STORIES OF
Presented by
HONOR Saluting those who served September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
2 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
WATERLOO COURIER
THANK
YOU
o our v eterans, for your serv iice ce and sacrifi ifice. t
LINCOLN SAVINGS BANK
MEMBER FDIC
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 3
Saluting those who served
Meet the inaugural Stories of Honor class
Cedar Valley veterans who found from all branches of the mili- and courage in service to country
META HEMENWAY-FORBES
meta.hemenway-forbes@wcfcourier.com themselves in extraordinary cir- tary and served in conflicts from should inspire us all.
History is shaped by ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Some of the most powerful stories in history have come from those who have served in the United States armed forces. The Courier’s Stories of Honor project tells the stories of
cumstances while serving. This special publication recognizes, with respect and gratitude, the service, bravery, and sacrifice of Cedar Valley heroes who have served our country. The service members featured on the following pages come
EDDIE CAHILL
World War II, to Korea, to Vietnam, to the Persian Gulf War, to post-9/11 battlefields. Some suffered wounds, physical and mental. One sailor, who made the ultimate sacrifice, is being honored posthumously. Their stories of commitment
These heroes will be honored at an event Sept. 26 at the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum in Waterloo. Stories of Honor sponsors are Buzz Anderson Enterprises, Stardust Productions, and Lincoln Savings Bank.
Naval seaman helped transport Marines in Korea, refugees in Vietnam
«««««««««««««««««««« ANDREW WIND
andrew.wind@wcfcourier.com
A
s a Navy seaman on the USS Montrose during the Korean War, Eddie Cahill helped with the transport of troops and equipment along the coast of South Korea. By the time the transport ship sailed for Vietnam in 1954, the charge of Cahill and his comrades had shifted to a humanitarian mission. The USS Montrose participated in Operation Passage to Freedom, where the U.S. Navy assisted the French in transporting North Vietnamese refugees to South Vietnam. John Edward Cahill graduated from Sacred Heart School in Rockwell in the spring of 1951, less than a year after the Korean War started as North Korean troops pushed into South Korea. With American involvement in the war, Cahill and his classmates assessed their options once their studies were completed. “Everyone was being drafted, so we enlisted,” he said in a 2018 interview recorded by the Grout Museum District. “We decided we’d take a chance at sea.” Cahill, 87, was one of 11 children in a family used to military service. His dad was in World War I, and two other brothers
BRANDON POLLOCK, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Eddie Cahill holds a drawing made by his grandaughter from his Navy photo at top right. were in World War II. He and a younger brother both served in the Korean War. It was months after enlisting that he first set sail for South Korea. “We usually would leave in January and get back to the United States in December,” he recalled in a recent interview. “I was on board the same ship for four years.” The Navy ship would help to move the Marines from one part of the peninsula to another.
“Every time we took a load, we’d take about 800-900 people,” said Cahill. “All we had to do was make sure we had the troops on board and get them transferred over,” he explained. The ship hauled two dozen Higgins boats, a landing craft that carried troops and smaller equipment to shore. They would carry “any of the weapons and stuff like that they’d load up (plus) ammo and then Marines.” But they also transported a
tank and multiple jeeps in the ship’s hold on each trip. “That’s when the LST’s (a type of landing ship) came alongside, so we could unload the jeeps and they’d take all the jeeps and trailers,” he noted. “We had no way to get the heavy equipment in.” Cahill laughed when asked if he knew where Vietnam was before arriving for his ship’s mission. “No, not until we looked it up on a map,” he said. “Until you got there, you didn’t know where you were going.” The USS Montrose transported refugees from Haiphong in communist North Vietnam to Saigon in South Vietnam. French forces were defeated in an eight-year war against the communists, resulting in an international agreement and the partition of Vietnam. During a 300-day grace period, though, people could move freely between the north and south. It was quite a change from hauling Marines. “They just were lost. They didn’t have any idea what was going on and they were scared,” said Cahill. “They were scared of us, they were scared of everything because they didn’t know where they were going, what was going to take place, and it was sad.”
Eventually, he added, the Vietnamese people would get used to their surroundings and “come up and visit with us.” At the end of their journey, “they were so darn glad to get off the ship” and be resettled to a tent city. “Once they left the ship and left that area where we were unloading, that’s the last you saw of them.” After that final year on board the Montrose, Cahill spent his remaining months in the Navy based at the Hutchinson, Kan., Naval Air Station. He was discharged in May 1955. He returned to Iowa and got married in 1960. The couple moved to Waterloo where they raised three sons and a daughter. Cahill had a 35-year career with Northwestern Bell, retiring in 1990 as the company was being divided up. Cahill said he was aware of what his brothers went through during World War II, serving in the Philippines, and “couldn’t find anything to really complain about” on board his ship. “We always had a place to eat, a place to sleep. We didn’t have to worry about anything like that,” he said. “I’ve never regretted any of it,” he added. “I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again if I knew I was going to do the same thing.”
4 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
DAN CRAWFORD
‘I can’t believe what we had to do when we were so young’ ««««««««««««««««««« AMIE RIVERS
I
amie.rivers@wcfcourier.com
t wasn’t a decision Dan Crawford made freely — joining the U.S. Army at the height of the Vietnam War. But when his draft number was called in 1968, he didn’t complain. “Back then, of course, Vietnam was very prevalent in everyone’s mind,” he said. “We all knew we had a six-year military obligation, all young men, so when I was drafted, I expected to serve as the others my age were serving at that time.” And, reflecting on that service 50 years later, Crawford was still proud to have done it — and emotional about his fellow soldiers not getting their due credit for decades afterward. “As I’ve gotten older, and at that time as I matured, why, yeah, the war was probably unjust,” he said. “But I stand proudly with those who served, and I feel we served our country when our country asked us to.” Crawford was born in Charles City on his parents’ farm but grew up near Winthrop, graduating from East Buchanan Community School in 1967. He worked for a neighbor the summer after graduation and then attended a semester of trade school in Omaha before returning home to begin working as a carpenter in residential home building. The trade school semester allowed Crawford, who had just turned 18, a temporary deferment from military service. But when that was up, in May 1968, he received his draft notice and was told to report to Fort Des Moines. If his family was worried, they didn’t show it, he said. “My family was very supportive,” Crawford remembered. “I’m sure they’d rather I not enter the service at that time because of the Vietnam War, but they supported me.” Crawford was assigned to Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, for nine weeks of basic training from June to August 1968, then went on to Fort Ord, in Monterey, Calif., for about nine weeks of advanced infantry training, where he learned about everything from small arms to heavy weaponry, including machine guns, fragmentation grenades, and explosives training. “It was quite extensive on evasion,” Crawford said. “They wanted to cover all the possibilities.”
