Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
I was speaking up near Knoxville a little about a little over a
year ago and a woman come up to me and she said, are, have you
heard of Honor Air? And I said, yeah, I've heard of
it. You know, and they were taking
World War 2 veterans and Korean veterans where she said, well,
now we're taking Vietnam Veterans, which means you guys
are getting old. You know, our, our, you know,
that greatest generation has, has passed away.
I mean, there's last November I spoke to a luncheon in Atlanta,
400 veterans, one World War 2 veteran one, and then the Korean
and I guess us guys now. In fact, I was amazed at how
many grateful when we went, I went to Washington, DC in April
with 131 veterans, three Korean War Veterans and 127 Vietnam
Veterans and 1 Desert Storm veteran.
And, and, and we've, we went to all these memorials.
Now 30 years ago, right before we left here, we, I had done a
victory over Vietnam conference, facilitate a victory over
Vietnam conference at the 700 Club.
We did seven, I think in five years.
And the year before we moved to Chattanooga, we went to the wall
in Washington, DC, the Vietnam Memorial.
And when we went there, there's, you know, they have all the
statistics. You, if you know a name and
where they were born, you can go there and they'll give you a
piece of paper and your pencil and you make an edging of that
person's name that's engraved on the wall. 58,000 names of those
who paid the ultimate price in in Vietnam.
And my best friend Danny, I'll talk about just a minute, was
killed standing right next to me in our first major battle.
We had gone through all our training together.
He was my best friend and the 1st combat operator was killed
right next to me and saw I knew Danny died in February of 1966.
I went to the panel and I went to the to the book of the names
and there were 4 Daniels I didn't know.
I couldn't remember where, you know, I had a horrible time
remembering names and I still struggle at times because I
blotted it all. I didn't want to remember, I
wanted to forget. But there were 4 Daniels in the
Marine Corps that and that died in Vietnam in February of 1960s.
I couldn't remember his name. And people were going and they
were put into etchings and I, I couldn't remember his name.
And this time when I went, it wasn't so emotional because as I
was getting ready to go to Vietnam, but I did not know at
that time that God took all that pain, all that healing away.
And so this time I was able just to minister to the other people
that are there. But, you know, I went to the
World War 2 memorial and the Korean memorial.
Neither one of those were in Washington, DC Then the Vietnam
Memorial before they had the World War 2 and Korean Memorial
went to the Wall. And, you know, it's just it was
powerful to think of the the price of freedom, but, you know,
the ultimate price for our freedom.
Yeah. Yeah.
The veterans, you know, we, we owe a debt of gratitude to them.
But the one that paid the ultimate price for our freedom
is the person of Jesus Christ. And, you know, and I, I love,
you know what John said, when the sun has made you free, you
are free indeed. Amen.
When I joined the Marine Corps, you know, I, I shared this as a
first service, you know, and every now and then I'll mention
some program, you know, TV program that, you know, shortly
ago. They weren't even alive, Rod,
when that, that program, you know, come out and, and, and I
mentioned, you know, that when I volunteered to, to I've actually
volunteered to go to Vietnam. And I'd said I, because I knew
what combat was all about, you know, and I said, it's kind of
like when you get married. And there were people that did
that same thing. They just, they, they just
laughed. And what I mean by that is that,
you know, when you get married, you think you know what you're
doing. But then I'm going to let Pastor
Dave work that out with you. But, you know, I, I had seen on
TVI had seen John Wayne and the Sands of Iwo Jima 3 times.
And yeah, I see a couple, couple of my mature brothers here today
that you might remember. Tuesday night, Victoria Morrow
on combat. You know so man, I had to and
you know so I, I thought I've got this all figured out you
know so we. And when we shipped out to
Vietnam in the fall of 1965, man, I knew the war was going to
be over quickly because the Marines had landed and.
And like I said this, so Vietnam was a different kind of war.
It was guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare is where your
enemy lets you wait. So it's his advantage to let you
find him. And so one of the, our first
major operation, we were on a search and destroy mission South
of the of the Demilitarized Zone and we had 217 Marines that are
reinforced infantry company. And there was we got woken up in
the middle of the night, flown and we landed in a open field,
set up a perimeter real quick and, and from 2:00 till dawn, we
just, we sat there not knowing what was going on.
They got the squad leaders together, said OK, a village at
a S enemy's army post nearby had been overrun tonight by an
unknown size enemy force. And so they put us on
helicopters. We landed.
We start out at dawn and for hours and hours we kept
searching for this elusive enemy.
We would see signs that they've been there, discarded equipment,
some bloody bandages and, you know, all day, 2:00 in the
afternoon. I'm exhausted.
