My name is Charles Gant, and I am a Vietnam Veteran.

I joined the Army one week after high school graduation. I enlisted so I could hopefully become an airborne combat medic. So, I joined May 31, 1967. I turned 19 December 5, 1967 and I was in Vietnam one week later. The Army did not have to honor any contracts or my request to become an airborne combat medic, so my jump school class and I were airborne infantry. A hundred of us were sent to the 2/502nd Infantry Battalion. Thirty six of us went to Alpha Company and the rest were spread throughout the battalion. By the way, we were called the Strike Force Widow Makers, thus the Widow Maker patch. The NVA and Vietcong who were pretty much wiped out in the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive, just took off their uniforms and put on the black pajamas. They referred to us as the “chicken men” since they did not know anything about eagles on our 101st Airborne uniforms.

My first six months in country was spent mostly out in the jungles and mountains doing what we called Search and Destroy operations, making heliborne assault after heliborne assault, many of which involved going into “hot” LZs. Other than the rare stand down, the only time I was out of the boonies was when I was recovering from being wounded, which happened twice. At that time or my first six months with Alpha Company, I carried a M-79 grenade launcher, a sawed off twelve gauge shotgun as well as a 45-caliber Browning automatic pistol. Our rucksacks were over a hundred pounds each, maybe dropping down to seventy-five pounds just before a resupply, which was either five days or seven days apart. We rarely took prisoners alive, but we did only when necessary. The NVA feared the chicken men to the point that there was a bounty on our collective heads, something that we were actually very proud of. Right at the end of May or early June, I was one of the “old timers” transferred into the newly formed Delta Company. I guess being wounded twice and having been in country six months, even though I was only 19, meant I was an old-timer. I ended up becoming a point man, a position I held until I left country in December of 1968. Even though a point man’s life expectancy was only seven seconds in an ambush and or firefight or so I was told, I was never wounded again. My mother accidentally threw out every bit of my military records and photographs from my service… The group picture was taken at the Memorial Day Weekend after our wreath laying ceremony at the 101st Airborne Division Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery back in 2003. From left to right is my best friend, Lawrence Z. Rives, Dennis Huserau, who has past away, Roger McCord with the beard, me, and Stan Inzer. This was the first time we had seen one another since I left in December, 1968.

I came down with some kind of nasty bug, which caused my temperature to go up to 107, or so I was told. It was actually fortunate that I was wounded the first time during the battle for Hue City and thus, I was already in a hospital recovering. I was told that I would not have survived long enough to make to a hospital, if I had been out in the jungle. I was unconscious for eight days, only coming to twice, once when I was placed in a bathtub filled with ice and water and the other time when I woke up long enough to realize that I was covered with a lot of blankets. As a result of the fever, I became sterilized, thus unable to have kids of my own. I did not find out for 30 years, that I had contracted a rare kind of TB called Testicular Tuberculosis. I have always loved kids, and now here I am with no children or grandchildren.

Thanks to a sorry shrink that worked for the Durham, North Carolina VA, who kept telling me that my wife and I should not get back together, nor should she come down with me for counseling sessions. It was only after I finally managed to get transferred to the Salisbury VA where the doctors were shocked to see that he had given me such terrible advice. My now ex-wife later told me that she had wanted me to come back, but then it was too late. She has now remarried and I am still as much in love with her as when I met her for the very first time.

Do I have thoughts of suicide, as the VA seems to ask each time I deal with that horrible bureaucracy? Suicide has never been an option. I come from a large Southern Baptist family and was raised to believe that killing oneself is a cardinal sin. I lost way, way too many friends as well as the 58,000 + men and women who paid the supreme sacrifice and whose names now appear on The Wall. It would be dishonoring their sacrifice, and that I would never do. I finally became a paramedic, something I loved to do. But I did not believe in PTSD. I just figured that not sleeping for three or four nights at a time, the daily flashbacks and way ongoing nightmares was just normal for having gone through a terrible year of fighting in the jungles and mountains of Vietnam. It was only in 2000 after going into a thirty minute flashback, while on call, that I was finally diagnosed. I will not bore you with my survivor’s guilt issues. Would I serve again? In a heartbeat. I love my country very much.

Honor and Duty is all that I have.

~Charles Gant, Vietnam Veteran

We are very grateful to Charles for sharing his personal story with Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, where we are all connected.

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