BRANDON POLLOCK, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Dan Crawford shows his display of military medals. Crawford remembers the exact date he was told he’d be heading to Vietnam: Sept. 23, 1968. “Well, I was kind of apprehensive, but all the way through — both basic and advanced training — we assumed we were going to be sent to Vietnam,” he said. “It was the peak of the involvement at that time.” After he finished advanced training, he had a two-week leave to see family and friends. “It went quickly, as you might expect,” he said. “I remember we took a family picture — everybody was kind of somber about my orders — but everybody was positive, very supportive.” His unit arrived at Ton Sa Nut Air Base in Saigon and then went to South Vietnam on Oct. 22, 1968. He was assigned to the
90th Replacement Battalion in the 101st Airborne Division, which replaced troops getting done with their year in country. “I remember it was quite a shock — it was terribly hot and humid,” Crawford said of Vietnam. “It basically smelled like a landfill. I felt real sorry for the people I first seen, because of the conditions that they lived in. ... It was quite a different way of life for those people back then.” Crawford’s first two weeks in South Vietnam included further infantry operations training in “swamp and mud,” and he said that included live-fire training, where instructors were “actually shooting at you.” “I’ve told people, the first time you feel the heat from a round, why, it’s a very different feeling, and we actually felt the heat from the rounds ‘cause they were trying to
shoot close to us,” he said. “They wanted us to get a feel for what perhaps lie ahead.” After that, his battalion was issued equipment and weapons and sent up north. “I remember riding in a truck at night, and of course we thought the enemy was right there,” Crawford said, though by daylight he realized they were in the rear, away from the action. Crawford was assigned to E Company, a weapons company within the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry, and was placed in the recon platoon. Initially, he carried an M-16 rifle, and in later operations he would use an M-79 grenade launcher and an M-67 recoilless rifle, a 90-millimeter anti-tank or anti-personnel weapon. Most operations he went on in his first three months were offensive, search-and-
6 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
WAYNE FOX
«««««««««««««««««««
WATERLOO COURIER
Navy pilot recalls thrills in the skies, crash landing
THOMAS NELSON
D
thomas.nelson@wcfcourier.com
uring his service in the U.S. Navy, flying upside down at 10,000 feet was just another day at the office for Wayne Fox. “We were the start of the jet age,” Fox said. Fox, 87, of Waterloo, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in January 1951 at age 19. He put in for pilot training shortly after completing boot camp. “It sounded like a new adventure,” he said. From there he went to pre-flight training and after graduation became a commissioned officer, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He trained on the SNJ-1, or the North American T-6 Texan, a single-engine aircraft. “That’s what I flew all through basic training, and went to advanced training and they put me in a F-8 Bearcat,” Fox said. “I can honestly say I’ve never been afraid in an airplane. You don’t have time.” The Bearcat was a whole other animal, though. It could climb 10,000 feet in 90 seconds. Training accidents were common. “They put young kids in it with 300 hours flight time, and stuck them in this airplane, which was built to combat the Kamikaze,” Fox said. ... “It also killed a lot of young men. My roommate was killed one night.” The Navy expected a lot from pilots. The planes they trained with had just a single seat, Fox said, so pilots trained in the air alone. “The first time you went up you were alone,” Fox said. “Some of the guys couldn’t handle it.” After surviving training he joined his squadron on the U.S.S. Hornet and sailed around the world. “When we were out there the Chinese were acting up,” Fox said. “So they sent us over.” Fox’s squadron shot down two Chinese planes during that time. “All hell broke loose for a while,” he said. At one point Fox and his squadron were alerted to a possible enemy aircraft in the area, flying low to the ground. “I saw him down there in the water,” Fox said.
THOMAS NELSON, COURIER STAFF
Wayne Fox shows off some of his flight helmets, a photo and books about his service in the Navy. He was given orders to shoot down the plane. “We rolled into a run on that guy,” he said. “It was one of ours. We damn near shot him down. He never saw us.” Fox went on to train other young pilots before briefly discharging from the Navy. Back in civilian life, Fox soon realized he had better prospects in the Navy. He returned to service in 1957 and went to instructors school to learn to teach pilot instructors. “That’s where I got labeled a test pilot,” Fox said. ...“We got any airplane the Navy was thinking of trying for training. We had to write a syllabus for students to follow, so we had to know exactly what the plane was going to do.” He liked instructors school, but it could be very dangerous. “In a three-month period they killed 20 pilots,” Fox said. “We lost a lot of pilots; people don’t know that.” Fox’s time as a Navy pilot was a “bloody
time in Navy aviation history,” he said. Often pilots would end up in inverted spins. “They were the most vicious maneuver you can ever get in, and there was one airplane in the Navy that could do it, and I was flying it,” Fox said. Fox did a lot of writing on how to handle inverted spins so other pilots could understand what to do. “I probably did 50 to 100 (inverted spins),” Fox said. Fox was in six flight accidents during his Navy career. Most were minor. But one led to him being discharged from the Navy for good. He was flying in a TT-1 jet. Only around 15 of those were built, Fox said. “We only had about two weeks, I flew it 22 times, and I did not like the airplane,” Fox said. “I would not put a student in it.” On the 22nd time he and his lieutenant commander were flying. The engine exploded when they were about 100 feet in
the air. “I saw I couldn’t make it to the water,” Fox said. He saw a possible landing area so he turned the plane and crashed it into a dirt road. “There was a car on the road,” he said. “I went in right along side of them.” The car was fine. “Jets almost always blow up or burn and this one didn’t,” Fox said. The tail of the plane came off, and Fox thought his back was broken. “I managed to slip out over the side,” he said. “The whole area was drenched in jet fuel. ... We should never have survived that.” It took him four months to recover. His injuries preventing him from flying again, and he left the Navy. “I wanted to stay in,” Fox said. He looks back fondly at his time as a Navy pilot. “When you’re that age you’re going for the thrill,” he said.