I'm, I'm barely 18, you know, I'm carrying about 50 lbs of
explosives and, and ammunition for the mortar crew.
And we're walking. I'm, I'm just, you know, I've
never been so tired of my life. And, and I remember looking at
my platoon Sergeant, who was a Korean War veteran who took us
new guys under his wing. And I remember asking, Sergeant,
are we going to take a break? And as I was talking to him, we
did not know that we had pushed a battalion of Vietcong regular
650 enemy soldiers into a tree line on a peninsula.
We had pushed them. They had nowhere else to go.
And we were walking across this open field and I remember as I
was asking my platoon Sergeant if we were going to take a
break, the enemy opened fire. And as I was looking at my
platoon Sergeant, I saw his head literally explode as a 51
caliber machine gun run hit him in the head, killing him
instantly. And I remember as I started to
throw myself down, out of the corner of my eye, I saw as my
best friend Danny took a machine gun run to the chest, killing
him instantly and he and throw him backwards.
And I remember throwing myself down to the ground and looking,
you know, I couldn't see anything but gunt muzzle flashes
in the tree line. And I remember shooting at an
enemy that I didn't, even, couldn't even see.
And so we lay there in the open field and I could hear our
company commander on the radio screaming over the, the sounds
of explosions. They were dropping mortars and
rockets and, and, and we were pinned down this field.
And I could hear him calling for artillery, calling for gunships,
calling for anything that would get, you know, suppress the
enemy's fire. And after about 15 minutes, the,
the command went up and down the line to assault the tree line
'cause we couldn't lay there exposed.
Now, I'm going to be real honest with you.
You know, I remember there was a movie nobody remembers, some of
those old people years ago, Audie Murphy played a civil, a
civil War movie called The Red Badge of Courage.
And at, I think it was the, the first battle that they had, some
of them dropped their weapons and ran.
And, and I'll be honest with you, I've never seen anybody die
before. And I'm laying there on the
field on fire in the jungle and I'm trying to get as low to the
ground as I can, really praying for the ground to open up and
swallow me. I did not want to get up because
I knew I would not. I would never make it to that
tree line. But then to my left, I saw my
fellow Marines get up. On my right, I saw my fellow
Marines get up and run to the battle.
And I didn't want to be, you know, because you depend on the
person on your left and on your right.
And so I got up and I knew it wasn't going to make it, but
somehow I did. I got the tree line.
It was over in 45 minutes. And at 45 minutes, my company of
219 Marines was reduced to 78 men, had not been killed or
wounded. And it took my my unit out of
the field. And then they asked for
volunteers. I remember I had two uncles that
were Korean War Veterans. They were Army, nothing
personal, you know, just, you know, and they were telling my
brother and I, you know, my twin brother, I joined the US is
never volunteered. You, you never, you don't tell.
That's, that's, you know, you volunteer to go in and you know,
they were volunteers. So they're asking for volunteers
to move from the bases out into the villages and live with the
people, train the local militia to take, you know, their, their
communities back from the Vietcong.
And so I went out, we moved into the village and, you know, it's
just, I love the people of Vietnam, but they, and, and, and
I felt sorry for them, you know, 'cause they, they faced
oppression. If, if they were, you know, ever
the enemy ever came in their village and they support the
Americans, they would kill them. You know, they would come to
villages at night, take their sons or daughters into the
jungle and make, you know, and make them become communist
soldiers and, and serve the, the communists.
And so, you know, we, we lived in the villages.
We, you know, we, we ate with them, we fought with them, we
bled with them. And sometimes we died with them,
winning the hearts and the minds and for the time that we were
doing at work, that they, they loved us.
We loved them. We built.
And so we, we began to know the territory around our villages.
We patrol day, night, afternoon and we we learned the area as
well as the people that lived there so that the enemy at that
time, before we started doing this, the enemy controlled the
night and the South Vietnamese army would withdraw to their
bases and the communists could do whatever they want.
When we moved in. Now they had to wonder when they
were going to run into us. And so I became a point man.
You know, a point man was a guy. You lead the patrol out your,
your job is to, you know, avoid the booby traps, avoid the
ambushes, find the enemy, kill them, and then get back to your
to your village. And, and I, I, I knew the whole
area around my village and I had, at that time we're, I, I
had good hearing. You know, I asked Shirley, what
was that person's name again? She goes, you know, that's not
what I heard. But anyways, a lot more fun of
that. So I, but I had good hearing.
I still got good peripheral vision, you know, guys.
And so I'm, I'm the point guy. Well, one day my squad leader
went on on R&R, you know, for a week out of the country.
And we, they sent us a new squad leader from our rear area.
And I didn't know why. So we're preparing for this
patrol that night. And I was telling them, look,
there's been a lot of enemy activity.
