Stories of Honor 2019

STORIES OF HONOR

Table of contents

Frank Dahl

Ed Saunders

4

16

Donn Bruggeman

James Mariska

7

Bob McGrath

9

18

Mark Wandle

21

‘Father Jimmie’

Ray Schaak

Sponsors

Dan Edelman

2

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AUGUST 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

11

Bill Bernhardt

14

23

Bud LaCounte

25

STORIES OF HONOR

Frank

persevered for all soldiers

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com

F

rancis E. “Punk” Dahl contends he’s no hero.

He’s just a guy who did his patriotic duty, enlisted in the U.S. Army, went to war, and was lucky enough to come home and get on with his life.

While the Billings resident kicks off our series “Stories of Honor,” which will highlight 10 different veterans throughout the summer, Frank has a story that he didn’t tell, but I will.

This series is meant to highlight the experiences of soldiers, period — in peacetime and war. We’re still looking for the stories of soldiers, (but more on that in a bit).

The story Frank won’t tell has a connection to another series of soldier stories.

When The Billings Gazette began our “Vietnam Voices” on the 50th anniversary of combat troops going there, Frank contacted me. During a great conversation in his beautiful backyard with his lovely wife Joyce sitting by, Frank asked why we didn’t pay more attention to Korea. You know, they fought in an Asian war, too.

I did my best to explain that we started the Vietnam series on an anniversary, something that journalists seem to love as an excuse for nearly everything from presidential assassinations to the recent 200th birthday of American poet Walt Whitman.

But, he persisted. What about the Korean war vets who were smaller in number but beginning to die at a large clip?

Over brownies and coffee, I gave him vague answers about maybe doing another series sometime in the future.

And, we kept our word.

We then started to spotlight World War II soldiers and families in our “World at War” series.

In the back of my mind, I could just see Frank gritting his teeth.

The story doesn’t stop there, though.

About once a quarter I would get a letter from Frank. I could hardly read them. I recognized the perfect penmanship on the envelope and “F. Dahl” in the return address.

As a historian, I knew there had to be great stories from Korea in our community.

I knew we were probably losing them. And, I knew we should do something. But, if you’ve read anything about the news business in the past two or three years, you know nothing has slowed about news, and nothing has slowed about the pace of change within the newspaper business.

Again, I could almost hear Frank’s gravelly voice — the voice of an old coach and principal — tell me, “Excuses, excuses.” I don’t know if he would have said that, but I could imagine.

So as we decided to embark on “Stories of Honor” and open up the experiences to all soldiers, I knew exactly who should be the fi rst person featured — the same man who had fought for his men as a platoon sergeant in Korea, and had kept on fighting for their stories, even as he pushed 90 years of age.

The announcement had hardly gone

Darrell Ehrlick

out about the series beginning — and before I could even pick up the phone — I got a nomination from Joyce. She, too, had remembered.

The rest of Frank’s story is his, told in his own words, preserved in print and online. Just like in previous stories of soldiers, “Stories of Honor” will feature their stories in their own words. And once again, I am humbled to simply run the camera, ask a few questions, and listen to

history right here in our community.

Even though we have at least three Korean war veterans who have agreed to share their stories as part of this inaugural series, I am not sure that it makes the war un-forgotten. Maybe a little less forgotten.

Frank insists he’s not hero.

I’ll let you listen to his story and be the judge of that.

As for me, I disagree.

STORIES OF HONOR | AUGUST 2019

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STORIES OF HONOR

‘THERE WASN’T MUCH PEACE ALONG THE 38TH’ Francis E. ‘Punk’ Dahl talks about Korean War experience

By Gazette Staff Francis E. “Punk” Dahl was raised in Valley City, N.D. He served in the United States Army from 1949-1953. He spent 13 months in Korea during the Korean War. When he came back, he became a successful teacher, coach and principal. He lives in Billings. This is part of his story. You can watch the complete interview on The Billings Gazette’s YouTube channel.

The Billings Gazette: You enlist in 1949, and by that time you had missed World War II. Did you know what you were getting into?

Dahl: When you’re at that age, you’re pretty naive. It was some money. I was in college at the time, and I thought, well, a little extra would help.

Gazette: Were you concerned about seeing combat, or were you worried about war?

Dahl: Not a lick. ... In the winter of 1950, six or seven of us were going into the Navy because the Korean thing had started. So, six or seven of us went to Fargo and decided we were going to join the Navy and we were going to sleep in at least decent places. My oldest brother, who was decorated in Okinawa, was going to school at North Dakota State, and he called and said, “Have you signed anything yet?” And I said, “No.” He said I want to talk to you before. So, I went over and visited. He said they said they called up the North Dakota National Guard first in World War I, and in II, and they won’t call them this time. He said, “You stick with the Guard. You don’t want to be in the Navy for six years.” Listening to my oldest brother’s sage advice, I decided to nix the Navy and about two weeks later, guess what? You’re going to Camp Rucker Alabama for infantry training. And that was it.

Gazette: What did you know about Korea in 1950?

Dahl: Not much. I had heard of it and that was it.

Gazette: At the time, we can look back and see that we fought a war there, but did people in 1950 think we were going back into combat?

Dahl: I don’t think so.

Gazette: Were you worried when you got the call to go to Camp Rucker?

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August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

Frank Dahl shows a shadow box filled with his Korean War memorabilia.

LARRY MAYER Billings Gazette

Frank Dahl is shown in sub-zero temperatures during the Korean War. Frank Dahl is shown shaving during the Korean War.

Dahl: We thought, “Well heck, we’ll go down there and get some more training, and be here six months and go back to North Dakota.” It didn’t work out that way.

Gazette: How did it work out?

Dahl: In July (1951) my name came up, and next thing you know, we’re on a ship heading for Korea. We knew where we were going. By that time, there was no doubt we weren’t going to be stationed in Japan or anything like that. We were going to some place in Korea.

Gazette: Do you remember your name coming up? How did you know it’s you, not generally, but you specifically are going?

Dahl: We’d been out on bivouac for a week, and you always have Reveille in the evening and they started reading the names, and “F.E. Dahl, here you go.”

(Two weeks later, Dahl and others left Seattle on a troop transport ship for Korea. It took 16 days, and there was a onenight stopover in Japan.)

Gazette: What’s your first impression or memory of Korea?

Dahl: We got off a main ship and because the tide was out, we had to load on a landing ship and it took us into the harbor at Inchon. Off the ship there,

they marched us through Inchon. Inchon almost looked like the pictures of Hiroshima because they’d been back and forth like three times already. The Chinese came down, back and forth, and it was devastated. To see it now is unbelievable.

Gazette: Walking through a place that had been hit by war was different than what you had seen in the United States? Even being naive at 19, did that hit you?

Dahl: It still didn’t sink in.

Gazette: After that what happened?

Dahl: They put on the ugliest train and coach. The seats were like a 90-degree angle. There was no slope to them.

We were jammed in there like sardines.

I thought, “To heck with this.” I crawled under the seats and went to sleep. It was much more comfortable underneath than sitting. They took us somewhere up north, around the Imjin River and that’s where we got out. ... The Iron Triangle campaign was going on and it was a big push to see if they could get the Chinese rounded up. It’s over in the Kumwha area, kind of the middle of Korea and so that’s where I joined the 35th Infantry Regimental Combat Team.

Gazette: What does it look like and

Courtesy photos

what do you notice?

Dahl: You’re kind of oblivious to things. It was late in the evening and it was pretty dark. We went up the hill, and there was a little fireworks going on, nothing too much. The lieutenant said that I was going to this hole with this guy and that was it.

Gazette: What was life like in Korea at the beginning, and say what it’s like being a soldier there in 1950-1951?

Dahl: I had a cousin who was in Okinawa ... The night before I was to ship out of Valley City, he and I went out and had a few libations to soothe things and he said, “Keep your mouth shut and your head down and you’ll get along.” So, you learn quickly. It doesn’t take many days of a little strife to smarten you up, no matter how naive you are.

Gazette: When you woke up in the morning, what was daily life like in Korea?

Dahl: At that time, the peace talks had already started, but there was anything but peace.

Gazette: Why? Dahl: The Chinese were probing all the time and so were we. There were patrols and listening posts, etc., going on.

Even though the peace talks were going

on... there wasn’t much peace along the 38th.

Gazette: What was the camp like where you were stationed?

Dahl: You’re not stationed in any camp, you’re out along the line, the “MLR” we called it — the main line of resistance in bunkers or foxholes, all along the line from the east to west coast of Korea.

Gazette: Someone once described combat war as long periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of intense terror.

Dahl: That’s a pretty good description.

Like I said, you learn fast. I know that was going over to this bunker such as it was and I was oblivious to things and again, let me state this: I am not a hero. My wife might think I am some type of hero. I am not a big hero in Korea or anything like that. The first thing I introduce myself to this man, and back where I come from I had this nickname “Punk” that my dad hung on me when I was 2 or something.

Anyhow, I said, “I’m Punk Dahl.” He said, “If you don’t get your head down, you’re going to get plunked.” I didn’t realize there was anything going on. He said, “Don’t you hear it?” And it was like the tick, tick, tick of a fingernail. That’s something going by that you don’t want to have a part of ... those were bullets.

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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August 2019

STORIES OF HONOR Veteran Donn Bruggeman grew up in the Baker area and graduated from high school in Wolf Point.

AMY NELSON, Billings Gazette

VETERAN RECALLS BONE-CHILLING KOREA String of lucky breaks helped Montana man during service Donn Bruggeman grew up in Baker and Wolf Point, Montana. He served in the United States Army from 1951 to 1953 and served in a combat zone in Korea. His story is featured as part of our “Stories of Honor” series which tells about the experiences of soldiers. This is part of Bruggeman’s story, in his own words.

The full interview can be seen online. This is a lightly edited excerpt.

Gazette: Before the U.S. Army, where was home? Where were you born and raised?

Bruggeman: I was born and went through the seventh grade in Baker, a small

town. Then my folks raised me in Wolf Point in 1941. That’s where I went to high school.

I eventually went to the University of Montana. ...At that time I was drafted and they gave me an exemption to finish college, which I thought was pretty nice. It really turned out to be quite a deal for me because when I was drafted, deferred, I missed the first bad year in Korea when all the Americans were overrun by the Chinese so I missed that winter, but I spent the next two winters there. That’s kind of the history of Small Town Donn getting drafted.

Bruggeman graduated from the University of Montana in 1951 and went right to basic training. His deferment ended upon graduation.

Bruggeman: At that time, people weren’t really up on the war even though it was going on. It was kind of forgotten.

People weren’t excited about it. It was five or six years since World War II had ended, so it was no big deal. And I happened to be the only guy in my class who was drafted.

Gazette: Did you feel picked on? When you were coming up in high school, did you worry about being drafted?

Bruggeman: The draft was still on from World War II, but we never thought about it.

I never did think about it until I got my classification, which was 1A, but I was in college then. In those days, they deferred married fellows, and they deferred farmers, mostly.

It depended on the local draft board. As I said, I was the only guy out of our county that was drafted that year. My dad wasn’t too happy about that. He went to the head of the draft board in Wolf Point and wantPlease see BRUGGEMAN, Page 8

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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Bruggeman From 7

ed to find out why, what was going on?

