Tag: veterans

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Warm Water, Warm Hearts

By Bernie Hunhoff

One of the most beautiful evenings of the South Dakota holiday season comes Tuesday (Dec. 8) at Hot Springs, a city with a 131-year legacy of caring for the veterans of South Dakota. That’s when the local Stillwater Hospice (112 S. Chicago) welcomes family and friends of deceased veterans for its annual Holiday Tree to Remember program, beginning at 5 pm.

Dawn Hurney, Stillwater’s director of clinical services, says attendees are welcomed at the door and offered an ornament to hang on a tree in honor of their loved one.”We have a signup sheet at the front where they can write the names of their veteran. This can be someone who died in the past year, or who died many years ago. As the program gets underway we will read the names, and if they wish they can talk a little about the loved one they lost. It’s a beautiful time. It never ceases to amaze me how touching it is.” Hurney says the program is not limited to families of hospice patients.

Hot Springs has a rich history of caring for soldiers and veterans. In 1889, the very year that South Dakota gained statehood, the legislature established a Soldier’s Home there, partly because the city’s natural warm-water springs had already gained a reputation for health and rejuvenation. A few years later, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers began to send Civil War veterans to Hot Springs. The care was so well-received — both the waters and the people there — that President Teddy Roosevelt signed a bill to establish a federal veteran’s hospital that was originally called Battle Mountain Sanatorium.

Today the state’s nursing home is thriving. It’s now called the Michael J. Fitzmaurice South Dakota Veterans Home. The federal sanitarium grew to become the Veterans Administration Black Hills Health Care System. Hot Springs’ healing history has won it a nickname as”The Veterans’ Town,” and now attracts tourists who appreciate the patriotic mission of the community’s citizenry.

In recent years, federal officials were making plans to close the federal hospital. A”Save the VA” group organized to prevent the closure, and last September the Veterans Administration announced that it would remain open.

Warm spring waters was the first attraction for state and federal leaders who established health facilities in the Southern Hills city of 3,500. A warm-hearted culture has kept the nursing home and hospital open. Tuesday’s holiday tree service at the Stillwater Hospice is a holiday example of how the people of Hot Springs care for our veterans and their families.

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Stories Beneath the Stones

By Paul Higbee

Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis is the largest national cemetery in South Dakota. Photo by Buck Lovell.

Seventy years ago, sailor Daniel Baughman sent a letter home to his family and it has never been opened. Baughman, who was serving on a submarine during World War II, presumably wrote another of his typically upbeat letters. He was safe. Don’t worry.

Military personnel arrived at the sailor’s house ahead of the letter. He was lost at sea, they said. He wouldn’t be coming home. Later, the postman delivered the letter.

Only the family knows why the letter was never unsealed.

Maybe the pain of reading the young sailor’s optimistic words while knowing his true fate simply felt overwhelming. Or maybe preserving an object as he last saw it, un-torn, brought comfort and froze an earlier moment in time. Whatever the case, the letter is a personal memorial to one soldier, and there are hundreds more across the state in the form of carefully kept letters, photos and dog tags. Wherever the American military has engaged in combat or peacekeeping the past 120 years, South Dakotans have served — sometimes in numbers that lead all other states per capita.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides the stark white gravestones emblematic of national cemeteries. Photo by Ryan Clayton.

Public memorials have been constructed in many South Dakota towns, including the state capitol grounds in Pierre where life-size statues represent all branches of the military. Thousands of grateful people will visit those locations to remember fallen and surviving soldiers this Veterans Day, and many will also gather in western South Dakota’s five national cemeteries. Most veterans laid to rest in those cemeteries were not combat casualties. Most left the service, entered professions, raised families and lived many more years as former soldiers than enlisted soldiers.

But there’s something powerful about committing a deceased family member back to the ranks of the military, back to the beautiful straight lines and uniformity that mark national cemeteries, back to military precision.

Visitors to our national cemeteries might wonder how western South Dakota got five when there are entire states with none. Our state’s impressive per capita enlistment rate hardly seems to justify five national cemeteries in a state with fewer than a million residents.

South Dakota’s frontier military history, along with astute national politicians and Native people who seized a 2006 ruling that allows tribal governments to establish national cemeteries, all contribute to the state’s surprising number. Yet visitors to any of the five might simply conclude that beautiful landscapes, starry black skies far from urban lights and an overall sense of tranquility make West River South Dakota an unparalleled location for memorial grounds.

