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thedrifter
07-28-08, 08:44 AM
July 28, 2008
Wendling brothers part of military history

By RON SIMON
News Journal

MANSFIELD -- The Wendling brothers -- John, Joe, Jim and Jan -- have three things in common.

All worked at for the Mansfield Police Department.

All were Marines.

All served in Vietnam.

And all but Jim have been featured in books on military history.

Sgt. Jan Wendling is the latest, quoted in more than 20 pages of "Marine Corps Tank Battles in Vietnam" by Oscar E. Gilbert.

Wendling was a member of the 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 3rd Tank Battalion serving south of the Demilitarized Zone for 11 months in 1969.

"I think I was on the phone with Gilbert for over three hours," Jan Wendling recalls.

His memories yielded 22 pages of tanks versus enemy infantry and the terrible living conditions men endured in a jungle climate.

"At night I'd be trying to sleep when three rats got on me. I rolled over to get them off and three more rats jumped on me," Wendling recalls.

"Everything over there was poisonous. I've still got a scar from a scorpion's bite on my arm. That bite was like having a lit cigar pushed into my arm."

"One night our latrine got hit. When we checked the ruins we found part of a King Cobra that had been living in our latrine. Which made you think about all the times you had used that thing while the snake was in there."

The four Wendling boys were all influenced by their father's war stories.

"Our dad was in the Army artillery in Guadalcanal and Bougainville and he always talked highly of the Marines," Jan Wendling said.

So, one by one the boys became Marines.

John, a sniper, and Joe, a machine gunner, were in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. Jim, a scout, followed in 1968 and Jan followed as a tanker in 1969.

The latter two brothers have a photo of themselves standing next to Jan's tank when they met briefly in 1969. They have another photo taken of themselves in front of a tank in 2006.

Joe, who was featured in a book about Marines snipers, "One Shot Brotherhood," earned a Bronze Star.

"Joe almost wound up getting zipped up in a body bag. He had a helluva time. All my brothers saw more combat than I did," Jan Wendling said.

But he saw plenty.

"Before I was assigned to tanks, I had no idea the Marines had them," he said.

He picked up the nickname "Turtle" from the way he looked while wearing his helmet.

His first position was in the gunner's seat.

One day, while on a road security assignment, a supply truck passed by and Wendling saw his brother, Jim, on board.

"I went nuts," he said. "I ran off the tank and out in the road to hug him and everybody's yelling 'No, no, no!' and I thought they were yelling "go, go go.' "

Wendling had to run through the edge of a mine field to get to his brother. Land mines, some of them dating to the French occupation in the 1950s, were a constant hazard for tankers.

So were enemy rockets.

Wendling said there were times he found himself praying he might reach his 19th birthday.

One night, the worst he can remember, his unit set up on a ridge and at 3 a.m., "All hell broke loose."

Wendling and his buddies found themselves in the midst of a firestorm of rockets and tracers.

"They were just all over us," he said.

U.S. tanks were fighting back and nearly out of ammunition by dawn.

"Only two tanks got out of it," Wendling said.

His was one of them.

He remembers his first combat and seeing a man killed for the first time. A truly awful moment came when his commander, Capt. Mike Wunsch, was killed that night on the ridge.

"I used to write home every day but I couldn't write a thing for a couple days after that I was so depressed," he said. "I was with him when he was killed. He was a really good dude. It was just a terrible, terrible night."

And so it went for month after month as both the war and the 1960s were winding down. Wendling said he and his buddies were well aware of changing attitudes back home.

His first shock was on Okinawa, where "the hardest thing to get used to was seeing lights at night.

"When I came home the whole world had changed; the clothes; the hair; platform shoes; bell bottom pants ....

"1969 was a bad year for Vietnam vets. Woodstock and all that kind of stuff. People might say, 'You killing babies?' You didn't dare go off on them.

"We didn't like what we saw going on at home. I was proud of my Marine uniform. But we talked about things and decided that once we got home the best thing to do was to blend in," he said.

Unlike many returning veterans, the Wendling brothers had each other.

"When we got together the war was all we talked about. It's how we decompressed."

All four brothers enlisted in a new war, joining the Mansfield Police Department.

That is where they suffered their first near casualty when Jim was shot while on duty Jan. 18, 1979.

He eventually left the department and now owns and operates his own business in Raleigh, N.C.

John, Joe and Jan remain with the Mansfield Police Department.

Jan Wendling is no longer married but dotes on his favorite granddaughters, Ella Rose and Naddie Jane, who live in Georgia.

Ellie