That fellow, the head of the draft board, didn’t agree with drafting either and he resigned.... So there was a few bad feelings at that time, but mostly people didn’t know what was going on, really.

Gazette: How did you feel when you found out you were drafted?

Bruggeman: It didn’t bother me at all. I was glad to go. I wanted to serve my country and didn’t have a job lined up and I was ready to go.

(He did basic training at Fort Lee, Virginia, finished in December 1951, and reported to Seattle.)

Bruggeman: We were going to ship overseas. Everybody knew where they were going, but I had no hard feelings about this. For one thing, my girlfriend who is now my wife of 65 years, she said she’d wait for me. And, that made me happy. So, I was off to the war a happy guy, because I figured I was lucky to be where I was. I knew Korea, but I didn’t know where I was going to end up over there.

Gazette: Were you aware of what was going on in Korea?

Bruggeman: Not really. There were a couple of guys who came back in that first winter of 1950 who had been there that had been overrun by the Chinese. They came to the fraternity house and man they kind of woke us up a little bit to what was really going on over there. I felt sorry for those guys and it kind of frightened me thinking I was going over there. But, you make the best of it. I think I had a good attitude to start with and that helped.

That helped me get through everything. I think I was lucky or blessed. I think I was probably blessed. I had quite a few people praying for me and that helped.

(Bruggeman left Seattle right after Christmas Day. A small transport ship took them across the Pacific, via Alaska and going through storms. They arrived in Japan 21 days later. Then, they went by train from Tokyo.)

Bruggeman: We went to a naval base called Sasebo. They had a naval replacement depot there, they called it — “a repo depot.” Everyone knew that was not the place to be because everybody went there just waiting for orders to go to Korea. The train ride was interesting going through Japan. It was January, January 1952. We passed through Nagasaki, which had been bombed by the atom bomb. At that time, it was six years later, and it was still nothing but flat rubble. A whole big city was just nothing. I thought it was an eerie feeling to see it. Still, years later, there was nothing there. ..I was [at the replacement depot] for a couple of days, and the name of Brugge-

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COURTESY PHOTO

Veteran Donn Bruggeman of Montana is seen during his service during the Korean War.

man is not all that easy to pronounce, and those guys would call out the names every morning and you’re straining to hear, and that’s a little nerve-wracking, too. After a couple of days, my name was called for the combat engineer — the 19th Engineer Combat group. I thought, “Boy Donn, you lucked out again. You didn’t get infantry, even though the combat engineers.” I was blessed again. Everything is still feeling good for me. Well, it’s cold, but I am from Montana. Once you’re name is called, you report to a ferry across to Pusan. It was just a ferry ride. The problem was when you get ready to get on, they issued us brand new rifles. That was scary because those rifles were full of grease... The only way you could get rid of that grease was, the instructions were, to boil in water.

Well, we didn’t even have paper. There was no way to clean the rifles. I thought, “Gee, they must know better than this to send us to a combat zone with a rifle that was useless.”

So that worried us all the way over to Pusan and then they put us on a train and we headed north. We went through the capital, Seoul. It was nothing but rubble. It had been destroyed almost completely. They had captured it two or three times. It was still just nothing but rubble. Then I watched the summer (1988) Olympics in Seoul, and I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe that they rebuilt that city beautifully. The train kept going farther north. The ferry had been all night. Then all day on the train.

And it’s getting later in the day, and the train made the stop and they said, “This

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

is the end of the line for the train.” A few people got off along the way for their assignments. There was still about a truckload of us who were going to go farther north. It’s an uneasy feeling because you don’t know where you’re going to end up. We got in the trucks and we kept going and going and we were in the mountains — a very mountainous region. It’s winter time and it’s below zero all the time. We came to this 19th Engineer Combat group and they were in a valley. We stopped there. They said this is where I got off, and they said there are a few other companies down the road where guys are getting off. The warrant officer said the company commander and the first sergeant here at headquarters want me to clerk. I had a college degree. They need an assistant.

I thought, “Boy, I am lucky again. I get headquarters company.” So that was another break for me. They sent me down to the tent — we were camped out.

We had to be ready to move at any time.

The fellow that I was replacing was so happy to see a replacement so he could rotate, that he was so happy. I said, “The first thing I got to do is fix this gun.” He said, “Don’t worry, we’ll go over to the supply sergeant and get us a clean rifle.”

He did and he could tell it was bothering me in a combat zone with a useless rifle. That was the first thing he did. I started out learning the job with him for a week — not long. Being headquarters company was a big deal because they have a lot of stuff for the group. We had a group and it consisted of different

LARRY MAYER Billings Gazette

Donn Bruggeman bronze star

companies. They had a truck company, we had a Treadway bridge company and a searchlight company. They all reported in to us. All the orders and the personnel, all of the things that went on came through headquarters, which was through me potentially. So, I learned the job and it was cold. The tents were pretty ratty. At that time, they had a couple of wool blankets. The Army was still behind after this many years for coldweather gear. So, I was in a tent with eight cooks, and they were all from the South. They were suffering miserably in the cold weather. Trying to cook and do their job, it was below zero and you’re outdoors. They couldn’t do much. So, there was another replacement who got there before I did. He became a friend and nobody was really friendly. Everybody had their own deal going and when they can rotate. Being in a combat zone like we were — they called it a zone — we found out later that headquarters was one ridge, maybe a mile, from the actual fighting. We could hear it all the time, but we all had foxholes to get in, because the artillery would come in once in awhile. The Chinese would send patrols out and we were still fighting the Chinese then. The North Koreans had been defeated then. The guard duty at night, even with a new rifle, was scary.

Gazette: Why? Bruggeman: Because you can’t see very much and you have to be really alert. Two hours on, four off, at twenty below zero. I just hate to remember that.

STORIES OF HONOR

Veteran found priest’s grave

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com Bob McGrath served in the United States Army, and served in the Korean War. He grew up in Butte, but has lived in Billings for more than 50 years. This is a lightly edited version of the interview. The full interview can be found online at billingsgazette.com.

Gazette: What was growing up in Butte like?

McGrath: “It was typical Butte, just a bunch of good people. A bunch of nationalities joined together in different neighborhoods, and they all intermingled and got along good. We had the English up in Centerville, the Irish in Walkerville, and various Serbian and all different kinds of nationalities blend together in Butte. It was a wonderful town to grow up in.

Gazette: What part of town did you grow up in?

McGrath: “We lived in the middle part of Butte at one time. Then my mom and dad bought a home out in the flats, down from Butte on the flatter ground. We lived there until my Army days.

Gazette: How did you find yourself in the Army? Tell me about that.

McGrath: “Well, it was the days of the Korean War. ... They put the draft into it. I was one of 20 guys that was drafted at the time I went in. The previous classes, there were always 10 or 12 guys that were drafted and intermingled with the outlying areas in Butte and from different areas. They all joined together, they shipped us to Seattle for processing as a group, and then the guys from Butte separated into different areas, and I was left with a bunch of guys I didn’t know. Then they shipped us down to Camp Roberts, California. ... We took basic training for 16 weeks. Then there was leadership school, and if you came out of there successfully, then you bump up on ranks. So, I went to eight weeks of leadership school and I made corporal when we graduated. Then, shortly after that, I was sent to a bivouac area, they were shipping young guys out of there to various places. I was shipped over to Korea just before Christmas 1952. They loaded us up on the victory ship, the Phoenix Arizona, they called it a boat. We sailed

Dec. 23, 1952, to Korea and it was 18 days on the sea. It was a long time. It was an old relic ship from the Henry J. Kaiser era.

“We went to Japan for processing and they split us up again, and they put us on a ship again to take us to Korea. After we got to Korea and Inchon, it was really cold weather — I’m seeing 15-, 20-below zero. So they loaded all of us new guys, we hardly knew

anyone, and we went on a LST landing ship.

The water was slopping through the door and slop down. We had Army-issued cloth boots, just kind of leather boots and we were soaking wet. We landed at Inchon, and they took us to one of the piers there, and they issued us new boots. They were called ‘Mickey Mouse’ boots — they were these big black boots, but they were warm. I still had them

until this one move that I misplaced. I was sick about that. ... We were there and a little narrow-gauge railroad took us for about 20 miles or so from Inchon to Seoul, across Korea, around the 38th parallel. There were North Koreans here and us there. We had a camp there — a bunch of tents and we did string up barbed wire surrounding it and we camped there for probably about a year.

“From that area, we moved out on the road and checked areas and checked bridges, did all the things the engineers do. I spent all the time over there at that camp. But during that episode, we were out and about with two other guys, looking at the roads and stuff like that. On the top of the hill, around Chunchon, Korea, we approached a church.

It wasn’t shattered or anything, but it was all broken glass and everything. So I said to the guys, ‘I’d like to go in and see that. I’d like to pay a visit.’ Anyway, we all walked in, and walked up and down. The two other guys wandered and did their thing. I wandered to the back and outside the back door . On the back door on the ground, there was three graves, with a headstone on each grave. I read the names on there: I got of a picture of that. I read the name of the priest, and the middle priest was named Maginn and his hometown was Butte, Montana. So immediately, I picked up on that.

“I thought, ‘Here’s another Butte guy.’

The Communists had executed the three priests maybe a month or two before I got there. His burial was there. I always had that in my craw. Here was another guy in Butte, doing the same thing probably what I did.

So, anyway, I was done with that.

“I went back, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind seeing another guy from Butte laying there on the ground with a tombstone. ...

“I spent another two years and two Christmases over there. ... But that grave story always stuck with me.

Gazette: Why do you think it stuck with you?

McGrath: “The Butte connection for some reason. He was from Butte. I was from Butte and it just hit me. I knew guys from all over the United States (in the Army).

And you hardly would run into a guy from Butte, except the guy laying in the ground.

It just hit me for some reason. I really can’t explain.”

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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VA introduces new Mission Act

By VETERANS AFFAIRS

T

he U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs launched its new and improved Veterans Community Care Program on June 6, implementing portions of the VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018 (MISSION Act), which both ends the Veterans Choice Program and establishes a new Veterans Community Care Program.

The MISSION Act will strengthen the nationwide VA Health Care System by empowering veterans with more health care options.

“The changes not only improve our ability to provide the health care Veterans need, but also when and where they need it,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “It will also put Veterans at the center of

their care and offer options, including expanded telehealth and urgent care, so they can find the balance in the system that is right for them.”

Under the new Veterans Community Care Program, veterans can work with their VA health care provider or other VA staff to see if they are eligible to receive community care based on new criteria. Eligibility for community care does not require a veteran to receive that care in the community; veterans can still choose to have VA provide their care. Veterans may elect to receive care in the community if they meet any of the following six eligibility criteria: A veteran needs a service not available at any VA medical facility.

A veteran lives in a U.S. state or territory without a full-service VA medical facility. Specifical-

ly, this would apply to Veterans living in Alaska, Hawaii, New Hampshire and the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

A veteran qualifies under the “grandfather” provision related to distance eligibility under the Veterans Choice Program.

VA cannot furnish care within certain designated access standards. The specific access standards are described below: Drive time to a specific VA medical facility Thirty-minute average drive time for primary care, mental health and noninstitutional extended care services.

Sixty-minute average drive time for specialty care.Note: Drive times are calculated using geomapping software.

Appointment wait time at a

specific VA medical facility.

Twenty days from the date of request for primary care, mental health care and noninstitutional extended care services, unless the Veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.

