A few reveled in the Vietnam experience. Lt. John Harrison’s Airborne company included a formidable sergeant named Manfred Fellman, who as a boy in 1945 had won an Iron Cross as a member of the Wehrmacht defending Breslau. Fellman’s request to be allowed to wear his medal in Vietnam was vetoed by an officer who said, “Think how a survivor of Auschwitz would feel, if he saw it.” Harrison, who admired the German’s warrior gifts, said, “Fellman was something, but he was always being busted for drinking problems.”
