because he loved playing football, so it came as a shock when his mother decided to move the family to Alaska at the end of his freshman year. Tom did not want to go, but they reached a compromise. He would go with the family over the summer to see how he liked it. If he did not, he could return to Baltimore at the end of the summer for his sophomore year at Baltimore City College.

Although Tom found Alaska beautiful, it was not for him. Living in inner-city Baltimore had made him a “city boy” and he missed his grandparents, his friends, and the life he had grown accustomed to. He tried working in a cannery but didn’t fit in because many of the employees did drugs. Still, he remained throughout the summer to fulfill his part of the bargain, then he returned to Baltimore to start school and play football. Throughout his high school years, he visited his mother and three younger siblings in Alaska over the holidays and during summer breaks, but otherwise Baltimore was his home.

Tom’s focus in high school was football, which was understandable given he was a big kid at 6’3” and his team was ranked #1 in the state of Maryland and #16 nationally. During his sophomore and junior years, he did just enough studying to make sure he could take the field with the team every week. Then in his senior year, things changed. By that time, he had finished all the required courses and could now take electives, so he took courses he enjoyed and did well. He also scored well on his college entrance exams and parlayed his newfound academic success and football prowess into a scholarship to attend Frostburg State University, an NCAA Division Two school in western Maryland.

Tom began at Frostburg State after graduating from Baltimore City College in 1993. In addition to playing tight end and defensive end on the football team, he studied one semester abroad at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland. Raised by his grandparents as a good Irish Catholic, he loved meeting the Irish people and learning about their culture and music, even taking Irish step-dancing lessons. He also learned to play rugby, a sport he would champion as a player and coach for the rest of his life. Finally, the experience awakened a wanderlust he had apparently inherited from his mother, and he backpacked throughout Europe whenever he had the chance, meeting people and exploring cultures as he went.

During his junior year, Tom applied for a unique program at the University of Baltimore School of Law. The program allowed him to complete his senior year of college and his first year of law school simultaneously. He was accepted into the program and began at the University of Baltimore School of Law in the fall of 1996, earning his bachelor’s degree in political science and justice studies from Frostburg State in the spring of 1997.

As Tom looked to the future, he felt he needed to do some sort of public service, and the military came to mind. Two major influences were his grandfather, who served during World War II in the 283rd Combat Engineers as part of General George S. Patton’s Third Army, and his uncle, who served in the Army during the Vietnam War era. Tom thought he should serve, too, while he was young enough to do so. His plan was to serve three years and then return to civilian life to practice law.

Since sports and physical fitness were such big parts of his life, Tom decided to apply to become a Marine “judge advocate”, the term for an attorney in the military. All was going well until he reported to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in Baltimore for his physical. There, doctors discovered an anomaly in his EKG (electrocardiogram), so the Marines delayed his commissioning until the anomaly could be resolved. Tom saw a Navy doctor who attributed it to Tom running a lot in preparation for what he expected to be a difficult officer training program and cleared Tom to join the Marines. However, when Tom followed-up with the Marine recruiter, he told Tom he didn’t have the doctor’s paperwork, so his commissioning was still on hold.

Tom Jones as a brand new Navy Ensign in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1998

Frustrated with the lack of progress, Tom contacted a Navy recruiter. The Navy recruiter pulled out a map and showed Tom Navy bases around the world, which really appealed to Tom’s desire for travel. Then he pointed to the Marine Corps bases at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Camp Pendleton, California, strategically leaving out all other Marine Corps installations and suggesting the Navy was a better alternative. Tom agreed and accepted a commission as an Ensign (O-1) in the Navy Reserve. Two days later, the Marine recruiter called Tom and said the Marines had cleared him, but it was too late – Tom was already in the Navy. Given his hippy upbringing, Tom believes this was all for the best because the Marine Corps culture would have been too structured for him, and he might have only done a single tour in the Marines instead of a full career in the Navy.

Over the summer of 1998 between his junior and senior years of law school, Tom attended Officer Indoctrination School (OIS) as part of Class 98050 at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island. There he learned the basics of being an officer along with other professionals like doctors, dentists, and nurses, and participated in Navy physical training. Since he had prepared for Marine Corps training and was already in great shape, the physical training at OIS proved a breeze. Even better was being in Newport in the summer because once Tom and the other new officers were given liberty off the installation, they got to enjoy five-dollar lobsters, clam bakes, and the beautiful New England weather. He also enjoyed the discipline and regimen his training provided – the polar opposite of what he grew up with.

Tom returned to the University of Baltimore School of Law in the fall of 1998 for his final year and graduated in the spring of 1999. Over the summer, he studied for the Maryland bar exam and worked for a law firm in London assisting with tobacco related litigation. Although he loved living in London, he hated the work. The experience taught him he did not want to work for a big law firm and reinforced his decision to become a Navy lawyer.

After passing the Maryland bar exam, Tom reported for active duty in October 1999 at the Naval Justice School, also located in Newport, Rhode Island. Instructors at the Justice School taught Tom how to prosecute and defend sailors at courts-martial, how to advise commanders on military justice matters, and how to conduct and document investigations into various types of military incidents. After having worked seventy hours a week at the London law firm over the summer, Tom used the twelve-week course of study as a time to decompress. The result was he made a lot of lasting friendships and again enjoyed Newport, but was ready to move on when graduation came in December 1999.

Now a Lieutenant Junior Grade (O-2), Tom reported to his first permanent duty station, Trial Service Office Southeast Detachment Jacksonville, Florida, in December 1999. He was by far the most junior attorney, so he found it difficult to break out and get the prosecution experience he needed. He did sit as the second-chair prosecutor in a murder trial, but decided it was in his best interests to transfer as soon as the opportunity arose. That happened in 2001, when he volunteered to take an assignment as a Lieutenant (O-3) at Naval Legal Service Office Pacific onboard Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan.

Tom reported for duty at Naval Legal Service Office Pacific in the summer of 2001. There he provided legal assistance to sailors and their families stationed in Yokosuka, served as the Tax Officer and Legal Assistance Division Officer, and finally as the Senior Defense Counsel defending accused sailors at administrative proceedings and in courts-martial. He also did two temporary additional duty (TAD) periods at sea on the USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19), the command ship for the U.S. Seventh Fleet. While onboard, Tom assisted the ship with military justice matters, visited Hong Kong during a port call, and worked with two more senior judge advocates handling operational/international law issues. Off-duty, he built core friendships and used his location in Japan as a jumping off point for travel around the Far East.

Tom Jones as a Lieutenant in Yokosuka, Japan, in 2003

When it came time to transfer in the summer of 2004, Tom’s commanding officer asked him what he was interested in doing. Tom had heard the Navy SEALs at the Naval Special Warfare Center wanted to add a judge advocate (JAG) to their staff and Tom said he would like to give that a try. He was selected for the position and, with surfboard in hand, reported to the Naval Amphibious Base on Coronado Island in San Diego, California, to begin his new assignment with the SEALs.

The SEALs had an immediate issue they needed Tom to help solve. In both the Afghanistan war, which had been ongoing since October 2001, and the Iraq war, which had been ongoing since March 2003, the SEALs were detaining individuals and turning them over to local authorities, only to have them released and back on the battlefield within a couple of months. SEAL leadership believed if Tom deployed to Iraq with a SEAL team, he could work with Iraqi legal authorities to help them hold detainees accountable for their actions supporting Iraqi insurgents.

Before Tom could deploy with the SEALs, he had to undergo intense training. Not only did he complete a mini-BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) course and participate in the SEAL’s physical fitness training, but he also completed Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school, learned to speak basic Arabic, earned his Naval Parachutist Warfare Pin, attended interrogator school, and took an evasive driving course. By the time he was finished, he was in the best physical condition of his life, and he’d earned the trust and respect of the SEALs he worked with because they could see he understood and valued their culture. He wasn’t trying to become a SEAL – his Executive Officer asked if he wanted to put in a package to convert to SEAL and he said no. But he did want to put in the effort to build credibility so the SEALs would respect him and his advice once deployed.

Tom deployed to Iraq twice in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom with SEAL Team SEVEN, once from October 2004 through February 2005 and again from April 2005 until December 2005. Since he was among the first JAGs to deploy in the field with SEAL teams, he had no manual to go by or instructions to follow. He had to develop everything himself and was given free rein to do so. He initially traveled around Iraq in stripped down HUMVEES with only a rifle to defend himself, but eventually the team received the up-armored HUMVEES that were more effective in defending against the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) insurgents placed along the roadways. This was a good thing, because in 2005, a HUMVEE Tom was riding in struck an IED. Tom was sure he would have been killed had the vehicle not had the extra armor built into its floor. Still, Tom and others in the vehicle were shaken up. Although Tom was checked out by a Navy corpsman and cleared for duty, he is pretty sure he sustained a concussion and still suffers from hearing loss. At the time, though, he didn’t want to admit he’d been injured.

