How wonderful this world is because we survived the greatest hardships that you can imagine.”

Eddie Kruczynski, Third Marine Division veteran

By Cyrus Guccione
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A group of Fountain Hills veterans gathered to commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day Friday, April 29.

Seated around a table and recounting their shared experiences over 50 years ago, six men went to war as strangers, all serving in different regions of Vietnam. They came back as brothers, sharing a bond forged in the crucible of combat along with a profound sense of loss.

“It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there,” says Roger Foreman, a fifth infantry division Army veteran who served in the demilitarized zone, a strip of land that divided North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. “There’s a saying in the military that the heart of a war is the infantry,  and that’s true.”

Army Veteran Richard Hollnagel of the 101st airborne division remembers going 45 days without a hot meal or change of clothes, trudging through the mud and the rain.

“The monsoons here would be a shower,” Hollnagel said.

A member of the Third Marine Division, Eddie Kruczynski recalled when the constant rain prevented helicopters from landing to provide necessary supplies. Pallets of food were dropped from helicopters flying above but the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) would raid the pallets before the troops could get to them.

Foreman vowed never to do anything intentionally in the rain for the rest of his life, a promise he’s kept since he was 18 years old.

Dying a thousand times

Most military divisions had a corpsman to provide medical support to their troop. Endearingly referred to as “Doc,” First Cavalry Division Army Veteran Mike Sholtz remembers getting ambushed and seeing Doc go down.

“We thought Doc was dead,” Sholtz said.

Following the war, Sholtz got a call from Doc who happened to live 25 miles away from him. The two caught up and spent time reminiscing about their time together as young men.

“Through the years, I thought I’d imagined things,” Sholtz said. “But when we got to sit down talking, I realized it was all real. I fought it all my life.”

As a surveyor for the Marine Corps, Rob Buchanan served 20 miles south of Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province. Despite getting wounded while serving in country, Buchanan said his parents “went through more hell than I did.”

“When I got wounded, they went to my mom’s place of business. When she saw the marine in dress boots, she died a thousand times. She thought I was dead. I mean, you and I knew where we were but our parents lived through hell because they didn’t know where we were.”

Exposure therapy

Foreman says gathering together is a form of therapy for veterans who seldom have the opportunity to speak freely of their shared experiences.

Serving in Vietnam and surviving the Battle of Dai Do, Kruczynski says the only person he can remember is the young Vietcong soldier who popped up out of the jungle 15 feet from the tip of his rifle.

“Our eyes met and he knew he was going to die,” he said. “When it was all over, He is the one face I can remember, and it will be there forever.”

Retiring from a career driving trucks cross country, Sholtz says it is meaningful to gather together with fellow veterans and share stories.

“It means a lot to me to sit down and talk,” he said.

Bothered by how difficult it is to explain the fear and inhumanity he experienced in his youth, Kruczynski carries a catholic scapular with him that contains a torn dollar bill he signed with his friend Joe whom he went through infantry training with in 1967.

“We said, ‘When we get back, we’re going to put that dollar back together again,’” Kruczynski recalled, who still carries his half of the dollar bill. “I still think, ‘Why me? Why did I get it?’ Whenever I start to get really melancholy and the medicine doesn’t work, I pull this out and look at it…how wonderful this world is because we survived the greatest hardships that you can imagine.”

During the gathering, Foreman passed out challenge coins created by Dennis Hollnagel as a symbol of camaraderie and to commemorate their shared military experiences.

We invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Cyrus Guccione can be reached at cguccione@iniusa.org.