WATERLOO COURIER
STORIES OF HONOR
RAY FREDERICK
«««««««««««««««««««
Waverly pilot was among first to fight in Vietnam
PAT KINNEY
For the Courier
R
ay Frederick took a lot of heat for 18 years as a Bremer County magistrate, but nothing like the heat he felt on an airplane flight a half century ago. The heat was from a Viet Cong bullet over South Vietnam. “We had one that came up through the floor, back of the seat, into the back of my helmet. Then it fell down my neck,” Frederick said. “It was hot. I was sure I was bleeding to death.” But it was the heat from the bullet, not his own blood. “I’ve still got the bullet,” he said. But he never received a Purple Heart because the round didn’t break skin. “I didn’t bleed,” he said. “And I don’t want the Purple Heart anyway. What the hell.” Frederick served 21 years in the Air Force, and he served in Vietnam before Congress authorized forces to be there. He was one of the “Dirty Thirty,” a group of U.S. Air Force pilots temporarily assigned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962-63 to the South Vietnamese air force as co-pilots on missions. Although U.S. soldiers and Marines had been in Vietnam, ostensibly as military advisers training forces, the “Dirty Thirty” pilots are generally considered the first U.S. forces to take an official direct role in the Vietnam War. The pilots had been instructors but were coolly received by the South Vietnamese. “Those rascals didn’t want to accept us as anything other than co-pilots. Even though we were instructors, they didn’t need instructors. We were sent there because of a shortage of pilots. “I flew almost all the time at night,” Frederick said. Their missions included air assault – transporting paratroopers into combat – as well as dropping flares on enemy locations to target them for South Vietnamese fighter planes. Friederick, a native of Strawberry Point and a graduate of the University of Iowa, flew 45 such missions and received the U.S. Air Medal for his Vietnam service. Perhaps ironically, being a Hawkeye, Frederick said he was told the group’s “Dirty Thirty” nickname “had something to do with the Iowa State football team.” The nationally known underdog,
PAT KINNEY, FOR THE COURIER
Ray Frederick of Waverly was among the “Dirty Thirty,” the first U.S. pilots committed to the Vietnam War in the early 1950s. injury-ridden 1959 Cyclone gridders, called “the Dirty Thirty” because they emerged from their first game covered in mud, had surprised the country with a 7-3 record and came within a game of the Orange Bowl. There were two groups of “Dirty Thirty” pilots; Frederick served with the second group, in 1963. He said the flights were subject to small arms ground fire from Viet Cong forces wherever they went. “Nothing antiaircraft at all,” he said. “But the bastards would lay at the end of the runway and be ready for you. I’ll say this: I spent many thousands of hours (flying) and never scratched an airplane. But those bullet holes were nothing I did. We were stationed at Saigon airport, but we did fly into lots of auxiliary places, and that’s where they were always waiting for us.“ They were flying unarmed C-47 Dakota military transport planes. “It pissed us off having those guys down there shooting at us and we couldn’t shoot back,” Frederick said. So, with the help of a U.S. army friend, he rigged up hand grenades in empty glass peanut butter jars and threw them from the plane. He would hold the grenade’s firing lever, pull the pin and very carefully put the grenade into the jar with the firing
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 7
lever still attached. “Of course you know what happened when they hit the ground,” he said. The jar would shatter on impact and the firing lever would release, igniting the grenade only after hitting the ground. “That made us feel good,” Frederick said. “I don’t think we ever probably got anybody, but it was nice to see.” He’d take maybe 20 grenades up with him on a flight. “A guy in the Army gave me the grenades. He was happy to assist. A guy in the chow hall too,” who supplied the empty peanut butter jars. Fortunately, no one among the “Dirty Thirty” was killed, though a couple of pilots were injured in a rough landing. Frederick said he questioned to himself why the U.S. government committed the pilots there, “but nobody seemed to give a damn,” he said. “And remember, this was early in the war.” Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution a year later, in August 1964, which President Johnson used as authorization to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Frederick said he left Vietnam shortly before the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem on Nov. 2, 1963 — less than three weeks before U.S. President John F. Ken-
nedy’s assassination. Frederick’s commanding officer in the South Vietnamese Air Force was Nguyen Cao Ky, who was involved in the coup that led to Diem’s assassination. Ky later led a military junta that effectively ruled South Vietnam under the figurehead leadership of President Nguyen Van Thieu until its fall to North Vietnamese communists in April 1975. Although American pilots had volunteered in other nations’ air forces in both world wars, Frederick said Vietnam was the first time American pilots enlisted in the U.S. military “were assigned to a foreign commander. And I didn’t like that little rascal. We knew what was going on,” Frederick said. “Ky and his people, with their fighter planes, they bombed the (presidential) palace,” in a previous unsuccessful February 1962 attempt on President Diem’s life. “We were lucky to get out of there when we did,” Frederick said. “It was just starting to get hot.” Frederick said he had questions about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. “I think we all did,” he said, but did not express it. “I was careful about that,” he said. “ I did mention it to the local newspaper when I came home on leave,” prior to Diem’s assassination. “I told them I knew there was something coming, and that’s about all I ever said.” Prior to and after his Vietnam service, Frederick spent a lot of time flying diplomats and VIPs on trips; first in Europe in the ’50s, based in Germany, and stateside in the ’60s, based near San Francisco. He also served as an ROTC instructor at Drake University from 1956-60. In the 1950s in Europe, he flew dignitaries on flights to several countries. He flew Vice President Richard Nixon, Saudi Arabian royalty, actress Esther Williams and singer-actor Frank Sinatra. He said he once joked to his wife that he was late getting home because “I was having a drink with Frank Sinatra.” A father of three, he returned home with his family to Iowa after retirement from the Air Force, after which he served on the bench. Frederick said his Vietnam service was “better than carrying a gun on the ground; and, I suppose, better than flying a combat airplane.” As long as he had his peanut butter jars.
8 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
GARRETT & ANGELA GINGRICH
«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««« Military experiences bring together husband, wife META HEMENWAY-FORBES
meta.hemenway-forbes@wcfcourier.com
P
eople generally assume Garrett and Angela Gingrich met while serving in the military. It’s a reasonable assumption, given their individual exemplary service records. “Everyone thinks we met in the army, but there was no crossing of paths for us,” Angela said. They actually met at the wedding of Garrett’s brother, who married Angela’s friend from high school. “I didn’t know anybody but the bride. ... I ended up sitting at the Gingrich table and hearing the war stories,” Angela said. “He told stories, I told stories. It was, like, meant to be. ... Garrett called me a month later and we started emailing.” That chance encounter at a wedding produced a strong military family that continues today. With the full support of his wife and daughters, and after 21 years of service, Lt. Col. Garrett Gingrich, 39, assumed command of the Iowa Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry regiment in Waterloo on Sept. 13. At the top post, he’ll be in charge of the battalion’s more than 700 soldiers. “I’ve been National Guard my entire career,” Garrett said. “I walked in there as a private in 1998.” He gives a lot of credit to his wife for his service trajectory, he said. “She’s very strong. She deals with me being gone a lot. A lot of other military marriages don’t do as well. She’s a rock star.” That’s because she knows a thing or two about military life. Angela joined the army in February 1997 as a senior at a Nebraska high school. She left for basic training six months later. “I knew I wasn’t ready for college but I wanted to get there eventually,” she said. ... “I wasn’t going to stay at home and work at Shopko. I needed something in between.” After basic training, Angela trained for several months more to be an operating room technician. She also was trained as a combat medic. “I wanted to pick a job that would work
KELLY WENZEL, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Angela and Garrett Gingrich stand in front of their home by their family military plaque. for me on the outside,” she said. “It put me in a position where I could continue on in the medical field in nursing.” She was stationed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, moving between rounds of sterilizing surgical instruments and assisting in operating rooms. She was in Operating Room 9 on 9/11 when an anesthesiologist came in and alerted them to planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “We needed to get all these (patients) off the tables and prepare for casualties,” she said. They got just three patients later in the day. Most 9/11 victims were treated at hospitals closer to where the planes struck. “They were either burned to a crisp or bumps and bruises,” Angela explained. A year later, five years into her six-year enlistment, Angela deployed to Afghanistan. One week in country, she experienced her first multiple casualty arrival to the field hospital. “I hadn’t seen war trauma,” she said. ... “A special forces soldier had an RPG blow up in his face. His whole face was just shattered. He lost a hand. It was just this huge team effort on this one person. I was just amazed that this kid got put back together. He looked like hamburger when he came to us. ... You just go on adrenaline.” She was in Afghanistan for six months
