Vietnam War Service
"An Infantryman in Vietnam" * Jerry Piehl Sleepy Eye, MN
Jerry Piehl lives with his family in Sleepy Eye. He grew up there, graduating from St. Mary's High School in 1962. Thirty-five years and four months ago, he returned home from Vietnam after having served as an Infantry squad leader and platoon sergeant in the Army's 1st Cavalry Division.
Jerry was a heavy young man and his draft physicals showed that, so the draft board did not call him for service. After this happened three or four times, Jerry dieted and lost weight. He was tending bar in early 1968 when a woman asked him, "You look familiar, who are you?" He identified himself and asked her name. It turned out she was the head of the local draft board. Jerry ruefully explained, "Within a week I was down for another physical and I never went home again after that. . . . I was 25 years old when they drafted me."
The Army sent Jerry to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for Basic Training, then to Fort Polk, Louisiana and Fort Lewis, Washington for advanced training to prepare him for Vietnam service. His Drill Sergeants saw the spark of leadership in this older draftee, so he reported to Fort Benning, Georgia for Non-Commissioned Officers' School. He was promoted to Sergeant and flew out of San Francisco for Vietnam on December 14, 1968.
The Army assigned Jerry as a Squad Leader and later as a Platoon Sergeant in A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment. His battalion was a part of the 1st Cavalry Division which was operating in the central part of Vietnam north of Saigon.
An Infantryman's life during wartime tends to swing wildly between extremes. There are long periods of boredom at a base camp where the big event of the day is the menu at the chow hall. There are periods of anxiety during patrolling or when the enemy fires mortars at the camp. Then there are unforgettably frightening periods of combat when the Infantryman and his unit encounters enemy soldiers and are trying to stay alive while firing on an enemy they may not be able to see.
Jerry's unit used helicopters to move from their base camp (Landing Zone (LZ) Dolly) to patrol areas where they might encounter Vietcong or North Vietnamese forces. The Army awarded Jerry the Air Medal for participating in at least twenty such combat assaults by helicopter.
A combat assault is a frightening experience, whether you are wearing Union Blue during the Civil War; khaki during World War II; or desert BDUs in Iraq. Jerry’s experience of combat assaults involved jumping from a helicopter into the waist high grass of Vietnam at least twenty times. Three times he returned from those combat assaults carrying shrapnel in his body after leaving some of his blood in the dirt of Vietnam.
Jerry recalled one combat assault that quickly turned hot.
“We were always scared as hell and each Huey had a door gunner on each side and he’d start blowing his gun,” Jerry explained, “He would probably burn up a machine gun barrel – turn it red, you know – before we were getting ready to set down.”
His company landed in a grassy area and set up a security perimeter while the platoons and squads organized themselves to begin their patrol.
“We started moving out and all the sudden all hell broke loose,” he remembered, “We had walked into a bunker complex – like fifty bunkers.” He continued, “We all got behind ant hills (they were several feet tall) or whatever we could find for protection and I got my squad together.”
“I was hiding behind this ant hill and I was telling this kid who was with me (a new soldier) to keep your head down,” Jerry explained. He tried to tell the new soldier how to fire his weapon without exposing his head to enemy fire.”
“Well, he had to do it once more, he had to aim,” Jerry remembered, “All of the sudden his helmet rolled off the back of his head and the top of his head was lying in his helmet.” He continued quietly, “That’s one sight I’ll never forget.”
Jerry was a heavy young man and his draft physicals showed that, so the draft board did not call him for service. After this happened three or four times, Jerry dieted and lost weight. He was tending bar in early 1968 when a woman asked him, "You look familiar, who are you?" He identified himself and asked her name. It turned out she was the head of the local draft board. Jerry ruefully explained, "Within a week I was down for another physical and I never went home again after that. . . . I was 25 years old when they drafted me."
The Army sent Jerry to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for Basic Training, then to Fort Polk, Louisiana and Fort Lewis, Washington for advanced training to prepare him for Vietnam service. His Drill Sergeants saw the spark of leadership in this older draftee, so he reported to Fort Benning, Georgia for Non-Commissioned Officers' School. He was promoted to Sergeant and flew out of San Francisco for Vietnam on December 14, 1968.
