2022 Veterans: Vietnam

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C O N T E N T S
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6 Vietnam
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6
on

from pot to pure heroin were available
everywhere and accounted for much of the
disorder and chaos. (Many enemy forces drugged
their fighters to maintain control, eliminate fear,
and make them impervious to cold: the Nazis had
fed methamphetamines to their troops fighting at
Moscow; Arab fighters in Iraq later were so
hopped up that they fought even when their limbs
were blown off! U.S. troops in Vietnam were
simply drugged euphoric and useless)
Unspeakable atrocities (MyLai massacre) were
also perpetrated by U.S. troops. Only the Marine
divisions’ superior discipline prevailed over
disobedience. One US Navy ship almost suffered
mutiny! Oliver Stone’s movie Platoon captured
this war realistically.
Warfare in Vietnam was far different from
previous wars: there was no “Front,” or Main
Line of Resistance (MLR); acquiring territory was
of no significance, only isolated Fire-bases, and
360-degree Tactical Areas of Opportunity
(TAORs). Suspected remote enemy areas were
swept by rapid helicopter “Inserts.” Both the Viet
Cong guerrillas and the NVA (North Vietnamese
Army) organized units were phantom-like in the
dense jungles; there were no major unit-vs-unit
clashes, only hidden and quick ambushes, intense
gun fire exchanges against invisible enemies. The
enemy logistical chain was a wide “Ho Chi Minh”
foot-trail under a jungle canopy in Laos and
Cambodia paralleling the western border of South
Vietnam, which U.S. air forces bombed
continually and full-scale incursions (deliberately
mis-labelled “Invasions” by the hostile press)
severed it temporarily from time to time.
The biggest change was that Vietnam was
mostly a helicopter war—at first small, sevenpassenger
helos, then larger, rapid transport, up,
over, and quick insert, firefights, and retraction—
mostly under unseen enemy fire. Close-air
support from hi-speed jet aircraft incinerated large
areas with napalm, as fighter-bomber jets dodged
Soviet-made SAM (surface-to-air missiles) while
tangling with Soviet-piloted enemy MiGs higher
up. Giant U.S. B-52 bombers wreaked havoc over
battlefields and the enemy capital, Hanoi.
(Captured American prisoners-of-war were
brutally imprisoned and tortured at the so-called
“Hanoi Hilton” there.)
Gone were the WW2 Garand M-1 .30-calibre
rifle and carbine, replaced by the M14 NATO
7.62mm, 20-round, automatic rifle, until it was
replaced in 1967 by the lighter, semi-automatic,
20-round M16 5.56mm. rifle; 7.62mm. automatic
and semi-automatic M60, M240, and M249
weapons replaced the WW2 .30-cal. BARs and
machine guns. Exception: the same ol’ 1911 Colt .
45s, replaced afterwards by 9mm Berettas. Bulletproof
Flak jackets were now personal gear.
Canned “C” rations were replaced with dried (add
water), packaged “Meals-Ready-to-Eat.” Light
combat uniforms were geared for the climate,
dried quickly, and the boots were meshed and
cool (and wet!). Cloth camouflaged helmets were
the same as WW2.
The large 1st and 3 rd Marine, 28-thousand-man,
divisions and their two air wings were posted in
the I Corps sector just below the DMZ separating
the South from the North to prevent an NVA
invasion. There, they sustained intense enemy
artillery bombardment and incursions—as at Khe
Sanh—from NVA organized ground units.
Offshore, Navy-Marine LPH (Helicopter carriers)
launched Marine Special Landing Forces to flush
out enemy from the DMZ and other isolated
targets with coordinated inserts and close-air
napalm attacks. The Navy also conducted river
patrols assisting Army units farther south.
In 1968, the enemy launched the so-called “Tet
Offensive” throughout South Vietnam that took
all South Vietnamese and U.S. forces by surprise.
However, despite the media’s negative reporting
about the U.S. suffering a staggering defeat, to the
contrary, all of the NVA and VC elements were
quickly disposed of.
Remembering
Eventually after nine years, in 1973, the U.S.
pulled its forces out, leaving only advisors to
assist the South to conclude the dwindling war.
The following year, however, North Vietnam
Premier Ho Chi Minh seized the opportunity and
had his army invade and 11/14/43 completely - conquer 7/3/08
South Vietnam and change the Capital, Saigon, to
“Ho Chi Minh City”! The 1975 lasting image of
the debacle of American helicopters lifting frantic
embassy and other remnant U.S. personnel off the
roof of the abandoned American Embassy, trying
to evacuate them, undercuts that of the heroic
raising of the flag on Iwo Jima in WW2, when the
U.S. had been an invincible power. (The same
frantic Afghanistan withdrawal repeated in 2021!)