We're going to try to go out there and, you know, and disrupt
the plans they have to attack our village.
And so he and I got into a discussion.
I'd call it a discussion. There's an argument about how
did you know what we were going to do?
And so he got mad at me. He was a Sergeant.
I was a Lance Corporal. So he put me at the back.
You know, there was 13 of us, and I was #11 in in the line as
we went out on patrol. And so this Sergeant and I don't
know what he was trying to prove, but he's on a patrol.
We're going down a trail he had never been on, only seen it on
an overlay and a map. And as we were coming to the
fishing village where we were going to set up our ambush, he
was walking point and I was, you know, we're we're stretched out
on the rice Paddy dike. And I remember as we came into
the village, all of a sudden, the hare literally stood up on
the back of my neck and, and, and on my arms.
It's like something was wrong. And before I could even yell or
say anything, the enemy opened fire.
We had walked into what was called an L-shaped ambush and
the gunfire was just a horrendous and behind me, a mine
went off and blew me and the two guys behind me off the trail
into the rice pad. And I remember laying floating
on my back in the rice Paddy. Just, you know, the concussion.
I was dazed. I was, I was trying to figure
out what's going on what and I'm laying there and out of the, I
mean, literally it was like Ghost come out of the, the
jungle and anybody they, they went up and down the, the line
on the, the rice petty Armand on the trail and anybody was still
alive. They killed them, took all their
weapons, equipment and I mean probably less than two minutes
just disappeared like Ghost to get back into the jungle and I'm
laying there floated as my trying to get my senses and
after I finally where I could start to hear and get another
what was going on. I could hear some moaning and
the two guys behind me had taken the whole impact of the
explosion and we're we're seriously wounded.
And I got them up on the rice against the rice petty dike.
And they're, they're moaning, you know, and I'm trying to, you
know, keep them quiet because I expected them any minute that
they hear us and come back. And I remember crawling up the
trail to see if anybody was alive.
When I got to our radio man, our radio man was a big guy.
He was a Samoan, you know, think of the rock, you know, big guy.
And he was so big that when he fell backwards, when he was
shot, the radio was underneath him, you know, and they didn't
Even so that we had the radio, I called, we always had a platoon
on standby. Within 1/2 an hour they flew,
landed in the the rice Paddy dyke of the spread out.
They took the two wounded guys, put them in a medevac flight and
then we took the everybody in front of me had been killed.
You know, that Sergeant was shot 27 different times and you know,
and so they put me and my 10 fellow Marines and corpsman in
that helicopter and flew us back to the rear of the next morning.
They told me when I went to the company headquarters, they said
that that my friends had died on a, on a helicopter, never made
it to the hospital. And you know, and 118 year old
kid, 118 year old Marine survived that ambush and he
would carry the guilt of surviving for 23 years.
I did 2 tours back-to-back, you know, it was wounded twice.
And both times I wanted to get out of the hospital, get back to
my, my Marines as as fast as I could.
And then finally, you know, one day we had, we were on a fire
base and we got hit in the middle of the night and we, all
through the night, we fought the enemy off at dawn, you know, the
enemy withdrew and some, some helicopters landed.
Our, our division commander actually wanted to, you know,
get an update and they flew in. And so I'm standing there just
standing around. Somebody said, Helly, nobody
pronounces our last name right. You know, I've been called
brother hell so many times. But Helly and I here and said,
get on that chopper that you know, OK, you know, chopped on a
chopper and they flew me back to the Nang.
They said, get your gear, put me on a plane to Okinawa, Okinawa
to the States. Met my brother in Okinawa.
We both were coming back on the same day.
Got into LA. The a police officer said, you
guys are lucky just missed the protest protesters that were
throwing pig's blood on everybody in the uniform that
was coming back. And so we got, we got home this
little little humor here. We we got in a taxi cab and went
to my parents house, knocked on the door, you know, like 9/30,
10:00 at night. And the door opens and here's
remember that movie, you know, throw Mama from the train.
You know that here's here's that woman cigarette hanging for her
mouth, little thing on her head. And you know, Bunny slippers
with a big robe. And Ron and I are looking at
each other. We look up at the address, at
the address, look at her. And I go, hi, is my mom here?
And I thought, you know, maybe she had somebody stay at I don't
know. And she said, do I look like
your mother slammed the door right in our face.
My parents had moved. You know, that would be nice to
know. But so anyway, so now, so now
it's 1967 and, you know, things had happened because in Vietnam,
you know, the media so grossly distorted what was happening in
Vietnam that, you know, my mom said, Rod, look, I'm glad, I'm
glad you're OK. I'm glad you're home.
But this Vietnam thing, it's a little, you know, awkward
wasn't, you know, but it was like, but it's embarrassing, you
know, so let's do this. Let's not talk about it.
