I served in Vietnam with Delta Company/4th Batallion/12th Infantry Regiment/199th Light Infantry Brigade in 1969-70 as an Infantry grunt (11Bravo).
My father served in WWII as a combat engineer and three uncles served in Korean War. My wife served as an Army medic in GWI in Karlsruhe, Germany. Dad was blown off a deuce and a half by friendly fire and burst his appendix in the fall. He was flown to London and operated on there.
In this picture, I was on perimeter guard at FSB Verna during Christmas 1969. That piece of Quanset (a half circle of corrugated metal behind me) was recessed into a berm (or burm an elevated pile of dirt around a gun placement) of dirt about 3 feet high around a pair of 8 inch Howitzers. I was with II Corps, and the Brigade Main Base was Camp Frenzell-Jones in Long Binh near Saigon. Our area of operation was in Long Khanh Province near Xuan Loc. Our battalion fire support base was FSB Nancy at Dinh Quan. We worked triple canopy jungle primarily. There was enemy contact almost every day.
Our brigade lost 857 KIA’s between 1966-1970. On 12Jan70 my squad was the point element of an ambush of an enemy force of unknown size. I had one man KIA and 2 others WIA. I was hit by an AK-47 round in the left eye that required surgical removal of my eye. I killed the NVA soldier after he had hit me. I received the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star Medal with V device for that action. Our company was the only one in our brigade that was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. I flew home on a medical cargo plane (C-141) from a hospital in Japan and landed in northern California, spent the night in an Air Force barracks, the flew on to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. I was released from service in May 1970 and returned to my old job. No one wanted to talk about the war and those who did were treated as outcasts. I felt that I had served my country as best I could and that’s all that mattered.
I felt that the protestors back home in the States lost the war. When the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, I lived in Plano, Texas and worked at Collins Radio in Richardson, Texas.
The one memory that has always stayed with me is the loss of James D. Plank the day I was WIA. He was going to be ordained as a minister as soon as he got home. I met with his family in October of 2002 here in Texas. They live in Westfield, Pennsylvania. I gave them the enemy belt buckle off the NVA that shot Jimmy. Our commanding general, Brig. General William Ross Bond was killed on April 1, 1970 by sniper fire.
My current picture is here along with the group photo taken in my front yard here in Pittsburg, Texas about 4 years ago. Pictured left to right: Michael Webb (former platoon member and now a neighbor), David Schapira (former platoon sergeant over us, James Farmer (another former platoon member) and myself. All three men were present when I was hit in Vietnam.
I was our brigade message board administrator until about December 2015. I’m on kidney dialysis, which is related to exposure from Agent Orange, so I turned it over to someone else. I keep in touch with brigade members, especially Jan Scruggs who was in my company. He is also the founder of The Wall in DC.
I am 100% disabled and a member of the Combat Infantryman Association.
~ Rick Jones, Vietnam Veteran
Special thanks goes to Rick for sharing his story with us. We welcome you to share your family photos of those who served both past and present, so we may feature and honor them on our COMES A Soldier’s Whisper Veteran tribute page www.facebook.com/ComesASoldiersWhisper/
God Bless all who serve and keep us safe.
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