Five Vietnam War veterans haven't let their memories of combat control their lives

From FayObserver: Five Vietnam War veterans haven't let their memories of combat control their lives

Vietnam.

For years, the mere mention of the name cast a pall over veterans of that war.

The conflict came to embody a splintered era of social unrest. Anti-war protests raged on college campuses, the surging civil rights movement was coming to a head, women jostled for equal rights and blue-jeaned hippies flaunted a beatific message of peace and love.

On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. ground troops left Vietnam. Many veterans returned home only to be treated as outcasts, enduring a blemish of shame for decades.

"The Vietnam veterans came home, and it was a turbulent time," said Ron Miriello, who pulled duty as a "River Rat" on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. "They stayed away from speaking. They were called baby killers and spit on. I never thought anybody wanted to hear it."

Now, more than four decades after the height of the conflict, Fort Bragg and Fayetteville are uniting in celebration of the men and women who served in Vietnam. Heroes Homecoming, billed as a long-overdue welcome home for Vietnam veterans, will run Nov. 4-13.

"I don't think I deserve or need anything special for what I did. It was my duty," Miriello said. "I think there should have been more learning back in the day. Still, I think it is a great gesture."

In conjunction with the community tribute, Miriello and four other Vietnam veterans shared some of what they brought back from the nightmarish conflict. They are five who proudly wore the uniforms of their country, overcame the combat horrors and achieved success in Cumberland County after Vietnam.
Tony Murzyn

Army paratrooper with A Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry

Three times, North Vietnamese soldiers ransacked Tony Murzyn's body as he lay prone and motionless.

Finally, he was left for dead.

Murzyn had been shot four times - in his left ankle, left shoulder and both legs - on June 22, 1967, during the battle of the Slopes. It was his first significant combat after three months in Vietnam.

His company had been searching for North Vietnam Army troops on a mountainside when it was pinned down by a large enemy force. Ammunition started to run low, and radio contact was lost.

"It was a couple of hours, it seemed like," Murzyn said from his home in the Briarwood subdivision. "I could hear some moaning and groaning of other people around. I couldn't get to them. Then, all of a sudden, I heard Vietnamese talking, so it had to be the enemy."

The first enemy soldier snatched Murzyn's rifle from his hand and walked off. A dazed and disoriented Murzyn then felt a hand reaching for his shirt pocket. The soldier nabbed his notebook.

"Then I felt his hand going across my back like he had put an 'X' across my back. I was really nervous at that time," he said. "Then another individual came along and took whatever food out of my pants legs."

Murzyn and other surviving members of his company who waited through the night heard shots punctuated by screams as the enemy executed the American wounded. Forty-three soldiers, according to accounts, died from head wounds inflicted at close range.

Once the soldiers left, Murzyn rolled around and grabbed a nearby gun. The signal to attract friendly troops was one shot in the air every 30 minutes. Murzyn managed to fire while going in and out of consciousness.

"You're 20 years old. Your thoughts are different than at this age," said Murzyn, now 65. "You sort of think everything will be all right."

After being discharged from the Army in late 1967, he landed a job with Westinghouse Electric Corp. In 1984, he was transferred to what is now Eaton Corp.

Murzyn worked for 38 years with the company, eventually becoming an engineering supervisor.

Looking back, he said, Vietnam didn't change him.

"I think about it a lot," Murzyn said. "I pray about the guys who have passed away, but it doesn't haunt me. It was just another time in my life, like going to work and back. It was then, and now it's gone."
Ron Miriello

Navy machine gunner with the Navy Mobile Riverine Force

Ron Miriello spent a year behind a 50-caliber machine gun on Naval river assault craft, pulling search-and-destroy missions on the Mekong Delta.

"It's always in the back of my mind. It is a moment that will never go away," he said. "You hear that expression about a 'Kodak moment.' But Kodak moments are not just good pictures. Some are bad. They'll never go away. I see them just as visibly today of a mangled body I saw 40-something years ago."

For the past 12 years or so, Miriello has presented a first-hand account of his Vietnam experience for audiences that cross generations - from teens to World War II veterans.

"I talk about statistics, and I tell about the 58,267 (American service members) killed in Vietnam," he said. "I talk about preparing for combat, what it's like during combat. What it's like to return home from combat and all of a sudden being in a peaceful situation, which is hard to adjust to."

By the grace of God, he said, he was lucky during those 300 or so "River Rat" missions with the Navy Mobile Riverine Force.

Miriello, who found himself in vulnerable, risky situations from July 1968 to July 1969, never got hit while patrolling the rivers as a machine gunner.

"It was a year of living off tension and adrenaline. It was an exhausting time every day, your adrenaline so high," he said. "We were under fire often every day. When you hear a round from an AK-47 and hear it whiz by and know if you leaned an inch to the right that you'd get hit, that's scary. We all experienced such things at that time."

Miriello spent four years in the Navy. Afterward, he changed directions, posting a 30-year career in higher education, beginning at Fayetteville Technical Community College. In 2008, he retired as vice president of Central Carolina Community College.

Although his wartime experience was bad, it taught the former petty officer to appreciate the small things in life. Among them, he cites clean water and being able to switch on night lights.

But that stretch of duty also changed him from a trusting, mild-mannered man into someone easily angered and often suspicious.

"I will not sit down at a restaurant until I see everybody in front of me in the restaurant," he said. "It is an uncomfortable feeling not knowing what is coming around you. If people are behind me, I'm not comfortable."
Retired Lt. Col. Arturo Macaltao

Army infantryman with the 1st Calvary Division (Air Mobile)

Arturo Macaltao used to skim over the section in history books on the Vietnam War when he was teaching at Douglas Byrd High School.