Let's just pretend like it didn't happen and let's get on
with our life. Well, I want to tell you
friends, I I wanted to get on my life.
I was so grateful to be alive and I and I wanted to forget.
But there's only one problem. And that was when I would go to
bed at night and I would close my eyes.
I would remember all over again, but I was very fortunate because
I was still in the Marine Corps and I was surrounded by guys
just like me that I could look at their ribbons under uniforms
and know where they've been, what they've done.
And there was that camaraderie, you know, that that Esprit de
corps, that fellowship. And so I was three years in the
United. I was a drill instructor for a
year and a half. That was that was interesting.
I didn't want to be a drill instructor and you know, I
believe in like having fun. And so, but it worked for me
because the recruits would say stay away from that guy.
He is crazy as it just guy. And so I did that for a year and
a half and then I re enlisted to be a criminal investigator.
You know, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, I had a better haircut.
And you know, I did that for about 20 months.
And so in 1970, I volunteered to go back to Vietnam.
And, you know, after I, you know, after I become a Christian
people I, I knew they'd say, dude, what was wrong?
What were you thinking? When, you know, you volunteer to
go back for 1/3 tour. And, you know, for a long time I
would just kind of nervously laugh it off and I'd say, well,
you know, I'm a Marine and, you know, we're just not that smart.
And you know, now, just so you know, we're the only ones who
can say that about ourselves. OK.
And I was just last one off and but really, and I realized 1 is
that by 1970, because of the media, because of the anti war,
this country had changed so dramatically that I mean, I
would put my uniform on and go somewhere and some peace
protester wanted to kill me for peace.
That was always interesting. And and or somebody call me a
baby killer. And when I was in Vietnam, there
was not, that's not who was killing the babies.
And you know, I just, I felt like this isn't my home anymore.
I don't recognize my own country.
And I felt more needed, useful, accepted 12,000 miles from home,
stinking Leech infested, rice Paddy, mosquito, malaria
infested. I felt more needed, accepted
there that I did in my own country.
And so I went back to Vietnam. I went back to the village they
had reorganized this, this the, the, what they were doing and
called it Combined Action Group. And we're, I was back in the
village. I had actually 3 squads of
Marines, a, a platoon of Vietnamese militia and we had
four or five village South of, of Dunang, the big military base
of Dunang that I was responsible for.
And we did the same thing. We started because they hadn't
been doing it the my, my predecessor had not to just they
stayed in the villages and the enemy was everywhere.
And so we began taking the night away from the enemy again.
And one one day we planned an operation.
We found we hit a gorilla base camp completely by surprise,
surround him in the middle of the night, hit him at dawn,
killed a bunch of Vietcong, captured a bunch of equipment we
had. There was so much stuff there
that we couldn't even carry it away.
So a couple days later, I thought it would be a good idea.
Let's load up with explosives to go out there and blow up these
bunkers so that they can't and the equipment so they can't be
used again. So as we started off, I was
walking point. Now, I shouldn't been walking
point and I didn't consciously know why I was walking point.
But in reality, you know, several years earlier that my
mind would always say if I had been walking point that night,
what I have known would you know, would we have walked into
an ambush? And so as I walking across the
field, it takes longer to tell the story than than the time
that took. But I stopped at the edge of a
field looking for trip wires and something flew through the air,
hit me in the in the the thigh and fell right in front of me.
And I looked down and laying at my feet was a grenade.
And before I could move, before I could think it, you know, is
it this is it registered? It went off just ripping me
apart and throwing me back several feet.
And when I hit the ground, it was the most incredible fear and
surge of adrenaline that I had ever experienced.
You know, I knew I was hurt and I knew that I needed to get away
from where I was. And I managed to struggle to my
feet. I had blood all over my face and
I reach up and wipe the blood out of my eyes and about 40 feet
from me, like where that cameras there was a there was a N enemy
soldier and had his rifle point at me and I saw the barrel
recoil and felt the bullets as they hit me and knock me back to
the ground. I mean, I hit the ground face
first. I had my face buried in the
ground and I was struggling to roll over because I was carrying
about 40 some pounds of explosive.
And I remember rolling over and I look up and that soldier that
I believe is the one that shot me was standing over me.
And I remember laying on the ground looking up at this young
man as he raised his rifle over his head and run his bandit
through my stomach as I was laying on the ground.
I thought this is not happening. This is this is a nightmare.
This is just it's not happening and I'm going to wake up and I'm
going to be OK. And the nightmare went on and
somehow I was able to get to my feet and I took a couple steps,
I felled, I struggled, got to my feet, took another couple steps
and fell, moving back to him. And finally I just fell and I
couldn't, I couldn't get up. I just rolled over and looked up
in a beautiful blue sky and and there were palm trees just, you
know, kind of blowing in the wind.