before returning stateside. Not long after, her enlistment ended and she left the army. “I am who I am because I did that,” she said. “It was about character building, selfless service, and being part of the greater good. ... “I was torn about getting out, but I knew I wanted to go to college. I used up all of my GI Bill to go to nursing school.” Angela is now a civilian nurse practitioner with MercyOne. Garrett is a firefighter/paramedic with Waterloo Fire Rescue. Like Angela, Garrett chose military service to help with college and gain additional job skills. “It’s become so much more than that. It’s about being able to serve and lead, and making a difference by serving community and country,” Garrett said. Garrett, a Dysart native, has deployed with the 1/133rd to the middle east three times — Sinai, Egypt; Iraq; and Afghanistan. The deployment to Egypt was a peace-keeping mission. In Iraq, one of his unit’s first missions was convoy security, escorting trucks carrying commodities to sustain U.S. troops in Western Iraq. “We were the primary unit that was supplying and sustaining all the Marines and the forces that were working in the west,” Garrett said. “We were a significant part of that. I’m proud of that; I feel good
about it. “Every day we were doing 14 hours in a truck. It was pretty hot all the time,” with outdoor temperatures reaching 115120 degrees during the day. ... “We had 30 to 50 military vehicles and we would have roughly up to maybe 125-200 semi trucks — we escorted all those vehicles. “The enemy, their primary means to engage us was (improvised explosive devices). Every once in a while we’d get small arms fire. But mostly they would plant IED’s on the road. ... We dealt with that. We got out there in the desert and we went after them. We had a lot of success tracking down the enemy — either 50 or 60 insurgents we were able to eliminate from being able to engage us that way.” Garrett also spoke about the firefight ambush with al-Qaida forces in Iraq on Sept. 30, 2006, that killed two soldiers from the 1/133rd — Scott Nisely of Marshalltown and Kampha Sourivong of Iowa City. “I called in the medevac for them and we made sure the bird got in and they got on it. My medic was communicating that they were already gone. ... That was a tough mission after that. ... You sit down with your guys and you let them know we got a job to do. I need you guys to step up and stay strong and persevere. We can’t have this happen again. It was tough.” Garrett’s third deployment, to Afghanistan in 2010, was the first in which he’d be leaving a spouse behind. “That one was a little tougher because I had settled into a life. I was working for the fire department. I was married. This would be the first time that I had my own spouse that I’d be leaving for a year.” Three deployments have left him mentally stronger and made him a better leader, Garrett said, the perfect fit for his new role at the 1/133rd. “I’ve learned how to deal and cope with high amounts of stress. It really pushes the limits of what you can endure,” he said. Garrett said he’s grateful for the leadership opportunities he’s been afforded in the military. “I had no idea. I went in for the college benefits. I had no idea that I would deploy three times and go through the experiences that I did. I could never have imagined it. ... But I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for my time as a soldier and an officer.”
WATERLOO COURIER
STORIES OF HONOR
RICHARD HELLING
««««««««««««««««««««« TIM JAMISON
tim.jamison@wcfcourier.com
R
ichard Helling never heard the incoming German mortar shell. It arrived hours before sunrise on Jan. 5, 1945, as a group of four U.S. Army soldiers from Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army in Luxembourg were on post. Shrapnel from the blast tore through Helling’s back, killed one soldier, and sent another running. Helling and a companion were left alone, wounded and bleeding on the frozen, snow-covered ground of the Ardennes Forest. “I could not move and Harry Gartner, who I’d met just a few days earlier, wasn’t able to move either,” Helling said. “He would scream for a medic and then he would pass out. I can still hear the poor fellow screaming.” Eight months earlier, Helling was graduating from high school. Now he was making his peace with God. “I kind of thought maybe we aren’t going to make it back home,” he said. “You better start saying your prayers, I thought.” But unlike 19,000 other American soldiers, Helling survived the Battle of the Bulge. Another 70,000 were wounded during just six weeks of fighting in the deadliest U.S. battle of World War II. Now 93, Helling spoke about his experience from his rural New Hampton farmhouse. A display case on the wall held his two Purple Hearts, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Good Conduct Medal, and three Bronze Campaign Stars. “I’m very, very lucky to be here,” he said. “I appreciated every day that I didn’t have to be in combat. That was a terrible, terrible experience.” The Fort Madison native remains proud of his service but never intended to join the fighting in Europe. He served from July 1944 to March 1946.
“I graduated in May and was drafted in July,” Helling said. “I didn’t really want to go to the military, but I didn’t have any choice.” After training at Fort Hood, Texas, and a short furlough, Helling joined hundreds of strangers on the USS Wakefield for a voyage from Boston to Liverpool, England, which he remembers as a “terrible gray-looking place.” After crossing the English Channel, Helling rode in a small French boxcar to Luxembourg, which was experiencing bitterly cold weather. “We were issued our rifles and hand grenades and told to put all the clothes on we had: two pairs of wool underwear, two wool pants, two wool shirts, sweater, field jacket, and overcoat,” he said. “But all we had for our feet in this below-zero weather was leather shoes. “They didn’t have anything else to give us; they weren’t prepared for this cold weather,” he added. “We carried extra socks in the tops of our helmets.” Helling was among 20 soldiers who marched to the front lines. Company G of the Army’s 80th Infantry Division had seen its numbers decimated from more than 200 to just 33 men by the time the group arrived. Many soldiers were killed by German artillery and mortars, which struck the forest’s tall trees and rained shrapnel down on the men, who hid behind trees and under farmers’ logs. Helling remembers lying in the snow for 30 to 45 minutes before medics arrived following the mortar attack on his patrol. He was evacuated to a farmhouse and then a tent hospital, where a doctor removed shrapnel protruding from his back. Less than two months later Helling was sent back to the front lines in the German Rhineland. Enemy tank fire struck as Company G neared the village of Bollendorf, causing Helling to take
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 9
New Hampton soldier feels lucky despite battle scars
KELLY WENZEL, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Richard Helling holds a shadow box with his two Purple Hearts and other military medals he earned while serving in World War II as he speaks about it in his home on Aug. 6, 2019. shelter in a muddy roadside ditch. “I was wounded within 24 hours of my return,” he recalled. “The shrapnel cut my left arm to the bone. It probably saved my life. So many of them didn’t make it that day, I’m sure. That front line infantry company was a very tough place to be.” Six weeks later, Helling was out of the hospital and back in battle as U.S. forces pursued retreating German forces in late March 1945. His company came upon a German hospital where a group of German soldiers had been seen going into the woods across a field. Company G was ordered to prepare for attack. “I thought, this is my third time,” Helling said. “I can’t be lucky every time. This time I
don’t believe I’m going to make it. I better say my final prayers, which I did.” At the last minute, a healthier company arrived and was ordered to charge across the open field instead. Several of those soldiers were killed and wounded in a hail of German machine gun and rifle fire. “I firmly believe a young soldier died in my place in central Germany that day,” Helling said. “That was very hard to take.” His good fortune continued when Helling finally was allowed to seek treatment for ongoing shoulder pain plaguing him since the first mortar injury. An X-ray revealed doctors had missed a 5-inch piece of shrapnel still in his left chest wall. After surgery to remove the
metal, Helling served out his tour on limited duty, getting “a very nice job as a company clerk for a tank destroyer company in France.” Helling was planning to become a veterinarian after the war, but chose farming instead. He got married, purchased a farm near New Hampton and raised five children. “Life has been great to me since I was discharged from the Army,” he said. “We’ve done quite well with farming and raised a nice family.” But memories of the war continued to haunt him: vivid images of dead American soldiers along roadsides or dead German soldiers near artillery pieces; beautiful teams of draft horses lying dead in a road; emaciated American and British soldiers freed from stockades as the Germans left them while retreating. “I never said a word about it for 30 years,” Helling said. “It was just too hard to do it.” He was later diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and found talking about his experiences helped. Helling also took the opportunity to seek answers to questions that had been on his mind for decades: What ever happened to the young soldier who was injured with him in that mortar attack during the Battle of the Bulge? Did he survive his injuries and the war? An Army historian helped him find the answer some 43 years after the war. Harry Gartner was alive and living with his family in Bismarck, N.D. The two visited each other several times, both in Iowa, North Dakota and summers in Arizona, before Gartner died. “It was remarkable to be able to get together with someone who’d been through all that,” Helling said. “We ultimately developed a great friendship and shared an unspoken bond that was originally formed on that cold day in the Ardennes Forest.”