One issue Tom noticed almost immediately was that when members of the SEAL Team went out on a mission to capture insurgents, they often rolled up every fighting age male they found, not just the four or five bad guys they originally targeted. This made evidence collection difficult and often did more harm than good, turning non-insurgents and their families against U.S. operations. To help solve the problem, Tom started to deploy on the capture missions with the SEALs. After the SEALs secured the area and the insurgents, Tom worked with them to identify and detain only the original targets. He then gathered the evidence they needed to provide to Iraqi authorities, including taking pictures of the scene to document what they found. This resulted in fewer detentions, better support for Iraqi prosecutions, and less animosity among Iraqi citizens. Tom’s efforts also further enhanced his credibility with the SEALs because they could see he was helping them accomplish their mission.

Commander Tom Jones in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2016

To solve the detainee accountability issue more broadly, Tom worked with authorities in the Iraqi legal system, which by 2005 was beginning to function again. He learned what their standard of evidence was and what documentation they needed to hold the insurgents accountable in Iraqi courts. For example, he learned for a confession to be admissible, it needed the detainee’s thumbprint on the document or it would not be considered. The results were incredible. Before Tom began working with the Iraqi prosecutors, there was a fifteen percent conviction rate. Once the SEAL teams started collecting and providing the right types of evidence and documentation to Iraqi prosecutors, the conviction rate rose to eighty-five percent.

By the time Tom departed Iraq in December 2005, he had set the standard for embedding a JAG with the Navy SEALs on operational missions. For his efforts, he received the Bronze Star and the Combat Action Ribbon, two awards he is immensely proud of because they were earned with SEAL teams on deployments. He returned to his position as the Staff Judge Advocate for Naval Special Warfare Center in San Diego, where he served until May 2007.

Given his success with the SEALs and realizing he would likely never have another tour that would rival his time in Iraq, Tom considered returning to civilian life. Two things changed his mind. First, he promoted to Lieutenant Commander (O-4). Second, he received one-year orders to serve on the staff of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT)/FIFTH Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, the headquarters for U.S. naval operations in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, and parts of the Indian Ocean.

Tom reported to NAVCENT in May 2007, where he was embedded with the Future Operations planning cell. There he provided legal advice to planners devising naval operations throughout the Middle East. With the Navy engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as interdicting the movement of terrorists in the Arabian Gulf and pirates off the coast of Somalia, Tom’s advice addressed international law issues, the law of war, and U.S. rules of engagement. Having just come from his assignment with the SEALs, he also brought a true operational perspective to the position. Throughout his tour, he worked hard and played hard, making many lasting friendships with his shipmates in Bahrain.

Tom’s most memorable assignment in Bahrain centered around a tragic accident involving a Navy contracted cargo ship, the Global Patriot. As the ship waited in Egyptian territorial waters to transit the Suez Canal, a small boat approached the ship at night. When the small boat failed to turn away after being warned to do so, the security detail on the Global Patriot fired warning shots to deter the small boat from approaching further. One of the shots apparently ricocheted off the water, striking and killing a man on the small boat. The accident triggered outrage in Egypt and became a major international incident.

To address the situation, the Navy initiated an investigation. Tom was assigned as the lawyer for the investigating team, which proceeded to Egypt on a factfinding mission. The mission was exceedingly difficult because the issue had become politicized. Senior officials with the Egyptian Ministry of Defense held a meeting with the investigating team and invited the media, using it as an opportunity to publicly excoriate the United States for the incident. During a break in the meeting, Tom and another member of the team went to the men’s room, which only had a single toilet surrounded by a stall. Tom waited for his turn to use the facility and encouraged the other team member to hurry up. When the other team member announced he couldn’t find a way to flush the toilet, Tom told him not to worry about it as he’d been drinking water all morning and really had to go. Finally, Tom got his turn and when it came time to flush the toilet, he too announced he couldn’t find a way to flush the now urine-filled commode. Then he spotted a pedal on the floor next to the toilet and stepped on it. Suddenly, the bidet shot a high-powered urine-filled stream of water at him and he had no way to turn it off. Even worse, he’d latched the stall door closed behind him and had to unlock it before he could escape, so he was soaked in urine when he finally exited the stall, just in time to see an Egyptian staff member poke his head inside the men’s room and disappear an instant later.

Tom and the other team member tried to dry Tom off, but it was no use as his shirt, tie, and suit were soaked. He had no choice but to go back to the meeting as he was, wreaking of urine. When he entered the room, he noticed subtle smiles on the Egyptian delegation’s faces. He was sure the staff member who poked his head into the men’s room had told everyone what he’d seen. Much to his surprise, though, the incident changed the tone of the meeting. The senior Egyptian Ministry of Defense official leading the meeting told the media to stop recording and began speaking with Tom. He said, “Mr. Jones, I understand you speak a little Arabic.” When Tom replied he did, the official asked what Tom knew about Egypt. Tom told him he of course knew about Egypt’s ancient civilization and the pyramids and was really looking forward to trying Egyptian food. Then Tom added, “and I just learned this morning that Egyptian toilets are very dangerous.” The Egyptian official and the rest of the Egyptian delegation broke out in laughter—the ice was broken. The official allowed the investigation team to proceed with its investigation, giving the team access to important information. Tom was glad he was able to play a key part in the incident’s resolution, although it was not exactly the role he initially envisioned.

After completing his one-year tour in Bahrain, Tom considered returning to civilian life, but again the Navy came through. Tom was assigned in June 2008 as the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, just a short drive from his aging grandparents in Baltimore. He loved his time at the Academy, where he not only provided legal advice in support of the Academy’s mission of educating the Navy’s next generation of leaders, but he also taught a class in the law for the midshipmen and coached the Academy’s rugby team. Most important, he met his future wife, Erin Bailey, at an Army v. Navy football game. Although Erin was a civilian when they met, she had previously served on active duty as a Navy Lieutenant, initially as a Surface Warfare Officer and later as a Public Affairs Officer, and was a proud graduate of the Naval Academy Class of 2000. After dating for a couple of years, Tom proposed to Erin at the Zimmerman Gazebo on the Naval Academy grounds. They were married in 2012 on a boat in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.   

Commander Tom Jones at his retirement ceremony in Baltimore in 2019

Tom promoted to Commander (O-5) while still at the Academy. When it came time to transfer in 2011, he asked for a job in the Washington DC area so he could continue to be near his grandparents. He felt very strongly about this as they had been there for him when he needed them most, so now he wanted to be there for them as their health declined. He got what he asked for, but the job itself did not seem ideal since Tom was more of an international law attorney than a trial attorney. He was assigned as a prosecutor in the Office of the Chief Prosecutor for the Military Commissions, which was responsible for trying the detainees in Guantanamo Bay for war crimes. The Military Commissions’ main office was in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, so the location was perfect. But the cases being worked moved at a snail’s pace and they faced legal hurdle after legal hurdle, so people assigned as prosecutors or defense counsel for the Military Commissions often grew frustrated. As with so many things in Tom’s life, that did not turn out to be the case for him – he loved his Military Commissions assignment.

First and foremost, the assignment gave him the opportunity to work with a brilliant Army attorney who served as the Chief Prosecutor for the Commissions, Brigadier General Mark Martins. General Martins was tough but fair, always expecting the most out of everyone who worked for him. He put Tom in charge of the Future Dispositions Cell, which meant Tom was responsible for putting together the evidentiary packages for possible future prosecutions. To carry out his responsibilities, Tom worked with a team of FBI agents and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan to interview witnesses and collect evidence. He also traveled to Yemen to depose witnesses, with the airline losing his luggage along the way. When he finally arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, he had to brief the Ambassador in the clothes he’d been wearing during the three days it took him to get there. By that time, the security situation had grown so precarious that instead of conducting the interviews in Yemen, Tom devised a plan to have the witnesses flown onto a U.S. warship off the coast, where they could be interviewed safely. Tom’s luggage eventually arrived at the Embassy after he left, although it was subsequently blown up during a rebel rocket attack on the Embassy’s motor pool.