And there was a rice, freshly planted rice Paddy right right
next to the dike where I was laying with.
I watched the wind as it rippled across the freshly planted
emerald rice Paddy stalks and, and pain that I had never
experienced before just hit me, every part of my body.
And it hurt so bad that I just, I just wanted to close my eyes.
And, you know, I was tired, tired of the killing, tired of
the, of the, the suffering, tired.
And I just, I just, I knew I was going to die in that trail and I
just closed my eyes And then all of a sudden I was being dragged
across the field. And there was like a moment of
terror because I thought, if it's the communist, they have
me, you know, I'm, I'm in really deep trouble.
And then I heard a voice in my ear as my 21 year Old Navy
corpsman said, I've got you. I've I've got you.
And I remember them trying to stop the bleeding.
I remember them calling for a medevac flight that were not
available. A Marine helicopter, supply
helicopter, big double rotors. Sikorsky heard the crawl landed.
They put me in this great big open, you know, the cargo Bay of
this big helicopter in the middle on a stretcher.
And, and I remember looking over at the door gunner and he looked
over and just shook his head and looked out the window, never
looked back. It was about a 15 minute flight
and as we went higher and higher I could feel myself getting
colder and colder as the blood was just literally draining out
of me and they got me to less than 15 minutes.
I was in a triage at a hospital, 95th Army Evac Hospital, MASH
Hospital at Danang, at China Beach.
And I remember all the activity, the smells, the sounds, the
blood, charge skin, blood. I wasn't the only casualty.
And I remember a doctor coming up and put the mask on my face
and he said, son, we're going to take you down to surgery.
And over the next few days, I was in and out of consciousness.
I remember one day when I was an investigator, my training
investigator was a guy named Mike Smith.
Mike was a staff Sergeant. And I remember I woke up one one
day and, and Mike was leaning over what I thought was my bed
and, and you know, he was looking at him.
He had tears. He was an African American.
My, my trainer loved the guy. He'd have me over to his house
for dinner and his family and, and he was, had tears running
down his eyes. And he said, you're going to be
OK, You're going to be OK. And I never saw him again.
Some years later, my brother was at Camp Pendleton and I went to
visit him and he said, what was that guy, you know that that
trained you, that investigator? I said Mike Smith.
He said, we got a new Provost Marshall on the base.
He's a major, but his name's Mike Smith.
He's a black Marine. And so I went to the Provost
Marshall's office. I walked in and and I said his
Major Smith in and said, no, he's not in yet.
But I said, could I wait? And I said sure.
So I sat with my back to the door.
And so a little bit later, you know, he came in.
Shoot. The corporal jumped up.
Good morning. Eddie's corporal sat down.
So I got up, looked at him. I said, is this where I sign up
to? Is this where I can sign up to
enlist? And this guy looked at me for a
minute and I mean, his face went white, you know, and he's, he
says, helly. I said, yeah.
So we hugged each other. We cried.
He took me to the officers club for lunch, which is kind of cool
because I'm a retired Sergeant, you know, and we're talking.
I said, Mike, I said, I, I thought I saw you when I was in
the hospital. I said, was that you or was I
just dreaming? And he looked at me for a
moment. He said, you know, because I had
a top sheet or a security clearance, you know, when they
want to make sure you don't divulge something.
So he was sent there and he was standard.
He said when I got there, he said they had operate on you,
but they and you are still on the Gurney from the operating
room and they pushed you out into the hallway and laid a body
bag over the end of your your Gurney and you know, because you
weren't supposed to make it. And he he said and I didn't want
to see you die. I never knew how close I had
come. And so in and out of
consciousness, 6 days later my brother comes in and I wake up
and I don't know what I look like and, and he walks past my
bed and he stops. Where's the doctor?
Couple beds away. And he says, excuse me Sir.
He said I'm Sergeant Helly's brother, could you tell me where
my brother's AT? And the doctor looked at and put
the chart down and I could hear him.
I couldn't turn my head. I could see him out of the
corner of my eye. I said, he said, son, He said,
your brother's going to die. We've done everything we can do.
He's not going to make it. And my brother stood there and
he said, well, can I see him? He said, they told me he's in
this ward, but I can't find him. Apparently he had walked past my
bed a couple times. And so the doctor took him by
one arm and a nurse came over on the other side, walked him back
to my bed, stopped and just stood there.
And my brother turned and looked at this massive human rubble
laying on the bed, ripped apart 70 some shrapnel wounds, burns,
2 bullet wounds. And he stands there and his face
just went white and he started to to weep.