The Army assigned Jerry as a Squad Leader and later as a Platoon Sergeant in A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment. His battalion was a part of the 1st Cavalry Division which was operating in the central part of Vietnam north of Saigon.
An Infantryman's life during wartime tends to swing wildly between extremes. There are long periods of boredom at a base camp where the big event of the day is the menu at the chow hall. There are periods of anxiety during patrolling or when the enemy fires mortars at the camp. Then there are unforgettably frightening periods of combat when the Infantryman and his unit encounters enemy soldiers and are trying to stay alive while firing on an enemy they may not be able to see.
Jerry's unit used helicopters to move from their base camp (Landing Zone (LZ) Dolly) to patrol areas where they might encounter Vietcong or North Vietnamese forces. The Army awarded Jerry the Air Medal for participating in at least twenty such combat assaults by helicopter.
A combat assault is a frightening experience, whether you are wearing Union Blue during the Civil War; khaki during World War II; or desert BDUs in Iraq. Jerry’s experience of combat assaults involved jumping from a helicopter into the waist high grass of Vietnam at least twenty times. Three times he returned from those combat assaults carrying shrapnel in his body after leaving some of his blood in the dirt of Vietnam.
Jerry recalled one combat assault that quickly turned hot.
“We were always scared as hell and each Huey had a door gunner on each side and he’d start blowing his gun,” Jerry explained, “He would probably burn up a machine gun barrel – turn it red, you know – before we were getting ready to set down.”
His company landed in a grassy area and set up a security perimeter while the platoons and squads organized themselves to begin their patrol.
“We started moving out and all the sudden all hell broke loose,” he remembered, “We had walked into a bunker complex – like fifty bunkers.” He continued, “We all got behind ant hills (they were several feet tall) or whatever we could find for protection and I got my squad together.”
“I was hiding behind this ant hill and I was telling this kid who was with me (a new soldier) to keep your head down,” Jerry explained. He tried to tell the new soldier how to fire his weapon without exposing his head to enemy fire.”
“Well, he had to do it once more, he had to aim,” Jerry remembered, “All of the sudden his helmet rolled off the back of his head and the top of his head was lying in his helmet.” He continued quietly, “That’s one sight I’ll never forget.”
The enemy unit withdrew after about ten or fifteen minutes of heavy firing because they knew the Americans would call in artillery or air strikes. Sure enough, Jerry’s company commander pulled the unit back two kilometers for an airstrike by big, B-52 bombers called “Arc light.”
“I was two clicks (kilometers) away and the ground just shook from the B-52 strike,” he recalled.
Jerry described what he saw when his unit went back into the bunker area the next morning, “It was a twisted mess of trees and bamboo, anthills, and bunkers.”
Jerry recalled one night on patrol, Good Friday of 1969, when his unit's nighttime observation post was hit by enemy mortar fire:
He explained, “They all came back in where my squad was dug in for the night. One of the guys ended up on top of my bunker and he had a tourniquet on all night long. They gave him a transfusion, Doc did, straight out of my arm into him. I had kept the tourniquet and I remember his leg looked just like a piece of skin. I mean the whole bottom of the ankle was . . . hanging there. I kept the tourniquet so he wouldn't bleed to death."
Later that same day Jerry suffered the first of three combat injuries when an enemy soldier blew a mine as Jerry and his men were trying to retrieve the bodies of two soldiers from the observation post that had been hit the night before.
“Two pieces of shrapnel got me – one right on the side of my head above the ear and one right below the jaw,” Jerry explained, “It was not serious enough to be medevac’d – they x-rayed me and saw the shrapnel was in there and it stayed in there the whole time I was in Vietnam.”
Jerry was wounded twice more during his 365-day combat tour – once by a bullet fragment in his shoulder and once by a booby trap that punctured his arm with dozens of tiny shards of hot metal. Both injuries left him with another Purple Heart award and also left him patrolling with his unit and his men.
War is a terrible thing. General Norman Schwarzkopf once described it as an obscenity. Our military personnel never make the decision to go to war. That decision comes from our President, usually in consultation with our Congress.
Service during wartime can involve days like the day Jerry was about to poke his head inside a jungle bunker and his radiotelephone operator behind him said, "Sergeant Piehl, don't move . . . look at that trip wire there." Jerry explained, "I had my hand down and there was a wire hooked to a . . . grenade staked to the other side of the bunker."