Retired
SMSgt Robert N. Bemis
Nor had any U.S. wars been so vociferously or
treasonously opposed! The untoward emergence
of the “Hippie Revolution” in 1969 in a large
gathering of anti-war youths at Woodstock, NY, in
a mass orgy of anti-war protests, drugs,
promiscuous sex, fueled outright defiance of law
and order and defilement of American flags.
TOWING OF PERRY

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20-round M16 5.56mm. rifle; 7.62mm. automatic
and semi-automatic M60, M240, and M249
weapons replaced the WW2 .30-cal. BARs and
machine guns. Exception: the same ol’ 1911 Colt .
45s, replaced afterwards by 9mm Berettas. Bulletproof
Flak jackets were now personal gear.
Canned “C” rations were replaced with dried (add
water), packaged “Meals-Ready-to-Eat.” Light
combat uniforms were geared for the climate,
dried quickly, and the boots were meshed and
cool (and wet!). Cloth camouflaged helmets were
the same as WW2.
The large 1st and 3 rd Marine, 28-thousand-man,
divisions and their two air wings were posted in
the I Corps sector just below the DMZ separating
the South from the North to prevent an NVA
invasion. There, they sustained intense enemy
artillery bombardment and incursions—as at Khe
Sanh—from NVA organized ground units.
Offshore, Navy-Marine LPH (Helicopter carriers)
launched Marine Special Landing Forces to flush
out enemy from the DMZ and other isolated
targets with coordinated inserts and close-air
napalm attacks. The Navy also conducted river
patrols assisting Army units farther south.
In 1968, the enemy launched the so-called “Tet
Offensive” throughout South Vietnam that took
all South Vietnamese and U.S. forces by surprise.
However, despite the media’s negative reporting
about the U.S. suffering a staggering defeat, to the
contrary, all of the NVA and VC elements were
quickly disposed of.
Eventually after nine years, in 1973, the U.S.
pulled its forces out, leaving only advisors to
assist the South to conclude the dwindling war.
The following year, however, North Vietnam
Premier Ho Chi Minh seized the opportunity and
had his army invade and completely conquer
South Vietnam and change the Capital, Saigon, to
“Ho Chi Minh City”! The 1975 lasting image of
the debacle of American helicopters lifting frantic
embassy and other remnant U.S. personnel off the
roof of the abandoned American Embassy, trying
to evacuate them, undercuts that of the heroic
raising of the flag on Iwo Jima in WW2, when the
U.S. had been an invincible power. (The same
frantic Afghanistan withdrawal repeated in 2021!)
Nor had any U.S. wars been so vociferously or
treasonously opposed! The untoward emergence
of the “Hippie Revolution” in 1969 in a large
gathering of anti-war youths at Woodstock, NY, in
a mass orgy of anti-war protests, drugs,
promiscuous sex, fueled outright defiance of law
and order and defilement of American flags.
From their collective mental
derangement, began the Hippies’ ultimate
undermining of U.S. society by ignorantly
spouting Marxist-socialist ideology, which they
inflicted on universities first by “sit-ins” in Dean’s
offices—defying expulsion, burning draft cards
and some fleeing to Canada—all gleefully
captured by sympathetic media. Soon this began
to wreak havoc with society and the “American
Way,” as well as the military. Instead of being
challenged, the Hippie ilk’s goal of communism
replacing the U.S Constitutional Republic was
eventually achieved by their infiltrating academia
for the next four decades with socialist teachers
and professors lowering U.S. education to 28 th
place in the world. And, to top it off—now, in
2022—the U.S. is suffering their further
imposition of insidious, destructive Woke poisons
of CRT, Cancel Culture, 1619 Project, BLM,
Antifa, et al., permeating society, commerce,
academe, and even the military.
The hostile Media: Vietnam occurred during the
advent of world-wide television (decades before
the digital age), so little wonder that the Press
leapt at the chance to be first to fully cover war in
real-time and send it back to home TVs as people
were sitting down to dinner, horrifying and
turning them against the war. Furthermore, this
gave droves of narcissistic neophytes a chance to
make their marks and become famous and highly
paid. Untutored in things military, empty-headed,
and with liberal chips on their shoulders against
war and the U.S. military, they slanted events,
skirted the truth and filed their jaundiced reports:
among the worst: Canadian Morley Safer and
Walter Cronkite for CBS, Peter Jennings for
NBC, Peter Arnett, David Halberstam, Mike
Wallace, Dan Rather, Marguerite Higgins, and
hordes of untrained newbies.
I twice volunteered for active duty as a
Marine Reserve LtCol for the History division
and billeted myself in Da Nang in the “I” Corps
sector below the DMZ at the Combat Information
Bureau (CIB), where I met and discoursed with
many of these professional and not-so
professional media reps, and, I too, accompanied
Marine jungle patrols and firefights (the absolute
safest place to be in combat is in a Marine unit
because they’ll never leave you behind!)
