"Soldiers of Today and Yesterday"
" Honor,Dignity & Hope "

It is the rare soldier who wants to hurt people and break things. The US history is one dominated by men and women who engaged in warfare not for the process but for the outcome, to make things better for others, not for themselves.

"You want to do something for me, you go back to college and make something of yourself. Why do you think I go fight in these wars? It is for your mom, your sister and you. I want your world to be a better place. Now let me go do what I am trained to do."

These were the words of a United States Naval Officer to his twenty-one year old son who was going nowhere and getting there fast. This Naval Officer had twenty-seven years under his belt at the time along with two wars. Now at the age of forty-six, he was going off to the "war" in Vietnam. With his age and time in service, he knew exactly what was in store for him, not like a lot of the young boys and girls who were going off to war with him. He was not going to Vietnam to break things and hurt people. He was going to be there to help keep "America’s finest" healthy and safe and to be

able to bring, as many as he could, back home to their friends and families. He was a medical officer. His twenty-seven years was spent to bring medical care and comfort to marines and sailors and their families and friends.

He knew what to expect when he arrived in Vietnam. He had served with the Marine Corp in the South Pacific Island D-days and he was the medical officer stationed aboard a US Naval Destroyer off the coast of Korea. Just prior to this deployment to Vietnam, he had known first hand of the real dangers there because of his former assignment. Many may remember what it was like for our returning warriors. If this was a tragedy for our soldiers, can you imagine what it was like for their families? This officer’s duty was to provide care, comfort and transition from being a mother and a wife of a sailor or marine to that of a widow of a fallen warrior. That is a tough job.

There was no such thing as a 9 to 5 job in this assignment. The phone calls of crisis and fear from these widows came at all hours of the night and

day. The personal challenges for these families could not and would not wait until the next business day. It was enough for all of us in those days to have to tune into Walter Cronkite at 6:00 p.m. and hear him report on the "body bag count" for the day. This Naval Officer’s wife watched what he had to deal with everyday and this presented an even more realistic and personal view of what war could bring.

What is even more revealing of the character of this Naval Officer is that he knew of the stress and fears his tour in Vietnam would put on his wife, but he had important work to do for his nation. He was not naïve. By 1967, the war had been escalating for many years. The handwriting had been written on the wall for a long time. He knew that with his years of training, education and practical experience, he was a prime candidate for a high paying safe job right here in the USA in the public health field or hospital administration, but he also knew how effective he could be in the more important job of protecting our young men and women in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

His wife said that she would not allow herself to be caught up in the anxiety and stress of watching the news for the next 365 days. She had seen many mature wives of officers and sailors, sink deeply into depression and try to escape the stress through a bottle. She took their teenage daughter to Europe for a year of study abroad. This would be her distraction. They enrolled in college and even lived separately in host families to immerse themselves in the new language and culture. His son took the advice of his father and went back to college out of respect for the vision that his father had for him and his country.

We may never know why the father chose to dedicate his life to his country this way. It may have started as a young boy growing up during the Great Depression. He knew two retired Chief Petty Officers in his neighborhood. He knew of their service to our country and he also knew of their retirement check that came once a month like clock work. Although his own father was able to find some limited work as an electrician in the railroad shops, he had an alcohol problem and was not the most loving of fathers.

-2-

Still his father may have set an example for the young boy to model. He heard the stories of how his father as a young man went off to Mexico to help Pancho Villa in the revolution for freedom against the evil dictator Porfilio Diaz.

His mother had a younger brother who was about ten years older and often served as a father figure. His uncle and he had a close relationship and often talked of many subjects. I am sure that they discussed current events and politics. It is a family tradition and something must have motivated them both to enlist in the Navy. The boy was then nineteen years old in May

of 1941, well ahead of Pearl Harbor, but they knew that a war was coming before many others did.

As a young boy entering the Navy that spring of "41," I am sure he looked every bit the picture of a warrior. He was 6 feet 3 inches tall, 245 pounds and strong as a bull. There was, however, a gentle, caring nature under that bulk. He had talked of his interest in being a doctor, but the times and conditions had made this vision seem unrealistic. After entering the Navy, he requested training as a hospital corpsman as this would meet some of those internal goals.

After completing his corpsman training, the war broke out and he was reassigned to the Marine Corps 3^rd Division that meant boot camp training again. You see, the United States Marine Corp does not recognize the other branches boot camp. He was then deployed to Australia for further training to prepare for what would become the long hard slog towards the main island of Japan. Before shipping out, he met a young sixteen year old girl and her fourteen year old sister at a musical performance at the Hollywood Bowl. Although he dated the sixteen year old, it was her little sister that had caught his eye. Over the next three years while he was away, the fourteen year old kept in touch with him by mail.

In the summer of 1944 following the battle for Saipan and Tinian, he had earned a little time off and was rotated back to San Francisco to help prepare for the final big push into Japan. Now this young girl was sixteen and they dated that summer and fall, when they could. Then came the news that he would not be shipping back out to the Pacific. He would be stationed in California. At the time, of course, no one knew the "big secret." He called his girl in LA and told her the news and asked her if she would come up to San Francisco to marry him. A few days following her seventeenth birthday, she dropped out of high school and took a train and married her young Chief Petty Officer.

You might wonder why a story intended to tell about the adventures of a thirty year, three war combat veteran told so little about war and war experiences. This is because, even though I was that aimless son in 1967, my father never wanted to talk to me about his combat activities. Most of what I know, I know through my mom. She was the one who comforted him in the middle of the night when he would wake up screaming or crying from a dream. She was the one who told me how it scared her when she would awaken in the night to see him dreaming with his arm sticking straight up in

the air. He was holding on to the imaginary bunk above him so he would not roll out of his bunk. In his dreams he was back in the rough seas of the Pacific off shore in the Korean War assigned to a Naval Destroyer, the Bausell DD845. The Bausell received three battle stars for her Korean service.

Today, my father is eighty-three years old. He still presents an impressive figure of a man. Maybe that is only because I see him through the eyes of an admiring son, who knows so little about the details that make him a true American Hero and yet I know "enough." As recently as the "First Gulf War" he called his old commanding officer and said, "I know I am seventy years old and not up to speed on some of the new technology, but maybe I could be of some help." His commanding officer who is also retired said, "Let’s hope that they don’t have to reach that far down into the barrel."

Epilogue: Senator Bob Dole and actor Tom Hanks worked to develop the new World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. They wanted it to honor not just the men and women who served, but all of the people who stayed behind to help support the war effort. I was opposed to that. I thought that it should be limited to only those in uniform. In writing this article, I got to that point when my dad was shipping out to Vietnam and thought of what my mother must have gone through, I cried. Then I realized that Bob and Tom were right to honor everyone.

Submitted by: Robert K. Rose, proud son of CWO-4, James Monroe Rose and Mildred Elinor Rose