Service during wartime can also involve days like the day Jerry's platoon was patrolling and was ambushed. Jack Hatfield, the soldier who had taken over for Jerry as squad leader, and the man next to him were killed. Jerry could not recall the second man's name and that bothered him. He said quietly, "I was out there (the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC) November 11th for the 20th anniversary and I found his name. He was right underneath Jack Hatfield."
Jerry remembered ways his unit worked to help the soldiers while they were patrolling in the field. “We had a lot of hot meals,” he recalled, “They were good to us that way – they sent them out in old artillery canisters.” He added, “They would send out a couple duffle bags with enough beer for a couple for each guy and with a can of ice – they were good to us that way.”
Soldiers like Jerry Piehl swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not knowing where that oath may take them or what it may require of them. Then they try their best to carry out the mission assigned them by the President through the military chain of command. They don't get a vote on that mission.
Jerry Piehl served in the field, leading soldiers from LZ Dolly for 10 months. He returned from Vietnam on December 15, 1969, 365 days after he had arrived in Vietnam. He was 26 years old. Thank you, Jerry. Welcome home.
*Originally published in an edited version in April 2005 and found in "To The Colors - 2005."
“I was two clicks (kilometers) away and the ground just shook from the B-52 strike,” he recalled.
Jerry described what he saw when his unit went back into the bunker area the next morning, “It was a twisted mess of trees and bamboo, anthills, and bunkers.”
Jerry recalled one night on patrol, Good Friday of 1969, when his unit's nighttime observation post was hit by enemy mortar fire:
He explained, “They all came back in where my squad was dug in for the night. One of the guys ended up on top of my bunker and he had a tourniquet on all night long. They gave him a transfusion, Doc did, straight out of my arm into him. I had kept the tourniquet and I remember his leg looked just like a piece of skin. I mean the whole bottom of the ankle was . . . hanging there. I kept the tourniquet so he wouldn't bleed to death."
Later that same day Jerry suffered the first of three combat injuries when an enemy soldier blew a mine as Jerry and his men were trying to retrieve the bodies of two soldiers from the observation post that had been hit the night before.
“Two pieces of shrapnel got me – one right on the side of my head above the ear and one right below the jaw,” Jerry explained, “It was not serious enough to be medevac’d – they x-rayed me and saw the shrapnel was in there and it stayed in there the whole time I was in Vietnam.”
Jerry was wounded twice more during his 365-day combat tour – once by a bullet fragment in his shoulder and once by a booby trap that punctured his arm with dozens of tiny shards of hot metal. Both injuries left him with another Purple Heart award and also left him patrolling with his unit and his men.
War is a terrible thing. General Norman Schwarzkopf once described it as an obscenity. Our military personnel never make the decision to go to war. That decision comes from our President, usually in consultation with our Congress.
Service during wartime can involve days like the day Jerry was about to poke his head inside a jungle bunker and his radiotelephone operator behind him said, "Sergeant Piehl, don't move . . . look at that trip wire there." Jerry explained, "I had my hand down and there was a wire hooked to a . . . grenade staked to the other side of the bunker."
Service during wartime can also involve days like the day Jerry's platoon was patrolling and was ambushed. Jack Hatfield, the soldier who had taken over for Jerry as squad leader, and the man next to him were killed. Jerry could not recall the second man's name and that bothered him. He said quietly, "I was out there (the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC) November 11th for the 20th anniversary and I found his name. He was right underneath Jack Hatfield."
Jerry remembered ways his unit worked to help the soldiers while they were patrolling in the field. “We had a lot of hot meals,” he recalled, “They were good to us that way – they sent them out in old artillery canisters.” He added, “They would send out a couple duffle bags with enough beer for a couple for each guy and with a can of ice – they were good to us that way.”
Soldiers like Jerry Piehl swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not knowing where that oath may take them or what it may require of them. Then they try their best to carry out the mission assigned them by the President through the military chain of command. They don't get a vote on that mission.
Jerry Piehl served in the field, leading soldiers from LZ Dolly for 10 months. He returned from Vietnam on December 15, 1969, 365 days after he had arrived in Vietnam. He was 26 years old. Thank you, Jerry. Welcome home.
*Originally published in an edited version in April 2005 and found in "To The Colors - 2005."