10 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
JAIME JAENKE
««««««««««««««««««
WATERLOO COURIER
Remembering Iowa’s first woman killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom
AMIE RIVERS
amie.rivers@wcfcourier.com
S
usan Jaenke has met several of the people who deployed to Iraq with her daughter, Jaime, at gatherings of the Seabees — the informal name for the Naval Construction Battalion — held at the Fort McCoy Naval Base in Sparta, Wis. The last time she went, she took along her granddaughter — Jaime’s daughter, Kayla. They stayed at a hotel with a water park, Jaenke remembered, and Kayla met the Seabees. “A lot of them weren’t prepared for how much Kayla looked like her mom,” Susan Jaenke said. Jaime Jaenke, a Navy hospital corpsman second class from Iowa Falls, was killed in action on June 5, 2006, when her Humvee hit an improvised explosive device placed along an Iraqi road. She was 29, and the first woman killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom from Iowa, according to her mother. In the 13 years since, Susan Jaenke has struggled, she said — emotionally, financially, and otherwise — to take care of herself and Jaime’s daughter, now a 22-yearold at Eastern Illinois University. “What if (Jaime) would have come back?” Jaenke said. “What if she’d become a nurse? What if she’d have seen Kayla achieve what she’d achieve? “Some days,” she continued, “it just breaks your heart.” But Jaenke, who has two other sons who served in the Navy, knows her daughter was doing what she wanted to do. “Jaime was very, very patriotic,” Jaenke said. “The only thing you can say is, it is what it is, it was what it was.” Jaime had three brothers — Garrett, the oldest, who served 18 years in the Navy as an air mechanic engineer first class; Ryan, a year younger than Jaime who wanted to follow his siblings into the Navy but couldn’t because of an injury; and Justin, who was getting out of the Navy just as Jaime went in. But having three brothers never fazed Jaime. “She started the fights and ended the fights,” Jaenke recalled. But she was always interested in patching them up afterwards — and was good at it, too. “When she was younger, we had a horse, and a neighbor hit the horse in
COURTESY SUSAN JAENKE
One of the last photos of Jaime Jaenke, taken sometime during her service in Kuwait and Iraq.
AMIE RIVERS, COURIER STAFF
Susan Jaenke, mother of Navy Corpsman Jaime Jaenke who was killed in Iraq in 2006, holds up a photo of her daughter, left, as well as a photo of her granddaughter, Kayla, wearing her Sea Cadet uniform, in Iowa Falls in August 2019. “It has been 13 long, heartbreaking years since her death,” Susan Jaenke said. “There are so many ‘what-ifs.’” the neck with a bow and arrow,” Jaenke remembered. “(Jaime) went out with a leather needle and thread and sewed up the horse, and you couldn’t even tell it had been hit.” After her kids were grown, Jaenke moved back to Iowa Falls from Red Wing, Minn., in 2003. Jaime, newly divorced and working three jobs with a small child,
moved back in with her mother. Their relationship became more of a friendship then, Jaenke said, and Jaime began talking about signing up for the Navy like her brothers, in order to get trained as a medic. Her goal, Jaenke said, was to become a flight nurse — she had been an EMT in Wisconsin, and “really liked that,” Jaenke said.
“She asked if I would watch Kayla while she did this, and I told her I would,” Jaenke said. “What made Jaime do what Jaime did is she saw a future for her and Kayla. She was thinking she’d be able to pay for college that way.” Jaime began her basic training at Fort Snelling in Minnesota, Jaenke said, before moving to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, where the Seabees were. She deployed on Jan. 3, 2006, first to Kuwait, and then to Iraq, said Jaenke. “It thrilled her and made me nervous,” Jaenke said. But she said she stayed strong: “You can’t sit there and dwell on that stuff — it’ll drive you nuts.” While deployed, Jaime met Jeff Hauswirth, who became Jaime’s mentor and friend. Hauswirth, now a retired Navy corpsman from Hancock, Mich., said he met Jaime in April 2004, when both signed up to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Hauswirth was in charge of the medical department, and Jaime was a medic interested in becoming a Seabee. “It was kind of my job to make sure that she knew — not medical stuff, because she was really good — but that she knew what the Seabees were about,” Hauswirth said. Back in Iowa Falls, Susan Jaenke was
WATERLOO COURIER
trying to take care of Kayla by keeping her busy. “I put her in 4-H, the Sea Cadets, she was in softball, church programs — everything I could think of to make her normal, make her a kid,” Jaenke said. Jaime was able to make calls home and wrote several letters, though many of them were unfinished, Jaenke said. “She really missed her daughter and her horses and her dogs and her boyfriend,” Jaenke said. At the end of May 2006, after Kayla turned 9, Jaime told them she wouldn’t be able to be in contact for a while. “They didn’t have phones,” Jaenke remembered Jaime saying. Jaime also couldn’t tell her family anything about her mission at the time. Hauswirth and Jaime were on separate convoy teams assigned to go to Kuwait, training and working closely together. “Two days before we left to go over to Kuwait, they cut one of the convoy teams, and that was the team she was on,” Hauswirth said. “She was really bummed out about that — her forte was emergency trauma medicine. I said, ‘Well, if anything happens, I’ll make sure you get back on the
STORIES OF HONOR other team.’” Sure enough, another corpsman couldn’t go. “I pushed to get her back on the convoy team,” he said. “I felt like that was her purpose. I felt that she felt that was her purpose.” Hauswirth’s convoy was in a different part of Iraq on June 5 when he heard a vehicle had been hit and two people were killed. Nobody officially finds out before the family does, according to military policy, but Hauswirth said he knew. “I just got a gut feeling Jaime was one of them,” he said. Back in Iowa Falls, Susan Jaenke, her father, and Kayla were returning from one of Kayla’s softball games — the first time Kayla had gotten a hit — and the trio had celebrated with ice cream. But when they pulled back into the family’s driveway, a blue Navy van was blocking them. “I pulled up to the house and told Kayla to go in and not to come out,” Jaenke said. A man with an empty manila folder under one arm delivered the news: Jaime had been killed, along with the driver of the Humvee she was in, while trav-
eling through Anbar Province in western Iraq. Two others in the same Humvee were injured in the blast. Jaenke remembers making phone calls to everyone, having meetings with military personnel, signing a multitude of papers, dealing with reporters and gossipy neighbors, and finally getting Jaime’s body back home and buried in the Alden Cemetery under a large shade tree. “A lot of things happened that were confusing and terrifying, and because I had a 9-year-old, you still had to have the normalcy,” Jaenke said. “It was really hard to make things normal.” She said she buried her feelings, promising Kayla she wouldn’t cry, because it would upset Kayla. “There were days I just stood in the middle of a room, and the walls were all around me, and I couldn’t breathe,” Jaenke said. The Navy named a barracks in Texas after Jaime — Navy Barracks Jaenke Hall, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Hauswirth ended up writing and recording several songs, some of them about Jaime, on an album meant to help returning veterans. Jaenke has now met Hauswirth
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 11
and other Seabees who have visited Jaime’s grave or who have come to Seabee Swarms, meetups for the veterans in Illinois or Wisconsin. “The first time they came, the year after they were killed, I didn’t know what to think,” Jaenke said. “It was kind of difficult to watch them come to her grave.” But Jaenke takes solace in the
fact that Kayla was a straight-A student and “very smart young lady” who continues to do well in college 13 years later. That, Jaenke said, would have made Jaime proud. “(Jaime) would say, ‘Well, I don’t really want to have other kids, because I had the best,’” Jaenke said. “My daughter gave me her daughter — that’s the ultimate gift.”
