May
30
Written by:
Mr. Harbaugh
5/30/2010 12:34 PM
Dick Johnson was asked to give the Memorial Day address at the Gobles (Mich) ceremony at the Veteran's Memorial at the city park in Downtown Gobles. His address remembers friends he served with, and the life-long repercussions of serving our country at a time of war. Dick and his son-in-law, Corey Harbaugh, worked together to put Dick's memories and message together to serve as the Memorial Day address.
Good morning. Thanks for being here. I appreciate that so many people have taken the time to come out and show their respects on this Memorial Day, and proof that they care about the American soldier.
I was an American soldier who served in the Army during the Vietnam War, and since returning from the war in 1967, to Gobles, this town where I grew up, and raised my family, and now watch my children raise their families, I have been a veteran.
When I think about being a veteran of Vietnam, I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. During the war I was shot at, and I pulled the trigger myself and tried my darnedest to kill other human beings. But I'm lucky that those I shot at were off in the bush and I don't have to see their faces in my sleep.
I returned from Vietnam physically healthy, emotionally stable (to some degree), and eager to begin my life: to get married, find a job, raise children.
In 2007 I retired from General Motors where I worked for almost 39 years. I started at GM shortly after my honorable discharge from the United States Army. I have worked at Gobles Public Schools for the past three years in maintenance, or as one of the high school students recently said "the old guy who fixes things." My wife and I raised two children who both live here in town, and we get to enjoy days like today with our family, which has grown to include six grandkids. We spend a lot of time at ballgames of all sorts cheering them on.
But like I said, I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. There are many people who didn't return from Vietnam at all. They paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country with their lives. Today we especially honor them.
And there are many others who returned home, but lost a large part of themselves in Vietnam which they never got back. Every day for the rest of their lives, for four decades, these soldiers and their families have had to continue living with the experiences of Vietnam, and I want to talk to you a little about those veterans, and why we honor them today, as well.
There are several people here today in attendance from Gobles or from the surrounding area who also served in Vietnam, and many people who are not in attendance today from Gobles or from the surrounding area who served there as well. You may know of one or two of these individuals yourself.
When I was drafted for duty in Vietnam in January 1966, I reported to the draft board in Paw Paw, then took a bus to Detroit to the Hotel Pick Fort Shelby. On that bus with me was a classmate and friend of mine who was also reporting for induction. I won't use his name as I tell you this story out of respect for his privacy. After our physicals my friend and I stood in a room with perhaps 100 other young men from all over Michigan, and one of the officers informed us all that they were taking a certain number of us for the Marine Corps, a certain number for the Army, and then the remaining few would go into the Navy. First they would take volunteers for the Marine Corps.
When my friend heard that he elbowed me and said "c'mon Dick, let's go into the Marines." He was eager to join the Marines. I have no idea why he wanted to join the Marines, but that wasn't something I wanted to do. My dad was in the Army during World War II, he took to the beach at Normandy, and I just knew I didn't want to go into the Marine Corps. During WWII the Marines were in the Pacific theater, and the Army was in the European theater. Since Vietnam was in the Pacific theater, I figured the Army might be a better bet. But my friend was set on volunteering for the Marines, and he did. I wished him luck, and luckily for me, I was the first of the men in the room to be inducted into the Army.
We of course then went our separate ways for the years of the war, and I didn't know at the time of his experience with the Marines. I figured he was sent to Vietnam. That's what we were all there for.
After the war my friend and I both returned to Gobles, and we both liked to ride dirt bikes on long weekends, up to Wellston and the Tippy Dam area. We'd camp with our families and have a good time. On one trip, after a day of riding, I was sitting at my campfire, and his wife came over to get me. "Dick, you have to go talk to my husband," she said. She didn't tell me why, but she asked that I go over to their campsite, so I did. When I got there I found my friend sitting by himself, head down, very depressed. He had been thinking about the war, about something that had been bugging him for more than ten years. He looked up at me, and finally spoke.
"Remember when I asked you to go into the Marine Corps with me?"
"Sure," I told him.
"If you had gone into the Marine Corps with me, I would never have been able to live with myself."
I could tell he was struggling for words, and fighting with some terrible memories. So I let him speak when he was ready.
"I'm the only survivor from my unit." He was the only one to make it out alive.
I didn't know what to say to him, other than to tell him then that we had to go on with our lives. We had both made it out, and had to get on with our lives. That was about all I could say. I of course couldn't see the movie that was playing in his head, which would have been seeing his brothers-in-arms fighting, and falling, and dying around him, and him being the only person out of his unit to make it out alive. That was a movie that would always play, and even still plays in his head, even up to this very day, forty years later.
This friend was able to return home, like me, and have a job and raise a family, like me, but the effects of the war were so much different, both for him, and for his family. Guys like him try to live as normal life as possible, but don't get to live the full life that somebody who hasn't experienced the war would get to experience. Many of these veterans carry psychological trauma, a mental block, that keeps them from being able to let people close to them, even sometimes their own wives and children. It keeps them from being able to do something that's simple for the rest of us, like sit in a gym and watch a grandchild play basketball, without the memories of war haunting them all of the sudden, from seemingly out of nowhere. That's why I consider myself to be one of the fortunate ones who returned from Vietnam. My friend isn't so fortunate.