Tom also got to work on some interesting cases while assigned to the Commissions. Not only did he work on the USS Cole (DDG-67) bombing case and the 9-11 terrorist attack cases, but he also played a major role in assembling the case against Irek Hamidullin, a Russian national fighting together with the Taliban. Although the Military Commissions did not try Hamidullin, the U.S. Justice Department did, using evidence developed by Tom’s team through partnership with the FBI. In 2015, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Virginia sentenced Hamidullin to life in prison plus thirty years for conspiring to attack U.S. and Afghan soldiers and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.

After Tom’s assignment with the Military Commissions, he transferred to the Pentagon to work in the International Law Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General. Within the International Law Division, which is known as “Code 10”, Tom was assigned as the head of the Law of the Sea branch, which was an area he had little previous experience in. Still, he got to work many interesting issues, including putting together testimony for Navy leaders to use with Congress to obtain funding for additional icebreakers to help the Navy catch up with Russian efforts in the thawing Arctic Ocean. He also worked on issues involving China’s buildup of artificial islands in the South China Sea.

Tom stayed at Code 10 through 2016, when he transferred to a dream job in Stuttgart, Germany. There he served as the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate for the U.S. European Command (EUCOM). As the Deputy, Tom managed the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office, which was time consuming but a pleasure to do because it was staffed with a group of well-seasoned attorneys. Tom even served for five months as the acting Staff Judge Advocate, personally advising EUCOM’s four-star commander, when the Staff Judge Advocate transferred to the Joint Staff in Washington DC after promoting to admiral.

Tom’s EUCOM assignment gave him the opportunity to work with many U.S. allies, often providing training on operational law issues and working closely with U.S. partners in Eastern Europe. In fact, during his assignment, Tom traveled to every country in Europe except Belarus. Even better, Tom’s wife, Erin, secured a position as the Deputy Public Affairs Officer, so they both enjoyed their European assignments while working together.

As Tom’s tour at EUCOM drew to a close, he had to make a difficult decision. Erin’s father was having health issues and needed Erin’s and Tom’s help managing the family’s ranch in western Oklahoma. Knowing the importance of family, Tom answered the call and retired in December 2019 after completing twenty years on active duty. Erin left her public affairs position, as well, and in March 2020, the two moved to Gate Oklahoma, where they remain to this day.

As if helping Erin manage her father’s 10,000+ acre cattle ranch wasn’t enough, Tom also serves as the District Attorney for two local counties, splitting his time each week between the two, and as a publicly elected Director of the Beaver County Conservation District. These are yet additional examples of the public service focus Tom has brought to everything he has done in his life. No matter how busy he was, he always found time to help others, including volunteering with community neighborhood associations, the Special Olympics, and Big Brothers; coaching the All-Navy Rugby Team from 2000-2019; and serving as a mentor for inner city youth.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Commander Tom Jones, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Navy (Retired), for his distinguished twenty-year career in the Navy. Whether our nation was at war or peace, Tom willingly went wherever he was needed most, often finding himself in harm’s way. In both his military and civilian capacities, he’s been an outstanding example of public service and dedication to family. We thank Tom for all he has accomplished and wish him fair winds and following seas.

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Commander Tom Jones and Erin Jones at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014

Major Sandy Richardson, U.S. Air Force (Retired) – From Dream to Reality, Flying with the Air Force for 20 Years

Some people dream and that is as far as it goes. Others follow through and take action, always keeping their eyes on the ultimate objective. Ever since Major Sandy Richardson, U.S. Air Force, was a boy with his father watching planes take off and land in Louisiana, he dreamed of becoming a pilot. Now he can look back at his fifty-year career of flying and training others to fly and say with pride, “I lived my dream.” This is his story.

Sandy was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 18, 1948. His father was an administrator/tower controller with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and his mother was a schoolteacher. When Sandy was in the fifth grade, his parents moved their family to Lafayette, then a city of about 40,000 people, located in south central Louisiana. With the oil and gas industry booming off Louisiana’s coast and the aircraft flying in support of the boom filling the skies, the FAA needed Sandy’s father in Lafayette to help control the situation and make sure the airspace was managed in a safe and efficient manner.

Needless to say, Sandy’s father spent a lot of time at airports and Sandy often went with him. As Sandy watched the planes take off and land, he dreamed of one day becoming a pilot. As he sat in the living room of his family’s home, he put on his father’s leather flying helmet and pretended to talk to the planes on a microphone as he watched every episode of the popular 1950s TV show Sky King, which featured an Arizona rancher using his Cessna airplane, Songbird, to track down criminals and rescue wayward hikers. Sandy’s desire to fly only grew stronger as he got older.

Sandy attended Lafayette Senior High School, where he played baseball for a while, but didn’t continue because he was physically too small. He started working at the local A&P grocery store when he was fifteen, bagging groceries, stocking shelves, and doing whatever else he was told to do. He graduated from high school in May 1966 at the height of the Vietnam War draft. Over 380,000 young men would be drafted that year to fight in the jungles of far-off Vietnam.

The draft was not an immediate concern for Sandy just yet. His grandfather, Edwin S. Richardson, had been president of Louisiana Tech University from 1936 to 1941, and his father, mother, and older sister were all alumni. Given that legacy, Sandy’s future was pre-ordained. He enrolled at Louisiana Tech, located in northern Louisiana about seventy miles east of Shreveport. Despite his family’s history there, the school was not for him and he barely managed to finish his freshman year. He then had a hard conversation with his parents, telling them the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette would be a better fit.

With his parents’ blessing, Sandy enrolled at the University of Southwest Louisiana in the fall of 1967. He was determined to remain in good academic standing because he’d seen some of his friends fail out and get drafted for the ground war in Vietnam. He majored in business and kept up with his studies, but what he really wanted to do was fly. Knowing that, Sandy’s father invited a friend who was a pilot for Eastern Airlines to the house to talk to Sandy. The friend told Sandy, “If you want to fly, you need to get into military aviation. They have a great program and will teach you the right way.”

Sandy took the advice to heart and went to a career fair during his senior year, where he spoke to a Navy recruiter. The recruiter told him about the Navy’s Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate (AVROC) program, which would allow him to complete his bachelor’s degree before reporting for officer training and flight school. Sandy was sold and signed up for the program. About six months before graduation, the Navy invited him and other AVROC participants to New Orleans to be sworn in as officer candidates. Before the swearing in ceremony, they were flown to Pensacola, Florida, to spend a day and a night at sea on the training aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CVT-16), an Essex-class aircraft carrier that saw action throughout the Pacific theater during World War II. Once the ship was at sea, Sandy and the other candidates watched new Navy pilots practice takeoffs and landings on the carrier’s flight deck. At night they slept aboard the ship, getting a taste of what life at sea was like.

The experience changed Sandy’s career trajectory – he hated the shipboard experience. So much so, that when the group returned to New Orleans to be sworn into the Navy, Sandy refused to raise his right hand and take the oath. Much to the Navy’s chagrin, especially since he’d already passed his physical and all the required tests, he told the Navy he was no longer interested and returned to the University of Southwest Louisiana a civilian.

After graduating from the University of Southwest Louisiana with a business degree in May 1971, Sandy’s next stop was with an Air Force recruiter. The recruiter was more than happy to work with him, especially knowing he’d previously qualified for the Navy’s flight program. Again, he passed the physical and all the required tests, but the Technical Sergeant (E-6) guiding him through the recruiting process gave him the runaround. Although he had promised Sandy the pilot program, he said he couldn’t guarantee a pilot slot. He suggested instead taking a navigator slot and then once in, doing a lateral move to the pilot program. Then he said he couldn’t guarantee the navigator slot either and Sandy should enlist and go to boot camp in order to open the door to the pilot program. Sandy was unwilling to gamble on his future and decided to wait until he could be guaranteed a pilot slot.

One afternoon, Sandy was drinking beer with a neighbor from across the street whom he knew to be a Marine Corps pilot. Sandy told him the problems he was having and the Marine told Sandy he’d go with him to the recruiter on Monday morning to take care of it. Much to Sandy’s surprise, the Marine showed up on Monday morning in a general’s uniform! Even more surprised was the Air Force Technical Sergeant when the general came into the recruiting office and asked to see his captain. Miraculously, all the problems disappeared and Sandy was given a pilot slot and sworn into the Air Force by 3:00 the same day. His flying career had finally begun.

Major Sandy Richardson

Sandy packed his car and drove to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for Officer Training School (OTS), which began on November 3, 1971. He did not find the ninety-day school, which taught the basics of being a new officer, very challenging. As long as he and his fellow trainees could run, salute, and make their beds, they did fine. There was even a class on how to eat properly, which Sandy had no problem with because his mother had been a stickler with him on table manners. Still, not everyone made it to graduation, which was merely a steppingstone to the next truly challenging level – pilot training.