Committed to Serving Veterans We honor their stories, thank them for their service, and look forward to providing them with high quality, compassionate health care when they need it.
905 Franklin Street, Waterloo
(319) 874-3000 | www.peoples-clinic.com Medical • Dental • Urgent Care • Behavioral Health
AMIE RIVERS, COURIER STAFF
A decorative marker featuring a horse and an eagle — two of Jaime Jaenke’s favorite animals — and other decorations adorn Jaenke’s gravesite in the Alden Cemetery. Jaenke, a Navy Corpsman, was killed in 2006 in Iraq, the first woman from Iowa to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
12 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
EDDIE JOHNSON
«««««««««««««««««««
WATERLOO COURIER
Waterloo sailor saw major action in Korea
KRISTIN GUESS
kristin.guess@wcfcourier.com
E
dward “Eddie” Johnson, 88, saw more action during the Korea conflict than he’d like to talk about, but the seven battle stars he received for his service speak for themselves. During three tours from 1947 to 1955, the U.S. Navy veteran received and sent heavy fire aboard an aircraft carrier and a destroyer. While aboard the USS John A. Bole, a support ship for bombardments, Johnson was involved in the infamous Inchon invasion in September 1950 on the west coast of Korea. The area was especially difficult for allied forces because of a narrow port and dangerous tides. “Inchon was the worst one,” he said during an interview on June 10 with the Grout Museum. “It was rough” because of the drastic loss of ground forces. Johnson loaded and fired magazines on a gunnery deck. He remembered hearing news reports of U.S. and allied casualties on the ground, but numbers were not reported. “I think the 1st Calvary in the 3rd Marines took the biggest hit at Inchon,” he said. “Once the troops go over ... we don’t bombard any longer because our job is finished. Then we get the sad news about the troops that went over and that’s about it. There’s no assistance on ground troops.” But Johnson maintained his position. “You can’t get scared. You’re at war. There’s no time for fear. You have an enemy,” he said. Johnson grew up in Waterloo and attended Waterloo schools before he moved to Chicago and graduated high school. His father signed a special contract for him to sign up for the U.S. Navy in 1947 as a 17-year-old. Two of his brothers also had served in the Navy. Johnson completed basic training in San Diego and was assigned sea duty on the USS Antietam, a large aircraft carrier, with nearly 3,700 aboard, including about 75 African Americans. “It was like being in a city,” he said. While segregation was still active during the time, Johnson said discrimination was not a problem on a ship that size. “[It’s] the way it was. I got food and medical just like everyone else. We were all just there to do our jobs,” he said.
META HEMENWAY-FORBES, COURIER STAFF
Korean War veteran Edward Johnson greets retired U.S. Army Gen. David Cole at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C., in September 2018. Johnson was later transferred to a much smaller ship, the USS Bole destroyer, with about 315 sailors, including 15 African Americans, when the war began. “We were a small part of the Navy, and we got called up to go to a job, so you just had to accept it,” he said. “You’ve got to respect one another. You’ve got to use a little more wisdom on the boat than you did aboard the carrier. The carrier you could relax a little bit on it.” The USS Bole joined a large task force of 77 of battleships, cruise ships, and destroyers. The USS Bole was in the blockade of Wonsan Harbor in North Korea. Later, the ship was sent to the South China Sea where some say Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur was attempting to lure China into the war before he was fired by President Harry S. Truman. “It got about routine because we were on a six-month rotation plan,” he said, noting that rule didn’t necessarily apply to the soldiers. Johnson served for nine months on two stints and 11 months on another.
Johnson was in Korea on Nov. 27, 1950, when Chinese forces surprised the United States’ X Corps, a corps that fought under MacArthur in World War II at the Chosin Reservoir area. A brutal 17-day battle in freezing weather followed, and between Nov. 27 and Dec. 13, more than 30,000 United Nations Command troops, later named the ‘The Chosin Few,’ were encircled and attacked by about 120,000 Chinese troops. The USS Bole was ordered to assist, but it was too late. All of the men had been killed. “They were gone. They were using them for target practice up there,” Johnson said. Johnson also was in Korea when the armistice was officially declared on July 27, 1953. But the USS Bole was under command to continue firing for three more days. “It wasn’t making much sense,” Johnson said. “I think we left their country whole in a sense ... we didn’t just go over to destroy the country, (although) certain
parts of it we did.” Johnson remained in the Navy for a year and a half after the war was over before residing in Los Angeles after he was discharged. “Back then the guys getting out of the service were going for civil service jobs, postal workers, school custodians, etc.,” he said. He later returned to Waterloo where he held several jobs, including as a metal spinner at Holland Manufacturing, John Deere, and Viking Pump, from which he eventually retired. He credits much of discipline to the U.S. Navy. “I think it helped out greatly. I think as far as discipline, as a young person, you need that, so I’m glad that I got that experience, but I’m glad it’s over,” he said. Johnson’s message to young men and women who don’t yet know what direction they’re going after high school: “Go into the military and find out what kind of help is needed to make it in the world today,” he said. “It will help you greatly.”
