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© NONGAMT | DREAMSTIME.COM 124 Toombs County Magazine years behind him. “For 40 years, I didn’t even tell anyone that I’d served,” he said. Steve will tell you that he’s no hero. That everything he did was just to survive. But surviving is sometimes a great act of courage. “People think that the majority of those who served in the Vietnam War were drafted,” said Steve, “but that’s not true.” According to “The International World History Project,” only 25% of those who served in all the armed forces in Vietnam were drafted compared to 66% of those drafted during WWII.* “Many joined hoping they would avoid being sent to Vietnam,” said Steve. “If you voluntarily joined, you could pick your MOS military occupational specialty, and the letters RA Regular Army were on your uniform. If you were drafted, they told you what you were going to do. I was a Private E1, the lowest rank you can be, and my uniform let everyone know that I was the lowest of the low.” The drill sergeant’s screaming and name calling that was supposed to toughen up the new recruits presented a brutal world for Steve. “We were deprived of sleep and awakened in the middle of the night to run 15 miles at a time. We did thousands of push-ups and pull-ups, threw live hand grenades, and got shot at with live ammo. All of this while they’re calling you names I can’t repeat and telling you that you’re going to Vietnam. And we knew that everybody going to Vietnam was getting killed.” In order to recruit more soldiers, the United States Department of Defense passed a program called “Project 100,000” (later referred to as McNamara’s Morons) in which mental and medical standards for enlistment in the Army were lowered. (McNamara was the Defense Secretary). “So many people were protesting,” said Steve, “that they were taking anybody they could get. A lot of them couldn’t read or write. Some were special needs and couldn’t even tie their shoes.” Other recruits, Steve realized, “were just plain criminals. Stealing was so bad, you had to keep anything of value with you at all times.” Suicide became a serious problem. “It was so bad that when you came in from rifle practice, the drill sergeants counted the bullets you were given and knew exactly how many you should have left.” One day Steve found an extra bullet in his pocket. As he turned it over in his hand, he thought about how easy it would be to just end it all. “I was so scared and depressed that I had hives.” But instead of taking his life, he prayed, “Lord, I’ll make a deal with you. If you get me out of this mess alive, I’ll be a public servant for the rest my life.” It was a prayer he never forgot. At the end of basic training, Steve was selected by the men in his unit for leadership school. “I’m thinking I’ve got 24 months to keep myself from getting killed. Basic training took eight weeks. Leadership school would take two more.” He was assigned to Clerk Typing School, which would take up another eight weeks. “I thought I’d hit pay dirt,” said Steve. After clerk typing school, he was sent to San Antonio, Texas, to be trained as a Medical Records Specialist. “That meant I would learn how to collect and tag all the body parts of the dead in Vietnam, and that scared me to death.” After graduating from medical records school, Steve’s entire class got orders for Vietnam. When they got to De Nang, he was told that his MOS was not needed there. “But a young guy who had lost his eyesight, an arm, and a leg needed to be taken to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa for rehabilitation, so I volunteered to take him.” As soon as they got to Okinawa, Steve went to Personnel and asked if “We were deprived of sleep and awakened in the middle of the night to run 15 miles at a time. We did thousands of push-ups and pull-ups, threw live hand grenades, and got shot at with live ammo. All of this while they’re calling you names I can’t repeat and telling you that you’re going to Vietnam. And we knew that everybody going to Vietnam was getting killed.”


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