And he took a step toward my bed and his legs buckled underneath
him and he grabbed the the end of my bed just sobbing.
I want to tell you Church, I was I had never been so afraid in my
life. I had, I felt a fear that day
greater than anything on the battlefield.
And I, I was 22 years old, three months for my 23rd birthday and
I landed that I said, God, if there really is a God, if you
let me live, I'll do anything you want.
And I went to sleep passed out and I can remember off and on
over the next few days as I would wake up.
My brother was always there. He was on the floor sleeping or
sitting in a chair. One day was one night he got to
sleep in a bed that was not occupied.
And he told me some years later, he said about the 10th day, the
doctor took him aside and it would been on the 6th day he got
there. He'd been in the field and he
said the doctor took him aside. He said, he said, Sergeant, your
brother's going to live. He's a mess, but he's going to
live. And it was a few days, about a
week after that before they felt I was strong enough to survive
the flight home. So they put me on a plane.
And on the way to Japan to refuel, I started bleeding
internally. So they took me off the plane,
took me to the naval hospital at Yukushka Navy Base in Japan, had
five surgeries over a couple weeks.
Then they put me on another flight back home.
I got to Chicago, Great Lakes Naval Hospital outside of
Chicago, got into the when they got me, took me in to the triage
to change my bandages. It was taking the bandages off
in this foul smell filled the triage room and the doctor
looked at me, said Sonny said you got gangrene in your leg,
We're going to have to take it off.
That was a rhetorical question. You know, he wasn't I couldn't
talk because that was I was not in agreement with that.
And so I'm in over the next few days, I would wake up different
times in that day. And this doctor at a team like
morning, night, middle of the night, this guy was working on
my leg. And one night I woke up, you
know, I, I'm a light, I was a light sleeper.
And you know, 1 morning I woke up with startle.
Somebody was standing by my bed in the middle of the night.
And I looked over here as his doctor.
And when he saw that I was awake, he looked at me, smiled.
And I'm almost sure this guy's a Christian.
And he, he looked at me and, and he said, Sergeant, he said that
Gangrene's gone. And he smiled, kind of shook his
head, grinned. He said, you know, that kind of
gangrene just doesn't go away. And he was Navy.
I'm Marines. So Doc, Marines are tough.
That's about all I can say, because I could hardly.
And so he shook his head, walked away.
So then they said one of the bullets had shattered my right
arm and shattered the elbow. And so they said they found a
bone infection. So it says we're going to take
the arm off above the elbow to stop the infection from
spreading. And that was not a, you know,
they weren't asking my opinion. They were.
So I remember waking up in in recovery.
And as I was waking up in recovery, I realized I was
holding my right hand. Navy guys, they like to play
tricks on Marines, you know, So I thought they just didn't throw
the parts away, you know, just parts as parts.
And so, yeah, but then my fingers moved.
And so, you know, so the doctor came in.
He said, you know, he said I was, I was all prepared to
amputate, but something compelled me.
They cut it open, you know, for the elbow all the way up.
They said something compelled me that we cut it open.
The bone infection is gone. So we did this, this, this and,
you know, medical terms. I have no idea what it was, you
know, And then they began to tell me, OK, you're going to be
here two, 2 1/2 years. You're going to have to have
surgery, therapy, recovery, then more surgery, therapy, recovery.
We're going to put pins and plates in your legs.
You're going to have leg braces. You'll have 15% use of your
right arm. You got strap on your eyes cause
you to go blind. You won't be able to have any
children. And, you know, kind of on and on
they went to encourage me. And, you know, nine months
later, 26 operations for plastic surgery operations on my face.
Yeah, I, I didn't always look this good.
Nine months later, I, I walked out of the hospital and I was
OK, at least on the outside. And then I went to work for a, a
private security investigation company.
I became a professional investigator, you know, wore a
suit tie, you know, and I learned 1971 after I got out of
the hospital of Vietnam, still going, but I could cover up a
lot of wounds. And on the outside, I looked OK.
I met my wife, convinced her I was normal, and we got married
anyway. And, you know, and, and for the
next two years, I put my wife through her own PTS program.
She has a Purple Heart plate on her car.
There's a reason for that, you know?
And two years afterwards, she, you know, she walked out.
She said, I love you, but I can't, you know, you're killing
me too. Well, right before that, we made
the mistake of walking into a church.
Now, my stepdad used to take us to a traditional church.
You know, we grew up and I don't think you ever should say
anything bad about your, you know, your background and Martin
Luther would be concerned. But you know, that's so.
So anyway, we went to this church that I'd always felt
comfortable in before, and we were ambushed.
Ambushed 2 born again spirit filled Lutheran pastors that
loved Jesus and they had a group of people in there.
