For some, service is a choice; for Doug Vines, it was a calling woven into the fabric of his family. Guided by an unwavering sense of duty, he followed in the footsteps of his father and uncle, trading a college campus for the jungles of Vietnam in 1969.
William A. Trader (“Bill”) was born on July 17, 1943, in Louisville, KY. He grew up in Philadelphia, attended and graduated from Philadelphia’s Central High School in 1961. Bill was a three-sport athlete competing in football, basketball, and baseball.
David Yost was born in 1953 in the Jackson Park area of Chicago. His family had an extensive military background, with his father being awarded a Purple Heart while serving in the Korean War, and two uncles also serving in the military, one in Korea and one in Vietnam.
Don Asher's life has been filled with front-row views of history—a major plane crash, flying into the eye of a hurricane, taking pictures of the President of the United States, running local newspapers, and even acting in a movie with Johnny Depp.
Jack Imburgia saw a lot of bloodshed while in The First Battalion Ninth Marines, but he wasn’t able to fully understand the magnitude of the carnage until nearly two decades later, when he finally started to come to grips with what he had endured there.
Nineteen-year-olds are invincible. Give them a gun, send them out into the dark of night in a foreign country with only a dog as companion, tell them to look for the enemy, and they’ll do it. No questions asked.
Glen Heinold spent a year in Cu Chi, Vietnam, without being fired at by the enemy. He was an ambulance driver on the Army base, and when asked, drove the medics to the local villages.
At the age of 21, Robert boarded a plane and headed off to Vietnam. His plane stopped in Japan, where he saw an episode of the Lone Ranger in Japanese and thought it was pretty funny. But the fun would soon end.
As a child, William “Bill” McLaughlin took his first flight in a float plane and thought little of it. Yet, two decades later, Bill found himself flying again, this time as a Naval aviator in Vietnam, helping save lives during the final chapters of the war.
It’s the silence that the old soldier remembers most vividly. The still quiet that hung like a cloud over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, whether under the hot, humid, blue sky or alone in the black Virginia night.
The ships just kept coming. It was April of 1975, the closing days of the Vietnam War. Aircraft carriers, destroyer escorts, freight vessels, even smaller fishing vessels were arriving in Guam loaded with thousands of evacuees fleeing South Vietnam.
Mike (“Doc”) was deployed overseas to Vietnam from October 1969 to October 1970 as a combat medic (corpsman). He spent time at LZ Baldy and LZ Ross during his deployment, with 3/7 1st Marine Division.
As was customary for an 18-year-old, Larry reported to the draft board in late October 1966 just after his birthday. He looked around and spied a rack of pamphlets each featuring Army service options. One caught his attention: “You can learn to fly.”
At 17-years-old Juan Sandoval was academically bored with high school and looking for a change of scenery so he enlisted in the Marines. For over 50 years his military career offered him plenty of that in hot spots like Bosnia and Iraq.
On September 11, 1965, Daniel Ehart married his sweetheart, Linda, whom he met on a blind date a year earlier. The couple looked forward to building their lives together, but four years later, the Vietnam War put those plans on pause.
“Radar Man” was a critical job during the Vietnam Era. Surveillance and intelligence were paramount in tracking enemy movements. Locating potential ambushes and guiding gunship attacks were part of the mission of the radar man.
After graduating high school in 1962, Ed decided to enlist in the Navy. His dad was for him signing up, calling the Navy the ‘King Cruize’. His mom on the other hand was not happy with his choice.
Robert grew up in Chicago's far South Side area commonly known as South Deering. He attended St. Francis de Sales High School but dropped out in 1968 to work and help support the family.
“I don’t consider I did anything spectacular,” Alfred Weedon insists. But after talking with him, it’s clear that his definition of “just doing what was told of me” involved extraordinary courage and resilience during the Vietnam War.
Andrew “Andy” Michnowski was born in Brexham, England, on January 11, 1949. His parents and their family, Polish citizens, had been deported to Siberian labor camps by the Soviet Union as a result of the German and Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939.