Twenty-eight days for specialty care from the date of request, unless the veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.

The veteran and the referring clinician agree it is in the best medical interest of the veteran to receive community care based on defined factors.

VA has determined that a VA medical service line is not providing care in a manner that complies with VA’s standards for quality based on specific conditions.

In preparation for this land-

mark initiative, senior VA leaders will visit more than 30 VA hospitals across the country to provide in-person support for the rollout.

The VA MISSION Act has as its goals to: Strengthens VA’s ability to recruit and retain clinicians.

Authorizes “Anywhere to Anywhere” telehealth across state lines.

Empowers Veterans with increased access to community care.

Establishes a new urgent care benefit that eligible Veterans can access through VA’s network of urgent care providers in the community.

VA serves approximately 9 million enrolled Veterans at 1,255 health care facilities around the country every year.

For more information, visit www.missionact.va.gov.

VA extends Agent Orange presumption to ‘Blue Water Navy’ Veterans Eligible Veterans may now be entitled to disability compensation benefits

By VETERANS AFFAIRS WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to process Agent Orange exposure claims for “Blue Water Navy” veterans who served offshore of the Republic of Vietnam between Jan. 9, 1962, and May 7, 1975.

These eterans may be eligible for presumption of herbicide exposure through Public Law 116-23, Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019, which was signed into law June 25, 2019, and goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020. They may also qualify for a presumption of service connection if they have a disease that is recognized as being associated with herbicide exposure.

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The bipartisan Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act gives VA until Jan. 1, 2020, to begin deciding Blue Water Navy related claims. By staying claims decisions until that date, VA is complying with the law that Congress wrote and passed.

“VA is dedicated to ensuring that all Veterans receive the benefits they have earned,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “We are working to ensure that we have the proper resources in place to meet the needs of our Blue Water Veteran community and minimize the impact on all Veterans filing for disability compensation.”

Blue Water Navy Veterans are encouraged to submit disability compensation claims for conditions presumed to be related to Agent Orange exposure. Veterans

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

over age 85 or with life-threatening illnesses will have priority in claims processing.

Veterans who previously were denied for an Agent Orange related presumptive condition can file a new claim based on the change in law. Eligible survivors of deceased Blue Water Navy Veterans also may benefit from the new law and may file claims for benefits based on the Veterans’ service.

The new law affects Veterans who served on a vessel operating not more than 12 nautical miles seaward from the demarcation line of the waters of Vietnam and Cambodia, as defined in Public Law 116-23. An estimated 420,000 to 560,000 Vietnam-era Veterans may be considered Blue Water Navy Veterans.

To qualify, under the new law, these Veterans must have a disease associated with herbicide exposure, as listed in 38 Code of Federal Regulations.

Agent Orange presumptive conditions are: AL amyloidosis Chloracne or similar acneform disease Chronic B-cell leukemias Diabetes mellitus Type 2 Hodgkin lymphoma, formerly known as Hodgkin’s disease Ischemic heart disease Multiple myeloma Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, formerly known as Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma Parkinson’s disease Peripheral neuropathy, early-onset

Porphyria cutanea tarda Prostate cancer Respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx or trachea) Soft-tissue sarcoma (other than osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma or mesothelioma).

For more information about Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam waters (Blue Water Navy Veterans), visit: https://www.va.gov/disability/eligibility/hazardous-materials-exposure/agent-orange/navy-coast-guard-ships-vietnam/.

Veterans seeking more information should contact their Veterans Service Officer, call VA’s toll-free number at 800-827-1000 or visit the VA Blue Water Navy Agent Orange website.

STORIES OF HONOR

‘FATHER JIMMIE’ STOOD UP TO COMMUNISTS IN 1950

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com

A “look back” at Butte history from the Montana Standard, July 19, 1992.

Montana Standard

Rev. James Maginn — the epitome of Butte, Montana — didn’t flinch when American military advisers started to flee south as the Chinese marched near the 38th parallel in Korea shortly before Independence Day 1950.

He’d been through this before. Besides, he had a fledgling flock to care for, and a new parish that had been established in an abandoned fire station.

“Father Jimmie” had been a missionary priest to Korea when the Japanese captured him and held him three years until the end of World War II. He had survived then, and he assured the exiting soldiers he would make it this time, too.

A few days later, Maginn would be cap-

tured by the Communists and imprisoned.

When they discovered his United States passport, he, along with two other Catholic priests, were executed as spies.

Defiantly, as one eyewitness account recalled, Maginn stood firm against his captors the same way he had steadfastly refused to flee when the oncoming Army approached.

“You can kill me if you like, but it will make no difference to the outcome of the war,” Maginn reportedly said. “You are going to be beaten anyway.”

But it was Maginn who took the beating. In an autopsy performed years later, it showed his skull was fractured, his leg broken and his body battered before being shot through the head. Maginn was estimated to have died around July 7, 1950.

Please see FATHER, Page 12

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msubillings.edu/vets STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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STORIES OF HONOR

Father From 11

The boy from Butte was buried along with his fellow priests near their newly founded church. According to one report in The Montana Standard, a little old woman dug the graves for the bodies. No church members mourned publicly, all of them afraid they would be labeled by the Communists as traitors and suffer a similar fate.

The only witness was a faithful church member and English teacher Kim Soo Sung, who wrote an account of the priest’s last days, and then, shortly after, disappeared from the record.

Kim said the small town of about 30,000 had been warned the Communists were on their way more than a week before they stormed the village.

American forces warned Maginn to leave.

On July 2, Maginn celebrated Mass and Kim assisted.

“During breakfast, Father told me that if we were captured, we should be sent to Siberia, but that if not that, we would meet in heaven,” Kim’s account states. “He thanked me for staying with him without fear for my own life.”

The next day, Kim was captured and imprisoned.

When Maginn heard of it, he sent a messenger with Kim’s coat and a note saying the priest was praying for his faithful helper. Inside Kim’s coat pockets were some sweets.

On July 4, Maginn was captured and placed in a cell next to Kim. “Father asked the Communist security police of what he was guilty.

They replied that there was evidence that Americans had killed Koreans.

He replied that this was not true — pointing out the many good things Americans had done for Koreans,” Kim said in his account.

Two days later, Maginn was taken from his cell at midnight, never to be seen again by Kim. Maginn was pure Butte. The son of two Irish immigrants, he had been born in Butte and attended Sacred Heart parochial school. He and his family later returned to their Irish home, and Maginn studied to become a priest. He was Irish, Catholic and a fighter.

News of Maginn’s death came slowly to his hometown, and then it was uncertain.

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A story buried in the Montana Standard on Sept. 24, 1950, read, “Red Koreans May Have Executed Butte Clergyman.”

Maginn was a popular figure even before his death, and a local martyr after.

As he was recuperating from his time as a prisoner during World War II, he was invited back to his hometown as a guest of Rev. Edmund Taylor, the pastor of Sacred Heart. He was given a party by his fellow Sacred Heart classmates who had likely not seen him in years.

“It is a fight to be won by prayers and the faith of all men,” he told the Butte crowd as he prepared to go back to Korea.

The Montana Standard lamented, “Nor did anyone envision ... a hillside in Korea when a Communist firing squad would snuff out the life of the young communicant because the native East Side boy, as a Catholic priest stood for everything to which Communism is opposed.”

Just a year after being the guest of honor in Butte, his grave was out back of the little church in Sam Chok, Korea.

His grave there was identified by a fellow priest who had been dispatched from Nebraska, the head of Maginn’s home Catholic Columban order, to find the location of the bodies.

“I set to work to dig and soon I uncovered some bones. ... Then, I found a skull and there was no doubt in my mind that we had found Jimmie Maginn. How did I know? By the teeth.

Jimmie had some unusual work done on his teeth; two of his lower teeth were capped with silver,” wrote Rev. Patrick Burke in his report back to the U.S. His body was later relocated to Chunchon, Korea, where other Columban priests are buried. The two other priests who were executed with Maginn were also buried there.

Yet, Maginn’s mark on Sam Chok remains. Holy Trinity Church stands in the shadow of where Maginn was thought to have been executed, and where the smashed church stood, and his first grave was located.

Money for the missionary church project came from the Columban Order and the American branches of the Catholic Church.

One of the largest donors was, of course, Sacred Heart Parish, right in From the Sept. 24, 1950 edition of the Montana Standard the heart of Butte.

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

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STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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STORIES OF HONOR Korean War veteran Bill Bernhardt of Laurel, pictured Thursday, June 6, 2019.

CASEY PAGE, Billings Gazette

Memories of Korea STILL VIVID

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com William “Bill” Bernhardt is a native of Laurel. He grew up on a farm with three brothers. He was drafted into the Army, even though he was married. He served in Korea in a combat zone. This is a lightly edited portion of his interview. For the complete video interview, please go to billingsgazette.com Bernhardt: My father had three boys, one was a year-and-a-half older than me,

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and one was a year-and-a-half younger than me. I was right in the middle. We were all 1A and the draft was going on then.

Gazette: What year was that?

Bernhardt: That was 1950. We were just sitting there with farm deferments. I was farming. Two of us, my older brother and I had been to Butte and we were all 1A, physically fit. This went on for two or three years.

We got married on Aug. 4. You had to go down to the draft board and let them know about the change in marital status. So, we went Aug. 4, we went a couple of days and

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

honeymooned through the park. On Aug. 6, I went down to the draft board. I was still 1A, and my brothers, too. They were both still single. I reported I got married, and I got a notice to leave the 6th of September, one month later.

Gazette: You were farming and married and they still took you?

Bernhardt: There was a reason for that.

Well, they picked me out of there because I got married. If your wife was pregnant, you were excused and deferred. That wasn’t the case, so they took me. I think they had

maybe had plans of getting one of the other in the future if they messed up.

Gazette: You thought because you were married and farming that you would not be drafted?

Bernhardt: That didn’t enter my mind at all. I had no idea that they’d pick me out of the middle.

Gazette: Do you remember getting that notice?

Bernhardt: It was a shock. Absolutely. I had just got married and had a new wife.

Gazette: How old were you at the time?

Bernhardt: I was 21.

Gazette: So you were thinking, “I am 21, just married and I am going to farm for the rest of my life?”

Bernhardt: My dad, we had farm deferments. He got it deferred for three months.

I was hoping that maybe (Korea) would be over by then. But, we got through the harvest season. After I had left, 6th of December for the Army. It was a short time that I was in Korea. I did basic training down in Camp Roberts, California. (My wife) came down there to visit me around Christmas and I came home for a 10-day leave. We came home together. Then I left and I was on my way to Korea right away.

Gazette: Were you aware that Korea was going on?

Bernhardt: Oh yeah. This was the second winter of the Korean War. That was the really devastating one where they just beat the heck out of mostly the Marines. I got over there in short order. They even flew us over.

Gazette: They got over there quickly, but most of the troops got over there by ship.

They must have needed replacements?

Bernhardt: That was my first airplane ride. It was a 36-hour flight. Three 12-hour hops. The first 12 hours was to Hawaii, the second 12 hours was to Wake Island, and during World War II there was a lot of fighting on Wake Island and there were a lot of old rusted out gun embankments across that is-

land. When you come in for landing, you see that island from one end to the other. There was just a landing strip and a plane refueling place. The third 12 hours was Tokyo.