Now an Air Force second lieutenant with ninety-days of experience under his belt, Sandy reported to Columbus Air Force Base in Columbus, Mississippi, for pilot training in February 1972. Because his class was not scheduled to begin for several months, he was placed on “casual status” and put in charge of the T-37 flight simulators (the T-37 was a Cessna twin-engine jet and the primary trainer for the Air Force at the time). He was also sent to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training, or SERE School. Normally, only officers who had completed flight school attended the intense two-week training, which teaches air crew how to survive and evade capture after bailing out of their aircraft over enemy territory. Since Sandy had not attended pilot training yet, he was unaware of the grueling physical and mental trials he was about to undergo. Still, he made it through SERE School and, on the positive side, did not have to complete it again after he earned his pilot’s wings.

Sandy and about fifty classmates finally began their fifty-four weeks of pilot training on July 17, 1972. In addition to hours of classroom instruction and physical fitness, Sandy and the other trainees got their first taste of the cockpit at the local airport in the T-41 Mescalero, the Air Force’s version of the Cessna 172. They spent about ten hours in the T-41, which the Air Force used to assess their basic flying aptitude. From there, Sandy transitioned to the T-37 and eventually to the T-38 Talon, a supersonic two-seat trainer still used by the Air Force today to train its pilots. Sandy loved the T-38 and found flying it exhilarating.

Flight training was, and was intended to be, stressful. Day one began with the instructors screaming, ranting, and raving at the trainees, warning them the man sitting next to them would not be there in six months – and they were right. Of the fifty trainees that started with Sandy, only twenty-six graduated. When a trainee failed on a flight, they were given another chance on what was known as an “87 ride”. If they failed the “87 ride”, they were given another chance on an “88 ride”. If they failed the “88 ride”, they were given one final chance on a “wash out ride”. If they failed, they were dropped from pilot training and sent to Navigator School. For that reason, the trainees jokingly referred to pilot training as “navigator prep school.” One officer in Sandy’s pilot class washed out just two-weeks before graduation.

As graduation neared, the training Wing Commander asked the trainees if any distinguished visitors (DVs) would attend graduation. Since Sandy only had his family attending, he didn’t think anything of the request, so he was surprised when the Wing Commander called him to his office. The Wing Commander asked why he did not tell the command his father was attending graduation. Sandy said it was just his father, but the Wing Commander told him his father was a GS-15 with the FAA and assured him that meant he was a DV. Sandy said he understood and left the office, a little more impressed with his father’s position.

The prospective pilots needed 210 flying hours to graduate from flight training. With the graduation ceremony drawing near, Sandy needed one more flight to get over the limit. As he was flying around the area, his T-38 lost one of its two jet engines, which was not a big deal because it was something Sandy had been well-trained to handle. He radioed in the emergency and started to return to the airfield to land. Unbeknownst to him, his father and mother had been given access to the Runway Surveillance Unit (RSU) to watch the day’s flight operations. They heard the emergency called in and were stunned to learn the pilot of the plane with the emergency was their son. Sandy’s mother nearly had a heart attack, but Sandy landed the plane without incident and graduated from flight training on schedule, having achieved the required 210 flight hours. His mother pinned on his flight wings during the graduation ceremony.  

New pilots like Sandy basically had two career options: flying fighters or flying bombers and tankers. Although Sandy was fighter qualified, there were only three fighter slots available, so that left bombers and tankers. With U.S. combat operations in the Vietnam War having just ended and the Cold War with the Soviet Union at its peak, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) desperately needed pilots. SAC operated the Air Force’s B-52s as part of the U.S. nuclear deterrent triad, the other two elements being land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In the past, few new flight school graduates wanted to fly B-52s, so SAC often got pilots from the bottom of the class. Now, with the emphasis on SAC’s mission, new pilots were being channeled to B-52s and Sandy was one of them.

After graduating from flight school in July 1973, Sandy drove 1,800 miles from Columbus, Mississippi, to Castle Air Force Base in Merced, California, to learn to fly B-52s. His training lasted 105 days and qualified him to fly in the right seat (copilot) of the big strategic bombers. He quickly learned to love flying the plane, but once he reported to his first command, he better understood why pilots were not enthralled with taking the bomber/tanker career path.

Sandy’s first assignment as a newly qualified B-52 pilot began in November 1973 with the 596th Bombardment Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base in his home state of Louisiana. Before he could fly operational missions, he had to get nuclear qualified, which he did at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. He then began to serve as a copilot on the Alert B-52s, which provided strategic bombers armed with nuclear weapons ready to take off on a moment’s notice. Each airplane had a specific mission to fly, so the crews were trained and ready to go should they be called upon for action. To ensure they could launch quickly, the Alert B-52 crews, together with the tanker crews that would help the B-52s get to their targets by refueling them in flight, lived together in a facility they called the “Mole Hole” for their seven-day Alert assignment. The Alert planes were also dispersed to Air Force bases in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, so a single incoming strike by missiles on Barksdale could not destroy them all at once.

Even the non-Alert B-52 missions were physically and mentally taxing. The day before flying an assigned mission, the flight crew spent six hours planning the flight. Then on execution day, the mission itself typically involved twelve to fourteen hours of flying. Sandy’s longest mission lasted twenty-six hours in the air. That said, the end of the Vietnam War brought many B-52 aircrew back to the United States and all of them needed cockpit time to stay current, so actual flight time in the B-52 became scarce. Sandy typically only flew one mission every forty-five days. The rest of the time he maintained his flying skills in the B-52 simulator. Then, the Air Force introduced a program where B-52 pilots could maintain their currency by flying T-37s, which were brought to Barksdale for that purpose. The pilots were permitted to fly the T-37s wherever they wanted, as long as they flew the required number of hours and made the necessary number of take offs and landings. Sandy took advantage of the opportunity and used the planes to fly to Lafayette to visit his parents and go hunting and fishing with his father.

At times, the operational requirements increased. Sandy did two 180-day rotations in Thailand flying missions in Southeast Asia. These assignments involved flying the B-52D model, and since Sandy was qualified on the later B-52G model, he had to go to Carswell Air Force Base to get certified on the B-52D before he could deploy. Sandy describes the Thailand missions as “peacekeeping” missions, keeping a watchful eye in the area after U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended.

Recognizing the SAC lifestyle and operational outlook weren’t what he was looking for, Sandy searched for other options. An opportunity arrived in the form of a letter asking for T-39 pilots. T-39 Sabreliners were basic seven-passenger jets serving as Operational Support Aircraft (OSA). Operationally, they were assigned to the Military Airlift Command with a mission of transporting VIPs wherever they needed to go. Sandy applied for the assignment and was accepted in September 1976; his B-52 flying days were over.

Sandy met all sorts of VIPs in his new role. Besides the normal mix of three and four-star generals, he flew the likes of Senator Barry Goldwater and other members of Congress around the United States. Most trips began or ended at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC. Because the trips involved very senior U.S. government officials, they required a new diplomatic skillset. For example, when flying a three or four-star general, Sandy put a placard in the window with three or four red stars if the senior passenger was an Army general and three or four blue stars if the senior passenger was an Air Force general. On one of his earliest trips, when he went out to greet the arriving four-star Army general, the general asked him, “Captain, how do I look to you, today?” Knowing this could not be good, Sandy responded, “You look fine, sir.” The general continued, “Well, that’s not what the stars in your window say. You’ve got them upside down, which means you are transporting a deceased general.” Sandy did not make that mistake again.

When Sandy’s Barksdale tour officially ended in August 1977, he took a permanent assignment with the 58th Military Airlift Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany, again flying VIPs on T-39s. He was surprised, though, when he arrived at the commercial airport in Frankfurt to begin his assignment and no one was there to help him get to the base and checked into his new command. He made it to Ramstein on his own and reported to his new command only to learn his orders had been cancelled, so the command was not expecting him. Fortunately, the squadron commander stepped in and since Sandy was already in Germany, the Air Force relented and allowed him to stay.

Sandy in the cockpit of a C-130

With twenty-one general officers on Ramstein Air Base alone, Sandy got plenty of flying time. He also flew ambassadors, members of Congress, and other VIPs around Europe. Oftentimes, the VIPs would have unusual requests. For example, a Congressman visiting Spain was presented with a large rock. His staff told Sandy he needed to load it onto Sandy’s T-39. When Sandy responded the rock was too big to fit on the plane, a much larger C-130 “Hercules” transport plane was requisitioned to transport the rock for the Congressman.