Thus, from my own military experience
knowledge, I can judge and refute much of what
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Since the military was not achieving
victory, President Lynden on Johnson and his sidekick,
Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara (a
former Ford Company executive) decided that
they could micro-manage the war better than the
generals and admirals, so in the basement of the
White House, rejecting professional military
advice, they used a table-top relief model of
Vietnam to orchestrate the military demise of the
war; so ended the Johnson presidency. As the
egotistical General MacArthur had in the Korean
War, Johnson left as an abject failure. President
Richard Nixon continued the war to its nonconclusive
end and the humiliating evacuation of
U.S. personnel from the American Embassy roof
in fallen Saigon.
There had been no way to measure
military success except by enemy body counts—
most of which were inflated to assuage higher
command. By the end of ten years of warfare and
the massive insertion of U.S. blood and treasure
into a lost cause, nothing changed—except the
once beautiful, peaceful countries and thousands
of their warm, friendly inhabitants (North and
free South) who suffered and died, ultimately to
lose all to communism. All the U.S. had to show
for its egregious errors was a casualty toll of
58,156 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and
Marines killed and thousands more wounded—
and the near demise of the U.S. Army.
Twenty years later, the Gulf War would see
Vietnam forgotten and a resurgence of the U.S.
Military in weaponry, efficiency, public
acceptance, and pride in service. Except, again the
U.S. Army would fail—two Marine divisions
invaded and liberated the oil rich country of
Kuwait in 100 hours, before the first U.S. army
and the foreign coalition forces ever reached the
battlefield. I was again on active duty as a 62 y/o
colonel for the History Division and drove a Jeep
Cherokee behind the Marine attacking Task Force
into Kuwait City and the cessation of hostilities.
The Army arrived later after the shooting was
over!
Iraq? Afghanistan? And, now the U.S.
military gone “WOKE”? West Point, Annapolis,
Air Force Academy?
My once glorious Marine Corps?
Another Asian war—against China?
God help us!
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Air Force - Master Sergeant
Aubrey Mitchell
After attending Blue Ridge Community College and
finishing his two-year schooling, Aubrey Mitchell received a
letter in the mail from the President stating the U.S. military
had drafted him. Mitchell, a born and raised resident of
Waynesboro, Virginia, had a decision to make.
After consulting with his uncle that served in both
the Army and the Air Force, Mitchell ended up deciding on
the Air Force.
“I spent 25 years in the Air Force; I thought I was
going to only stay four years, and then I got
married, so that made me decide to spend some
time,” Mitchell said, laughing. “But after a while,
things were going pretty good, so I decided to
stay in 25 years.”
His military service included deployments
at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento,
California, then Vietnam.
During his year in Vietnam, he worked
in guard towers with security police personnel.
He said he and his unit had to keep their eyes
out for pythons and panthers among other wildlife.
“I was getting relieved, I guess it was about 10
o’clock at night,” Mitchell said. “Here comes this
big python up the ladder, and it just so happened
one of the guys that was down there relieving me
was used to getting snakes and skinning them.
BY: WILL OLIVER
So he came up and got the snake, took it back down and they took it to the
dorms.”
During his last day on post, he had to give up his permanent tower to be relocated
to another post outside the main gate of the installation. He recalled
this making him nervous, saying he knew of someone that was hit by a
rocket after receiving his last paycheck right after stepping out of a building
and planning to head stateside.
“It seems like a lot of times, on your last day, something will happen,”
he said.
Following his departure from
Vietnam and another station at
McClellan, he was sent to Goose
Bay, Labrador, and spent a year
there. Following that, he went to
Minot Air Force Base in North
Dakota. He said one of his favorite
deployments was his one-year
stint in Greece. After Greece, he
was stationed at Langley Air Force
Base in Hampton, Virginia. At
this point, he made a switch in
occupation.
“I was a cop in the Air Force
for 13 years,” he said. “While I was
at Langley, I changed jobs and
went to school, became a telephone
installer.”
10
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His next station was
Robins Air Force Base,
serving with the 5th Mob,
Combat Communications
Group. Mitchell was sent
to England after this and
stayed for two years before
returning to Robins.
His unit completed work
on the telephone cables at
Kunsan Air Base in Gunsan,
South Korea, since
there were paper cables
installed prior to his unit’s
work of completely rearranging
and reinforcing
the communications system. He laughed, saying that whenever
it rained, there was chaos over the radio with everybody listening
to each other.
He said his wife was able to visit during this time as well.
A funny memory of his from his time in South Korea included
signing liability waivers when they visited the DMZ.
“Once we were there, they were giving us a briefing and told us
if anything ever happened, we had to sign those papers saying
that we weren’t going to make the military responsible; I
thought it was a joke at first,” Mitchell said, chuckling. “A lot of
times, North Koreans might try to
escape and come to South Korea, and
those guys up there will shoot at you.
