He’s a vagabond, a nomad, a traveler. He has lived in Costa Rica, in Thailand, in Cuba, on a sailboat in the Caribbean, even in the Cayman Islands. But he has never owned a house. He is a pilot, a scuba diver, a motorcycle rider, a ham radio operator with friends all over the world.
Even a decade before Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome got its official name, PFC Arnie Oskin was immersed in evaluating and helping traumatized soldiers coming home from Vietnam.
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.
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.
What do the US Marines, the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County Sheriff’s Department have in common? Jim Cleary. At 96, the former Chicago PD detective has left footprints in some of Chicago’s most memorable moments.
When Laurel and Craig Schilling walked down the aisle in May of 1972, they had no idea their plan to return to college safely ensconced in married student housing was never meant to be.
It was a childhood plagued with asthma and multiple hospital stays that first put the thought of nursing into Denise O’Leary Kennedy’s head. She saw so many nurses during those early years she couldn’t help but admire them.
Lessons learned in a war zone can last you a lifetime, assuming you make it home alive. Sergeant Dick Hanson learned quickly that taking pictures from the turret of a tank on the front lines of Korea can get you killed.
“I had the best time of my life. I would do it all over and I wouldn’t change nothin. I got to see the world and I’ve got brothers.” Those are the words of Scott Phillips 50 years after serving aboard the USS Ticonderoga in the early 1970s.
Vietnam wasn’t really on his mind when Willie Floyd Smith decided to join the Army in 1966. Just a few months before, the 173rd Airborne Brigade had become the first US Army unit sent to South Vietnam. Willie was shipped to Vietnam in March of 1967.
High school wasn’t working out for Ed Helrigel, and as he walked home one fateful day, he passed an Army recruiting office. “I walked about a half block, turned around and went in and joined the Army,” says Helrigel.
It was 1966. His student deferment was gone, and his draft papers had arrived. For Rick Ellish it was a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father was a lifer in the U.S. Army infantry. But when Rick gave his dad the news that he’d been drafted, the reaction wasn’t what he expected.
As family traditions go, service to your country is a truly noble one to have. For the Burkart family of Sycamore, IL, answering the call during World War II was more than a duty. It was a strike back at an enemy that had taken one of their own on D-Day.
David Grauer feels bad that he never saw combat in World War II. He is also very glad he never had to kill anybody.
John "Gene" Craig was a crypto officer aboard the USS Mississippi when it was decommissioned, making him responsible for destroying all classified material on the ship.
U.S. Army Vietnam Naperville, IL [...]