On another occasion, Sandy was tasked with transporting a general with an impressive flying record, including having been commanding officer of the Air Force Thunderbirds and astronaut qualified. Their destination was Northolt, the Queen’s airfield, outside of London. The runway was short and slick when wet, which was particularly hazardous for the T-39 because it didn’t have anti-skid brakes or thrust reversers.  The conditions were so bad, in fact, that Sandy needed to be specifically qualified to land there. On the flight to Northolt, the general sat in the pilot’s (left) seat and flew the airplane, but as they approached the field, Sandy said he would have to make the landing. The general disagreed and pointed to the four stars on his shoulders, asking Sandy why he thought he was a better pilot than the general. Sandy explained the hazardous conditions (it was raining at Northolt) and that he had the special qualifications needed to make the landing safely. It got so heated, Sandy actually had to hand the general the orders for the flight making it clear Sandy, as the aircraft commander, was in charge for the flight. The general angrily acquiesced, telling Sandy, “Captain, you won’t be here tomorrow.”

Once on the ground, Sandy called his squadron commander to tell him what happened. Two hours later, Sandy got a call directly from the four-star general in command of the entire Military Airlift Command. When Sandy explained what happened, the general told him to go to his airplane the next day as scheduled to pick up the angry four-star, and if he didn’t want to fly with Sandy, the four-star could walk to his destination. Sandy did as instructed but when the four-star arrived for the flight, instead of being angry, he apologized. Sandy had done the right thing and it paid off.

On June 25, 1979, Sandy was tasked with picking up General Alexander Haig, who at the time was the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, at an airstrip in Belgium. As Sandy was waiting for the general to arrive, a column of black sedans barreled onto the airstrip and stopped at the plane. A staff member jumped out and told Sandy to get the plane in the air—NOW! He said they needed to go “wheels up” as soon as the general got onboard because one of the cars in the motorcade had just been blown up in an attempt to assassinate the general. Sandy did as instructed and flew General Haig to safety.

Missions to and from Berlin also proved stressful, because at the time Berlin was surrounded by communist East Germany. Sandy had to fly his unarmed jet through one of three narrow Allied air corridors leading from West Germany to Berlin. If he flew near the edge of the corridor, Soviet Mig fighter jets would fly close by to check him out. More than once, Sandy observed the Migs flying nearby, but there was never an incident because he always remained in the Allied corridor.

Sandy and Randi Richardson

By far the most consequential event during Sandy’s tour at Ramstein was he met his future wife at the officer’s club one Friday night. Randi Habersang had just arrived at Ramstein two days before to take a secretarial job when she saw Sandy “float through the bar.” Although she thought he appeared cocky, they went out after being introduced by mutual friends.

When Sandy’s tour with the 58th Military Airlift Squadron came to an end in August 1979, the Air Force wanted him to return to flying B-52s out of Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The only other option offered involved flying C-130 “Hercules” transport planes out of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. Sandy jumped at the opportunity to fly C-130s. After taking time off to marry Randi on October 13, 1979, Sandy spent the rest of 1979 qualifying in the C-130 at Little Rock Air Force Base in Little Rock, Arkansas. Then he and Randi departed for Elmendorf Air Force Base to begin their Alaskan adventure.

Sandy reported to the 17th Tactical Airlift Squadron at Elmendorf in January 1980. The squadron’s primary mission was to keep the many remote military sites throughout Alaska resupplied. For many of these sites, airlift was the only way in and out. In fact, some of the landing zones at the sites were so treacherous, once Sandy committed to making a landing, pulling up and circling around wasn’t an option – he either had to land or crash.

A colonel from the Air Force Inspector General’s Office who had previously flown for the Thunderbirds learned that firsthand when he visited Elmendorf for an inspection. After spending the bulk of his time with the airbase’s fighter squadrons, he agreed to fly on a C-130 mission with the 17th Tactical Airlift Squadron to Sparrevohn. Sandy was the plane’s pilot. After Sandy did a spiral-down approach into a holding pattern for the first destination, the colonel started to become interested in the flying and stood on the flight deck behind Sandy’s shoulders. As they approached a landing zone on the slope of a hill with hydraulic fluid marking the center of the zone, Sandy called out “committed” and lowered the big plane’s flaps to land. The colonel asked Sandy if he did this often and when he said he did, the colonel replied, “You guys are crazy!” Once they made their other stops and returned to Elmendorf safely, the colonel invited the plane’s officers to the club and said, “I’m buying”.

On another occasion on a flight to Indian Mountain, Sandy noticed a bear on the landing zone. As he was already committed to land, his intention was to fly over the bear without hitting it, because a collision could prove deadly for both the bear and the plane and its crew. At the last minute, the bear decided to move off the landing zone and Sandy was able to put the plane down safely. As he taxied slowly to the end of the runway, he saw the rear door light illuminate, indicating the loadmaster was opening the ramp in anticipation of unloading the plane’s cargo. Then suddenly, the light went out indicating the door had closed. When Sandy asked what the problem was, he learned the bear had only temporarily taken refuge while the plane landed and now it was following the plane to its parking space. The huge grizzly walked all the way to the front of the plane and looked at Sandy before finally wandering off, allowing the ground crew to escape from the fire truck they had crammed into when the big bear approached.

Sandy and Randi consider their years in Alaska some of their best. Not only did they enjoy Alaska’s beauty, but their first son, Rich, was born there in 1981. By the end of 1983, though, it was time to transfer, and Sandy received orders to Travis Air Force Base in northern California where he would be assigned as the Chief of C-130 Flight Safety for the 22nd Air Force. Before reporting, he was sent on temporary duty to the University of Southern California to learn how to conduct mishap investigations. This meant he had to leave Randi, who was seven and a half months pregnant with their second child, and Rich behind in Anchorage. After completing the school, Sandy returned to Anchorage to accompany Randi and Rich to Travis in November 1983.

Major Sandy Richardson

As the Chief of C-130 Flight Safety, now Major Sandy Richardson was responsible for all safety issues for every C-130 west of the Mississippi River. This meant he spent a lot of time on travel throughout the Pacific, working with squadrons and airplanes in Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan. In fact, as soon as Sandy arrived at Travis, he was sent on travel for three-and-a-half weeks, making it back to Randi just in time for the birth of their second son, Shawn. Sandy’s other significant responsibility was to conduct investigations when C-130s suffered mishaps. To prevent bias, he was only assigned to investigations involving 21st Air Force C-130s, which were those located east of the Mississippi River and in Europe and Africa. The 21st Air Force reciprocated by investigating C-130 mishaps involving 22nd Air Force airplanes.

As Sandy approached the end of his four-year tour, he learned he was being considered for a one -year unaccompanied short tour in Bizerte, Tunisia, to work with Tunisian C-130 air crew to improve their flying skills. Sandy told his command he didn’t want to go and the command pushed back for him, but to no avail. As he was planning the 22nd Air Force staff going away party to recognize departing officers, it turned out unexpectedly to be for him and Randi. He had ninety days to report to Bizerte, Tunisia, and move and settle Randi and their sons to San Antonio, Texas. 

After attending a crash course in Arabic, Sandy reported to Bizerte in October 1987 and found himself in charge as the senior U.S. Air Force officer on the ground. This meant not only was he responsible for training the Tunisians, but he also was responsible for evacuation plans for the U.S. military and contractor personnel there in case something went wrong. More relevant to his original tasking, he found Tunisia had only two C-130s in its Air Force and its pilots had limited skills. This meant he had to be on special alert whenever he flew with them, always ready to take the plane’s controls.

Sandy did get one opportunity to visit his family once during his Tunisian tour. The mission was to fly one of the Tunisian C-130s back to the United States, stopping at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC, then on to Texas, back to Andrews, and finally returning to Bizerte. When it came time for the plane to depart Bizerte, Sandy could tell the plane was really overloaded. He asked the loadmaster what the plane’s weight was. The loadmaster replied 155,000 pounds, which was the plane’s maximum fully loaded weight. The loadmaster also said the weight was precisely balanced over the C-130’s wheels. When Sandy looked at the weight and balance form, he could see the form had been erased multiple times.

By just looking at the way the plane was sitting, Sandy knew the plane’s weight and balance weren’t accurate. He asked the loadmaster what was in the back of the plane and the loadmaster said it was classified. Sandy didn’t buy it. He looked in the cargo bay for himself and saw it was loaded with pallet upon pallet of twenty-four-inch by twenty-four-inch boxes filled with posters encouraging people to vacation in Tunisia. With that load in the cargo bay, Sandy estimated the plane’s weight had to be at least 190,000 pounds with full fuel. He told the Tunisian air crew the plane wasn’t leaving until the load was reduced to within specifications. After four days of wrangling that involved the U.S. embassy in Tunis, the excess cargo was finally unloaded and the plane took off enroute to the United States.

