Hill 861 Vietnam Veteran Talks About Surviving Worst Day

Vietnam Veteran Larry Hester tells the story of fighting on Hill 861
ABC News Channel 9
Josh Roe
July 5, 2017

WALKER COUNTY, Ga. — The walls in Larry Hester's office will tell you a lot about the man. A plaque hangs behind his desk that reads Walker County Veteran of the year 2007. It's right next to his 2014 Charles Coolidge veteran of the year.

There's a shadow box with a Purple Heart, and many other decorations from eleven months, and twenty days in country in Vietnam. These things that hang on these walls tell a story, but it's not the whole story.

"Easter Sunday is the worst day of my life," Vietnam Veteran Larry Hester said.

It was Easter 1967. The fighting there has been called the First Battle of Khe Sanh or the Hill Fights. Larry Hester was with the 9th Marines.
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Strange Bus Trip With Vietnam Veteran and War Protestor

A Vietnam veteran and a 1960s radical met on a bus headed for Khe Sanh
The Washington Post
By Daniel Malloy
April 28, 2016

DA NANG, Vietnam -- A half-century ago, they were on opposite sides of a nation divided over a distant war.

Suel Jones fought with the Marines in the jungles near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam. Later, he broke up an antiwar protest in Texas with his fists.

Mark Rudd was a Columbia University campus radical turned domestic militant with the Weathermen, battling those he called warmongers by any means necessary.

Last month they sat on adjacent bus seats in Da Nang traffic, having formed an unlikely but powerful bond. Jones spoke of rejecting his former self, forging a new path.

“What you’re describing is word for word my situation,” Rudd replied.

The men had joined a two-week tour of Vietnam sponsored by the antiwar nonprofit Veterans for Peace -- part of a group of a dozen veterans, protesters and others who were just curious about what the country looks like today. The group leaned left (Bernie Sanders would have won a bus straw poll), but individually, the travelers approached Vietnam from strikingly different perspectives.
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Vietnam Veteran Filmmaker "Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor" Earns High Award

Vietnam veteran, filmmaker to receive highest DAR honor
Stars and Stripes
By Matthew M. Burke
Published: April 26, 2016

During the 11-week siege in early 1968, a single surrounded and cut-off Marine regiment of about 5,000 and their supporting forces stood in defiance of three North Vietnamese Army divisions — about 20,000 troops. They were victorious, but only after 27 deaths, with 19 wounded and one taken prisoner.

Retired Marine Ken Rodgers poses during the Vietnam War at Khe Sanh in 1968. Rodgers will receive the Ellen Hardin Walworth Founders Medal for Patriotism, the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution's highest award, May 12 in Boise, Idaho.

COURTESY OF 'BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR'

A Marine veteran who turned his company’s harrowing tale from the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War into a documentary film will be honored with the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution’s highest award.

Ken Rodgers, of Eagle, Idaho, will receive the Ellen Hardin Walworth Founders Medal for Patriotism on May 12 in Boise, the society announced in a statement. The medal honors an adult who has displayed “outstanding patriotism in the promotion of NDSAR’s ideals of God, home and country through faithful and meritorious service to our community, state and nation.”
Rodgers, along with his wife, Betty, directed and co-produced the award-winning film, “Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor.” The film won the best documentary feature prize in 2015 at the GI Film Festival San Diego’s Local Film Showcase.
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Vietnam Veteran "redefined gratitude" for Corpsman

Semper fi: Vietnam veteran salutes corpsman who saved his life
High Point Enterprise
Jimmy Tomlin
Aug. 02, 2014
ARCHDALE

For Welch, though he may not have realized it at the time, a new journey was just beginning. The day he was injured — Jan. 25, 1968 — redefined his life.

And that newspaper photo, which ran the next day, redefined his sense of gratitude.

One day in late January 1968, the High Point Enterprise published a somewhat grisly, front-page photograph of a wounded U.S. Marine, lying flat on his back at a first-aid station in South Vietnam.