The national cemetery movement took root during the Civil War. Proponents believed that the federal government owed deceased soldiers a place of eternal rest. In 1862, the war’s second year, Congress authorized President Abraham Lincoln to set aside lands for burials for Union veterans. Tragically, because the war was so horrific, these cemeteries quickly grew to great size. In the East they became prominent landscape features, instantly recognizable.

No part of the federal bureaucracy was more eloquently defined than national cemeteries, thanks to language President Lincoln used in November of 1863 when he dedicated the burial grounds at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lincoln’s description of hallowed ground consecrated by the blood of soldiers, living and dead, still resonates — as does his call for Americans who visit to”resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” Inscriptions of the Gettysburg Address are standard features of national cemetery designs.

Only a few burials have occurred at a new 18-acre cemetery on the Pine Ridge Reservation near Kyle.

South Dakota’s biggest, Black Hills National Cemetery, sits at the eastern edge of the Hills near Sturgis. It turns 70 years old in 2018 and continues to expand, with more than 650 burials annually. Views combine the dark ridge of the Black Hills, rugged foothills and Bear Butte rising to the east. U.S. Senator Francis Case, who led the way to secure the cemetery and was himself a World War I veteran, is buried there.

Two national cemeteries categorized as historic, no longer open to burials, are at Hot Springs — longtime site of state and federal medical and residential services for veterans — and at Fort Meade outside Sturgis. Veterans as far back as the Civil War and Army campaigns against American Indians were laid to rest at the two historic graveyards. Civil War Medal of Honor recipient Charles L. Russell is buried at Hot Springs. The New York state soldier was recognized for gallantry during the bloody battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia, and later he headed west.

By contrast the two newest national cemeteries in the state are on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations. Sicangu Akicita Owicahe Veterans Cemetery (Rosebud) and Akicita Owicahe Lakota Freedom Veterans Cemetery (Pine Ridge) came about after the U.S. Veterans Administration opened its cemetery grants to tribal governments. The VA recognized that Native people have long enlisted in numbers exceeding the national average, and that many reservations in the West are a long drive from other VA cemeteries. Rosebud’s tribal government was the first to apply, won a $7 million grant, and opened its cemetery in 2013. The grant was the first of its kind awarded to a sovereign tribal nation and resulted in a unique, turtle-shaped cemetery layout. Turtles, in Lakota tradition, represent longevity and fortitude.

Pine Ridge wasn’t far behind its neighbor reservation, and its national cemetery occupying 18 acres opened in 2014 east of Kyle. Both reservation cemeteries honor those interred as United States soldiers and Lakota warriors. United States, tribal and POW/MIA flags fly in the prairie winds.

A handful of national cemeteries operate under the auspices of the Army (Arlington outside Washington, D.C., for example) or National Park Service (Custer National Cemetery at Little Bighorn Battlefield in our region). But most, including all five in South Dakota, are part of the VA’s National Cemetery Administration.

About the same time the National Cemetery Administration decided to support new reservation burial grounds, its leaders began thinking about what they call”stories beneath the stones,” some of them along the lines of the submariner’s unopened letter. Or, just as important, stories about what veterans who survived their service did with the rest of their lives.

The NCA selected three universities nationally to research those stories, including Black Hills State University in Spearfish.”This is a phenomenal way for our students to look at big national history through intimate, local stories,” says Kelly Kirk, a history instructor at BHSU and the project’s coordinator. Much of the initial research was done this past summer.”Once the community realized we were doing veteran research, they reached out to undergraduates,” Kirk says.

The concept of national cemeteries came during the Civil War. Veterans of that conflict are buried at Fort Meade. Photo by Stephen Gassman.

Student researcher Sidney May appreciated”the incredible connections I was able to make with people,” and the details families shared. She emailed back and forth with the Huntsville, Alabama family of Andy Andrews — and learned he earned his wings as an Air Force jet pilot before age 18, flew in Korea, and built a distinguished military resume that made him eligible for interment at Arlington National Cemetery had his family wished it. Red Pesek’s family told May that he fought German troops in Europe and also read Mein Kampf to better understand his enemy. Andrews and Pesek are buried at Black Hills National Cemetery.