On the way into Washington, DC, the plane lost one of its four engines, so once it landed at Andrews, the trip couldn’t continue. The Tunisians had two options – they could wait for an engine to be shipped to Andrews for the necessary repairs, or Sandy could fly the plane on its remaining three engines to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where it could be repaired and the Tunisians’ visit could get back on schedule. The Tunisian crew elected the latter option and Sandy flew the plane to Texas without incident. While the plane was being repaired, Sandy visited with Randi and their two boys, who were living in San Antonio.  After the plane was repaired, Sandy said goodbye and made his way back to Tunisia to finish his tour.

Sandy returned to the United States permanently in October 1988. He was offered two assignments, either the Africa Desk at the Pentagon or as a C-130 instructor pilot at Little Rock Air Force Base. Sandy took the instructor pilot job and moved his family to Cabot, Arkansas, where he has lived ever since. He was initially an instructor pilot for the 16th Tactical Airlift Training Squadron, but soon transferred to the 62nd Tactical Airlift Squadron once he updated his tactical flying qualifications. There he trained not only U.S. C-130 pilots, but also C-130 pilots from around the world. He served as the chief instructor pilot with the 62nd Tactical Airlift Squadron until he retired from active duty on November 30, 1991.

Sandy (at right) in the C-130 simulator with a student and fellow instructors

As with many retiring military pilots, Sandy’s post-retirement plans were to fly for a major airline. But after discussing it with Randi, they agreed he’d been away from the family a lot and he should pursue a job that would allow him to be at home. His first thought was to see if there might be a position training C-130 pilots on the simulators at Little Rock Air Force Base. When he went to inquire about a position, he was hired on the spot and told to report for work the following Monday. He held that position for thirty years, finally retiring in October 2022. He and Randi are now enjoying retirement, with their two son’s families, including their three granddaughters, Landry, Anna, and Elle, living in Little Rock and Oklahoma City. 

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Major Sandy Richardson, U.S. Air Force (Retired), for his fifty years of service to our nation, including twenty years on active duty and thirty years as a flight simulator instructor training the next generation of C-130 pilots. From patrolling the skies as part of the U.S. strategic bomber force, to safely transporting military and civilian leaders around the U.S. and Europe, to flying hazardous C-130 missions around the globe, Sandy epitomized the Air Force’s fly, fight, and win motto. We thank him and his family for the many sacrifices they made during Sandy’s career and wish him fair winds and following seas.

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Sandy Richardson

LCDR Alfred Sokolowski, U.S. Navy – Dreadnoughts to Destroyers: A Two-Ocean Sailor in World War II

Lieutenant Commander Alfred “Ski” Sokolowski, U.S. Navy (Retired), has experienced much over the last ninety-nine years. He had a front row seat in World War II as his ships plowed the North Atlantic, protecting convoys from German submarines. He fought on a destroyer in the Pacific, helping recapture islands lost to Japan at the start of the war, and then joined the fight again just five years later in the Korean War sailing off the coast of North Korea. As if that wasn’t enough, he took on the dangerous job of explosive ordnance disposal and managed weapons logistics in the western Pacific. He didn’t just watch U.S. history from a distance—he lived it over the course of thirty years. This is his story.

Alfred was born to John and Rachel Sokolowski in March 1924 in Jerome, Pennsylvania, a small town in Somerset County, located in the southwestern part of the state. His father had his own coal mine and supplied coal to the local dairy farmers so they could pasteurize their milk before taking it to market. His mother stayed home to take care of the family, no small feat given Alfred was the ninth of ten children. In all, Alfred had eight sisters and one older brother, so his home was a lively place growing up.

Alfred attended school in Jerome through the eighth grade, but began high school at Conemaugh Township High School in nearby Davidsville, Pennsylvania. He had only made it through his freshman year when his father passed away, so his mother moved the family to suburban Chicago to be nearer her relatives. Alfred continued his education in Chicago at Fenger Academy High School, where he completed his sophomore and junior years.

By the early spring of 1941, Alfred was ready to move on. His high school swim coach had done a tour in the Navy and told him if he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, joining the Navy was a good way to help him find out. Armed with that advice, Alfred and a friend from high school decided to give the Marines a try. They went to the post office to follow through on their decision, only to learn the Marine recruiter was temporarily unavailable. Committed to their decision, they sat on the cold granite floor to wait. After a while, a Navy chief (E-7) walked up to them and asked what they were doing. When they said they wanted to enlist in the Marines, the chief told them the Marine sergeant wouldn’t be back until later, but they were welcome to talk with him until the sergeant returned.

Soon the Navy chief was telling them about the hot meals and warm bunks they’d have in the Navy but not in the Marines. The chief’s sales pitch, together with the sharp appearance of the Navy’s uniforms, worked their magic on Alfred and he decided to enlist in the Navy for three years. Alfred’s friend could not be swayed. He waited for the Marine recruiting sergeant to return and enlisted in the Marines. The two friends then went their separate ways, heading off to their respective service’s boot camps.

Alfred Sokolowski at boot camp in April 1941

Since the Navy’s boot camp was located at Naval Training Center Great Lakes, just north of Chicago, Alfred did not have far to go. He began his eight weeks of training in April 1941, just after his seventeenth birthday, learning the ins and outs of being a sailor. He did not find boot camp difficult and graduated in the summer of 1941 as a Seaman 2nd Class (E-2) making the lofty sum of $21.00 per month.

After bootcamp, Alfred received orders directing him to report to the USS Arkansas (BB-33), a mammoth battleship (often referred to as a “dreadnought”) commissioned into the Navy in 1912. Five other graduating sailors also received orders to the Arkansas, while six more received orders to USS Texas (BB-35). As both ships were homeported in Newport, Rhode Island, the group of twelve traveled together. When they arrived in Newport, the USS Arkansas was underway, so Alfred and the others bound for that ship stayed aboard USS Texas until Arkansas returned to port.

Life onboard one of the oldest battleships in the U.S. Fleet was much as it had been since the day the ship commissioned. Alfred was initially assigned to help maintain the officers’ stateroom area, which meant constantly polishing the floors and touching up paint. He was also assigned to the ship’s 7th Division, which meant he had to do routine maintenance on the main deck and man the officers’ motorboat, where he served as the bow hooker. Alfred’s most impactful assignment, though, was as a mess cook preparing meals for the 5-inch/51-caliber gun crews assigned to the 7th Division.

The cooking supplies Alfred worked with were basic. In fact, since the Navy did not supply condiments to help spice up the meals, Alfred took it upon himself to purchase condiments for everyone’s use. A First Class Gunner’s Mate (a petty officer (E­­-6) whose job specialty was maintaining and firing the ship’s guns) noticed Alfred’s extra effort, not only with the condiments, but also with everything else he did, and asked if Alfred would like to “strike” to be a Gunner’s Mate. Alfred asked the petty officer what a career as a Gunner’s Mate entailed and it sounded like something he would enjoy doing, so he said yes.

From that moment on, the First Class Gunner’s Mate took Alfred under his wing. Not only did he teach Alfred how to maintain and fire the Arkansas’ 5-inch/51-caliber broadside guns, but he also taught him about how to be successful in the Navy. He gave him practical advice about what he needed to do as a seaman and leadership advice about how to handle himself once he became a petty officer. He painted a clear picture for Alfred of what he could expect from a career in the Navy and gave him principles to live by. Throughout Alfred’s career, he recalled his time with this First Class Gunner’s Mate and tried to follow the advice and life lessons he had been given. Alfred considers his time with the First Class Gunner’s Mate to be one of the most important experiences of his nearly thirty years in the Navy.

During the summer and fall of 1941, the United States continued its support of England and inched closer to entering World War II on the side of the Allies. In August 1941, USS Arkansas accompanied other U.S. Navy ships escorting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland for the Atlantic Charter Conference, where both countries agreed upon their war aims. The conference was held on the British battleship, HMS Prince of Wales, which Alfred actually had the opportunity to go aboard while the conference was ongoing. After the conference ended, USS Arkansas returned to the United States and later patrolled the mid-Atlantic a couple of times in mid-September. These patrols were dangerous, even though the United States was not yet at war. In October, two destroyers, the USS Kearny (DD-432) and the USS Reuben James (DD-245), were both torpedoed by German submarines in the general vicinity of Iceland. The USS Reuben James sank on October 31 with the loss of 100 members of her crew.