Gazette: What did you think of your first airplane ride?

Bernhardt: I was scared stiff. They were not jets, there were four-engine prop planes.

They were big commercial airline planes.

There was only about a half dozen soldiers on them.

Gazette: What was your training to do in the Army?

Bernhardt: I was fortunate enough to get in the heavy weapons company, which was one step up from a foot soldier. We had vehicles and machine guns, mortars. Anyway, that’s the reason I can’t hear today.

We didn’t have any ear protection. We had these big 80-mm mortars that set on a platform and sat like a stovepipe. You’d put a shell in them like a bowling pin, a big shell, you stand right beside that thing and boom and away it would go.

Gazette: So it was loud.

Bernhardt: We didn’t have ear protection.

Gazette: Were you worried about going over to Korea?

Bernhardt: Absolutely, I had a new wife at home.

Gazette: Did you have any idea how long you’d be over there?

Bernhardt: The whole peninsula of

Korea was divided into zones for rotating home. There was one point per month, two point, three point and four points. The quickest you could get out of there was nine months or 36 points. You needed 36 points to rotate. And you also had to have a replacement before you go home.

Gazette: So you not only needed points, you also needed a guy coming in for you.

Bernhardt: My outfit was the 45th Infantry Division which was the Oklahoma National Guard. The National Guard got whipped in the first winter, 1950. And I was over there in the second winter which wasn’t quite as bad. The (demilitarization) region was more defined at that time.

It was just back and forth. The Chinese were in there. All these stories, if you read up on that, there was the “Punchbowl.” I saw that. I wasn’t involved in that. It was just a big 160-acre field, with ridges all around it. There were mountains. I was on the eastern edge and side of it. These are real mountains. The mountain peaks were so close together that they would have you on the front line for a month or so and then pull you back, and I went back to the division for a little recuperation and reorganizing. Then you maybe go back in a little bit different area. There was always just patrols going out. The Chinese were there. One time, I was back in the heavy weapons company. We had a motor pool with heavy trucks. I was designated to

take a 2.5-ton truck up the mountain and get some guys to come down for showers because they were living in a hole in the ground. They were living like rats, with the rats. I was up there to get guys and I am running down this trench, and I started shooting at him, and he crawls the rest of the way. That trench was down the front of the hill. It was so close to the enemies that we had chicken wire over the trench to stop their hand grenades. They could throw hand grenades back and forth. They would roll down the hill and they would explode down the hill. It was unbelievable. You could throw hand grenades back and forth, that’s how close the peaks were.

Here comes a guy and he was filthy. He was big time filthy. He was a kid from Laurel that I knew who he was in school, but he was living behind me. He came out of there, and he was mentally about half shot then. He came and hugged me and he recognized me. That was pretty traumatic.

Gazette: Were you shocked — shocked by the condition and shocked to see someone from home?

Bernhardt: I was, too, but as not as much as him. He was a kid that was raised down on the east end of Laurel in what they called “Railroad Town.” He was an orphan kid. He never had good clothes. A poor kid. And here he came and hugged me. I understood he came home after that and he committed suicide.

honor.

Rimrock Mall thanks our Veterans and Active Duty Service Men and Women for their commitment

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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STORIES OF HONOR

‘I saw fellow veterans who needed help’

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com Ed Saunders was born in Nebraska. He moved to Riverton, Wyoming as a child.

Saunders joined the United States Army and served as a regular for more than 20 years. He has been actively involved with the Yellowstone National Cemetery in Laurel and served in the First Gulf War. His book on the making of the Yellowstone National Veterans Cemetery is titled, “Sentinels: Yellowstone National Cemetery.”

Saunders: I grew up in Western Wyoming and because of that, and my father’s very strong work ethic, you became a selfreliant man and you also appreciated the hard work and suffering that people put in. It was a largely a conservative area and I grew up in the Civil Rights era and also in the Vietnam era where even the conservatives where I grew up were questioning what we were doing. That questioning is always wise for people to pause for a little and say, “What is America doing?” I registered for the draft when I was 18. When the draft numbers — the draft lottery numbers came out for Vietnam, it’s the only time I ever won the lottery. My draft number was 009. The rule on the street was if your draft number was 125 or lower, then you were Long Binh bound. You were going to the “First Repo Depot” in South Vietnam. I showed the newspaper list to my dad and he just turned white.

My father was a combat veteran of World War II in the Army in the Pacific at the age of 19. I said, “Dad, if I got to go, I got to go.” But I was never called up because the United States was in the Vietnamization program at the time. And the draft had essentially shut down. I knew that for me to get anywhere in life that I had to get an education. My father was the first member of his family to ever get a high school diploma. I knew that I had to get a college degree.

I went to the University of Wyoming

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Gulf War veteran Ed Saunders served more than 20 years in the U.S. Army.

and entered the ROTC program, and I remember telling my colonel down there. I said, “Colonel, you ought to know something: I’m No. 9 on the draft.” He looked at me and said, “Saunders, you’re not going anywhere.” So I think he knew some-

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

thing I didn’t. I graduated from Laramie in four years — eight semesters — I never took summer school. I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States regular Army. I was a regular Army officer my entire career. I stayed. I found

CASEY PAGE, Billings Gazette

the Army to my liking. I liked being in the field. I liked the ruggedness of it and I liked moving around the world. I married a year after I was commissioned to a wonderful little redhead Irish girl I had met in Laramie and she followed me all over

the world and bore me a son, and I stayed.

I served 22 years and 16 days in the U.S. Army. I survived a war. I do know what a bullet sounds like when it passes your head going the wrong way. I retired because I got hurt in the Gulf War. I wasn’t combat wounded. I do not have a purple heart. The injuries in the Gulf War began to catch up with me. I knew I had to retire.

I retired and went to work for corporate America in the defense industry — a coatand-tie job — I hated every minute of it.

It paid good. We became empty-nesters, and my wife, who is a Wyoming native, said, “Let’s go home.” And so I followed her. She worked for over 20 years with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in their medical sections in Albuquerque and here. She made a career serving veterans. God bless the military families who follow us. They don’t get the credit they deserve.

Gazette: You earned two retirements — one from the military and one from a “coat-and-tie” job, why did you get involved in veterans affairs? Why didn’t you go fishing?

Saunders: First, I never was a good fisherman. It’s kind of an ethos that in the military — especially for officers who command units — we command units not for ego and we certainly don’t get any more pay for doing it. We do it as a measure of service. We know that in our experience and our training, we can organize a group of dissimilar people, in this case soldiers from all walks of life, and in my case, both genders, and we mold them to achieve a goal which singularly they could not do. And when you retire from the military, you look at how best you can continue to serve. It’s not because it’s a self-serving ego trip, but it’s a calling that courses through you.

It’s a pretty hard thing to describe, but when you see a need, especially with veterans, mostly men, who are struggling with coming to grips with their service and how to continue with their life, you think in a practical sense and a compassionate sense, you can help them. To step away from that, I think is, well, I wouldn’t do it. When you see someone who needs help and you and you walk away from them, that’s an indictment on you as a man. And when I saw fellow veterans who needed help, and they didn’t know where to go and who to talk to, all of my Army training and experience and my experience as a Christian man, you put all that together, and you say: It’s my responsibility to help these men and women. I can’t walk away from them.

Gazette: What kind of help do you see men and women who are coming back today need most?

Saunders: They need an assurance that first, they are not forgotten. I think

PETER DEJONG, ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Marine Cobra gunship files over a column of allied tanks during the battle for Khaf ji on Thursday, Jan. 31, 1991, at Saudi Arabia on the SaudiKuwait border. Iraqi and coalition forces were fighting in the first major ground engagement of the Persian Gulf war.

the greatest tragedy to an American service man or woman is not that they may possibly be killed in action, the greatest tragedy is that they are forgotten. That they do these remarkable and courageous things worldwide in very dangerous and hostile places and they would come back to a nation that doesn’t even remember them, or doesn’t even fully comprehend what they do, especially the younger men and women who are 19, maybe 20 years of age. They need that assurance that we, as a people, as nation, and we as a community are there to help them. Asking for help is not an admission of failure or being less of a person, it is saying that your courage still exists in asking for help. That’s why I do a lot of this.

Gazette: Why do you think soldiers today are forgotten or are in danger of being forgotten?

Saunders: The wars that we have now and they were wars in quotation marks, because we are not sure what they are. World War II was probably the last popular war in American history.

My father was 19 when he was drafted.

My late father-in-law was 17 when he enlisted in the Navy. Both of these men

were combat battle veterans when they were teenagers. World War II was a popular war that had a lot of support and we knew what the objective was: Defeat Nazi Germany, defeat Imperial Japan.

Then came Korea. We weren’t quite sure what Korea was all about. Then came Vietnam. Vietnam stands alone in a tragedy that America did not know what it was doing. It wasn’t a tragedy for the individual people who served in uniform because they were heroic men and women, but when they came back the nation took out its uncertainty on them.

It shouldn’t have done. America now has an entire generation of young men and women who have always known war — the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict — see, I used the word “conflict.” I don’t know what to call it. But when you’re a soldier, a Marine getting shot at, you don’t care about the word, all you know is someone is trying to kill you and that’s war. But we have a generation of young men and women who have known nothing but reading about Americans getting killed on the other side of the planet in a hostile gunfire situation. How do we approach that now? When you bring back a young person and they have seen things that

were unimaginable, they heard about it — they may have heard grandpa talk the war or Uncle Jack talk about Da Nang, or Ed Saunders talking about the Battle of Khafji, the battle I was in; but, listening to it and experiencing it are two different things. And the younger mind when they see these unimaginable traumatic events, it skews them a bit. They will not get over it. I told a younger veteran who came back from Afghanistan, I said, “Unfortunately you’re not going to get over this, but you will get through this a stronger man.” I said, “You have two choices here and we can help you: You can be a better man or a bitter man, which one is it going to be?” I see me as helping this younger generation the best I can.” America doesn’t know what to do with these younger men and women because the war is not something which affects us every day. In World War II, it affected things with rationing, the draft and all these sorts of things. Now, it’s just a sidelight on the back page of somewhere and an occasional opinion somewhere. It’s like, “It’s a five o’clock news broadcast, what are the hockey scores tonight?” That’s what we have to guard against.

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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STORIES OF HONOR U.S. Army Col. (Ret.) James Mariska, pictured Wednesday, June 12, 2019.

CASEY PAGE, Billings Gazette

MILITARY EXPERIENCE opened doors to adventure Career in intelligence took man to polar region in February

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com

Billings Mustangs players. Here is an excerpted, lightly edited portion of his interview. For the entire interview, please James Mariska is a retired colonel who see billingsgazette.com spent a career in the United States Army Mariska: My brother and I were born and the Reserves. He is involved in numerous veterans organizations. He grew in San Francisco... On my father’s side, up in California, but calls Billings home. several generations of my family had He also is known throughout the base- been involved in the military, and on my ball community for hosting an army of mother’s side, the same... My father flew

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August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

in the Pacific (in World War II); my uncle was a seaman in the Pacific in the Navy in World War II; and I had my uncle who was in the European theater. My grandfather had been a seaman on the battleship New York during World War I... So I grew up around all that. Of course, after the war, there were 15 or 20 military bases around there, so it was just kind of part of our life and upbringing. When my brother gradu-

ated from high school, he was a little bit older than I was and he immediately entered the military. I thought I would take a little time off. I came up to Montana and lived with my uncle in Missoula and started at the University of Montana. I first put on the uniform at the University of Montana in the ROTC, which was, at the time, mandatory. That was in the fall of 1964. I entered college. By 1965, it was

obvious that I was going to get drafted.

