(Editor’s Note: “The Vietnam War was a ‘protracted conflict’ that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It lasted from 1954 to 1975.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
March 29, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of that war. For the next several months, the Webster Parish Journal will feature area men who fought that war and made it home.)
By Marilyn Miller
The year that the United States landed a man on the moon, Minden’s Dr. Richard Campbell landed at the Ft. Benning Army Post in Georgia, a member of the Infantry Officers’ Candidate School. That was 1969 and he was 23 years old.
Go back a year.
“I remember thinking, ‘If President Johnson (LBJ) wants to get re-elected, he’s going to get us out of that war,’” Dr. Campbell recalls. He was working on his undergraduate degree at Louisiana Tech in Ruston at the time. Of course, history tells us that LBJ chose not to run. And the war raged on.
By the time Campbell was at LSU, hoping to become a dentist, he had made a decision to join the military. So in 1968, he headed four hours south, to Ft. Polk in Leesville, LA to complete Basic and Advanced Individual Training.
But it was OCS at Ft. Benning that was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he recalled. “And I was in as good a physical condition as I’ve ever been.”
Although OCS was as much about academics as infantry, the ground-war skills ranged from changing treads on a tank…to avoiding chemical warfare…to dealing with landmines. “We fired everything you can imagine,” Campbell added.
Campbell also participated in Airborne training at Ft. Benning to allow him to jump out of planes and helicopters. Near the end of his training, he was also assigned to the OCS Brigade, which gave him the opportunity to train incoming candidates. “We put as much stress on them as we could, because it was better if they broke here than there,” Campbell added, admitting that he went from the “harassed” to the “harasser.”
All of this to fight a “war” a world away in the jungles of what was then South Vietnam as a 1st Lieutenant and platoon leader in the 1st Cavalry Division, 2nd Battalion (Air Mobile), “B” Company.
The academics that were a part of OCS included learning about the geopolitical, cultural, and topographical aspects of the country of South Vietnam. However, since it was impossible to tell the South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Viet Cong and eventually, Cambodians, apart, “Everyone was the enemy,” Campbell said.
“I wasn’t in the rice paddies,” Campbell stated, recalling that the heavily wooded, hilly land scattered with small rivers reminded him a lot of Northwest Louisiana. The many rivers were the source of the soldiers’ drinking water, and the location of many ambushes on the part of the Americans and South Vietnamese.
The river water, which was purified by iodine, was rank with Agent Orange, a powerful herbicide used to eliminate forest cover and crops for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. Millions of gallons of Agent Orange were dropped from planes in an effort to kill off the heavy canopy of trees and vines to allow sight lines down trails and through the jungle.
“We frequently saw trails…you didn’t walk on trails,” Campbell pointed out. “Or into villages or built-up areas.” Why? “Booby traps were a bad deal. They were holes with spikes turned up in them. And they (the Viet Cong) got really advanced at including explosive devices in them.”
Campbell actually requested the Cavalry Division, and “B” Company, so he was placed in charge of a Reconnaissance Platoon of all-volunteers who traveled farther out on missions. “I was lucky if I had 20 volunteers…a normal platoon had 30 or 40,” he said.
During one mission, the ignition source for a booby trap was attached to a tree limb. The Cambodian scout that the American team was using grabbed the limb and set off an explosion. Campbell remembers the blast all too well. The scout survived, he said, a far-away look in his eyes. “I was third in line…and not a scratch.”
As remote as the jungles of Vietnam were, Campbell says that communication with home was pretty good. “I wrote letters to my parents when I was in the jungle,” and “when we were re-supplied, we’d get letters and care packages from home.” His mother would send him tape cassettes, and on one occasion, sent him a tape from a “party at the Judge Carr McClendon home.” At the end of the tape, his mother had recorded “Claire de Lune,” which he listened to while enjoying the beautiful scenery that Vietnam did offer.
The military newspaper, “Stars and Stripes,” kept the soldiers abreast of political news from home, and they knew that the war they were fighting was not supported by many. But Campbell, while attending conservative Louisiana Tech, was already aware of this. “We just considered it crazy radicals,” he said. “I didn’t like it. I thought less of the people it (demonstrating). But a lot of it started before I got over there.”
Campbell saw a “moderate” amount of fighting while serving in jungles rife with water leeches, snakes, ants, and other venomous creatures. One time the platoon he was leading got too far out into a swampy area infested with water leeches. “Soldiers were throwing off their packs” trying to remove the slimy, blood-sucking parasites.
There were deaths…and some were soldiers he considered friends. But trust Dr. Richard Campbell to have a good story to tell about that person. Stories are plenty. There’s one about meeting an Air Force crew “who flew cover for us” at an Officer’s Club on Bin Wa Air Base. There’s one about meeting a member of another flight crew (of “soundless” spotters) not too long ago at a Minden restaurant. He tells of a lecturer he talked to at Fort Benning getting the Medal of Honor. And there was his Texas “bud” who won a Purple Heart, but later was killed.
Dr. Campbell, who was only injured once when he jumped from a helicopter too soon and hurt his leg, said that he made it home to Minden without a lot of emotional and mental damage because “I was okay. I felt so fortunate to make it back.”
Nearly 60,000 didn’t, including nearly 10 young men from Webster Parish.