Recent graduate Courtney Buck met a woman with an unusual set of World War II letters written by her parents, Patrick and Shirley O’Leary, when Patrick was stationed in Europe. Shirley kept not only Patrick’s letters but also her own, so that”we were able to see directly into the world of a soldier and his family statewide,” Buck says.”These letters are very rare because it’s hard to find someone who copied their letters before they were sent overseas.” The O’Learys are interred at Black Hills National Cemetery, and their story led Buck to the story of Daniel Baughman, the submariner lost at sea who wrote the never-opened letter. He was Shirley’s brother.

Buck also delved into the past of John Bear King. Buried at Black Hills National Cemetery, he was a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who served as a World War II code talker. She was struck by a historic irony.”John Bear King was able to use his native language of Lakota to pass on messages and information from their reconnaissance missions that the Japanese were unable to decode,” Buck says.”At one time the United States government tried to wipe out the Native American languages, then in World War II they were using it to their advantage, and it became a crucial part of communication.”

Another BHSU student, Katie Haigh, researched 19th century veterans whom no one alive remembers, relying primarily on newspaper archives. She studied the stories of two Medal of Honor recipients laid to rest at Fort Meade National Cemetery. Albert Knaak was a long-serving ordnance sergeant when he died at the fort in 1897, and it appears he never told anyone in South Dakota that he won the prestigious medal for actions in Arizona Territory. His grave marker made no mention of the honor, and the fact was buried with him for 79 years, until a study during the United States Bicentennial revealed the truth. Abram Brant was all set to receive his Medal of Honor at Fort Meade in 1878, two years after he risked his life carrying water for fellow soldiers at Little Bighorn. The night before the ceremony, apparently while engaged in drunken tomfoolery, he accidentally shot himself and died.

Less dramatic but just as significant, Kirk says, are stories that explain why men or women entered a certain branch of the service, where their enlistment took them, what brought them back to South Dakota and how their experiences shaped their post-military careers. About 25 students are conducting research, and what they discover will be made public in online documents and as part of materials prepared for school use.

Whether inspirational, ironic or profoundly sad, the soldiers’ stories add power to the already poignant sight of white markers gleaming under wide Dakota skies in five national cemeteries.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Stories Beneath the Stones

Six national cemeteries lie within South Dakota’s borders: Black Hills National Cemetery, Fort Meade National Cemetery, Hot Springs National Cemetery, Akicita Owicahe Veterans Cemetery (Rosebud), Akicita Owicahe Lakota Freedom Veterans Cemetery (Pine Ridge) and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate National Cemetery near Sisseton. Our November/December issue features a story about them and a new initiative through Black Hills State University in Spearfish that seeks to uncover the stories behind the men and women who are buried within these hallowed grounds. Our photographers traveled the state to gather images from each cemetery. Here are a few more that didn’t fit into the magazine.

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Four Stars and Two Shoes

By Roger Holtzmann

Carolyn and I are at the grandma and grandpa stage of life, which is a time of both joy and trepidation. Is there anything sweeter in heaven or Earth than a little girl whose face lights up when she sees you? On the other hand, I worry because she can look at wild animals and hear them roar on an iPad. Will she be content to read an animal book with grandpa and listen to his imperfect impersonation of an elephant? Such are the questions that keep me awake at night.

This is also a time of life when I sometimes read only the headlines in our daily newspaper; the stories seem to be on some sort of dreary loop in which the names change and little else. Something similar can be found on the comics page — Beetle Bailey is forever getting horribly mangled by Sergeant Snorkel, yet he always recovers by the next day, and Dagwood remains skinny as a fence post despite consuming heroic amounts of food — yet I never miss a day or a panel. This probably means something. Drop me a line if you know what it might be.

When I’m done with the comics I glance through the obituaries. Not to see if I’m dead, as the old joke goes, but because people close to my age, some of whom I have known for years, are occasionally showing up there.

Several years ago, my parents entered the downsizing stage of life. They moved out of their house and into an apartment, which necessitated getting rid of everything from snow blowers to boxes of photos and mementos they no longer had room to store. My dad, my brother and I were going through some of these land found countless treasures, along with the usual fare unearthed in such places. Lamentable wardrobe choices. Embarrassing haircuts. People nobody recognized. Then we came across a small, framed flag of four stars. Dad lifted it from the box and stared at it for a moment with faraway eyes.

“This was hanging in the window of Mom and Dad’s house when I got home after the war,” he said at last.”There was a star for each of us in the service.”

Uncle Ed, the eldest of Alphonse and Mary Holtzmann’s four boys, got drafted into the Army in 1941. He started out in the cavalry. It seems odd that the Army still had horses at that time, but in any event, the generals soon reassigned him to an artillery unit. Ed served in Europe.

