thedrifter
08-23-04, 06:06 AM
Devoted to his country
Andrew Cutler Argus Observer ONTARIO
It was a dare that almost cost Alfred "Chief" Wilson his life - twice.
And yet the semi-retired farmer, who lives between Ontario and Vale, does not regret his decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War.
Wilson - who played football at Treasure Valley Community College and graduated in 1965 - and a college friend decided they wanted more from life.
To shake things up, they decided to join the U.S. Marines.
"A friend of mine wanted to do something different and we decided we wanted to see the world," Wilson said. "So we signed up for the Marine Corps. We had no idea what would happen after we signed our names."
Indeed.
After enlisting as a rifleman in 1965, Wilson completed basic training in San Diego, before moving on to advance training at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. The 1962 graduate of Ontario High School then was shipped to Okinawa in 1966.
Wilson said the early training was tough.
"Basic training was the toughest thing I ever went through," he said. "But they do it for a reason - survival."
Wilson was about to put everything he learned during his training in Southern California to the test.
He was headed to Vietnam.
Wilson, who is a full-blooded Navajo Indian, touched down in Vietnam in August, 1967.
The newcomer was assigned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines for his 13-month tour. His unit was stationed five miles from the Demilitarized Zone, a line on a map separating South Vietnam from North Vietnam.
The "Striking Ninth" was one of the first units to land in Vietnam following the decision to commit U.S. Marine forces against the guerrillas - dubbed Viet Cong - fighting the South Vietnamese government.
The 9th Marines landed in March, 1965 in Da Nang, Vietnam as part of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force.
The Demilitarized Zone was a particularity lethal area, as Viet Cong and main force North Vietnamese units moved into South Vietnam to stage attacks.
Wilson said he learned early on there were no guarantees in the jungles of the war torn country.
"Our job was to keep the North Vietnamese army from infiltrating South Vietnam. That was hard to do, because there were a lot of them. We could never keep them all out," Wilson said. "Our unit lost a lot of guys. We took a lot of casualties everyday. It wasn't easy. It could be you, it could be me. After you left base camp it could be you not coming back alive. Every morning we shook hands and said 'good luck', then we went out."
It didn't take Wilson long to experience the horror firsthand.
Two weeks after reaching Vietnam, Wilson was shot in the right ribcage leading a patrol.
"I was the point man for my squad, leading my patrol, and a sniper picked me off," Wilson said. "He hit me in the side."
Despite Wilson's claims that the injury was "nothing serious," the injury left Wilson with a punctured lung and a two-month stay at a hospital in Japan.
After recuperating in Japan, Wilson had a decision to make - go home or return to the fighting in Vietnam.
"My doctors told me that my lung, would not handle the stress situation," Wilson said.
Defying logic and wisdom, Wilson decided to rejoin his unit in Vietnam.
No one would have blamed Wilson for heading home. But it was one simple thought that troubled him enough to go back.
"I felt like I didn't do enough for my country," he said. "So I went back."
Back to the brink
And so back Wilson went, rejoining his unit in November of 1967. Things were heating up for the "Striking Ninth."
"By the time I got back, the Vietnam War was getting bigger and the enemy was coming into the country more," Wilson said. "Our casualties were beginning to rise. But we had to do our job, and our job was to keep South Vietnam free."
And Wilson did just that for a little more than six months.
In May of 1968, Wilson's commander offered the former Ontario Tiger an out. He could go to the rear and finish his tour of duty.
Wilson would have none of it.
"My commander told me 'you better go to the rear, you are getting too short to be out here.' I said 'No, I want to stay with my squad'," he said. "They got me once already, I didn't think they are going to get me again."
He was wrong.
And it almost cost him his life.
Soon after, Wilson took his position as a squad leader and the fourth man in a column formation patrol.
As the unit was moving, it suddenly stumbled into an ambush.
The first two Marines, Wilson said, died instantly from a machine gun burst, and the third Marine managed to get behind a nearby tree unhurt.
Wilson was not so lucky.