They still had Lutherans, but they had a group of people in
there that were spirit filled, loved us, reached out to us and
we, they asked us to take part in a Bible study And Shirley
said, OK, and I looked at her like, you know, what are you
thinking? But so we went to this Bible
study and they had that first night they had icebreaker
questions. You know that to make you feel
comfortable when you already know you're not comfortable with
that, like the first time you walked into here and go, who are
they? These people?
So and so I'm trying to think of you understand.
And the last question was, when was God real in your life?
I'm trying to think of something that sounds religious, you know.
I mean, you know, I know peer pressure is just for younger
people, but I did want to fit in.
And so the going around a room church never happened before
since. But as I was sitting in that
room with these nine other couples, I was lifted up out of
that room and I was looking down in another room and I saw a man
laying on a bed, bloody and bleeding.
And I heard him say, God, if you let me live, I'll do anything
you want. And I was back in that room with
a mirror in front of my face. Spiritually, I looked in that
mirror. I saw a phony.
I didn't like that person I saw. Now I realize God had spared my
life. Why?
But it took my wife walking out. That brought me to rock bottom.
We are separated 10 days. We were living in Omaha at the
time and you know, we decided to get together.
You know, we wanted our divorce to be amicable, you know, be
friends that kind of and I like my version of it.
We met in a public place. I live in the South and you
know, he needed killing is a good it's justifiable, you know,
to and I needed killing. But we met and surely, yeah, we
knew these people had something different.
And Shirley said unless we put God first, we're not going to
make it. And I said, I know that, but how
do you do this? We went to her apartment.
I moved her out so quick so I could try to have fun again.
Did not have fun. And we moved to went to her
apartment and knelt by the bed and just cried out.
I said, God, what's missing? And the still small voice of the
Holy Spirit spoke and said, it's not what's missing, it's who's
missing. You need Jesus.
I didn't do this right. You know, I never watched
Christian TV. You know, somebody was said,
Amen. At our church.
That pastor would have been scared half to death.
And and so I, I probably didn't do this right.
But thank God that the word of God says whoever calls upon the
name of the Lord will be saved. I said, God, you know what's
been said that what's been but who's been I said, Lord, if you
can use somebody like me here I am.
And, and you know some of these veterans here, you know, every
morning when I got up with some of you who have been hurt and
wounded, every morning when I got up, I felt like I strapped
100 lbs of emotional combat gear on my back.
I carried this weight of guilt, of shame, of hate, of
bitterness, of unforgettable. I carried this weight around
every single day for 4 1/2 years.
And that night I said that simple prayer, the weight fell
off of me. And if I thought that, if I
doubted that anything had changed when I went to bed that
night and closed my eyes, I slept for the first time in 4
1/2 years. No nightmares of Vietnam since.
Or I did have a, a bad dream one night that I was in the church,
something like this, and I was preaching and I was so boring I
fell asleep. But that was a, you know.
But that was A and I need to. So God changed our life.
He healed my body. He healed our marriage.
Surely. I've been married for 52 years,
8 months and 22 days. Not that I'm counting.
I have two children that the doctor said I'd never have.
I have 5 grandchildren and 1 great granddaughter who's about
four months old. Shortly after I became a
Christian. You know, when I was medevaced
out of Vietnam when that plane lifted up and they would have to
accelerate as fast as they can because sometimes the enemy
would be at the end of the runway and shoot at aircraft
taken off. And you know, you're at a
medevac flash. You know, last thing you do is
get shot again. And, and I was on a stretcher,
probably about 3 or 4 off of the off of the high.
And but it's a plane tilted to go over Danang Bay to Vietnam's
a beautiful country. And I'm looking down the
beautiful beaches, the fishing boats out there, the mountains,
the, you know, the green trees and is it?
But I looked out that window and in my mind I never wanted to
ever see Vietnam again. Never, because it was too
painful. Shortly after I became a
Christian and got saved in early December 7475, maybe February,
March, I looked at Shirley and I said, I think I'm supposed to go
back to Vietnam. Well, April 30th, 50 years ago,
Vietnam fell and they were shut off from the outside world.
Nobody was going to Vietnam. For 14 years, I'd go to missions
conference, I talked to WYWAM people, I talked to anybody that
was going to Asia. What is going on in Vietnam?
Nothing. And so 1988, Shirley and I had
the the honor of going to focus on the family doctor, James
Dobson. He was still in California and
Doctor Dobson was doing, we're going to tape 3A series of three
radio programs on PTS. They call it PTSDI, Don't call
it PTSDI, call it PTS. Cause a disorder means there's
something wrong with you having the wounds of, of, of, of
whether it be Vietnam or abuse or rejection.
That's not a, that's not a disorder.
