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 marked 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
ASSISTANT GUNNER
After five or six days, the company was sent to protect Da Nang Air Base. “One guy who was at Fort Polk with me was just a good old boy from Indiana. He was the RTO (radio operator). I was the assistant gunner. We got our gear that evening and at daybreak we went out on helicopters.”
Being a “newbie” assistant gunner to a seasoned gunner from New York meant that Harper had to learn everything on the job. And “newbies” traditionally made the seasoned soldiers nervous. “Seasoned” meaning 10 months…
Harper said that “very little news” got to his company, although they had small radios which they shared, picking up Armed Forces Radio, which carried “Good Morning, Vietnam.”
“I was a big baseball fan, and I would hold the radio close to my ear and listen to the World Series,” he recalled. He also recalled the company getting the news that Martha Mitchell, wife of then U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, had made a statement that there were no longer any troops on the ground in Vietnam.”
“And there we were,” Harper stated, shaking his head.
Harper described how at night, the camp perimeter would be shaped like a big circle, with individual soldiers “hanging their hammocks” 15-20 feet apart. Mosquitoes were a challenge, and every soldier carried insect repellant, which made the heat worse by “clogging up your pores.”
The area the unit occupied west of Da Nang Air Base reminded Harper of Fayetteville, Arkansas, with its mountain ranges. “F-4s (the U.S. Phantom II fighter aircraft) took off around the clock. The North Vietnamese would fire on the base the whole time. We tried to keep them from shelling the base. Our missions were 21 days ‘out’ and 24 hours ‘in.’”
“We’d have 24 hours to resupply, dry out, and find a beer,” Harper recalled. “I had never been on a helicopter (which took soldiers to the combat zones). The first time I flew in one I was scared to death. Instead of hanging out of the door, I huddled down in the middle (of the aircraft).”
“But you learn,” he said, admitting that “pretty soon” he was hanging out of the doors, too. Once delivered to the combat zones, Harper spent a lot of time assisting the machine gunner. Then he advanced to become the “PIG” gunner, describing an ugly machine gun that “ate up” ammunition like a pig.
“The mountains were always slick and wet. I’d be carrying a 25-pound gun, 30 pounds of ammo, C-rations, water, our “SP” packs (a cellophane packet containing cigarettes and toiletries), claymores, bootlaces, etc. We’d get re-supplied every three days.”
If you got a “world” package, you shared, Harper said, describing a mailing of cookies, fruit cocktail, or the like from your granny or mother…He has a fond memory of his mother sending him a package that contained El Chico’s chips and hot sauce.
DEADLY CLAYMORES
Claymores (land mines) were very important to the troops because they protected them. “Our trails in and out of the perimeter at night were guarded by them (claymores),” Harper said, explaining how blasting caps, wires, and batteries were combined to allow the mines to mechanically blow should pressure be applied. Guard duty was rotated on the hour. Because he was a gunner, Harper was situated next to a trail. “It was spooky,” he admitted. “You just had to try to stay alert!”
And troops had to be careful. “The guy I went to Fort Polk with was killed by our own claymore mine,” he said, shaking his head. “But we couldn’t mourn…we had to head out again.” Harper had some near misses. “Two people stepped on a land mine that I had already stepped over,” he recalled. And once when he examined his uniform after a skirmish, he found two bullet holes in his pants behind his knee. And then there was the time he stood up too soon when a dud mine was being blown up, leading to a little vertigo in his future.
Harper had been in Vietnam for 10 months and the skirmishes had become “few and far between.” Always referred to as a “grunt,” his last month in Vietnam found him “walking point” without a map, because of experience – he was no longer a “newbie.
”We were some of the last troops on the ground. The U.S. was sick of it…the Vietnamese were sick of it.”
In 1972, President Nixon was not making his timetables for withdrawal. But Harper’s withdrawal from Vietnam happened “so fast.”
“We were in our hammocks Wednesday night, and I was in Shreveport Saturday. My parents didn’t even know I was coming home.” But when they found out, “they gathered up all the family and met me at the Shreveport Airport.”
Harper still had to finish his “tour of duty,” for Vietnam, which was one year. He was assigned to Fort Knox, KY, where he worked in the Finance Dept. until March of 1973, when his commitment was up. A term of service for draftees in Vietnam was two years, but training like Harper did at Fort Polk lasted one year, leaving one year for the tour of duty.
Did Harper feel unwelcome when he returned to the United States? “I was never harassed,” he recalled. “But there were protestors who met our plane when we landed in San Francisco. And the saddest story I recall was about an Episcopal priest, who was a soldier in Vietnam, Father Quido Verbeck, who came back into Oakland, CA and wanted to go to church. He did, but the priest refused to serve him communion.”
Did Harper have any trouble when he returned to “normal,” which included enrolling at LSU-S, and finishing with a BS in Business Management, with a minor in Economics, in 1976?
“My first impression when I got back home (at age 23) and into a car was that a vehicle going 30 mph was going too fast!” he grinned. “That was because we walked so much in Vietnam.”
Actually, reacclimatizing was something that Harper “suppressed for 25 years!
“Then the Independence Bowl recognized Vietnam veterans…and I went down,” he said. “Then I entered therapy for PTSD.”
“Then one day it dawned on me, ‘What choice did I have?’ I really didn’t know if I was right or wrong. All I knew was that I was going to do what my country asked me to do. I wasn’t a Conscientious Objector, and I wouldn’t flee to Canada.” Harper, like the other 500,000 American troops on the ground in Vietnam, had been told that they were fighting communism. And that is what he agreed to do.
Today, Harper is 70 percent disabled because of PTSD, and a heart problem brought on by Agent Orange. “We slept and walked on ground” saturated with the defoliant used by the U.S. to kill off dense jungle growth so that trails could be seen, and to destroy crops consumed by the North Vietnamese.
Harper is just thankful for the Veteran’s Administration. “The VA is a tremendous benefit to veterans. They do so much,” he exclaimed.
(Part 1 of this 2-part series was published Tuesday, April 4. Read at http://www.websterparishjournal.com .