That’s why we had to sign the papers.”
He even saw some time in Saudi
Arabia during his military travels,
serving with his unit as a telephone
installer and maintaining communications
systems.
“I just had a joyous time in the military,”
Mitchell said. “I look at it, and
I say, ‘where else could I have been to
be able to get trips like that to different
countries and things like that?’”
Retiring as a master sergeant, he
worked at Robins Air Force Base in
transportation for a few years before
working 22 years with the U.S. Postal
Service out of Macon.
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Air Force - Technical Sergeant
Walter Parker
An Air Force veteran of “approximately 21 years,
three months and 23 days,” Walter Parker was born in
Crossville, Tennessee, on March 31, 1942. He and his family
moved to Akron, Ohio, when he was 10 years old.
“When I graduated from high school, I tried to
find jobs around — Akron, Cleveland — [I] couldn’t, so I
went into the Air Force and never looked back, never was
sorry I joined the Air Force,” Parker said.
In terms of education after high school and some
military service, he received some additional credentials:
a master’s in counseling and psychology from Ball State
University, a bachelor’s from the University of Southern
Mississippi and a Georgia Certified Public Manager Program
certification from the state of Georgia.
Parker enlisted in the Air Force on March 8, 1962
in Akron, Ohio.
“I had been wanting to be in the Air Force, my
mother said, since I was 5 years old,” Parker said.
He attended basic training and technical school
before what was supposed to be his first overseas assignment
in Araxos, Greece, in 1963. Although he was deployed,
he said his particular assignment was not open yet.
BY:
WILL OLIVER
Instead, he spent six months in Athens going to class for half a day and
living in Glyfada where the Air Force Base was located.
“Even though I was only an E-3, me and a friend of mine had
a villa,” he said. “There were no military quarters on the Air Force Base;
everybody lived off base.”
From there, he was stationed in Araxos and quartered at the Greek
Air Force basic training base.
After finishing his assignment in Greece, he was sent back to the
states to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. He then went to
Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, for Jump School. He was sent to
the Dominican Civil War crisis in 1965 and 1966, going in and out of Shaw
AFB once he returned. Next came an 18-month assignment at Clark Air
Base in the Philippines, and Parker met his wife, Eileen, there where she
served as a schoolteacher. Eileen was a native of Cleveland, Ohio, serving as
a teacher on the base for the Department of Defense. At the time, Clark was
closest air base to Vietnam.
The Parkers were married and went to Thailand for their honeymoon
before heading back to Clark. Walter said it was interesting how
he and Eileen met so far from home, yet both their parents only lived 30
minutes away from one another.
“I came back in on the 15th of December, was married on the 30th
of December, went to Thailand and back with her for one week,” Parker
said. “On the 15th of January, I was back in Vietnam.”
Serving as what he called a “field rep,” he was an Air Force guy
that worked closely with other Army personnel. He said he spent most of
his time “wandering around in the field getting information to send back to
Clark.”
12

He said he made some great memories on Vung Chua Mountain near Qui Nhon, Vietnam.
Next was STRIKE Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, where the couple lived for four years. They were sent to
England, and he added that while they were there, he, Eileen and their two boys (at the time) made a trip from Land’s End, England, to John o’
Groats, Scotland. After England, they came back to Altus, Oklahoma. Following a short stint in the recruiting service, he was stationed in Bessemer,
Alabama. He was stationed at Brooks Air Force Base with the 6906th Electronic Security Squadron, specializing in work with technical
intelligence vans before going back to Greece for a second time — this time, with a wife and three kids by his side.
Parker retired from the Air Force on June 30, 1983 as a technical sergeant. After taking on various directions and endeavors over a
number of years, Parker visited the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, Georgia, on a job lead.
After finding
out he was the only
person in the state
that applied for the
job with appropriate
qualifications, he got
the position.
After working
for the state for 18
years in a couple of
different roles, he
retired again before
working once again
with a methadone
treatment center
located on Highway
247 for two years.
From there, he retired
“for good.”
13

Army - Sergeant
Bill Carey
BY: TYLER MEISTER
“You get scared, you
get mad in the middle, and
right at the end when you
think something is going
to happen, you get scared
again,” Bill Carey said.
Sgt. Bill Carey still has
recordings of the nights he
spent in Vietnam. Through
the speakers of his cassette player, you can hear the
crickets surrounding Nhatrang Air Base, gunfire and
explosions popping off somewhere in the background.
After a yearlong tour, and four years total in service,
Carey returned home. The day he stepped back on Georgia
soil, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were taking
humanity’s first steps on the moon.
Carey is 75 years old, born in 1947. He enlisted
in the Air Force when he was 18 years old, after being
warned by his father not to enlist with the Army. He was
21 when he was sent to Vietnam.