I remember my classification physical, which was Oct. 15, 1964. It was the day that (USSR Premiere Nikita) Khruschev was deposed from the Soviet Union government. I knew I was “1A,” and it was going to happen so a friend of mine and I went down in October and volunteered for the military. Come to find out, it was the largest draft call of the Vietnam War at the time. I believe October 1965, they drafted 35,000 people for the Vietnam War. Things were starting to get pretty hot there. By the time we got processed through Butte, it was Dec. 6 when we left Butte. They flew us to San Francisco — back home — then onto a bus and we arrived at Ford Ord, California, real early in the morning on Dec. 7, greeted by two Hawaiian drill sergeants. I don’t know if it was fate, or if it was purposely done.

Gazette: So 1964, it was understood that you were going to go into the military, being from a military family?

Mariska: Eventually, yes. One way or another. Either I was going to go through college and get an ROTC commission, or I was going to join.

Gazette: Why did you decide to join rather than draft?

Mariska: I could pick where I could want to go. You could volunteer for the draft which was two years. They just threw you in the pool for wherever they needed you for. Or you could volunteer as a regular volunteer and that would be a three-year commitment or you could pick a specialty and that would be a fouryear commitment. I picked the specialty.

I asked for the army security agency, which they could guarantee you if you volunteered for four years and it was specialized education. Of course, they had to do a top-secret background investigation for me. Once I finished basic training in Fort Ord, California, then they sent me to Fort Gordon, Georgia, with training in, what was at that time some fairly advanced technology, which was cryptography. From there, I volunteered for the Infantry Officers Candidate school at Fort Benning, and once I graduated from the school, I got commissioned as a second lieutenant on February of 1967 before I turned 21.

Gazette: You’re seeing Vietnam heat up. Does that worry a 21-year-old?

Mariska: Oh yeah. My ROTC instructor at the University of Montana had just come back from Vietnam and he had talked to us about that. Almost all of our drill instructors from basic training to (advanced training) to officer candidates school had been to Vietnam or had been in Korea. Our platoon sergeant at basic training had been in both World War II and Korea and his sole goal was to make sure that all of us soldiers in that platoon survived on the battlefield. I will never

EDDIE ADAMS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Marines in combat gear wade ashore from landing craft at beach near Da Nang, South Vietnam on April 14, 1965. They were later flown to Phu Bai Airport 35 miles to the north near the city of Hue where they were to guard an important airstrip.

forget him. His name was Sgt. Cha. Gazette: What did they say to you about surviving Vietnam?

Mariska: When we were out in the field — doing whatever it was that we were training on — he would bring that up. He said, “This may, someday, save your life.

You need to learn what this is about and what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

He was good at explaining it. Sometimes, he didn’t and he’d just let you experience it.

Gazette: That was probably a good experience too?

Mariska: Those are the ones you never forget.

Gazette: So you decided rather than just go into a pool at two years, you were going to spend four years. Did you intend to make the military your career?

Mariska: Yes. Gazette: Why? Mariska: It provided a lot of opportunities, particularly for education. Our family always considered education the key to having a better life, maybe not a successful life or a happy life, but it was certainly something that my mother and father made sure we both understood — that education was a very important thing as we were growing up. So, it was drilled into us. There are tremendous educational opportunities in the military.

I don’t think there was hardly a year — I spent 34 years in both active and reserves — that I was not in some type of schooling or education program or something where I was learning something new almost every single year.

Gazette: It seems interesting that you volunteered for the four years and you wanted to do this career and you go into Army intelligence. Did you know, going in, what you’d want to do? How did you determine that was the path you wanted?

Mariska: It was one that had — right at that time — was when all the 007 movies came out, OK? There was a certain amount of excitement to that. Now, there was no chance of me becoming an agent, but there was a chance of being involved in that type of business and it excited us.

Gazette: 007 versus what you’re being trained for — probably there was a gap between what you saw on the silver screen and what you experienced?

Mariska: There was a huge step.

Gazette: Did you find it to your liking, or was it a disappointing?

Mariska: Oh no. It was probably the best thing I ever did. I mean talk about opening doors to adventure, if nothing else. Once I got commissioned, they said, “Well, we can’t keep you in the Army Security Agency.” I said, “Why?” And they said, “Because you don’t have a college degree.” As an officer, you had to have a degree to be an officer; you could be an enlisted man... I said, “Aww, crud.”

Gazette: Do you wish they had told you?

Mariska: Why would they? They already had you. They said, “But, we will transfer you to the military intelligence branch, but you are going to have to get your college education either part-time or something so that we could keep you.”

So, it was pretty clear that at the age of 20,

where I had to go. I went to ... the intelligence school in Maryland. I became a counterintelligence specialist and I was transferred 6667th Military Intelligence Detachment in Fort Richardson, Alaska.

I had orders to go to Nha Trang Vietnam, but my bother was in Phu Bai, and there was only my brother and I. And he was in the Army Security Agency and they wouldn’t send the two of us in the same spot. They sent me to Alaska while he finished out his tour in Vietnam. I ended up being in the counterintelligence section of the military detachment. Then, for one reason or another, fate, I got transferred to the general staff, and I worked on the G2 section. I was counterintelligence and graphic officer and as such, I got to travel all over the command, either with the general staff or on my own. I went all the way to the Naval Arctic Research at Port Barrow and then hopped on a C-130 and they flew me out to Ice Island, T3, which was 950 miles north of that and 300 miles from that and landed on an iceberg and stayed there for 10 days and floated around the Arctic Ocean, listening to our neighbors.

Gazette: So that’s what you had to do to listen to your neighbors?

Mariska: Well, you know who our neighbors were.

Gazette: Of course.

Mariska: That was fun. Colder than heck.

Gazette: So you can beat anyone’s Montana cold stories?

Mariska: Ah yes. There’s nothing like being on top of the world in February.

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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N O M I N A T I O N S The Billings Gazette received such tremendous feedback on our inaugural “Stories of Honor” series this year, we’re proud to announce that we’ll bring back the series next summer. We plan to spotlight 10 more veterans who served with honor in our Armed Forces.

If you would like nominate a veteran or share your story with The Gazette and the community, please fill out the nomination form below:

NOMINATE A SOLDIER Veteran’s name: _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Branch of military: ______________________________________ Veteran’s phone number:________________________________ Veteran’s email:_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Nominated by: _______________________________________ Nominator’s contact phone:________________________________ Nominator’s contact email: _______________________________________________________________________________________ Reason why this person should be spotlighted in the “Stories of Honor” series: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 20

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

STORIES OF HONOR

‘YOU DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU HAVE’

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com

National Guard veteran and Huntley Project Schools superintendent Mark Wandle.

Mark Wandle is from Baker, Montana. He went to Dickinson State University and is the superintendent of Huntley Public Schools. He spent 20 years in the National Guard, doing tours in Germany, Italy and South Korea. From 2003 to 2005, he served in Iraq. For his complete interview, please go to billingsgazette.com Wandle: My first year in at college I did the normal route, and had always thought about military service. My father had served in the Air Force and a grandpa who served in the Army, postWorld War II in between World War II and Korea. It was kind of there, but honestly, I ended up wanting a challenge one summer and I didn’t know what I was going to do, so in March of 1989, I decided to sign up on a whim. I had a battle buddy who wanted to join and I thought, “I got nothing planned, so why I don’t I sign up?” I went down and signed up in an hour-and-a-half, and then I contacted my mom and dad and they were back here in Billings. I hadn’t communicated with them on my intentions and told my mom what I was going to do, and I’d always recommend to everybody: Talk to your mom or talk to your wife or talk to your loved ones before you jump into something like that.

Gazette: Were they worried?

Wandle: I think moms always worry.

Dads worry also, but moms probably express it a little more. I think they worried, but we were kind of in a transition period where it was a peacetime opportunity.

For me, part of it was love of country, but also to be honest, it was joining up in the guard. It had great college payment benefits and the GI bill. Coming from a family that didn’t have some of those things in life — Dad was a truck driver and mom worked as a cook in Baker at a restaurant, but was more of a stay-at-home mom. To be able to pay for college was a driving force of mine. So, I signed up and ended up spending 20 years in the guard and some deployments inside there. Most of those opportunities were different.

I was lucky enough to go to Italy. That

CASEY PAGE, Billings Gazette

was a great tour. I also did an opportunity to Korea — South Korea, Camp Red Cloud which is around Seoul. That was a good opportunity, but I don’t know that I would go back to Camp Red Cloud again if I had a choice. Nogales — down on border security toward the end of my career and then in Germany and then served in Iraq from 2003 to 2005.

Gazette: In 1989, did the thought of being called up in a war — because there was no real war (in fact, communism was beginning to fall) — was that a concern?

Was that even on your radar?

Wandle: No. It came up on the radar real quick. I had the great fortune to play college football and wrestle at Dickinson. And what ended up happening, we had Desert Storm come around, and, being in North Dakota, I was a combat engineer. We put in minefields and built bridges. We were assault and ops (operations) — that’s what we called our heavy

equipment side. That was our main focus when I went to basic. Coming out of there, we did a lot of water purification.

There was always that conversation of being called up and getting the opportunity to serve the country. At that point, being in for about a year and a half, and toward the end of my athletic career, I had a lot of anxious moments. If I get called up now, what happens with football? As selfish as that sounds now to me, when you’re 20 or 21 there are a lot of different things going through your head.

I didn’t get called up at that opportunity and then things settled down. For awhile, we did a lot training for a transition into what we were going to be down the line. As a combat engineer, I started out doing minefields and bridges. Eventually that turned into more of a mechanized infantry type opportunity as a combat engineer until the eventual thing we ended up being. We called ourselves

“trailblazers” but basically looking for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). We rode some of the troop transports when we were deployed. The transition of it was fluid. The great thing about the military is that we’re very stuck in protocols and standards, but you have to adapt and change constantly to improve your situation or your survivability or effectiveness, depending where you’re at at the time.

Gazette: Did your father have a different reaction to you joining because he’d been in the Air Force?

Wandle: Not that I remember other than that he was proud of me for doing that.

Gazette: Let’s go to Sept. 11, 2001: Where were you? Did anything change for you, and what did you think?

Wandle: Most of us have those moPlease see WANDLE, Page 22

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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Wandle From 21

ments and being a history teacher, you know, the connectedness and when President Kennedy (was assassinated), and the first man on the moon. For me, (9/11 is) still vivid. That one is easy, and I had re-upped during that year and at the time was dating my future wife. I’ll sign up and nothing is ever going to happen.

That was my quote to her and my mom as well. They were both like, “Maybe it’s time. When you get to 12, 15 years, let’s see where we are.” So in 2001, it had been 12 years — on 9/11. I was over in the weight room and I remember hearing it on the radio — a local radio station — that a plane had hit the towers. I remember thinking, “How bad a pilot do you have to be?” ... I go back over to my apartment to change and get ready for the school day, come back in, and about 7:30 that morning — our secretary came walking through the door with my principal and said, “What are you doing and what’s happening with you?” I was like, “I am coming to work.” That’s when they

said that I needed to come in and look at the TV. So that whole morning I ended up watching that in classes. I remember getting a call from my future wife, who said, “You said nothing would happen.”