Two machine gun slugs entered his stomach while a third round slammed into his right hand. A Marine behind Wilson was hit in the shoulder. Wilson spotted the Marine behind him go down and he said he yelled for the Marine behind the tree to lay down cover fire. Then, wounded three times, Wilson went after the other wounded Marine. That is when, he said, he heard the artillery. Suddenly things were going from bad to worse. The first big artillery round impacted about 15 feet from Wilson's position. Wilson said he was saturated with metal from the round, including a serious injury to the right side of his face.
"I thought (the artillery) was going to go over my head, Wilson said. "It landed about 15 yards ahead of me. When it blew up, I caught a chunk of shrapnel. I lost the whole right side of my head. That's all I remember."
Then things went dark.
Back home
The next thing Wilson said he remembers is waking up in the Oakland (Calif.) Naval Hospital.
What he does not remember, but what his medical records describe, is that he had been in a coma for two months and had spent time in hospitals in Da Nang, Japan, Guam and the Philippines and time aboard the USS Repose, a naval hospital ship.
The artillery blast blew away a portion of Wilson's skull and his right eye, and left Wilson in the coma.
"I got hit in May of 1968 and I didn't come out of the coma until July of 1968," Wilson said. "I weighed 89 pounds when they brought me back."
Wilson was far from healed.
"Chief" then was sent to the Portland Veterans Hospital, where he spent the next three years. Wilson underwent a pair of surgeries to insert a metal plate into his skull. The first surgery caused complications, requiring the second surgery.
"They were two major surgeries," Wilson said. He also had to relearn to walk, something that Wilson said took him four or five months to accomplish. The experiences and scars acquired in Vietnam, are something that still haunts Wilson in normal every day life.
"I am 100 percent disabled. I had to learn to live with my handicap and that was the hardest thing to do," Wilson, who received the Purple Heart, said. "My daily life is a challenge. I run into something everyday that I can't do. But then you have to work around it. I have to learn how to do it. I could have gave up, but I didn't. The things I do around the farm keeps me away from my problems. I don't think about it. I'm busy constantly. From the time I get up in the morning, until I go to bed at night. I am busy all the time."
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2004/08/22/news/local_news/news01.txt
Ellie
Andrew Cutler Argus Observer ONTARIO
It was a dare that almost cost Alfred "Chief" Wilson his life - twice.
And yet the semi-retired farmer, who lives between Ontario and Vale, does not regret his decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War.
Wilson - who played football at Treasure Valley Community College and graduated in 1965 - and a college friend decided they wanted more from life.
To shake things up, they decided to join the U.S. Marines.
"A friend of mine wanted to do something different and we decided we wanted to see the world," Wilson said. "So we signed up for the Marine Corps. We had no idea what would happen after we signed our names."
Indeed.
After enlisting as a rifleman in 1965, Wilson completed basic training in San Diego, before moving on to advance training at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. The 1962 graduate of Ontario High School then was shipped to Okinawa in 1966.
Wilson said the early training was tough.
"Basic training was the toughest thing I ever went through," he said. "But they do it for a reason - survival."
Wilson was about to put everything he learned during his training in Southern California to the test.
He was headed to Vietnam.
Wilson, who is a full-blooded Navajo Indian, touched down in Vietnam in August, 1967.
The newcomer was assigned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines for his 13-month tour. His unit was stationed five miles from the Demilitarized Zone, a line on a map separating South Vietnam from North Vietnam.
The "Striking Ninth" was one of the first units to land in Vietnam following the decision to commit U.S. Marine forces against the guerrillas - dubbed Viet Cong - fighting the South Vietnamese government.
The 9th Marines landed in March, 1965 in Da Nang, Vietnam as part of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force.
The Demilitarized Zone was a particularity lethal area, as Viet Cong and main force North Vietnamese units moved into South Vietnam to stage attacks.
Wilson said he learned early on there were no guarantees in the jungles of the war torn country.
"Our job was to keep the North Vietnamese army from infiltrating South Vietnam. That was hard to do, because there were a lot of them. We could never keep them all out," Wilson said. "Our unit lost a lot of guys. We took a lot of casualties everyday. It wasn't easy. It could be you, it could be me. After you left base camp it could be you not coming back alive. Every morning we shook hands and said 'good luck', then we went out."