“I was an old man,” Carey said. “I was one of the
old guys.”
Carey recalled the surroundings of Nhatrang.
The base was bordered by the South China Sea. To the
base’s left and right, a mountain and rice patties. When
he first arrived, he was a personnel specialist, helping
manage those coming in and out of the base and keeping
records.
“You don’t have to go out and wander through
the woods and track down folks, stuff like that,” Carey
said. “It was a good job.”
It was not long after he arrived, however, that Carey came
face to face with the dangers of being in country. From the mountain
near the base, enemy soldiers dropped bombs into the base.
While working as a personnel specialist, Carey would often wake at
two or three in the morning to the sound of explosions.
Carey said that he spent the first portion of his time on base
scared, bombs and gunfire often waking him in the night. Eventually,
he was removed from his personnel specialist job.
“Overnight, I became a security policeman,” Carey said. “It
turned out to be a real good job.”
With his new job, Carey would watch the base from a 20-foot tower,
offering security. Rather than being scared, Carey became angry. Awake
during the base’s nightly attacks, he could now identify where incoming
bombs were coming from and the general area of where they would land.
Aside from the hardship that comes with being at war, Carey recalled New
Years Eve, 1968, when he was in Vietnam. He called it “the most spectacular
thing,” he has ever seen.
It was from his watchtower that he was able to find full view, as,
from a fenced-off island just off the coast, American soldiers hit pop flares
off at the stroke of midnight, ushering in the new year with a bang.
“They all go out there, hit the pop flare and the whole place lights
up,” Carey said. “All these little things just go up into the air and then they
have little parachutes to carry them down. G-I will find a way.”
Carey spent the remainder of his time on base as a bus guard, and
then, once again, as a personnel specialist. As his time “in country” began
to come to a close again, the fear Carey first became acquainted with upon
his arrival returned, as the time to come home came closer and closer.
Carey finished his tour, returning home in July 1969. Like so many Vietnam
Veterans, he was told to change out of his fatigues before entering the main
airport to avoid the protestors inside.
Since returning, he has gotten his college degree, continued in a
love for playing music and held a number of jobs, including announcing for
drag races. He has worked in activism, advocating for veterans and has done
several works remembering his lost and fallen brothers.
14

Navy - Seaman
Bob Bovitch
BY: TYLER MEISTER
Unlike many in Warner Robins, Seaman Bob Bovitch served in
the United States Navy. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he joined when
he turned 17 in 1964.
“I had friends who were in my high school, who were already in
the military,” Bovitch said. “They were going to Vietnam. My father took
me to the Naval Reserve, and I got to sign in.”
Bovitch would stay in the reserves until he was 18, while his
brother was already enlisted, a seaman on the USS Bronstein.
Bovitch grew to the age of 18, and helped moved his family
down to Florida for work. While there, he got a phone call from his
brother.
“I realized he needed help,” Bovitch said. “I went to mom and
said, ‘I’m going active duty.’ I went to the commander down in Miami,
and I said, ‘sir, I’d like to go active duty.’”
Weeks later, Bovitch climbed aboard the USS Bronstein in 1965,
like his brother before him. He worked on the mess decks for around
a week before signing up for the ship’s radar unit, the same unit as his
brother. Bovitch slept in bunk three. His brother slept in bunk two. The
USS Bronstein, however, would not be Bovitch’s final destination.
“We went, on our ship, from San Diego to Japan, and then to
Vietnam, and then came back,” Bovitch said. “I went to my commander
and I said, ‘we didn’t do our jobs.’
“He said, ‘what are you talking about?’
“I said, ‘I know we were plane guarding the carriers
off the Tonkin Gulf, but I got friends that are dying in
country.’
“He asked, ‘what do you want to do about it?’
“I said, ‘I want to go in country.’”
Just short of 19 years old, Bovitch went to a second
boot camp and completed a survivalist training that required
him to avoid “capture” for five days, and then spend
two days in a POW Camp. He completed the training, losing
13 pounds over the course of the week. Shortly after, he
went to Da Nang. After two days in country seeking work,
Bovitch took a job moving money across an area in Vietnam
called I Corp. Bovitch, at the age of 19, moved money
from military base to military base, taking helicopters and
military vehicles to pay troops on and off the field.
On top of these duties, Bovitch also helped to collect
and transport fallen soldiers to a mortuary in Da Nang.
“That really got to me,” Bovitch said.
After serving two years either at sea or overseas,
Bovitch left active duty and returned to the military
reserves in 1967. Back on American soil, Bovitch got his
college degree and later took a government job.
Since returning home, Bovitch has become an avid
author, publishing several books containing poems, prayers
and short stories surrounding his time at war as well as all
that transpired after.