I was wrong.

Gazette: How did you respond to that?

Wandle: I was wrong. I was pretty matter-of-fact at that point. There were bigger things clicking in my head. I could see where we were going to be, and what was going to happen. And, then trying to stay calm even though you have a lot of nerves and anxiety. You’re concerned, scared, pissed — all those emotions going through you. Then, we did an assembly in the high school gym the afternoon.

So that whole day seemed, after the first couple of hours, like, “What was going on?” Trying to focus on your regular job.

Being part of the Guard is a blessing. It’s nice. We go do our stuff for a weekend or two times a month, and a little bit longer. Once you start getting deployed or ramped up for deployment, your timelines get stretched and you’re over there more often. The impacts of that can happen a lot on family. So, the best part of

being part of the Guard is that you know everybody so well.

Gazette: Did you know you would have to go to Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere like that?

Wandle: I became more aware of it almost immediately. ... You knew sometime in the next five years, you were going to get deployed. Knowing what your job was going to be, we didn’t know. We had heavy equipment in our company, and we transitioned from putting in mine fields and bridges. Now, we’re running heavy equipment both for horizontal construction and then some of us who were more of the mechanized.

Gazette: In the first Gulf War, it was still kind of a state-versus-state — we were going after Iraq. It was traditional, but after 9/11 our enemy became a little less defined. Was that hard?

Wandle: It changed consistently for us on a day-to-day basis. We were right outside of Baghdad. ... Basically our area of operation was going from that location to certain gridlines, looking for IEDs. And if we found them, call in (a demolitions crew) or to figure out how to get rid of them. Going through that tran-

sition and people could be very friendly to you during the day, but at night, if you were on night operations, you see IEDs or get blown up, you know it’s probably somebody you met. The enemy gets to fight when they want to fight. So you’re always anxious and ready to go. We’re always looking and being alert. So to try not to be complacent with that and be numb. For us, we’d be driving at a very slow rate of speed. For a long time, we didn’t have armored vehicles. We had 5-ton dump trucks and we’d haul dirt in different areas and boxes filled with dirt and dirt on the bottom. We’d be looking over the sides on the road in 5-tons, looking for IEDs. Looking back on it now, as I have told people, when I talk to Vietnam vets and other guys in the VFW and out there and I’ve done presentations or the legion, they think we’re nuts so the great thing about the military is that you do a great thing ... with what you have at the time that you have it. You can complain about it all you want, but I used to tell everyone: I don’t think complaining about the heat is going to lower the heat.

You have to figure out how to deal with it, move on and get the mission done.

Male nominees to service academies outnumber women 3 to 1 An analysis shows the percentage of female students nominated by members of Congress for admission to U.S. service academies has been rising, but men are still put forward at numbers nearly three times higher than women

By MICHAEL MELIA Associated Press HARTFORD, Conn. – The percentage of female students nominated by members of Congress for admission to U.S. service academies has been rising, but men are still put forward nearly three times as often as women, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

A nomination from a federal lawmaker is required for most applicants to the Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy, institutions where some advocates say female enrollment remains low, considering how gender barriers have been falling across the armed services.

Representatives of some congressional members say the low numbers reflect a correspondingly small number of female applicants.

The Connecticut Veterans Legal Center did the analysis with the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School by reviewing data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests on nominations made by members of the current Congress.

From the 1994-1995 application cycle to

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the 2019-2020 cycle, it found 21% of their nominees overall have been women. That percentage has risen steadily over the last decade, from 17% in 2009-2010 to 26% for the upcoming academic year.

Lory Manning, director of government operations for the Service Women’s Action Network, said more congressional offices should update their recruiting efforts to reflect the repeal of rules excluding women from combat and other duties.

“It’s possible some of the procedures are sort of locked in and nobody has had the bright idea of ‘Oh, the law has changed, policies have changed, maybe we ought to take a new look at nomination procedures,’” she said.

The academies, which were required to admit women under a law signed by thenPresident Gerald Ford, provide a cost-free education, and students upon graduation are commissioned as junior officers with requirements to serve a minimum number of years.

Currently, women represent about 22% of cadets at West Point, 27% of Naval Academy students and around 22% of Air Force Academy cadets. At the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, which does not require congres-

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

sional nominations, the student body is 36% female.

The Naval Academy does not have a specific goal or target for the percentage of women among the Brigade of Midshipmen, according to Michael Brady, a spokesman. He said the academy strives to “continue to attract qualified women candidates from across the nation” interested in leadership roles with the Navy and Marine Corps.

At West Point, Col. Deborah McDonald, the director of admissions, said it has taken steps to increase the percentage of female applicants, including recruitment mailings written for high school girls that note West Point women have gone on to become generals, astronauts and executives.

The analysis by the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center focused on nominations by the 438 current members and delegates of Congress who have submitted over 10 nominations. It found that 49 of them had female nominations rates of 15% or lower.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, was among the senators with the lowest female nomination rates, at 13%, according to the analysis. But a spokes-

woman, Caroline Tabler, said that in 2017 he nominated more than 90% of total female applicants and less than 50% of male applicants and that he also nominated a greater percentage of female applicants than males in 2018.

“Regardless, students who attend the U.S. service academies and go on to serve their country in uniform — male or female — are the pride of Arkansas, and Senator Cotton encourages more young people to explore the application process,” she said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat, was among senators who nominate women most frequently, at a rate of 38%, according to the analysis. She said she makes it a point to ensure her selection panel includes at least one woman.

“We have a long way to go still before there is equality between men and women, but the fact that there are so many qualified young women applying, being nominated, and getting accepted is a positive trend and one that I hope will continue,” Hirono said.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press.

All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

STORIES OF HONOR

‘It was just a bunch of rubble’ Army vet recalls total devastation in Korea Ray Schaak grew up in Hardin. He was drafted into the United States Army and served in Korea.

This is a lightly edited interview. For the complete interview, please go to the billingsgazette.com Gazette: How did it come to be that you were in Korea?

Schaak: The draft policy was still on after World War II, so when I was 18, we had to register for the draft. My good buddy and I registered and we had been to Butte for the exam, which classified you. We were both classified 1A, so we knew we were going. So we were having a draft call in February. The clerk told me I would be called in March and (my friend) would be called in April. So we said, “What about if we just register for this draft call in February?” The clerk said, “Go ahead.”

I said maybe we will get to stay together and we did. On Feb. 8, 1951, we were sworn in in Butte. We were put on a train. We were sent to Fort Lewis, Washington, where we had an orientation and they gave us military clothing. Then they put us on a plane and we flew to Fort Rucker, Alabama. We were assigned to the 47th Infantry Division, which was the Minnesota and North Dakota National Guard and trained there. In August, I got a call we were going to the Far East. At that time, they let me have a 30-day leave and then I reported to a base in San Francisco where they put us on a troop ship. We were on that troop ship for 28 days. We arrived in Tokyo, Yokohama, and we were there a couple of days and then they put us on another troop ship and sent us to Korea, Inchon.

Gazette: So 1951, you were old enough to remember World War II. Schaak: I missed that draft by about a year.

Gazette: In 1951, are you worried about going back into war?

Schaak: I really didn’t give it much thought.

Korean War veteran Raymond Schaak.

LARRY MAYER, Billings Gazette

Please see SCHAAK, Page 24

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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LARRY MAYER Billings Gazette

ABOVE AND UPPER RIGHT: Korea War veteran Raymond Schaak’s memorabilia.

Schaak From 23

You know, they were going to take care of this in a few months and we’d get it taken care of. But as it went on, we were sure that it was pretty obvious we were going to go into the military.

Gazette: Were you worried?

Schaak: Not really. We volunteered for the draft.

Gazette: Did you assume that when you were drafted that you were going to Korea?

Schaak: It seemed very obvious.

Some of the people were going to Europe, but the majority were heading to the Far East.

Gazette: What are your first thoughts

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as you arrive at Inchon?

Schaak: It was different. We pulled into Inchon and the harbor is very shallow and they anchor off shore, and they load you in boats. Here are these people swimming around the boat. I don’t know what they were looking for, but you would throw something at them.

Garbage was floating around. It was different.

Gazette: You get on land and then what?

Schaak: They put us on trucks and hauled us to Seoul. When we were on the trucks, we were going to Seoul. I noticed the sign along the road. The sign said, “This is Wi Jong Bu.” It was a town in Korea. But someone had taken a marker, and crossed out the “Is” and it then said, “This was Wi Jong Bu.” There was devastation you couldn’t believe.

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

Gazette: Is that because we were going back and forth with fighting between the Chinese/North Koreans and the Americans? So what did it look like?

Schaak: It was just a bunch of rubble.

There were no walls standing up there.

There was nothing. And then we got to Seoul. It was the same way. It was unbelievable. They put us on a train in Seoul.

They called it a passenger train. That was something else, too. They were hard seats and small and cramped up. I swore we backed up more than we went ahead, but we finally made it to a replacement depot, and we got there it was evening and they fed us. This guy says, “Find you a good soft spot out there and go to sleep.” It was the side of a hillside. The next morning I woke up, and it was in the middle of October, I was all covered with frost. Of course, you were close enough where you could hear the artillery rounds.

Gazette: You slept out in the frost. Is that what you expected? What did you expect Korea to be like?

Schaak: We had some knowledge of it because of where we were training.

There were some going over and some coming back from different units.

Gazette: What did they tell you?

Schaak: They told you it was bad. It’s not a good place. It’s cold. It’s hot. Humid.

Gazette: As a Montanan, we have cold and hot. Did you dismiss it?

Schaak: I figured it was pretty cold from what we had heard from these people. The people who first got there.

They got there in the winter of 1950, that was horrible. They didn’t have the right clothing, but we had our winter clothing and it was better.

Gazette: Where did you wind up?

Schaak: I wound up as part of the Third Infantry Division. We were assigned to the 65th Infantry Regiment, which was a regiment out of Puerto Rico.

All the enlisted men in the regiment were Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans.

The majority of the officers were “continentals.” That’s what they called us people from the United States. So there was a little disconnect with communication.

Gazette: What was your specialty?

Schaak: I was assigned to a combat engineer outfit and I didn’t know what part of it I would be in. When I got there, they said, “You’re taking over the spot of the demolitions deck.” I thought, “Well, boy. All I am trained to do is be an infantry man.” I said, “My only experience with explosives is I shot up a few firecrackers when I was a kid.” I was very fortunate to be with the guy I was replacing. He took me and showed me how to do these different things and how to rig the explosives. The explosives they used there was TNT because it was the safest to handle. The blasting caps, they were pretty touchy and you carried them around in case that was padded. They were individually labeled and you had to make sure they didn’t touch each other.

I took some on-the-job training while somebody was trying to shoot you.

Gazette: Was that nerve wracking or how did you view that?

Schaak: You know, I am a kid.

Things don’t bother me too much.

Gazette: You were 22 and it didn’t bother you that they were just going to teach you.

Schaak: Well, the guy says, “Welcome to our world.”

STORIES OF HONOR

‘All you’re thinking of is your own hide and getting the hell off the beach’ Bud LaCounte is a World War II veteran.