The young soldier’s gritty face reflected the anguish he was in as a medical corpsman tended to his left ear, which had nearly been ripped from the Marine’s face by enemy rocket and mortar rounds.

“Shocked And Wounded,” the caption read, explaining that the corpsman was talking quietly to the injured Marine to calm him.

For most readers, it was just another grainy, black-and-white war photo — an Associated Press dispatch from a divisive conflict being staged some 9,000 miles from North Carolina.

For one High Point family, though, the photo hit close to home. The injured soldier, though not identified in the caption, was their son — Lance Cpl. William Michael “Mike” Welch.

LAURA GREENE | HPE
Marine Corps veteran Mike Welch, of Archdale, tracked down the corpsman who saved his life in Vietnam more than 45 years ago.

“Yeah, my dad saw it in the paper and recognized me, but he didn’t show it to my mother until about a week after I got wounded,” says Welch, now 65 and living in Archdale. “He was afraid my mom would flip out and have a heart attack or something.”

Joseph Grayson Welch tried desperately to find out what had happened to his son — and whether he was even still alive — all the while keeping the newspaper from his wife, Mildred, and hoping nobody else would recognize their son in the photo and call it to her attention.

One day, finally, a cab pulled into the Welches’ driveway on Brentwood Street — a universally understood sign that they were about to receive a telegram from the military about their son. To their great relief, Welch had not died, but the telegram reported he had sustained “fragmentation wounds to the left ear, neck, both hands, back and both buttocks, with an open fracture of the left arm.” Hostile mortar fire, the telegram said. His condition was listed as “serious,” his prognosis “guarded.”

Subsequent telegrams provided medical updates — and some measure of comfort — for Welch’s parents, who are now deceased.
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Two Vietnam veterans finally receive honors after 4 decades

Vietnam veterans honored with Silver, Bronze Stars 4 decades after battlefield actions
By Associated Press
September 20, 2013

SAN DIEGO — Two Vietnam veterans were awarded the Silver and Bronze Star medals Friday for their courage in a battle on a jungle hillside where more than 75 percent of the troops with them that day were killed or wounded.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in his citation to the president that Joe Cordileone and Robert Moffatt showed extraordinary heroism during the first Battle of Khe Sanh in 1967. Marine Brig. Gen. James Bierman apologized to the veterans for the 46-year-wait, saying “I’m sorry that it took so long for these awards to work their way around to you.”

The men were never recognized until now because the commanders who make such recommendations were killed: Of the more than 100 American troops on the hill, 27 were killed and 50 were wounded.

The pursuit for medals for the men started with a retired Marine general listening to a group of veterans reminisce about April 30, 1967, when troops with Company M, 3rd Marine Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, advanced to secure Hill 881 South and were attacked by the North Vietnamese Army.
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Khe Sanh Vietnam Veteran sheriff recalls experiences

Worcester sheriff recalls Vietnam experiences
Delmarvanow.com
Oct 24, 2012
Written by
Brian Shane
Staff Writer

SNOW HILL — Facing death was a way of life for Marines in Vietnam, but for 77 days, Cpl. Reggie Mason had a front-row seat.

The Pocomoke City, Md., native joined the Marines in 1966 at age 18. He spent most of 1967 in DaNang, as a bodyguard and driver for a colonel. He had been putting in transfer requests to be in a combat unit.

In January 1968, he had re-enlisted and joined the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, an infantry unit nicknamed “The Walking Dead” for having so many men killed in action.

“I’ll never forget when I checked in,” said Mason, 66. “The staff sergeant said, ‘You’re that crazy-ass bastard from division that wants to go in the field. Get your gear — you’re going to see all you want to see.’ At 1300 hours, I was on a chopper bound for the DMZ.”

When they landed at Khe Sanh, Mason was given a new detail: Casualties.

His job was to shadow medics working with the wounded and dead, and bring them out of the Demilitarized Zone. He would radio in dog tags about who was wounded and how badly. For Marines killed in action, he would collect their personal effects from the body.
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