USS Arkansas (BB-33) – Source: U.S. Navy

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II. The attack was personal for Alfred, because his high school friend who enlisted with him earlier in the year was killed on board the USS Arizona (BB-39) when the ship blew up after a Japanese armor-piercing bomb penetrated a powder magazine. One week later, Alfred found himself sailing onboard USS Arkansas in the North Atlantic again, heading for Iceland. The ship returned to Boston in late January 1942, then transited to Casco Bay, Maine, for convoy escort training. In March, the ship sailed to Norfolk, Virginia, for an overhaul, and in July, it departed for New York City to begin convoy escort duty as the flagship for Task Force 38.

From August 1942 until Alfred transferred from the ship, USS Arkansas escorted convoys across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. One of Alfred’s primary duties during this time was to serve as a lookout on the bridge or high up in the crow’s nest, keeping a watchful eye for German submarines. The job was difficult because the submarines attacked at night and the only indicator that a submarine was in the area might be a periscope sticking out above the water’s surface. Alfred and the other lookouts knew if they saw anything, they had to report it.

Alfred also served as a member of a 5-inch/51-caliber gun crew. These guns were located on the port and starboard sides of the ships, three on each side. To ensure the guns could be manned and fired on short notice, the gun crews lived in the compartments that housed their guns. They maintained a supply of live 5-inch projectiles, and sometimes even powder bags, alongside the guns, so they were always ready to fire. Alfred’s gun was on the ship’s starboard side and took five to six people to fire. He gained lots of experience firing the gun during gunnery practice and eventually promoted to gun captain. This meant he led the team of men firing the gun.

The gun crew’s sleeping arrangements harkened back to the days of sailing ships. Because Alfred was a junior sailor, he slept on a hammock strung between two poles. The senior petty officers were issued cots, which were more comfortable until the ship got into high seas. Then the cots slid back and forth across the deck as the ship rolled, while Alfred and the junior sailors simply swung back and forth, secure in their hammocks.

The sparse living conditions also meant Alfred had little space to store personal items. Everything he owned, including his uniforms, had to be stored in a locker about thirty inches wide, tall, and deep, although he was able to hang his winter peacoat in a locker with the coats of the other sailors. When it came time to wash his uniforms, he filled a bucket with cold water. He then used a steam outlet in the shower to heat the water until it was hot enough to wash his uniforms, which he did in the bucket while sitting on a three-legged wooden stool. Once satisfied his uniforms were clean, he hung them, together with the bucket, in the gun crew’s living spaces to dry.

Alfred wore his enlisted blue uniform most of the time, but he and the other sailors were permitted to wear a t-shirt and dungarees when they were doing hull maintenance over the side of the ship. Hull maintenance involved scraping any barnacles off the ship above the waterline, brushing on a rust inhibitor, and then painting over the area with gray paint. It was dirty work, but Alfred didn’t mind because the dungarees were much more comfortable than his Navy blues.

When it came time for payday, Alfred filled out a pay chit requesting to be paid. He received his monthly pay in cash, although he never took the full amount, instead leaving some in his paymaster savings account. Since his mother needed help and he had nowhere to spend his money, he always sent half his pay home. The rest he kept for those few times when the ship pulled into places like Iceland for a few days ashore.

USS Isherwood (DD-520) – Source: U.S. Navy

As the war continued, the Navy started to bring new ships online and it needed experienced sailors to form the backbone of their crews. As a result, Alfred, now a Gunner’s Mate Second Class (E-5), transferred from USS Arkansas at the end of 1942 to a new Fletcher-class destroyer still under construction, the USS Isherwood (DD-520). Before reporting to the ship, he attended a Gunner’s Mate school to learn to fire the 5-inch/38-caliber gun, which would be the main battery on his new ship. He then moved to Staten Island, New York, where the ship was being built, as part of the pre-commissioning crew. Because he could not yet live on the ship, he stayed with an old Italian family who rented him a room. He went to the shipyard every day, working with other Gunner’s Mates to inventory spare parts the ship would need in the event the guns were damaged in combat.  

The Isherwood was finally commissioned on April 12, 1943. Throughout April and May 1943, the crew trained on the new ship as far north as Casco Bay, Maine, and as far south as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. By August, it was ready for escort duty and it sailed with a convoy that included the RMS Queen Mary, which was serving as a troop ship ferrying soldiers to England. The Isherwood was then operationally assigned to the British Home Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands to help search for the German battleship Tirpitz, the sister ship of the infamous Bismark, which had been sunk earlier in the war.

Alfred’s starboard running light from Scotland

When Isherwood made a port call in Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney Islands, Alfred got the opportunity to go ashore. As he was walking back to the ship, he passed a sail loft where a sail maker was sewing sails. Alfred said hello to the man and noticed he had a beautiful copper and brass kerosene powered running light for sale that must have been salvaged from a wrecked ship. Alfred purchased the running light and managed to get it home, and it still decorates his living room to this day, although now it is powered by electricity instead of kerosene.

Alfred and USS Isherwood returned to the United States at the end of September 1943, escorting a convoy to Boston. In November, the ship headed south for the Panama Canal and then north to San Francisco, to begin operations in the Pacific theater. Its first assignment was as part of Task Force 94 in the Aleutians campaign, an oft forgotten aspect of the war fought around Attu and Kiska Islands, the only U.S. soil captured by Japanese forces during World War II. The ship operated out of the U.S. Navy base at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, hunting for Japanese submarines and screening U.S. ships conducting operations in the area.

Although Alfred was used to sailing in the North Atlantic, operations in the northern Pacific took cold to a new level. He describes the water as being so cold, the surface appeared to be more of a slurry than flowing water. The weather was also different, with frequent snow and ice storms. U.S. ships used these storms to their advantage when Japanese planes spotted them and came in for an attack. The ships would make their best speed toward the storms to hide from the attacking planes. If they could not make it into the cloud cover, they stood and fought.

Alfred’s main job on the Isherwood was mount captain for its Number Five turret, which housed the ship’s stern-most 5-inch/38-caliber gun. That meant he was responsible for fighting with that gun, firing at attacking enemy aircraft or surface vessels and bombarding targets ashore. The gun was a powerful weapon, capable of hurling a fifty-four-pound, five-inch diameter shell against surface targets up to ten miles away, and against aircraft targets up to six miles away. In addition to being responsible for firing the gun in combat, Alfred’s team also maintained the gun so it was ready to fire whenever needed.

During the late spring and summer of 1944, the Isherwood provided screening to protect the U.S. ships landing forces on Attu and Kiska islands to retake them from the Japanese. Then, in June 1944, the ship participated in a raid on Japan’s Kurile Islands, attacking shipping in the area and bombarding targets ashore.

Isherwood finally left the frigid waters of the northern Pacific in August 1944, headed for San Francisco and some needed repairs. From there it headed to Pearl Harbor, and finally in October 1944, it joined the assault force in Leyte Gulf for the invasion of the Philippines. Throughout the Philippine operations, Isherwood conducted anti-submarine patrols and provided gunfire support for U.S. Army forces ashore. In late December, the ship joined the landing force in the Lingayen Gulf, where the ship was constantly under attack from enemy planes and kamikazes. The ship’s guns scored numerous hits on enemy aircraft, shooting down at least one kamikaze.

Throughout the Philippine campaign, Alfred and the rest of the crew were at general quarters around the clock, prepared to defend the ship. Despite this, Alfred never felt stressed because he had a job to do where failure was not an option. He also lived better than he did on USS Arkansas in that he now slept in a bunk, not on a hammock, and got to eat in the crew’s mess rather than on tables set up on the mess deck. The food was good and there was always enough, even if it meant just eating a sandwich while Alfred manned his battle station.

Gunner’s Mate 1st Class Alfred Sokolowski

After the invasion of the Philippines, USS Isherwood was directed to send one of its two First Class Gunner’s Mates back to the United States to await assignment to new ships under construction. Alfred was one of the two under consideration, but since he was the junior of the two, the other First Class Gunner’s Mate got to make the decision. He decided to send Alfred back while he remained on the ship. Alfred departed as instructed and made his way back to the United States via New Guinea, eventually arriving at Naval Station Treasure Island in San Francisco, where he stayed at the Transient Barracks awaiting new orders.