Dad, next in line, enlisted in the Coast Guard. He trained as a radioman, and spent most of his time afloat on small weather ships in the North Atlantic. Convoys and aircraft on the way to Europe needed up to date weather information, so he and his shipmates bobbed among the U-boats to obtain it. Oliver, dad’s younger brother, was part of Patton’s fabled Third Army. Its combat arms earned that fame, but they did so with the support of men like Oliver. He was a cook.

Uncle George graduated from high school in May 1943, and was drafted a month later. He ended up in the Army Air Corps as a radioman/cryptographer, and took part in the invasion of Luzon and subsequent campaigns in the Philippines.

“Mom and Dad said the rosary every night for us,” said Dad, and their prayers were answered. All four of the stars on their flag were blue; families that lost a son in combat had gold stars instead of blue.

My dad’s story brought to mind something I heard from an acquaintance. Her son joined the Marines right out of high school, and he is now stationed in Afghanistan. After being in country for some months he came home on leave and got married. All too soon, I’m sure, he returned to the war zone and she settled into base housing in North Carolina. She leaves a pair of his shoes by the door, as if he has just stepped out and will be back soon.

“They also serve who only stand and wait,” wrote John Milton in a different context, but the sentiment applies. Most of us may never truly understand what it feels like to look at shoes by the door or count rosary beads like the days until loved ones return. That does not relieve us of the obligation to try.

Editor’s Note: This column is revised from the November/December 2013 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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In Memory

To commemorate Memorial Day, volunteers placed flags at every one of the 20,000 gravestones in the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis. The cemetery is a United States National Cemetery open to all members of the armed forces and their spouses. Those who served were also honored with programs sponsored by the South Dakota American Legion and Oglala Sioux Tribe. Photos by John Mitchell.

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Native Patriots

Our May/June issue includes a story on our Native American residents’ rich history of military service. Bernie Hunhoff visited the Standing Rock Reservation to visit with its veterans and their descendants. He took several photos on his trip — too many to print. Here are some of his extras.

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A Hero In All But His Own Eyes

By Roger Holtzmann

Editor’s Note: In 1998, the South Dakota State Veterans Home in Hot Springs was renamed the Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home, to honor our state’s only living recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. When the home recently dedicated a new, state-of-the-art, 100-bed facility they invited Fitzmaurice back for the ceremony. If he’s the same man we wrote about 17 years ago, we can’t imagine they got many war stories out of him.

State dignitaries recently cut the ribbon on the new Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home in Hot Springs.

Call it a difference of opinion, or a matter of interpretation. Call it whatever you wish, but the plain fact is that the United States Army and Michael J. Fitzmaurice do not seem to be of one mind when it comes to the events of March 23, 1971.

For its part, the Army uses phrases like,”conspicuous gallantry,” and,”above and beyond the call of duty,” to describe what Fitzmaurice did when North Vietnamese soldiers attacked his unit’s position at Khesanh, Vietnam. They awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military decoration, for his actions.

Fitzmaurice does not dispute the Army’s account of that night, but the self-effacing Hartford man does not seem convinced that his actions rose to the level of gallantry, either. He was just being a good soldier. Fighting as he had been trained, defending his post and helping the rest of his outfit live to see another day. He is quietly proud of that. As for earning the medal itself, there’s a very simple explanation for that.

“I just got lucky,” he said.

General William Westmoreland once compared the country of Vietnam to a don ganh — the pole that is carried across a man’s shoulders, with baskets suspended from either end — which has been used to carry burdens in Asia for thousands of years. Vietnam’s two most important regions, the Mekong River delta in the south and the Red River basin of the north, comprise the baskets; a slender strip of land hugging the South China Sea, the pole, connects these two. Near the center of that pole is the 17th Parallel, chosen as the dividing line between North and South Vietnam when the country was partitioned in 1954. Just south of that line, in the mountainous jungle near Laos, lies the village of Khesanh.

Early in 1968, Khesanh was added to the roll of battle names that will resonate down through American military history when North Vietnamese troops attacked and surrounded the U.S. base there. What had been a relatively quiet, obscure outpost suddenly loomed large when it became the focal point of a 77-day siege that reduced the defending Marines’ existence to a hellish struggle for survival.