He’s 96 and lives in Billings, and he spent nearly a decade in a boarding school for American Indians. He was at the invasion of Normandy, and ranched in eastern Montana. For a full interview, please see The Billings Gazette.

LaCounte: It all started in 5/25/1923.

Six years later — are you familiar with the Dawes Act? There was a program enacted in 1880-something. They picked up Indian kids six years of age and put them in Indian schools run by the government and the Catholic church was involved in some way.

I was one of the ones they picked up and put in this so called “school.” I’ll call them a prison because that’s kind of what they were. They picked up all through the nation and sent them to many different locations in the United States. I was sent first to Devil’s Lake at Fort Totten. It was an abandoned Army camp that they had converted to an Indian school. I was there three years and then they transferred me to a Catholic mission in South Dakota. Marty was the name of the mission. This program was in effect until 1957. I was right in the middle, I guess. I was picked up in 1929 and I didn’t get home nor see my family until 1938. When I knocked on my mother’s door, she didn’t really know who I was, and I definitely didn’t know who she was. We were all separated so many miles apart and at that time, transportation wasn’t what it is today, so consequently, the parents didn’t get to see the kids and the kids didn’t get to see the parents. I was 6 when I was taken and I came back at 16.

Gazette: How in the world does a little kid — a 6-year-old — did that happen?

LaCounte: You tell me. I don’t know how. There was a lot of them that didn’t survive. Carlisle, Pennsylvania was one of the largest schools there was. There were hundreds of little unmarked graves in Carlisle.

Gazette: How do you think you survived?

LaCounte: I don’t know.

Gazette: Do you remember being taken away?

LaCounte: Oh, absolutely. They took me away in a cattle truck and there was probably 12 or 14 other little kids with that much

World War II veteran Bud LaCounte smiles as he sits in his favorite chair in the living room of his home in Billings.

CASEY PAGE PHOTOS, Billings Gazette

straw in the bottom and a rack that was covered over with a tarp.

Gazette: It sounds like a round-up. Did they just go around and picking them up?

LaCounte: It was. It was. It was a roundup, yes.

Gazette: What does a 6-year-old think about then? Do you remember your thoughts?

LaCounte: I don’t have a clue. But you know there had to be a lot of tears.

Gazette: Did your parents know it was happening?

LaCounte: I think that they had been notified that they were coming to get me. I think. I am not sure of that.

Gazette: Did you have siblings and did they face the same thing?

LaCounte: The age didn’t fit, either some were too young or some were too old.

Gazette:Tell me what life is like at one of these places.

LaCounte: The first thing they do when they get you there is cut all your hair off.

And, take away your native language. It was punishable to speak in your own language. I am Chippewa, by the way. It was punishable for kids to speak in native tongues. They had to speak in English.

Gazette: Did you know English at the time?

LaCounte: Well I knew English, but a lot

of kids didn’t. My folks spoke English. My folks were half French and half Chippewa.

They spoke English... I did have knowledge of French at one time, but it’s gone away.

Gazette: How do you grow up without parents?

LaCounte: You do the best you can. It’s survival of the fittest.

Gazette: What did you do to entertain yourself?

LaCounte: It was dormitories.The first year they took me, I don’t know many days I was in the dormitory and I Please see LACOUNTE, Page 26

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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World War II veteran Bud LaCounte shows his French Legion of Honor medal, which he received in 2013, in his home in Billings on Thursday, July 11, 2019.

A World War II-era photo of Bud LaCounte is on display at his home in Billings.

LaCounte From 25

had an acute appendicitis attack. The hospital was only a block away. Somebody picked me up and carried me to the hospital, and I spent the next nine months in the hospital for appendicitis operation. I have had doctors ask me if this scar is a war injury. It looks like a hand grenade blew up right there, but it’s an appendicitis scar.

Gazette: Did you have any communication from home?

LaCounte: None.

Gazette: That must be a terrible feeling.

LaCounte: Well, I suppose it is. At that age, you don’t realize that. You don’t realize what’s happening.

Gazette: Do you get along with the

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other kids in the school from the diverse backgrounds?

LaCounte: Oh yeah. You have to. It’s like a big family. But the only thing is that all the family is about the same age.

Gazette: You came home — you got an education, came home to your parents and your mom didn’t recognize you.

LaCounte: I don’t think she did because I sure didn’t recognize her.

Gazette: That’s got to be hard not recognizing your own mother.

LaCounte: Well, that’s what happened.

Gazette: You seem to be a pretty amazing human being. How did you not let something like that tick you off for the rest of your life?

LaCounte: Effort I think, maybe. I don’t know. There’s some things that just happen and you don’t know...Survival?

Maybe it was a good thing. I don’t know.

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

Gazette: Tell me about Normandy.

LaCounte: On the second day, I landed on the Seventh of June. It was foggy.

You know, different ones ask and different articles of people thought of the chaos on the beach, you are so damn scared that you don’t see any chaos on the beach, all you’re thinking of is your own hide and getting the hell off the beach. I saw some destruction, absolutely. Quite a bit of it really. But, nothing like I’ve read other claim to have seen. But, I could run pretty fast,too.

Gazette: Tell me about about the build-up?

LaCounte: We didn’t know one thing.

We pulled in a convoy from our position and we got shipping orders and we pulled in the convoy and it was about thirty miles to the ports and it was thirty miles, at least.

Gazette: You knew something was happening.

LaCounte: We knew what was happening but we didn’t have any word of any part of it.

Gazette: They loaded you on ships?

LaCounte: They loaded us on LST (landing ship tank).

Gazette: What are those landing ships like?

LaCounte: Crowded? Yeah. You better believe they’re crowded. And then I had gone to school in South Hampton to waterproof those vehicles. My jeep when I landed, I was the lead jeep off the LST. When I landed, you couldn’t see the Jeep.

It was under water completely. I was sitting in water up to here (motions to his neck). It would run and as long as you keep it running. If you stop it, then water goes

up the tailpipe.

Gazette: Is that nerve wracking?

LaCounte: You can see in just awhile you’ll be out of that water.

Gazette: Your crowded in there, was it cold?

LaCounte: No, it wasn’t cold, but it was so foggy that you couldn’t see anything. On the day of the initial landing, when they started to clearing off, you couldn’t imagine the ships around you — as far as you could see in any direction you could see ships. You could see that plain, when you got on the beach, you couldn’t see anything because you were so damn scared.

Gazette: I have heard that you get tunnel vision. Is that true?

LaCounte: Kind of. Right. You see a path and when I landed, when I drove off the jeep. My gun crews followed me — all of them. The captain was with me. He said, “Keep going! Keep going! Keep going!” He was yelling at me. But there was nothing else to do but keep going. So, I saw there were two German barracks that were on fire up there. I thought, “There must be a trail or something close to those barracks.” So, I headed over that way with the Jeep and everyone following me and the captain, “Keep going! Keep going! Keep going!” And when I got there, there was a trail leading up to the top of the plateau above. I just got on that trail and as soon as we found space big enough to set our guns up, the captain said, “Stop here.” We started setting our guns up because our job at that time was to protect the beach. So, right away we got our guns set up. We were only there two days and they had moved away far enough that we moved to Cannes.

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August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

STORIES OF HONOR Veteran and MSUB Chancelor Dan Edelman, pictured Tuesday, June 18, 2019.

CASEY PAGE PHOTOS, Billings Gazette

DAN EDELMAN: Hey, it’s OK to be mad.

It’s OK to be upset. Let’s get you some help.

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August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

MSU Billings chancellor Dan Edelman, left, and cemetery manager Stephen W. McCollum hand out pins to Vietnam veterans at a ceremony to honor National Vietnam War Veterans Day at the Yellowstone National Cemetery in Laurel on Friday, March 29, 2019.

Dan Edelman is the chancellor of Montana State University Billings. He served in the U.S. Army. He was wounded, was discharged honorably, and found higher education.He has worked with the U.S. Department of Justice, and has run his own accounting practice. He has set as one of his top priorities at the university, veterans services. A full interview is available at billingsgazette.com Gazette:Where did you grow up and tell me about your life?

Edelman: I grew up in Chicago, actually southern suburb of Chicago. I am a first generation college graduate as well, a family of six. We lived with modest means. Dad was a cop for awhile. He couldn’t afford it for a family of six, so he ended up working in a factory just for us to make ends meet.

Gazette: It’s hard to imagine that it’s more lucrative to go into a factory than be a

police officer.

Edelman: That’s the truth, but I was happier, though, because I remember my dad going off to work. Every day I was worried he wouldn’t come home. It was during the bad times. He also worked the ‘68 (Democratic National) Convention downtown. I was kind of glad he left the police force.

Gazette: Growing up, did you come from a military family?

Edelman: No. I had a lot of John Wayne movies in my background. We were pretty patriotic. I had some uncles who served. I also had — I call him my brother — but he worked for my dad for a long time. He went to Vietnam and I looked up to him quite a bit.

Gazette: How did it come about that you gave part of your life to the military?

Edelman: Well, I knew early on I wanted to join the military and I wanted to serve. I also needed a way to finance my college ed-

ucation. We didn’t have the means to put me through school. The day after I turned 17, I was down at the recruiter’s station, making arrangements for the physical and my mom and dad signed me away, and I enlisted in the delayed-entry program. I was still a senior in school, and I was all set getting ready to go into the Army.

Gazette: Did your parents have any apprehension or hesitation about that?

Edelman: I think my mom was happy to get rid of me. My dad wasn’t so happy to get rid of me. I was trouble when I was a kid.

Gazette: Is the south side of Chicago tough?

Edelman: It was a tough area.

Gazette: Was Vietnam still going on when you were 17?

Edelman: It had just ended. But there was still a lot of talk about Vietnam and veterans and things like that.

Gazette: Did it worry you going into the Army? I mean: It’s still a dangerous career.

Edelman: It didn’t worry me at all. I think the only time I was worried was when on my first day when I went down to the station and actually got indoctrinated and a priest came out and handed out Bibles and started reading. I’m like, holy mackerel, do we get into war today? We didn’t. I just knew I needed to do what I needed to do and I didn’t worry about it.

Gazette: You knew you wanted to go to college. Tell me how that worked. Your family couldn’t afford it so you saw the military as a means?

Edelman: I did. I thought I’d join the military to be an MP (military police) but it turns out that I was too young. They didn’t Please see EDELMAN, Page 30

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Edelman From 29

tell me that until the very last minute. The recruiter said, “Hey, you’re pretty smart. Do you like girls? Do you like fast cars? What about military intelligence?” I said, “Sure, who doesn’t like girls?” I never had the girls or anything like that and the fastest car the Army ever provided me was an Opel Cadet when I was overseas, but it was a pretty good experience anyhow.

Gazette: When you’re trained as an 18-year-old going into military intelligence, what’s the training like?

Edelman: I was actually 17 when I went in. I didn’t turn 18 until November and I was in advanced individual training. I was taught and trained for the collection and analysis and dissemination of intelligence data. So, what does that mean? Find out what you need to find out, figure it out, and get the information where it needs to go.

Gazette: Did that suit you? Did that match up with what you originally wanted to be, especially when you originally wanted to be an MP? Edelman: It did. It was hard at first because I didn’t know what I was doing and I still had the images of James Bond in my mind.

Gazette: Is it anything like James Bond?