It didn't take Wilson long to experience the horror firsthand.
Two weeks after reaching Vietnam, Wilson was shot in the right ribcage leading a patrol.
"I was the point man for my squad, leading my patrol, and a sniper picked me off," Wilson said. "He hit me in the side."
Despite Wilson's claims that the injury was "nothing serious," the injury left Wilson with a punctured lung and a two-month stay at a hospital in Japan.
After recuperating in Japan, Wilson had a decision to make - go home or return to the fighting in Vietnam.
"My doctors told me that my lung, would not handle the stress situation," Wilson said.
Defying logic and wisdom, Wilson decided to rejoin his unit in Vietnam.
No one would have blamed Wilson for heading home. But it was one simple thought that troubled him enough to go back.
"I felt like I didn't do enough for my country," he said. "So I went back."
Back to the brink
And so back Wilson went, rejoining his unit in November of 1967. Things were heating up for the "Striking Ninth."
"By the time I got back, the Vietnam War was getting bigger and the enemy was coming into the country more," Wilson said. "Our casualties were beginning to rise. But we had to do our job, and our job was to keep South Vietnam free."
And Wilson did just that for a little more than six months.
In May of 1968, Wilson's commander offered the former Ontario Tiger an out. He could go to the rear and finish his tour of duty.
Wilson would have none of it.
"My commander told me 'you better go to the rear, you are getting too short to be out here.' I said 'No, I want to stay with my squad'," he said. "They got me once already, I didn't think they are going to get me again."
He was wrong.
And it almost cost him his life.
Soon after, Wilson took his position as a squad leader and the fourth man in a column formation patrol.
As the unit was moving, it suddenly stumbled into an ambush.
The first two Marines, Wilson said, died instantly from a machine gun burst, and the third Marine managed to get behind a nearby tree unhurt.
Wilson was not so lucky.
Two machine gun slugs entered his stomach while a third round slammed into his right hand. A Marine behind Wilson was hit in the shoulder. Wilson spotted the Marine behind him go down and he said he yelled for the Marine behind the tree to lay down cover fire. Then, wounded three times, Wilson went after the other wounded Marine. That is when, he said, he heard the artillery. Suddenly things were going from bad to worse. The first big artillery round impacted about 15 feet from Wilson's position. Wilson said he was saturated with metal from the round, including a serious injury to the right side of his face.
"I thought (the artillery) was going to go over my head, Wilson said. "It landed about 15 yards ahead of me. When it blew up, I caught a chunk of shrapnel. I lost the whole right side of my head. That's all I remember."
Then things went dark.
Back home
The next thing Wilson said he remembers is waking up in the Oakland (Calif.) Naval Hospital.
What he does not remember, but what his medical records describe, is that he had been in a coma for two months and had spent time in hospitals in Da Nang, Japan, Guam and the Philippines and time aboard the USS Repose, a naval hospital ship.
The artillery blast blew away a portion of Wilson's skull and his right eye, and left Wilson in the coma.
"I got hit in May of 1968 and I didn't come out of the coma until July of 1968," Wilson said. "I weighed 89 pounds when they brought me back."
Wilson was far from healed.
"Chief" then was sent to the Portland Veterans Hospital, where he spent the next three years. Wilson underwent a pair of surgeries to insert a metal plate into his skull. The first surgery caused complications, requiring the second surgery.
"They were two major surgeries," Wilson said. He also had to relearn to walk, something that Wilson said took him four or five months to accomplish. The experiences and scars acquired in Vietnam, are something that still haunts Wilson in normal every day life.
"I am 100 percent disabled. I had to learn to live with my handicap and that was the hardest thing to do," Wilson, who received the Purple Heart, said. "My daily life is a challenge. I run into something everyday that I can't do. But then you have to work around it. I have to learn how to do it. I could have gave up, but I didn't. The things I do around the farm keeps me away from my problems. I don't think about it. I'm busy constantly. From the time I get up in the morning, until I go to bed at night. I am busy all the time."
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2004/08/22/news/local_news/news01.txt
Ellie