A world away from Khesanh, in Iroquois, South Dakota, Michael Fitzmaurice was a junior in high school. By his own account, he did not pay much attention to the war back then. Following graduation in 1969 he and several classmates enlisted in the Army — he was the only one who ended up serving in Vietnam — and he left for boot camp on Halloween.

By the following May, Fitzmaurice was in the war zone, assigned to the Second Squadron, 17th Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division. As a helicopter borne unit, the Second was a reactionary force: they were deployed to places where combat was already going on and another outfit needed help, or to help rescue the crews of downed aircraft who were under attack. At other times they were assigned to,”fly in and look things over,” as Fitzmaurice laconically described it, searching bunker complexes and other suspect areas.

Fitzmaurice was in Vietnam for two months prior to the action at Khesanh.”I don’t know what a lot is,” said Fitzmaurice when asked how extensive his combat experience was during that time.”But we got shot at quite a few times. Nothing as serious as that night, though.”

Fitzmaurice as a soldier.

Shortly after the battle of Khesanh in 1968, American forces had abandoned the base. When the decision was made to go into Laos three years later, however, the airstrip was again needed to support raids against the Ho Chi Minh trail, just across the border. Fitzmaurice’s unit was assigned to guard the airstrip.

“We thought it was going to be good duty,” he said, grinning, but reality was quite different.”We were getting rocketed every night … there were ground assaults.” On the night of March 23, the North Vietnamese attacked once again. A company-sized force broke through the perimeter to where the helicopters were parked,”and things kind of went downhill from there,” said Fitzmaurice.

“I had just gotten off guard duty when they started coming in. I was wide awake,” he recalls. Fitzmaurice was in a bunker with three buddies when three hand grenades landed in their trench.”I threw two of them out, and covered the third with a flak jacket. It blew me up out of the hole, and that’s about it. I just stayed out there and finished up the fighting.”

Fitzmaurice’s account is remarkable for its brevity, but the Army’s version of events is more illuminating.”Specialist Fourth Class Fitzmaurice and three fellow soldiers were occupying a bunker when a company of North Vietnamese sappers infiltrated the area. At the onset of the attack Fitzmaurice observed three explosive charges which had been thrown into the bunker by the enemy. Realizing the imminent danger to his comrades, and with complete disregard for his personal safety, he hurled two of the charges out of the bunker. He then threw his flak vest and himself over the remaining charge. By this courageous act he absorbed the blast and shielded his fellow soldiers.

“Although suffering from serious multiple wounds and partial loss of sight, he charged out of the bunker and engaged the enemy until his rifle was damaged by the blast of an enemy hand grenade. While in search of another weapon, Specialist Fourth Class Fitzmaurice encountered and overcame an enemy sapper in hand-to-hand combat. Having obtained another weapon, he returned to his original fighting position and inflicted additional casualties on the attacking enemy. Although seriously wounded, Specialist Fourth Class Fitzmaurice refused to be medically evacuated, preferring to remain at his post. Specialist Fourth Class Fitzmaurice’s extraordinary heroism in action at the risk of his life contributed significantly to the successful defense of his position and resulted in saving the lives of a number of his fellow soldiers. These acts of heroism go above and beyond the call of duty, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflect great credit on Specialist Fourth Class Fitzmaurice and the U.S. Army.”

One of the three other soldiers in the bunker that night was Billy Fowler, from Georgia, Fitzmaurice’s closest friend in the whole outfit.”[Michael] was the first guy I met when I got over there,” Fowler remembered.”We just hit it off. But everybody liked him. He was just a good soldier.”

The explosion that tossed Fitzmaurice out of the bunker partially buried another soldier and Fowler,”but all I got was one little piece of shrapnel in my back, never even had to go to the hospital,” he said. In the confusion of the firefight they lost contact, but he and the others were pretty sure what had happened to Fitzmaurice.”We all thought he was dead.”

When the fighting ended that morning about sunrise, Fitzmaurice finally consented to be evacuated, and spent the next 14 months in and out of hospitals. He had numerous shrapnel wounds, one eye got dislocated, and the force of the explosion had raised havoc with his eardrums; doctors could not get the right side to heal properly for a long time. Fitzmaurice wears hearing aids in both ears today, which remarkably are his only ailments attributable to that night.

Fitzmaurice does not know who initiated the Medal of Honor process. He was back in South Dakota, working at a packing plant in Huron, when he received notification. He was married by that time, so he and his wife, Patty, plus two brothers and his parents, were invited to the White House on October 15, 1973. There he received his medal from President Richard Nixon.