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
KRIS JONES
«««««««««««««««««««««
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 13
Gulf War veteran ‘couldn’t even foresee this coming’
ALLISON MAZZARELLA
newsroom@wcfcourier.com
F
lames licking the horizon, breathing in chemicals and soot – scenarios Kris Jones never imagined he would experience in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. “I couldn’t even foresee this coming,” Jones said. But the unforeseeable happened. Jones’ unit was called to the Persian Gulf after Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. A Waterloo native, Jones joined the military after graduating from East High School in 1985 and served in the Waterloo Delta Battery 214 artillery unit. In January 1991, Jones boarded a commercial plane with his unit and flew to Saudi Arabia. Close to landing, the pilot invited Jones into the cockpit. During the plane’s descent, he remembered feeling overwhelmed as the reality of his unit’s mission struck him. Trudging through the landscape of war, Jones felt the weight of it. “It put things in perspective, just seeing the wreckage,” he said. When Hussein set the oil rigs on fire, it “turned the days to night,” Jones said. Soot covered their clothes; Jones breathed it in and blew it from his nose. It colored his sweat black. They saw more wreckage from the war further into Kuwait. “The smell of burning bodies, that’s engraved in your mind forever,” Jones said. “So are the oil fires. Just ... talking about it I can just smell it on my clothes.” Enemy threats weren’t the only problems. A British plane with a 500-pound bomb lodged in its wing flew over allies. The pilot, thinking he’d dropped everything, took a turn, dislodging the bomb a quarter mile from Jones’ unit. “You could hear the whistle,” Jones said. “... I think the pilot was sick for a while after that, thinking that he might have killed some of us.” A month of combat passed when Jones heard U.S. forces had liberated Kuwait. With Hussein still alive, however, it didn’t feel like victory to Jones. It felt unfinished, and Jones feared what that would mean for future soldiers. “If we’re going to make this sacrifice, let’s just handle business so no one else has to deal with this,” he said.
KELLY WENZEL, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Veteran Kris Jones stands next to the Current Conflicts and Gulf War section at the Grout Museum. Even after the liberation of Kuwait, Jones remembers “pockets of resistance.” Other threats remained as well — land mines, accidental weapon discharges, and scorpions. And there were lingering, uneasy emotions. “How do you feel comfortable after what you just did?” Jones said. “You still see the horizon burning; everything’s like an orange glow at night.” When it came time to leave the gulf, the unit ran into a group of children. Jones pulled candy out of his bag and handed it to them. “(Seeing them) made you feel, you know, decent about what you did and reiterated the purpose you were there (for),” Jones said. “It’s for them, the welfare of those people that were being abused.” Prior to deployment, his unit trained at Fort Sill, Okla., for three months. Jones
helped position guns for firing, checked powder and timing on fuses, and ensured accurate coordinates fired guns in the right direction. After his unit was called, they traveled to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for training, which entailed preparation for chemical warfare with gas masks and other protective gear. “It was a concern about being gassed over there, you know, because that’s what they were using on their own people, so why wouldn’t they use it on you?” Jones said. For the unit’s homecoming, civilians lined the streets at the Waterloo airport. Jones felt overwhelmed again, but was glad to reunite with his family. “It was,” he said, followed by a long pause. “It was a great feeling.” Jones is now active in veterans’ affairs.
Busy with work and family, he had little time to process his emotions from his time in the Persian Gulf. After recovering from a work injury five years ago, Jones said he had time to reflect. As other veterans shared their struggles, he realized he had buried similar emotions. “These things just came out of the woodwork,” Jones said. “ ... My mind was my biggest, biggest enemy.” Recognizing other veterans also lacked support, Jones started serving them breakfast once a month. These “Coffee and Camaraderie” meetings gather around 50 veterans with similar experiences. Jones’ goal is to provide community and support for them. “The lights are all shiny when you come back. ... People soon forget that you’re still compromised. Once you’ve seen war, I mean, your world is changed forever.”
14 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
FRED MORRIS
Evansdale Marine remembers Mayaguez incident ««««««««««««««««««« PAT KINNEY
For the Courier
F
red Morris wants the battle he and his comrades fought to be more than an asterisk or an afterthought. In May 1975, Morris was among a contingent of U.S. Marines dispatched to the island of Koh Tang off the coast of Cambodia to recover the merchant ship SS Mayaguez and its crew, being captured and held by communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas. It’s been considered the last battle of the Vietnam War, which actually ended a month earlier. It was supposed to be a brief and efficient rescue mission. “They said we’d be home by noon,” Morris said. But more than half the rescuers were killed or wounded. Morris was among the wounded. It would be almost 40 years before he received a Purple Heart for those wounds. Certain politicians deemed the mission accomplished, while Morris and his comrades were pinned down under enemy fire, in a calamity of miscommunication. And there were dead and missing left behind. Some are unaccounted for to this day. Some in the government want the incident forgotten. Morris and his buddies aren’t forgetting. Morris is an officer with the Mayaguez veterans group. He wears a dark polo shirt with Marine emblems on one side and “Koh Tang Beach Club” on the other. The battle was fought about three weeks after the fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and evacuation of the U.S. Embassy there; most U.S. forces had left in early 1973 under the Paris peace accords. The “Mayaguez incident” was also not long after the fall of the Cambodian government to the Khmer Rouge, who renamed the country Kampuchea during their rule. Smarting after a political if not a tactical defeat in Vietnam, and the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, politicians under President Gerald Ford’s administration were itching for a quick win. “We just got spanked. We basically walked out of Vietnam with our tail tucked between our legs,” Morris said. “And they wanted to show, ‘You mess with the U.S. you’re going to have to pay.
PAT KINNEY, FOR THE COURIER
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Fred Morris of Evansdale participated in the rescue of the merchant ship SS Mayaguez and its crew from communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas on Koh Tang Island off the coast of Cambodia in May 1975. It is considered the final battle of the Vietnam War. Morris is shown here with an enlarged version of the cover of a Newsweek magazine issue chronicling the rescue. And there’s some truth to that. The Cambodians had no business taking that ship.” However, the engagement, while lasting a day, was hardly easy. While they were told to expect token resistance, they were met by several hundred battle-hardened Khmer Rouge soldiers, sent by their government to secure the island in a disagreement with Vietnam over nearby oil rights. “There were 160 Vietnamese people who were like workers or fishermen. And the Khmer Rouge put them into slave labor, built the fortifications we ended up fighting against, and executed them,“ Morris said. While the Khmer Rouge were ruthless and battle hardened, the American Marines were not. For some, like Morris, the day would be their first and only taste of combat — but it would haunt them for years to come. For Morris and his fellow Marines, the terror started when their helicopter took repeated hits as it sought to land them.