That's your system reacting to what's it, what's not a normal
situation. That's just my opinion.
But when you get to heaven, you'll see I was right.
And so we're on this program and Doctor Dobson's interview and
several other veterans. And he said to one of them, he
said, Bill, I understand you just got back from Vietnam.
And I said, yeah. I said, I believe that God gave
me a heart to take Christian Vietnam Veterans back to with a
message of reconciliation. You know, we all know 2nd
Corinthians 517, you know, if any person is in Christ or a new
creation, the old passes away, all things become new.
The next verse says, therefore, since we have been given this
ministry of reconciliation, as I believe God wants veterans,
Christian veterans to take a message of reconciliation to our
former enemy. And then, you know, we, I said,
I said to him, what do you get? You guys have any plans tonight?
You know, after, after we take part, can we take you out to
dinner? So we're talking about he's
sharing his heart with me and my heart's burning.
And he says, he just looks at me.
He says, you want to go? And I said, yeah, you know, pick
Shirley up off the floor. And several months later, 14 or
23 years after my first trip to Vietnam, I'm on a plane, I'm in
my 40s, and I'm going back with a camera bag and the gospel.
And I could tell you so many stories about what God has done.
I want to just tell one story in closing.
And then we're going to minister.
We took on a bunch of projects. We, we did some churches, but
our favorite, the beginning was a polio orphanage, 450 children
with polio, handmade braces. You know, these kids, we would
take toys and, and balloons and, you know, some clothing to these
kids and they were so happy. They had nothing.
They were so happy. But you know, and they just, you
know, here's you want to see a bunch of hardened veterans just
sob every time we left that orphanage after we had visited,
you know, we're just got tears running down our eyes.
And so we had done a product, we repaired their therapy pool that
hadn't worked since 75. And so we were negotiating.
I was a team leader. So I had I was meeting with the
communist officials that were over all the social services,
you know, for Saigon. Saigon was a city of about 9
million at the time. And so we were veterans, we were
Christians, we made no, we didn't hide that at all.
And so, and the all the communist officials were former
soldiers, you know. And so we started, they always
ask you, when were you here? Where did you serve?
Whatever. And so as we're talking, the man
over all the social services in 1966, we were on an operation on
the DMZ, walked into a regimental base camp at for five
days. We fought literally at times
hand to hand to fight our way out of that, out of that, that
jungle, nearly half my company was wiped out.
And as we were talking, the man that's in charge of social is
the was the regimental commander of that unit.
Asian culture has a thing called face saving.
We had just made him look good. And now he realized I had some
painful memories because of what his men did, you know, during
during the war. And so he looked through the
interpreter. We had interpreters.
Her name was Hen. She was a Buddhist, Buddhist
girl. And he said, why do you come?
Why do you do this for the people of Vietnam?
He said, we had the Ford Foundation here and, and, you
know, they said, Oh yeah, we want to help the people of
Vietnam. We showed them all the needs and
we've, we've never seen them again.
And then we had the the Carnegie Foundation, same thing.
We showed them all the, Oh yeah, we wanted, and they never came
back. You know, this may seem like a
small thing to you, but it's not to us.
Why do you do this? And so I looked at him and I
said, Sir, I said, Jesus Christ has healed all the painful
memories that I experienced in Vietnam.
And because of that, I can say that I love you and Jesus loves
you. Now.
There was about 12 communist officials on the other side of
the table and three of us, him started weeping.
My interpreter just started bawling.
And they're looking at us, looking at her looking at us
like, what did you you know, And we're like, like awkward.
Wasn't still a term yet, but it was awkward.
And then after a couple minutes, she finally got her emotions
under control and she asked me a question.
And so she told the Colonel what I said.
He looked at her and looked at me.
Look, he got up and he come around the long term.
So I got up and he come up to me, looked up at me.
I'm 64. Most of the Vietnamese are not,
you know, And it just threw his arms around me and had tears
streaming down his eyes. And I'm kind of, you know, and
afterwards, you know, I mean, we just hugged each other for the
longest time. And it's, and he looked at him
and said something and she said, he asked me to tell you that
he's never had an enemy tell him he loved him.
Only Jesus, only Jesus. The video, there's a video, 5
1/2 minute video of that story that's had one and a half
million hits on the Internet. And it's not about me.
I remember the first time they called said Roger, that videos
had over 1,000,000 views and hundreds of thousands of of
people got the next step to know about Jesus.
Not that's not about me. Because we live in a world where
there's a lot of people that are hurting.
There's a lot of people. One, they need to know that they
can be forgiven, and two, that they know no matter what they've
experienced, what they've gone through, what they've been, what
what has happened to them, that God will give you the ability to
forgive others no matter what they've done.
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
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