“That was pretty interesting,” said Fitzmaurice.

As the only Medal of Honor winner living in the state, Fitzmaurice is a somewhat reluctant celebrity. South Dakota Public Broadcasting did a segment on him for its Dakota Stories program, and he frequently gets requests for souvenirs or mementos from all over. He has been honored by the state twice. In 1996, 25 years to the day after the action at Khesanh, Gov. Bill Janklow presented Fitzmaurice with a special license plate, CMH1, in recognition of his accomplishment, and in October of 1998 the state Veterans Home in Hot Springs was renamed in his honor.

Fitzmaurice works at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans Administration Hospital in Sioux Falls as a plumber these days. Seeing him walk the halls with a problem faucet in hand leads you to wonder: there were four men in the bunker the night those grenades landed. Michael Fitzmaurice acted, saving the others. Why him? Was it instinct? Exceptional courage? Something indefinable?

Because of his genuinely humble nature, Michael Fitzmaurice is of little help in answering that question.”We were just trained to do what we had to do. We were all in this little hole. We weren’t going any place,” he said simply. If pressed, he will venture a little farther.”I was closest to [the charges]. I didn’t think about it. There are lots of things we wouldn’t do if we stopped to think about it.”

Perhaps it is best for us all to leave his story there. Then we can believe that someday, if we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we might find within our hearts the capacity to be heroes, too.

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Do The Job And Come Back

By Chris Vondracek

Several years ago, Francis Whitebird revisited Vietnam and sat on the hill where he was injured 40 years ago. “It was so peaceful,” Whitebird said, from his home in Pierre.

He’s traveled much since Vietnam. He earned a master’s in education at Harvard University. He has been to the Wall in Washington, D.C. He has taken radiation treatment at Seattle for cancer he thinks was caused by Agent Orange.

A member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Whitebird has been living in Pierre, where he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Gov. George Mickelson. He now focuses his energy on preserving the culture and language of his Lakota ancestors.

His journey to Vietnam began in the St. Francis Mission School that he attended for nine years. He graduated from the Flandreau Indian School and enrolled in South Dakota State University. Agriculture was his major; he dreamed of becoming a rancher. The Army got in the way. “I went to a dance in 1967 and I saw this one kid get a war medal and I thought, ‘I want one of those,’ and the only way you could get it was going to war,” Whitebird said.

He enlisted, and the Army made him into a combat medic. He was stationed south of Da Nang, the second largest city in South Vietnam, with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade. His duties included a mix of going on patrols, radio watch and lugging a 90-pound rucksack. In the jungle, he dispensed malaria pills, made morning calls to sick soldiers, and regularly treated heat exhaustion. When firefights started, he had to switch his mindset. After a year, he decided he’d go back for more. “I couldn’t leave my guys behind,” Whitebird said. “I didn’t trust anyone else to look after them.”

He only remembers the nicknames of comrades. But Whitebird repeats again and again that they were a family. “If someone had a sore back over there, they wouldn’t tell you. They become brothers over there, we’re still brothers,” he said. Often, because he knew the infantry soldiers were less than forthcoming about their injuries, he had to be aggressive. If a guy was hurting, but mute about it to Whitebird, he would often kick the guy to the rear of the formation.

Whitebird witnessed not just the physical strain on his men, but the emotional as well. When men received”Dear John” letters from home, he would often send the men back to camp to get drunk for a few days. They weren’t fit for combat with the contents of the letter weighing on their minds. “If we kept them in the field, they might get themselves or someone else killed,” he said.

Some of his brothers never really left Vietnam. “They lost their spirit,” he said, and mentally they are trapped in the past.

Whitebird doesn’t understand why he and others adjusted from the horrors of war and others still suffer. Nightmares were common for him. When he first returned to the States, he stayed up nights and slept days. But he managed a return to routine.

Whitebird is now retired from government service and has two sons who have served in the military. It’s tempting to ask him about honor and service through several generations, but Whitebird will have none of that. “You went over there to do a job, did it and came back,” he says.”That’s that.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2006 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Flag Day at Veterans’ Memorial Park

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II and the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end. Sioux Falls residents and area veterans commemorated the occasions with a special Flag Day ceremony at Veterans’ Memorial Park on June 14. Photos by Scott and Marilyn Korsten. See more of Scott’s work at InspiredByNatureImages.com.