In early June 1945, a yeoman contacted Alfred and said his previous ship, the Isherwood, had been damaged and was at Treasure Island for repairs. He asked if Alfred would like to return to the ship and Alfred said yes. When Alfred learned what had happened to the ship, though, he was shocked. On April 22, 1945, USS Isherwood was serving as a picket ship off the coast of Okinawa fighting off Japanese kamikaze attacks when one penetrated the ship’s air defenses and crashed into the Number Three gun mount, killing everyone in the vicinity, including the First Class Gunner’s Mate who had elected to stay with the ship and send Alfred back to the states. Fires broke out and one set off a depth charge in a rack at the stern of the ship, blowing a hole in the deck and killing everyone in the Number Two Engine Room, as well as those trying to put out the fire before the depth charge exploded. Over eighty men were killed, wounded, or missing as a result of the attack. Alfred believes had he been onboard fighting the fires around the Number Five gun mount, he would not have survived.

Alfred returned to the Isherwood, but repairs were not completed until after the war with Japan ended, so the ship’s and Alfred’s wars were over. The ship left Treasure Island in October, retraced its steps through the Panama Canal, and arrived in New York City to participate in Navy Day on October 27, 1945. As part of the celebration, over 1,000 warplanes and forty-seven warships, including the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), on which the Japanese surrendered just the month before, and USS Isherwood, saluted President Harry S. Truman as he sailed by the line of ships on the USS Renshaw (DD-499). Alfred recalls being awed by seeing the New York City skyline from the deck of his ship.

After Navy Day, the Isherwood sailed to Charleston, South Carolina, for decommissioning. Alfred, now a Chief Gunner’s Mate (E-7), stayed with the ship to ready the ship’s five 5-inch/38-caliber guns for mothballing as the ship prepared to enter the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. USS Isherwood was formally decommissioned on February 1, 1946.

With the war over and the ship decommissioned, Alfred served briefly on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-18) and the battleship USS Washington (BB-56) as part of their decommissioning crews. Both ships had storied records in the Pacific War, but now that the war was over, their services were no longer required. As he had done on the Isherwood, Alfred prepared each ship’s five 5-inch/38-caliber guns for mothballing before the ships entered the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. USS Wasp was decommissioned on February 17, 1947, while USS Washington was decommissioned on June 27, 1947.

With his decommissioning work complete, Alfred reported to the destroyer USS Turner (DD-834), homeported in San Diego. In 1948, he sailed with the ship to the western Pacific and to various ports in China, where the ship facilitated the transportation of people from Mao Tse Tung’s communist Mainland China to Chiang Kai-Shek’s democratic Formosa. The Turner, and other U.S. Navy forces patrolling the Taiwan Strait, helped deter Mao from further extending his communist regime to the island of Formosa.

After his assignment on the Turner, Alfred returned to Naval Training Center, Great Lakes. This time, instead of being in a company of new recruits, he led one. While there, he was playing basketball with a lieutenant who told him that the Bureau of Naval Personnel was looking for Chief Gunner’s Mates to instruct at three Navy ROTC units: the University of North Carolina, Tufts University, and Harvard University. Alfred said he would do it, indicating the other two chiefs could pick their schools and he would take whatever was left. Thus began Alfred’s three-year assignment at Harvard University, which gave him the opportunity to finish his fourth year of high school and earn his high school diploma.

Chief Gunner’s Mate Alfred Sokolowski

Once he completed his tour at Harvard, it was time for Alfred to get involved in his second war. He did this aboard the fleet oiler USS Kaskaskia (AO-27), which had a 5-inch/38-caliber deck gun mounted on its stern and thus needed the services of an experienced Chief Gunner’s Mate. The Kaskaskia refueled U.S. ships operating off the coast of North Korea, including ships engaged in fire support missions, which brought her in closer to the coast. She also refueled aircraft carriers launching bombing missions against enemy targets in North Korea, so she played a vital role in the Korean War effort. Alfred, who also served as the ship’s Chief Master-at-Arms, stayed onboard Kaskaskia after the war ended and promoted to Warrant Officer (W-1) while onboard. His promotion provided hope to his fellow Kaskaskia chiefs (E-7s), signaling they, too, could become officers if they wanted to do so.

After USS Kaskaskia, Alfred reported to the Reserve Fleet in Philadelphia to help oversee the ongoing efforts to maintain the many ships mothballed at the end of World War II and the Korean War. Soon after arriving, he ran into another warrant officer who told him he needed to get out of the Reserve Fleet because it was a dead-end job and that instead, he should apply to Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) school. He warned Alfred to do it right away because he would soon be too old to be considered.

Alfred heeded his friend’s advice and went to speak with his commanding officer. Instead of giving him permission to transfer, the captain threw him out of the office and told him to go do what he had been brought there to do. The captain didn’t care Alfred would soon be too old to attend EOD school and that this would be his only opportunity. Alfred did as instructed, but a little while later, the Chief of Naval Personnel paid a visit to Bayonne, New Jersey, and Alfred ran into a fellow warrant officer accompanying the admiral on the visit. Alfred told him what had happened and that he really wanted to go to EOD school. The warrant officer said he would mention it to the Chief of Naval Personnel and they parted company. Three weeks later, Alfred had orders to EOD school, much to the chagrin of his commanding officer. 

Thus began what amounted to Alfred’s second Navy career as an EOD officer. Among other tours, Alfred served as Commanding Officer, EOD Unit TWO in Charleston, South Carolina; worked at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hawaii, the Naval Ordnance Facility in Yokosuka, Japan, and the Naval Ammunition Depot at Seal Beach in California; and served on the staffs of Commander, Task Force (CTF) 73 and Commander, Naval Forces Japan in Yokosuka, Japan. Although Alfred initially entered the EOD world as a warrant officer, the Navy decided to phase out the warrant officer rank in 1959, so Alfred became a lieutenant (O-3) limited duty officer, which recognized his technical expertise as a former Gunner’s Mate and most recently as a trained EOD technician. Alfred subsequently promoted to lieutenant commander (O-4).

Warrant Officer Alfred Sokolowski at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan

An experience Alfred had shortly after reporting to the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hawaii illustrates just how dangerous his new career path was. As a destroyer escort (DE) sailed through the channel on its way out of Pearl Harbor to practice with its depth charges, a Gunner’s Mate onboard accidentally energized the primer on a depth charge and fired a live depth charge with 300 pounds of explosives into the channel. The depth charge was set to go off when it reached a specified depth, but because the channel was not that deep, it did not detonate. As a result, all shipping traffic into and out of Pearl Harbor had to be shut down until the depth charge could be found, brought back to the surface, and disarmed.

Every available EOD sailor got the call to help find the depth charge, including Alfred. He and the others donned their wet suits, went out in the channel in a Mike boat, and dove into the murky waters in search of the lost explosive. To help cover the channel bottom more effectively, the swimmers searched in groups of two or three, holding hands as they methodically skimmed the bottom. Much to his surprise, Alfred and the swimmer he was linked to found the depth charge sitting on its end. Alfred signaled to the other diver to go to the surface and announce the find, while Alfred stayed with the live depth charge at the bottom of the channel. Eventually, additional divers arrived and they returned the depth charge to the surface, where it was disarmed.

Alfred’s subsequent tour with CTF-73 in Sasebo, Japan, was significant because that is where he met Keiko, his wife of fifty-four years. They were married in 1964, making Alfred’s tour with CTF-73 one of his favorites during his Navy career. The tour itself was challenging, though, because he was responsible for managing the moves of classified ordnance around the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s area of responsibility in the western Pacific. His tour with Commander, Naval Forces Japan proved similarly stressful in 1968 when the North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) and the command played a major role in dealing with the incident. After his tour with Commander, Naval Forces Japan, Alfred retired from the Navy in November 1970, having served almost thirty years on active duty.

With his long Navy career behind him, Alfred bought a boat and he and Keiko settled down in Snohomish, Washington. His intention was to enjoy his retirement by getting away on his boat and doing some fishing, but he ended getting far more than he bargained for. When he was working on his boat one day, a man walked over to him and offered to partner with him in the fishing business. They bought a boat together and fished salmon each spring off the coast of Alaska and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. When it came time to retire for good, Alfred sold his boat and moved to Sun City West, Arizona, where he and Keiko built a home. Alfred also joined the Mary Ellen Piotrowski Post 94 of the American Legion, continuing his strong ties to the military.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Lieutenant Commander Alfred “Ski” Sokolowski, U.S. Navy (Retired), for his many years of service to our country. In both wartime and peace, Alfred stood the watch, protecting our shores and defending our allies from those who would do us harm. He represents the best America has to offer, displaying courage in battle and a commitment to service. We sincerely thank him for all he has done and wish him fair winds and following seas.

LCDR Alfred Sokolowski inspecting sailors