Macaltao, who retired from Special Forces as a lieutenant colonel nearly two decades ago, was severely wounded on a search-and-destroy mission on Sept. 23, 1966, in the Hai Lang Forest of South Vietnam.

His voice drops as he recalls a brush with death and the valiant men who died around him, including those who tried to pull him to safety. It explains the difficulty he faced teaching about the war in a classroom.

"It was rough," he said. "You might say I would glide over it, even though some of my students wanted to know more. I always had the memories of guys who I served with and about the war itself."

Macaltao carved out a 28-year military career, enlisting out of high school at age 19 in July 1964.

He taught social studies at Douglas Byrd from 1996 through 2007. Macaltao always had an interest in history, and teaching came natural since training soldiers had been part of his job in the service.

Macaltao, 66, said people tend to ask him about Vietnam.

"I don't really get too much into it," he said.

On that fateful September day in Vietnam, he had been airlifted onto a hilltop. Trapped there were a couple of North Vietnamese regiments. A South Vietnamese unit flanked the American soldiers as Huey helicopters blasted the countryside with rocket artillery.

"I jumped in a depression on the trail and started exchanging fire," said Macaltao, a native of Puerto Rico who grew up in Chicago. "Next thing I knew, I felt like I was lifted up, like someone hit me with a telephone pole."

Macaltao, the fire team leader of about five soldiers, suffered bullet wounds in his lower back just above the right hip and in the left leg and shoulder. Fortunately, a hedge separated him from the enemy.

They knew he was there, he said, but they could not see him.

Macaltao called for a medic and recalls "another kid calling my name - Joseph T. Williams, who was the machine-gunner." He heard gunfire and found out later that Williams had been killed.

Platoon Sgt. 1st Class Antonio R. Osuna, who tried to pull Macaltao out, also was slain in the battle.

"I believe I've got closure with it, as far as looking back. I don't dwell on it," he said. "It brings back bad memories. I think about those guys, and I'm so grateful I'm alive. I guess I feel guilty I'm still alive. I lived a full life, married, had three children and have granddaughters.

"I think about the soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice. I accepted it because I always wanted to be a soldier. Those things come with the job."
The Rev. Roy F. Hill

Army administrator with the 173rd Airborne Brigade and Special Forces Fifth Group

When the Rev. Roy F. Hill looks back at himself during his years in the military, he sees a hell-raiser. His first sergeant once told him he was going to put Hill's stripes on with Velcro because he was so often in trouble.

"I was a rah-rah guy," he said. "I was one of the devil's disciples."

Converted to Christianity on Oct. 16, 1983, the Kinston-born serviceman went on to become an ordained nondenominational minister.

He attended Bible college, worked for TV host Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network, and was a director of the 700 Club (and now Operation Blessing) in Fayetteville.

He doesn't have his own church, but he presides at funerals, burials, weddings and baptisms. Hill also helps widows of retired Special Forces families.

Six years ago, he compiled a "Survivors Guide: What My Family Should Know" that he gives to Special Forces veterans and their families.

In public speaking, Hill likes to incorporate anecdotes from his long tour of duty in Vietnam. "It has helped me share the gospel," he said. "I'm a man of simple faith."

Hill said he doesn't linger on the baggage of Vietnam.

"We need to get on with life," he said. "We were treated like crap. It's my past. By grace, I got through it, and, by grace, I get through today."

Hill logged nearly 19 months in the Dong Nai province, doing administrative work before returning home in July 1967.

"I think it gave me an understanding of how war worked - how politicians get into it, and when the politicians get into it, how they handcuff the soldiers," he said. "We kept the American people out of it. They weren't telling the truth on what we were doing over there."
Ladell Williams

Army squad leader, demolition leader and platoon sergeant with over three tours of duty in Vietnam

Ladell Williams cannot bear to watch the 1968 John Wayne movie "The Green Berets."

In one scene, a Special Forces camp is attacked and overrun by Viet Cong. It gave him nightmares after his second tour of duty in Vietnam.

The scene is said to be loosely based on the July 6, 1964, Battle of Nam Dong.

"I guess it was just the violence of that particular scene," Williams said from his Hope Mills home. "That was one of the things that keyed my nightmare - that continuous nightmare - the same nightmare that I used to have when I first came back. I never got overrun, but something about that scene was the trigger. I won't ever watch it."

From 1965 to 1972, the St. Louis native served three deployments in Vietnam, anchoring a nearly 30-year career in the military. Later, he married a Vietnamese woman after meeting her on a blind date.

After his retirement from the Army, he worked for three years with Aims Rental Property and Storage and another 15 years at J.C. Penney in Cross Creek Mall.

Though he mostly keeps his perspective on the Vietnam engagement to himself, disturbing images from the war remain embedded in his mind.

"The first time I went, about the worst thing you run into, drug-wise, was maybe somebody smoking a joint," said Williams, who is 69. "Then you went from there, the last time I went back - a whole bunch of folks are strung out. You walk through an area, but instead of finding cigarette butts you'd find these little plastic heroin vials lying all over the place."

Williams long felt responsible for the death of a combat buddy in a helicopter accident. Williams sobbed softly as he recalled the soldier, who died in a burn center in Texas.

He blamed his hurried-up process to book a flight back to base camp in Thuy Hoa in the northern part of South Vietnam after some R&R in Thailand. After Williams was dropped off, the soldier took the same chopper out. The rotor clipped a tree, and the aircraft crashed.

Williams and his wife try to visit Vietnam about every other year. He has passed through areas where he once trudged as a soldier, but it's no longer recognizable to him.

"The good thing I can see: When we were there, you had a divided nation fighting among themselves," he said. "Before, you had two countries, and now there's one. And I can appreciate that. The time I was there, I had chosen the military as my career, and I had to do what I had to do."