Edelman: No. It suited me well. I advanced very quickly and turned out that I was a pretty good leader of people and could make decisions and was conscientious and straightforward. Folks followed me. It turned out to be a pretty good move.

Gazette: What’s the hardest part of being in military intelligence?

Edelman: I think sometimes when you’re alone and things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to, and things could take a real bad turn and you could be killed.

Gazette: Vietnam is spooling down. But, peacetime after Vietnam is not necessarily peaceful because we’re engaged in several conflicts around the world... then we’ve still got communists and the Cold War. Edelman: For a long time, I was assigned to the First Infantry Division, we had a brigade, forward deployed to stop the Russians. I was deployed a couple of times overseas in the Cold War. It didn’t matter if we were at war or not, my mission was the same. It got pretty tense sometimes.

Gazette: For many born after the fall of communism, it’s a different context. Now, we talk about Russia but it’s different. Were you afraid of the Russians or the communists? How was that viewed in the military intelligence at the time?

Edelman: As far as afraid of them individually, no. I didn’t have a lot of respect for them. I knew what was going on behind the scenes. I saw how they treated their people as well. It was a difficult time. People don’t

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understand it. The freedoms that we have in this country and even in other countries in Western Allies we have. That didn’t come overnight. There’s a lot of people who died for that, and a lot of people who sacrificed for that. It was an interesting time.

Gazette: What do you remember about the people there, behind the Iron Curtain or in communism at the time? What was the most striking? You were a kid from Chicago and then you were halfway around the world and witnessing a different form of government.

Edelman: The darkness of the buildings. The lack of colors. Things appeared really old. It was just a lot of stuff like that.

Here in the United States that are multiple colors of buildings, but there it was pretty dark and dreary.

Gazette: Did you predict or could you see the fall of communism?

Edelman: I always thought it would, but I didn’t know when it would.

Gazette: Why did you think that?

Edelman: I just didn’t seen it was a sustainable model. The money was going to run out somehow and some way. And that’s really what happened. If people get a taste of freedom and what it’s like to express your opinion, or to do things or to pursue your goals, your ambitions; the United States didn’t say, “You’re going to do this.” It said, “You want to do this?” And I said, “OK.” In the Soviet era, it was up to them to decide what your future path was going to be. I just didn’t see that as a sustainable long-term model.

Gazette: When you were overseas, what did you appreciate most about America or what did you miss the most?

Edelman: The language. It was nice to be able to speak English. I was in the Army and any food was better than what they were serving. I missed baseball and football and things like that.

Gazette: How did your time in the military serve or inform what you’re doing today?

Edelman: It helped me significantly. It’s helped me throughout all my jobs, but this job is probably the pinnacle of it because I learned not to complain about what I don’t have. I learned to get the mission done using the resources I have or my brains to figure it out. I learned about survival. I learned about integrity. I learned about people. I learned about responsibility and all those things are so important in my position as chancellor right now. If I am not honest, I’ll lose respect and people won’t follow me. People won’t do what they need to do. If I complain that I don’t have enough money to get things done, I’ll never get anything done. And, at the end of the day, you can always use more money, so we’re pretty mission focused at the university and we want to put our students first. I got a lot of that from the military where I put my troops first. I made sure

August 2019 | STORIES OF HONOR

they’re safe and we came back OK and we did our job.

Gazette: It’s one thing to be an individual in something like the Army, it’s another thing having troops. Did that keep you up at night? If you’re leading troops, you’re responsible for their lives and safety.

Edelman: I don’t think it was difficult because we made sure when somebody was put in a difficult situation, they were trained and prepared for it and they’d come back OK. And they did. It’s the same here at the institution — I don’t want to put the CFO in charge of academics when the CFO is not trained in academics.

Gazette: What was the most important thing the military taught you?

Edelman: Mission first. Get the job done. Do what you got to do.

Gazette: When you came back, how many years did you spend in the Army?

Edelman: I spent three years active duty, one year active reserves and about a year-and-a-half inactive reserves. I got called back to duty when I was in college. I was sent to Fort Meade for a short time.

Gazette: When you came back, did what you wanted to do with your life, had it changed?

Edelman: It did because I was hurt pretty bad overseas so I was no longer able to do things that I love like play baseball and football and running and things. Physically, it provided me with a lot of challenges that I never faced before. When I went to school, I wasn’t real well received, but it was a liberal arts school. It was a good school, but they weren’t pro-military at the time. I certainly displayed all the signs of PTSD at the time and got not a lot of help. I went to class drunk a lot. Some classes, I didn’t even buy the books. I struggled through a lot of that.

Gazette: What did you go to college to study?

Edelman: I wanted to be a lawyer. I had multiple majors from criminal justice to political science to human resources. All over the place.

Gazette: You were just trying things?

Edelman: Trying not to flunk out.

Gazette: Coming back to the U.S. injured. That’s a life-changing experience, obviously. How did your perspective change from when you went into the Army to coming back injured?

Edelman: The medical care wasn’t very good. I was still pretty bad off. And, I could have stayed in longer just to get the medical stuff, get surgeries and things. It kind of changed my perception of the military a bit.

Gazette: In what way?

Edelman: Well, I was supposed to go to West Point prep school, a year-long program and when you’re done with that, you go to West Point. It just changed the way I looked at the military. I thought: I am really putting my neck on the line, why can’t I get good medical care?

Gazette: Is it fair to say that you came back bitter?

Edelman: I would say that would be accurate.

Gazette: The media has covered people who came back bitter and were never able to overcome those things. You don’t seem like that now.

Edelman: I stopped the poor-me party. I never really complained about it when I got hurt. I got a job to do, and I have to finish and I have to do some things. I just didn’t know how to do it.

Gazette: Why was that? Was it a lack of direction? Lack of support in the Army?

What gave you that driftlessness? How did that work?

Edelman: I was a non-commissioned officer in charge of security and intelligence in a battalion. I had a lot of responsibility and I was only 20 years old. I had a lot of respect as well. So one day I was that, the next day I was nothing. There was no transition time. There was no thought about it. I had more responsibility then than I had 30 or 40 years later in my life. So that was a hard time, plus I was hurt. I was angry about that.

I was disappointed about that as well. It was a hard transition as well. I didn’t know what to do in college. I was never a great student in college and I was always more interested in sports or girls or whatever. College was a little hard. You had at least buy the books and go to class. I didn’t master that for awhile. I went to school downtown right off Rush Street which is a party street in Chicago. I fed the local economy.

Gazette: When you came back, you’d gone from this position of respect and authority to a nobody. That has to be very hard and you’re younger. There’s probably that going on now. What’s the answer for the veterans coming back today?

Edelman: Get help. Reach out. That gives me a lot of passion right now. I know I struggled for a long time in college and after college. The people around me also paid a price, because sometimes I could be pretty blunt and bitter as well. So right now what I want to do is to reach out to those veterans who are coming out and say, “Hey, it’s OK to be mad. It’s OK to be upset. Let’s get you some help. What can we do to make your life better? We care.” I don’t think anybody cared at the time. I remember going on an interview with a corporation and this lady said, “Why would I ever hire you? I just realized you were in the Army.” I said, “Well, the Army was good and it trained me.” She said, “You chose to go in the Army. You weren’t even drafted. You don’t have the judgment.” I kind of lit her up right there.

That was a prevailing feeling in that era, so it was pretty hard. I am very pleased we’re not like that to our veterans today. But, I want to make sure that if they come to MSU-Billings, there’s a place for them and we’ll help them succeed. Whatever we can do.

STORIES OF HONOR

A class of their own ‘Stories of Honor’ was an amazing success

By DARRELL EHRLICK dehrlick@billingsgazette.com

I

t always works.

And, I always doubt it.

Just about the time you think you’ve found all the good stories and there’s nothing more under your (broken) nose, you find what seems like a never-ending well of stories, fascinating and inspiring.

That’s what happened when we launched “Stories of Honor.”

Forgive me for what may be seem like a disrespectful comment, but after running the very popular “World at War” series which featured some World War II veterans and the “Voices of Vietnam” series which spotlighted the Vietnam War vets, I thought we had a pretty good run of veterans stories in The Billings Gazette.

Chalk it up to another example of me being phenomenally wrong.

This year, we launched “Stories of Honor.” The series’ goal was to spotlight veterans — of peacetime and war — and tell about their experiences.

I worried that we had promoted the stories but there might be fatigue.

Instead, as we promoted the series and ran it, more and more amazing stories came out. I wasn’t just floored by the kinds of stories we discovered and were able to tell, I was even more blown away that there seems to be more stories coming after them.

Where’s the end?

That’s a good question. But, it reminds me of a journalism professor who preached that for every person that exists, there’s at least one spellbinding story.

That’s true.

This year, we kicked off “Stories of Honor” as a means to highlight 10 veterans’ stories. They were each unique. One of the limitations of the previous series was that we limited them to a war, Viet-

CASEY PAGE, Billings Gazette

Billings Gazette editor Darrell Ehrlick talks with World War II veteran Bud LaCounte after their interview for Stories of Honor on Thursday, July 11, 2019.

nam and World War II. But that sure leaves a lot of veterans out, maybe none more so than the Korean War. We wanted something that would also spotlight veterans of other time periods, and not just war. The dedication and sacrifice of veterans to give part of their lives — years — to the service of their country is something worthy of recognition and honor.

We wanted to be able to tell what it’s like being a solider years ago as well as what it’s like being in the military more recently.

The feedback was tremendous.

We still have names trickling in.

More than that, we’ve been able to learn about the experiences, challenges and dedication of soldiers who are just returning from the Armed Services.

Regardless of which series we’ve run, we have had tremendous community participation including our sponsors of MasterLube, Rimrock Mall and Montana State University Billings.

This series which spotlighted 10 soldiers was so successful and yet the irony is that we worried we couldn’t even get 10.

The good news: We’ve already started collecting a list of veterans to interview for the “Stories of Honor, 2020.”

We’re lucky to preserve history and promote these stories. As with all of our veterans’ stories, we’re committed to keeping their stories posted via YouTube and turning the video interviews over to places like the Western Heritage Center, which have been amazing partners in the effort to preserve local history.

For now, our 10 soldiers have been highlighted for this year. I can tell you as the guy on the other side of the camera who asks questions, I have been inspired by what these men have done, and the profound experiences they’ve had.

That’s another reason why I am giving a shameless plug to hire veterans and grab them as employees when they come back. The kind of depth of understanding and skills they have should vault them to the top of any hiring list.

Today, we conclude this series with MSU-B Chancellor Dan Edelman. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate his candor, and I can think of few people who are doing more for returning veterans.

And he should know what to do.

He returned home from serving his country wounded physically and failing academically. For most people this would be some cliche. Yet Edelman found his exit and salvation in education and worked his way out. Now, as chancellor of the state’s third-largest public university in Montana, he’s made it a mission to make sure returning veterans have support and opportunities. And that’s why I wanted him to close our series.

It’s not about The Gazette telling these stories, instead it’s about showcasing the positive impacts these veterans continue to have on the lives and communities they touch.

It has truly been my honor to tell their “Stories of Honor.” And that’s why I am excited to announce that I am collecting names for next year to spotlight.

As long as soldiers are dedicated to service, we’ll be dedicated to telling their stories.

STORIES OF HONOR | August 2019

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Thank You t o a l l o u r

SM

www.MasterLube.com 32

August 2019