He has also continued to support other veterans by
acting as part of the veteran community, organizing meets
and working with Monica “Little Sis” Harvey with her work
on Band-Aid for the Heart. 15

Navy - Seabee
David Wilson
BY: BRIEANNA ROMERO
As a member of the Navy’s Seabees, David
Wilson has been all over the world, including Vietnam,
where he was stationed from May 1971 to February 1972.
Wilson was an electrician for the Navy and was
sent to Vietnam to help upgrade infrastructure in the
area. He worked in a group of 13 men, including heavy
equipment drivers, mechanics, steel workers, plumbers,
engineering aids and surveyors. Wilson primarily worked
maintaining 200-kilowatt generators, and then worked
with local middle schoolers to upgrade their schools. The
kids were learning construction skills from the team and
helped Wilson himself avoid a run-in with the Viet Cong.
“I’d catch a ride to the school that I was working
in,” Wilson said. “There was one time I get there, I’ve got
my belt, and I’ve got my tools and everything and two
little boys came out and said [‘get out of here.’]”
After asking them why, the boys told Wilson
there were Viet Cong in the trees nearby. After leaving,
Wilson told his boss, who assumed at first that the
children did not want to work. During their morning
report, the first item on the agenda was the Viet Cong the
children spotted near Wilson.
“They had captured two VC and a cache of
weapons and ammunition in [the trees] that the two boys
had pointed out to me,” Wilson said.
He was stationed in Tan An, a small city in the Long An
province. While the province was believed to be pacified,
Wilson soon found out it was far from that.
“In our compound, we had a watch tower, and we could see coming
out of the Saigon area, at night especially, when an aircraft would leave Saigon,
they would have their navigation lights on, and then all of a sudden, the navigation
lights would go off. We knew that if we turned to the west and watched,
pretty soon we would see these ‘glowing candles’ coming down.”
These glowing candles, Wilson explained, were the result of raids on a
nearby island.
“When they would use these Gatling guns, or whichever gun they
were using, every fifth round was a tracer round, so they could see what was
going on, where it was going,” he said. “When they were firing down two or
three weapons at the same time, it looked just like a glowing candle, going up
and down out of these aircrafts.”
One night at the compound, Wilson had divine timing on his side.
While he was in bed, an alarm went off.
“I’m trying to get ahold of my weapon, but I couldn’t get ahold of it.
When I finally got ahold of it, and got out and around, before I got out, I heard
a big boom,” Wilson recalled. “And the guy that is normally in front of
me, when we went out, had shrapnel in his back. The guy that went out behind
me, normally, had shrapnel all in his front. They had dropped a satchel charge
over the fence of our compound, and if God hadn’t made me fumble for my
weapons, I had been directly under that explosion.”
Wilson said his biggest takeaway from serving his country was his
faith.
“I know God has been with me,” Wilson said. “He had to have been
with me.”
Wilson retired as a chief construction electrician and is now a member
of several veterans’ groups across the area. Every Friday, you will find him
wearing the color red.
Wilson said, “We remember everyone deployed.”
16

Army - Staff Sergeant
Ernest Cooling
You could say Ernest Cooling is exceptional at supporting
his brothers in arms. Nowadays, he presents local veterans with
certificates of appreciation and is an active member of the veteran
community. During the war in Vietnam, he took on a supportive
role as well. While he never stepped foot in the country, Cooling
worked tirelessly in the United States supporting the war effort.
“Looking back on it today, I think it was a good experience,”
Cooling said.
Cooling joined the Army in 1958, after seeing an iconic
pamphlet.
“I got a certificate in the mail: “Uncle Sam wants you.” So,
instead of being drafted, I enlisted,” Cooling said. “I didn’t want to
be drafted and taken off to do something I didn’t want to do.”
Originally wanting to stay in his home state of Illinois,
Cooling was, instead, initially sent to Wadsworth, New York. In the
Army, Cooling was an operator of Nike-Hercules missiles. The team
was primarily tasked with taking out enemy aircraft formations.
Luckily, the only time he personally needed to fire a missile was
for a training exercise in Fort Hood, Texas. One of the necessities
to make a military strong is their technology. Military technology
has come a long way since the conflict in Vietnam, but as Cooling
explained, the radar involved with the missiles back then was still
fascinating for him.
“We had four different radars,” Cooling said. “One is what
they called a LOPAR radar, which is what I did. We were the first
ones to locate a specific target in the air. I was the first one to see it.”
BY: BRIEANNA ROMERO
Once an aircraft was spotted, the commander on duty
determined through communication with other branches whether
the craft was friend or foe. Then, as Cooling further explained, the
radar would track it, displaying its location on a 10-inch screen,
with the radar sweeping through the area’s 100-mile radius at 15
times per minute.
