Vietnam vets receive belated Silver Star honors

Vietnam vets receive belated Silver Star honors
By Chuck Carlson -
Battle Creek (Mich.)
Enquirer via AP
Posted : Monday Apr 16, 2012

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — It was, Doug Ludlow recalls nearly 43 years later, “a long day.”

He was 19 years old, stuck deep in the stifling rubber tree jungle near Quan Loi in South Vietnam and wishing he was anywhere else.

It was Aug. 10, 1969, and Ludlow, a private in the 1-16th Infantry Iron Rangers, was trying to help hold off a vastly superior force of North Vietnamese when the 50-caliber machine gun he was firing in his armored personnel carrier malfunctioned.

But in the course of the 10-hour firefight that, according to official sources, cost 10 American lives and double that of the NVA, Ludlow found himself doing things he never really thought he was capable of.

“In a 10-hour gunfight, there are a lot of stories that will never be told,” he said. “When you’re 19 years old, you know you’re going to lose somebody you know, but it won’t be me. But on this particular day, the amount of fire power the NVA had and we were seriously outnumbered, you begin to think your time is running out.”
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