Another friend I served with in Vietnam, Jim McDonald, died this week. He is to be laid to rest tomorrow, June 1, in Bridgetown, Oregon. I got the news in an email from one of the old guys from our unit that I still keep in touch with.
At the time of his death, Jim owned and operated a small coffee cart on the ground floor of an Oregon company. Because of injuries received in the war, Jim was only able to run the cash register, but he was working a business he started, with the help of Veteran's Affairs and a company that supports wounded vets. He started this business on my birthday, July 22nd, 1998, and it was the first job he'd had since being wounded in Vietnam on May 23, 1967.
I remember talking to Jim on May 23, 1967. He had just returned that day from an R&R trip, and I ran into him in Aplong, the Vietnamese village we all called home. Jim was looking rested up, and was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of general fatigue britches, and probably a pair of shower thongs we wore in the village to keep our feet dry. It was always hot and humid there. At that time a sergeant walked up to where Jim and I stood and pointed at Jim and said "McDonald, you have night ambush tonight."
Night ambush was a dangerous assignment, so I gave my friend a piece of advice. "Jim, you want to take your white t-shirt off before you head out." It would make him too easy to see as he moved around in the rice patties of the Mekong Delta. He took off to get ready for his night duty, and we parted with a "see you later," or something like that.
That night Jim McDonald was hit by a piece of shrapnel from a rifle grenade, wounded, very nearly died, and spent most of the rest of his life in a coma, effectively brain dead for years, and then in rehab, and it wasn't until 1998 that he was able to do what I've taken for granted for four decades, get up in the morning and head off for an honest day's work. But he never got married, never raised kids, never sat in the bleachers at a game cheering for his grandkids like I have done. That's why I consider myself to be one of the fortunate ones.
People like Jim, like my friend from Gobles, like me, like anyone who serves in the United States Armed Forces, understand something very important about what it means to be a soldier. And I'd like you to help me with something for a moment here, and maybe you'll understand a little about that, too. Please look to somebody standing here near you, I don't mean your husband or wife, but maybe another person just to your left or your right. Shake hands with that person, and if you don't know him or her, introduce yourself, just for a moment.
Now, please turn and stand back to back with one another, and make sure your backs are touching, so you can feel what it's like to have your back covered. I want you to imagine this person is your friend who has your back. Now I want you to close your eyes and imagine being in a country miles away, some third world country, whether in the jungles of Vietnam, or the sands and streets of Afghanistan, and imagine what it's like to have somebody covering you like that. Literally, you have their back to your death, and they have your back to their death. It's do or die.
We understood that in Vietnam, just like American soldiers have understood that in every war we've ever fought to protect this country. Sometimes the difference between living and dying was as small as the way you were facing, or your friend was facing, when the fighting began. Sometimes you made it, but your friend didn't.
And that's why the memories of fallen friends can haunt a veteran for the rest of his or her life, why some people never fully returned from their service in Vietnam, were never able to resume a normal life after the war. This is also why we need to support our troops fighting in the Middle East right now, and support them after they return home to resume what we hope will be normal life for them.
Okay, you can open your eyes.
Thank you for helping me make that point. You can continue to stand like that, or you can resume a more comfortable position. In the in Armed Forces we would say "At Ease!"
I've said several times this morning that I returned from my service in Vietnam as one of the fortunate ones. But I haven't forgotten what it's like to have somebody protecting my back, and what it feels like to protect the backs of friends I was serving with.
I know today, even though I'm sixty-three, a grandpa living in Gobles, Michigan, that people still have my back out there. And hopefully you can feel they have yours, too. Soldiers are out there right now protecting our country and way of life, putting themselves at risk, for us. And the families of soldiers are also sacrificing, by sending their loved ones off to fight, and then after those soldiers return home, those people all have to figure out how to live a normal life.
I want to thank you again for coming out this morning, by showing me and all veterans that you respect what our service meant to this country. Please continue to show that respect, not just on Memorial Day, but every day. Because every day, the fortunate ones like me, and the less fortunate ones, are still working to figure out how to live with the life-long effects of our service.
It was an honor to speak with you this morning.
Thank you.
Richard F. Johnson, Gobles, Michigan
Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade, United States Army (1966-1967)
Copyright ©2010 Corey Harbaugh
2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Memorial Day Speech
This speech is wonderful - very personal, real, momentous and touching. Thank you for sharing your memories and reminding us what a costly thing American freedom and liberty is.
By Liz Mandrell on
6/2/2010 7:19 AM
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Re: Memorial Day Speech
Thank you so much for sharing, for reminding us what our soldiers (past and present) go through to provide us all with the freedoms we so often take for granted. Thank you. God bless you, and all our soldiers and their families.
With respect and honor,
Betsy
By Betsy Wahmhoff Perales on
7/16/2010 7:39 PM
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