“Every time it passed that aircraft, it would show up on
my scope,” he said. “I’d locate it and then get the commander, tell
him what we had. If it was foe, then it was up to the commander
to make the decision to send it to [target tracking radar.]”
Target tracking radar would then make note of the exact
location of the aircraft. Missile tracking radar would do the exact
thing for any missiles that were fired by the team and plot their
projected point of interception on a map via computer.
“I could pick up buildings, mostly aircrafts, boats … you
got to see a lot of things. I could see it, and not even have to be
there,” Cooling said, laughing.
Using this technology, Cooling was stationed in multiple
locations stateside, including right here in Houston County.
During his military service, he had the chance to travel internationally
to Korea, Germany and Japan.
Cooling retired as a staff sergeant in 1979 and would not
trade the experience for the world.
“I enjoyed every bit of my 22 years,” he said. 17

Romeo Group
BY: TYLER MEISTER
Retired Old Men Eating Out — “Romeos.” A club ran by little oversight or rule,
those involved very simply get the opportunity to socialize, make and keep friends as well as
have some good food. The Romeos in Middle Georgia, however, are a little different.
Formed in the mid-2000s, Middle Georgia’s local Romeos meet twice a week at the IHOP in
Warner Robins. They share a meal
and good conversation, and they
poke fun at one another. Every
single one of them is a veteran of
the Vietnam War.
The group has met faithfully
over the years, greeting new
members, saying goodbye to ones
that have passed while also spending
time with one another. In the
past, they invited their wives out
for dinners as well, developing
a community network that has
continued to grow and change for
more than two decades.
The group, and individuals
within this group, has worked
at some level of activism, fighting
for the recognition and visibility of
Vietnam veterans.
The group petitioned
Warner Robins mayor and council
to name a road within Warner
Robins honoring veterans across
the state — that road is now
named Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Parkway.
Since 2012, many veterans within
the club have petitioned Warner Robins to
build a Vietnam Veterans Memorial within
the city. As it stands currently, the city is
in the process of finalizing a contract to
purchase land for the construction of the
memorial. Many of these veterans are also
a part of Warner Robins’ Veterans Issues
Board.
Finally, and most importantly to
many Romeos, the group acts as a support
system for one another. They may not often
talk about the hardships they faced while at
war, but sharing space together, reminiscing
in the bond they share as Vietnam veterans,
is often the most important part.
Bill Carey, a member of the Romeos
since 2008, said much the same.
“We don’t talk about what we did,
or what happened to us,” Carey said. “We
hang out together. It’s that comradery; that’s
the therapy.”
According to Carey, in 1968 and
‘69, 28,000 American soldiers were killed.
Many of these veterans experienced multiple
losses and carry traumatic experiences.
“We’ve had experience with being
in country,” Carey said. “The things that
happened, the things you saw, no one else
has seen it. No one else has done it. We can
be together and share it, yet not talk about
it. We all went through it at some point.”
The Romeos of Middle Georgia
are a Vietnam veteran support group. They
meet every Monday and Friday at the IHOP
on Watson Boulevard at 8 a.m.

Air Force - Major
Originally wanting to be a member of the Marine Corps,
Air Force veteran Tim Bollinger applied to the Navy-Marines
program but was denied due to the height requirement. After
considering his love for flight and hopes for becoming a pilot, he
chose the Air Force.
Originally from Bell City, Missouri, Bollinger said he was
a normal kid, attending church and participating with the Boy
Scouts — even earning an Aviation Merit Badge at one point. He
attended Central Methodist College in Fayette, Missouri, graduating
with his degree in music education and was teaching choir
and band when he got the green light for Officer Training School.
When filling out paperwork for the Air Force, he was advised to
write “BME” (bachelor’s of music education) on the forms for his
education. After completing his pilot training and reviewing his
paperwork before heading to Vietnam, his education was listed as
a bachelor’s of mechanical engineering.
“The staff sergeant that was going through it with me
said, ‘well, you can’t fly,’” Bollinger said, laughing. “I said, ‘are you
going to take my wings away from me?’”
By the time he arrived in Vietnam he was a first lieutenant
considering all the required training he had completed:
basic training, Officer Training School, pilot training, jungle
school, survival school then jungle school in the Philippines. The
mission he became a part of led to a vast majority of the required
intelligence gathered during the Vietnam conflict. The efforts
were declassified within the past couple of decades, and Bollinger
wanted to share the story of his time as a pilot and aircraft commander
with the EC-47 “Electric Goon.” Bollinger said his EC-47
fielded a pilot, copilot, navigator and flight engineer, all part of
the designation “Tactical Electronic Warfare.” Backend operators
were from the 6994th Security Squadron, and Bollinger said the
mission would not have been possible without their work.
“They were extremely skilled and proficient,” Bollinger
said. “They would scan enemy radio, and they knew Vietnamese
and knew their
voice traffic.”