“As the chopper was coming in, we were told not to really expect any fire,” Morris said. “We were just going to walk the island and look for the crew or the ship.” But landing was a problem. “We were just getting blistered” by enemy fire. The pilot “just real slow kept circling around like he was looking for a place to sit down. But it seemed like he was just crawling and the bullets are going chinkchink-chink-chink, coming through” the skin of the helicopter. “He finally sets it down and the crew chief is motioning for us to go out there, and I’m like ‘You’re kidding, right?’ And everybody’s looking at him like, ‘No way!’ And about that time a round came through and hit a fuel line or a hydraulic line or something, and liquid start spraying. And out we went.” But the chopper was “like a piece of Swiss cheese,” Morris said, and, unable to gain altitude, it crashed only a short distance away. In addition to being relatively green compared to their foes, Morris said the Marines, told to expect light resistance, were equipped with limited ammunition and grenades. And the operation involved multiple service branches — the Air Force, Navy, and Marines — who did not all have the same radio system. And several helicopters were shot down or damaged, including the one Morris and his comrades were in. A crew chief was killed in that crash. Meanwhile the Marines were taking fire on the ground and had to tend to business. They exchanged fire with an enemy that was barely a football field away, as they were mired in tall elephant grass. The Marines’ action, along with a U.S. Naval attack on the mainland by the carrier USS Coral Sea, had their impact; the Khmer Rouge released the Mayaguez crew, and another Marine element boarded and took the ship back. Yet, Morris and his comrades were still pinned down by the Khmer Rouge. Eventually, helicopter gunships were ordered into the area, attacked and repelled the Khmer Rouge. “That was a game changer,” Morris said. He remembers one of the big choppers dropping a “daisy cutter” bomb that leveled a lot of area. Morris blamed then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for pushing for the ill-conceived attack, and praised Donald
Rumsfeld, then-White House chief of staff, later defense secretary under President George W. Bush, with getting Morris and his fellow Marines the support they needed to make it out alive. American casualties numbered about 40 dead, both killed in combat and in helicopter crashes in the combat zone, and another 50 wounded. About 20 of the dead were actually left behind in the heat of battle but eventually repatriated back to the States. Thirteen service personnel who died in a helicopter crash in the incident were buried together at Arlington National Cemetery. Three Americans were left behind, alive, and were presumed to have been executed by the Khmer Rouge. Morris said he’s received some limited local inquiries and attention about the Mayaguez based on past media coverage, and he’s spoken to school and veteran groups. Yet, acknowledgement of the battle is mixed. The names of the service personnel who died in the incident are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. But the battle hasn’t yet been added to the base of the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, D.C. of the Iwo Jima flag raising. The base lists the various engagements that the Marines have fought in throughout their history. Morris and a group of his comrades made it back to Cambodia in 2015, the 40th anniversary of the incident. Seeing how beautiful the country had become provided him some semblance of closure in dealing with PTSD he suffers from his service. Despite the foul-ups, there’s a lesson to be gained from the action, Morris said. “People have to know if someone messes with a U.S.-flagged ship anywhere in the world, we’re gonna come and get it,” he said. “I agree with what they did. I don’t agree with how they did it.” Miscalculations made in the preparation were corrected, leading to the creation of a coordinated rapid deployment force for future incidents. “We have to protect our citizens, no matter where they’re at in the world,” Morris said. The Koh Tang/Mayaguez Veterans Association has a website, kohtang.com, for more information.
WATERLOO COURIER
STORIES OF HONOR
HEIDI WARRINGTON
«««««««««««««««««««««««
Sunday, September 22, 2019 | 15
Army career leaves lasting impact in public health
MELODY PARKER
melody.parker@wcfcourier.com
WATERLOO — Col. Heidi Warrington’s U.S. Army career unfolded in several phases. The Army nurse and Iraq war veteran received her direct commission in the U.S. Army Reserves and received officer basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Tex. She served stateside as a medical nurse and operations officer before entering active duty in 1988 with medical nursing and psychiatric specialties. She also was certified as a public health clinical nurse specialist. “I joined when I was 28. I trained to be an officer and a soldier. I was a single parent with two kids. Days were long, but being a military nurse gave me more flexibility to be a mom,” said Warrington. The 1973 West High School graduate is now the mother of four children and the wife of a retired U.S. Army Special Forces soldier. She earned her nursing degree in 1981 from the University of Iowa in Iowa City and a master’s degree from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. She also earned a master in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. Warrington retired from active service two years ago “after 34 years, five wars, 41 countries, and more than 16 moves,” she said. “My kids thought they had a good life, making new friends and becoming citizens of the world.” Warrington is the daughter of Betty and U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Evan “Curly” Hultman of Waterloo. Throughout her career, Warrington never traded on her father’s name or rank. “Even now, very few people I served with know he’s my dad. People didn’t need to know. I’m very proud of my dad and his service, but his service had nothing to do with me and what I wanted to accomplish, what I needed to do.” Her military career is lengthy with accomplishments and achievements that will continue to pay dividends for military personnel and civilians into the future, particularly in the areas of public health, advocacy for children, domestic abuse, and sexual assault and suicide prevention. Throughout Warrington’s Army career, she has been involved in suicide prevention, including serving as suicide prevention program coordinator for Europe from
KELLY WENZEL, COURIER STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Heidi Warrington talks about her service in the military and the toll it can take on those that serve while in her home in Waterloo. 1999 through 2002 and a 1999 deployment to Kosovo. She experienced the personal pain and loss that suicide brings families when her son-in-law, Iraq war veteran Brandon Shepherd, took his own life in 2009. Warrington served as chief of mental health services for the 86th Combat Support Hospital, the first Army combat hospital supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq in 2003. Then she was placed in charge of two mobile medical wards supporting the 101st Airborne, Marines, and Army infantry divisions advancing from Kuwait to Baghdad. In Kuwait, her unit served as the mental health ward. The medical ward in Iraq treated critically wounded soldiers and Marines and also delivered medical care for civilians and enemy forces. Often battles raged outside their sleeping tents — and sometimes overhead — as Patriot missile batteries shot down Scud missiles. While assigned to the U.S. Army Europe G1, she oversaw the suicide prevention program and designed and implemented the first joint service sexual assault nurse
examiner program, serving as the only SANE for all sexual assault cases at Landstuhl for 2005-2006. Warrington received recognition as a leader and educator for military and civilians for her decades-long dedication to end domestic violence. Later in her career, Warrington became a leader in public health within the Department of Defense, nationally and internationally. “Army nurses stand in the hospital door looking in at patients who need care. My public health nurses stand in the hospital door looking out at the world, assessing the impact of disease outbreaks like Ebola, natural disasters, environmental catastrophes, forest fires,” she said, while assessing and developing policies and plans for future disaster response. Warrington served as consultant to the Army Surgeon General for Public Health Nursing and the first chief nurse executive for Army Public Health Command. Through her leadership, standards were set in such areas as policy and leader development, force structure and strength, and human readiness for war. During her
tenure, she directed DOD development of the nation’s first National Prevention Strategy. She also worked with the WHO, International Council of Nurses and the International Red Cross/Red Crescent to increase disaster nursing skills across the world, helped effect policy changes in the Army and DOD for drug addictions and to better protect the health and safety of children. Warrington was chief of deployment health for the Defense Health Agency and led a team of 67 experts in developing the first joint web-based periodic health assessment. Since her retirement, Warrington is a frequent guest speaker on such topics as public health and suicide prevention. She also serves as Black Hawk County Veterans Affairs commissioner. “I’ve never regretted my decision to serve my country,” Warrington added. “My faith has always been important to me, and I’ve given of my own free will. On my tombstone, I want the lines to read ‘A Christian and a healer.’”
16 | Sunday, September 22, 2019
STORIES OF HONOR
WATERLOO COURIER
Thank you for the courage, bravery and loyalty you have shown in defending our great country.
You will be forever be in the hearts and minds of the American people.
April 24, 25 & 26, 2020
Electric Park Ballroom ∙ Waterloo, Iowa