Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Vietnam talk
Vietnam talk
Northwest Public Radio/Television hosts Greg Mills and Sueann Ramella, left, listen across from retired Marine colonel Bob Wakefield, middle, and former Army green beret George Stockton at the Center in Colfax
Veterans in attendance stand near the conclusion of the event, telling where and when they served.
A large crowd gathered in the Center in Colfax Thursday night, Oct. 26, for “Vietnam: Sharing & Preserving the Stories of Local Veterans.”
Put on by Northwest Public Radio and NWPTV, in conjunction with the PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, the evening featured two Moscow men – one a career U.S. Marine, the other Army Special Forces – and their experience in the war in which American involvement spanned 1950-1975.
George Stockton, 74, a retired administrator for University of Idaho, was a third-semester student at Eastern New Mexico University in 1964 when he and 14 young men from his county were asked to take a physical for selective service. Only two passed.
It was the time of only U.S. advisors in Vietnam.
Stockton joined the Army and was trained as a telephone pole lineman.
Later volunteering for airborne training, he joined a “jump class” of 400 and was soon among 40 to be asked to test for special forces: Green Berets.
Only four passed.
He went to Vietnam in 1966 as one of a 12-man A-team, who were supported by 12-man B teams, who were in turn, supported by C teams. He was the youngest on his team, age 24, amidst older, mostly career soldiers.
He returned home Easter Sunday, 1967.
Bob Wakefield is a Moscow attorney and retired Marine, finishing as a colonel after 30 years.
“I’ve never confessed this, but I sometimes sing the ballad of the Green Berets in the shower,” he said to laughter.
“I never do,” Stockton said.
Wakefield, 81, joined the Army in 1959 after graduation from the University of California-Berkeley in speech/communications at a time when every male on campus was required to take two years of ROTC.
He went to Vietnam in 1967 – as an advisor to a South Vietnamese battalion – after years of surveying.
“I had done a lot of thinking, studying war throughout history,” he said.
Citing the charisma of John F. Kennedy in his 1960 inauguration speech saying the United States will “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship... to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” Wakefield thought that was key.
“Perhaps if it was someone else saying it, it wouldn’t have had the same effect,” he said.
After Stockton returned to the U.S., he enrolled at Oklahoma State to finish college. He never mentioned his service in Vietnam.
One day a professor made a comment in class that, “All special forces are psychopaths.”
“That was the first time I said anything,” said Stockton.
In the past 10 to 15 years, he has opened up more to the subject.
For Wakefield, after his time in Vietnam, he spent 20 more years in the Marines.
“We talked openly, among ourselves,” he said. “We talked about it from a tactical point of view.”
The point of his talking now was clear.
“... For all of us to understand what goes on in war when we’re having a discussion about sending people into harm’s way,” Wakefield said.
In 1998, he returned to Vietnam with a group of Marine veterans and met with former generals of the North Vietnamese.
“Their generals were talking about saving their country vs. somebody talking about body counts,” Wakefield said.
“There was no gaining territory as there was in previous wars,” Stockton said.
On the topic of body counts, moderator Sueann Ramella asked if the two men were involved in inflating counts.
Stockton nodded, hesitant a moment, then told of a time when his A-team was set up at an old French villa, in Hau Nia province. Near an operating French sugar mill, across the Vam Cadong River, scattered people lived in what was designated a free-fire zone.
A girl was out in the field, middle-school age, working the rice.
“A helicopter gunship strafed her,” said Stockton, telling of how the mother and her son brought the girl across the river in a sampan into the Green Berets’ aid camp. The U.S. soldiers worked to save her, but the girl died. The unit turned in a report of one civilian KIA – killed in action.
“By the time that report came back, that was a Viet Cong soldier. We were credited with one V.C. killed,” Stockton said.
Wakefield compared the body count measure with evaluating a kid’s education solely by how many pages of homework they do per night.
“It was terrible, it was stupid,” he said.
He told of when a fact-finding group from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office came. They asked him how pacified was this province.
“It’s 100 percent pacified by day,” Wakefield told them. “And zero percent pacified by night. You know what they said when reporting? They said it’s 50 percent pacified.”
For Stockton’s green berets, they had three companies of South Vietnamese soldiers (about 250) work for them, who lived – with wives and children – in their camps. Stockton had two bodyguards with him at all times, ages 14 and 16.
“They had been soldiers their whole lives,” he said, referring to strife which stretched back to the Indochina war against the French in the 1950s.
The boys guarded Stockton’s cot each night while he slept.
“We figured we had 10 percent V.C. in our ranks,” Stockton said of the soldiers, recruited from Saigon, of which the Americans could never be sure about.
Noting the differences in groups, religious and more, of the Vietnamese working for them, a fight broke out once in camp during a card game in which two companies of different Buddhist sects – which were not mixed in camp – lead to the two groups taking defensive positions against each other and firing shots.
Another question came from the moderators during the broadcast about the music of the era; any particular songs they liked to hear or did not?
“I’ll be Home for Christmas,” said Stockton of one he did not. “It messed with us tremendously.”
Answering another question, Wakefield talked about what it felt like looking back.
“The bad news about me, not only am I a Marine, I’m also a lawyer,” he said, to laughter. “I still basically feel good about my experience in Vietnam, what I did and the soldiers I fought with, not what my country did.”
Upon his initial return, he was treated differently than many others.
“Coming home I flew straight over San Francisco to Kansas City,” he said. “The heartland of America, God bless ‘em,” he said. “I wore my uniform and got nothing but respect and gratitude.”
After the war, Wakefield lead Marine Corps Reserve training in the midwest.
He has lived in Moscow since retiring, starting at the University of Idaho law school at age 52. He now serves on the board of operation education at U.I., which now has nine wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on full-ride scholarships. Nineteen others have graduated so far from the program.
Stockton’s return from Vietnam brought new thoughts.
“That I had survived that year and don’t sweat the small stuff,” he said. “For the rest of my life, it was don’t sweat the small stuff. Nothing can be worse than that.”
After questions, as the event in Colfax neared conclusion, Wakefield called for veterans in the crowd to stand up and a representative of the radio broadcast took around a microphone for each to tell which branch they served in and when.
“Vietnam” was put on by NWPTV, Northwest Public Radio and Whitman County Rural Library District.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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