He added
the operations
lasted a
minimum of
16 hours a day,
with designated
search areas
in Laos, North
Vietnam, South
Vietnam and
Cambodia.
Timothy
Bollinger
BY: WILL OLIVER
“We were free to run the
mission as required in order to get
what we needed,” Bollinger said.
During these missions,
the flight crew had to check in with
their home base every 30 minutes
to verify they were not in trouble.
He said this was essential since
sometimes they would cross 20
miles into North Vietnam.
“We’d coordinate our
[enemy locations] with our forward
air controllers, fighters, ground
forces to let them know where the
enemies were,” he said.
The missions would start
at 1,500 feet but later moved up to
around 8,000 feet to avoid AAA
gunfire. The unit’s motto — “Unarmed,
Alone, Unafraid”— was basically true, besides the .38 sidearms
carried by Bollinger and the crew. Whether day or nighttime, rain or
shine, his crew would still fly their missions. Because of the crew and
equipment in the back end of the aircraft, they would have to make “flat
turns” instead of changing direction by banking. He recalled a time where
one of the aircraft’s engines went out, and the crew was not able to get the
landing gear to come down for an emergency landing at Pleiku Air Base.
“We were fully loaded; we had just gotten started on the mission,”
Bollinger said. “And Pleiku is [at] about 6,000 some odd feet. It made the
density altitude such that, even if we had landed there, we wouldn’t have
been able to take off with that much weight.”
As one side of the landing gear was down, the flight engineer was
laying on the floor trying to manually pump the other one down. They
decided to make another pass around the base to give them time to get the
gear to come down, even though their tech order said their aircraft at its
current weight would not be able to do it.
“We were able to get around, and the right landing gear dropped
— we didn’t know if it was locked or not — but it dropped just as were
touching down, and it did not collapse,” he said. “The Stars and Stripes
newspaper ran an article on us for that.”
According to a document provided by Bollinger, the EC-47 in
Southeast Asia, “explores the potential of a prototype tactical air reconnaissance
effort which, since its inception in 1966, has repeatedly attained
the real-time goal of Air Force doctrine.”
The C-47s were modified for the mission at Eglin Air Force Base;
Sacramento, California; Florida; New Hampshire and the Warner Robins
Air Materiel Area.
Bollinger received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.
He retired as a major after 21 years with the Air Force.

20

21

Air Force - Staff Sergeant
Tom McLendon
BY: TYLER MEISTER
Staff Sgt. Tom McLendon enlisted for the United States Air Force
in 1967. The first piece of mail he ever got, upon moving to Middle Georgia,
was from good ole “Uncle Sam.”
“[It said,] ‘I need you,’” McLendon said. “I had to go back to Alabama
because that’s where my local draft board was.”
Rather than be drafted, McLendon returned to his home in Alabama,
and on Mother’s Day 1967, he became a member of the United States
Air Force. McLendon began his time in the military working on “egress”
at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, removing ejection seats from
aircraft in the Air Force inventory. He worked majorly with F-4s, a common
jet used in the Vietnam War, but also on A-1E and A-1H Skyraiders.
In July of 1968, McLendon volunteered for aircrew duty in Da
Nang, overseas in Vietnam.
“I thought that would be exciting,” McLendon said. “It’s cooler up
there than it is down there, over there, especially.”
Because of his background in egress, McLendon said it was not
difficult to get into the program.
“We flew rescue missions, things like that,” McLendon said. “I was
mainly assisting the crew chief and helping get the aircraft ready. A lot of
the times, the crew chief wouldn’t go and I would. During rescue, I would
have to be a gunner, something like that.”
McLendon made rank in minimum time due to his volunteer efforts
and work for the military. He was promised, if he stayed, he would be
given further opportunities. Instead, McLendon left the military on May
14, 1971.
“When you join the military, you’re going to sell your soul to the
military,” McLendon said. “You go where they want to, and you sacrifice
time away from home, time away from seeing your family grow during that
time.
“You went over for one-year, two-year, three-year tour, but you
sacrifice a lot of family time. I do not regret serving; I’d do it again. I felt
like I owed my country something for being free. Freedom is worth fighting
for.”
Once he returned stateside, however, the comradery he learned
while serving never left.
“It’s just a bond we have,” McLendon said. “I may see somebody at
the airport.
“If I see someone that’s got a Vietnam hat on, I automatically shake
their hand and say ‘welcome home, brother.’ I may not ever see him again,
but that’s the bond we have. I don’t think there’s a bond any stronger than
what the Vietnam vets have got.”
Since returning home, McLendon has remained in Middle Georgia.
He is a member of ROMEOs, and has been an active part in petitioning
the City of Warner Robins for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial as well as the
naming of Vietnam Veterans Memorial Parkway in Warner Robins. 22

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