THEY REMEMBER WAR  « Table of Contents

John M. Lloyd and his late wife Patricia are founding members of Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Their marriage produced three children, and from these came five grandchildren. For many years John was a successful executive in  laundry service and in the uniform supply and rental business. Patricia was a homemaker and served a long time as a volunteer worker. John's Navy service in World War II included over a year at sea with a gun crew and almost another year of duties at Camp Shoemaker in California.

I was 17 when I entered the Navy July 5, 1944. After boot camp, I was sent to Hugh Manley High School in Chicago. Part of the school then was being used by the Navy for radio training. My grades were poor, so the Navy sent me back to Great Lakes Naval Training Center to be interviewed for a job. I volunteered for armed guard on a merchant marine ship and they sent me to Gunnery School in Gulfport, Mississippi. I trained on a 5" 38 caliber gun. All the training guns were wooden. At Shell Beach, Mississippi, we trained with live ammunition.

After gunnery training, I was assigned to the SS Fort Laramie in Panama. The ship had 25 Navy men and about 25 to 30 merchant seaman. Our ranking officer was a lieutenant junior grade. The rest of us were enlisted men. I soon attained the rank Seaman 1st Class, equivalent to a corporal in the Army. Our ship carried different grades of oil and different grades of fuel. I was part of a 7-man crew that handled the 5" 38 gun on the ship's stern. There were four 20 mm guns on the first deck and one 3" 50 caliber gun in the bow. The ship was also equipped with depth charges, located near the stern.

Do you recall the name of the lieutenant j.g.?

I'm sorry I cannot.  The names of most of the guys I served with escape me now. I do remember one, Paul Lies. I think he was a trainer in our gun crew.

We left Panama about  January 18, 1945.  Our first stop was Hollandia, New Guinea, but we weren't allowed to go ashore. The Navy had a huge supply depot at Hollandia. The place became like a home port for us. Our next assignment was Leyte Island in the Philippines. We were part of a convoy of about 50 ships. Our position was in the middle of the convoy where I thought there wasn't a great chance of being hit by a torpedo. Little did I know. The second night out a ship about 300 yards from us was hit by a very large explosion. We thought it was done by a Jap submarine. None of the ships carrying supplies stopped to help the badly damaged tanker. I'd been ignorant of the danger we were in. Now I finally realized the danger of being easily seen by the submarine with all the burning fuel around us. Eventually U. S. Navy ships guarding the convoy tried to help the struggling merchant marine crew. Later I was told no one had survived. For the first time it struck me that we were in a real war. 

We finally arrived at Leyte, my first visit to a country at war. There was a great deal of fighting on the shore and in the wooded areas about one or two miles from us. I saw Jap planes bombing and strafing American positions.

Did you come under fire at Leyte?

No. Nothing was fired at our ships in the harbor. I wasn't afraid of being hit by Jap planes. They were concentrating on land warfare. After a while I figured if they were gonna bomb us they'd have done it by now. We sent oil ashore via oil hoses. We had many hoses and we could lay a lot of oil in a place. On ship I couldn't see the tanks we were filling. Two days later we left Leyte for a return trip to Hollandia. From Hollandia we headed for Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. The temperature was a high 126 degrees, the Gulf water a very light blue. We stayed in Bahrain about two days and headed for Darwin, Australia. We took on food supplies for a trip to the Admiralty Islands. Few ships were there. We dropped off supplies and left the following day.

We came on some loose American mines. We fired every weapon we had at them but without success. We couldn't get too close for fear of hitting a mine so we swung around the mines and went on. We got orders to return to Hollandia. On the way back we stopped at Peleliu Island where there'd been a terrible battle with the Japs. I'm surprised the paper didn't give the battle more news--they were due it. We dropped supplies at Peleliu and headed back to Hollandia. The war appeared to be slowly ending.

Did you ever fire at any enemy?

Only once outside Leyte. We saw Japanese planes and fired at them but they were too far for us to hit any.

Did the Laramie drop any depth charges?

Not on any subs. Merchant mariners manned the depth charges, but they were seldom used and then just for practice. The only Jap sub I knew of was the one that I told you about, that torpedoed a ship in our convoy to Leyte.

What was your job in the gun crew?

I had several jobs but wasn't very good at any of them. I can't recall them exactly now. I believe one time I was a pointer, another time a trainer. I never could understand sight setting. They wanted me to be a signalman. I was totally inept at that. (Laughs)

You'd think merchant mariners could keep their refrigeration equipment working, (Chuckles). The refrigeration went out so we headed to Pearl Harbor to get it fixed. During the trip to Pearl all the Navy got to eat was K-rations.   

In all our time on the Ft. Laramie we Navy guys weren't allowed to leave the ship. After the war, the captain of our gun crew did get off and went into town. I think he got off somewhere around Panama, but I'm not sure of that. He was not a likable guy. He apparently fooled around on shore because later it was common knowledge he got gonorrhea and syphilis. Our bursar handled finances, but he also did other things, like giving shots. One time I saw him take a big syringe and give our gun captain a shot.

There was poor interaction between us Navy and the civilian crew, a lot of whisky drinking among the merchant seamen. The Navy had beer but the merchant guys wouldn't give us access to the whisky or let us in the engine room. I saw the captain only once. According to some civilian seamen, the captain stayed in his cabin and boozed it up. The merchant first mate ran the ship. Eventually the captain was relieved. We got another captain, but he didn't last long. Then we got a third captain. I don't remember much about him. He may have been better than the other two but that's not saying much.

Every night merchant mariners blew out the smokestack and blackened the deck and the guns. We Navy guys had to constantly chip away blackened paint and lay down cobalt blue paint. If you didn't have anything to do, you got a paint job, either chipping or slapping on paint. I spent many an entire day chipping paint.

In wartime there's always a great need for warm bodies, so the civilian and military services don't always get the best caliber of men. The civilian crew on the Fort Laramie was a boisterous lot. They constantly moaned and groaned that they weren't getting enough money. They bitched about having to do Navy drills and pass ammunition to us. I saw many fights, merchant seamen slugging it out with other merchant guys and Navy guys pounding on each other. I found the best way to get along was to keep to myself, not argue, not say much.

The civilian bosun on the ship was pretty old. I think he'd been in World War I. Suddenly he disappeared. Several merchant guys said he'd been thrown overboard. I was amazed. He was smart and knew how to fix things. He seemed like a nice guy. I didn't think he was unpopular. There was no investigation, nothing else about him. I got to feeling I was on a ship from hell.

One time at Pearl Harbor I had the afternoon watch. My only company was the 5" 38 caliber gun. After a while I noticed a ship slowly making its way to the harbor. Before long I saw the ship listing to one side. The entire ship looked to be badly damaged. Little did I know. The ship continued on and I could see it would likely take the dock space in front of ours. It did exactly that. This carrier was the USS Franklin and the crew looked exhausted and dejected. They stood at parade rest and were making the best of it. They had a band playing the Navy hymn, "Eternal Father." It was an extremely sad moment. I'll never forget that day.

Before long we heard what happened to the Franklin. It had left the convoy to get close to the Japanese mainland to launch fighter planes and attack key targets.  A Jap plane came in low level and bombed the ship. The carrier's elevator and a good part of the flight deck were destroyed. The Franklin was a mass of flame and fire. The heat was intense in almost all parts of the ship. It was very hard to put out the fire. Many enlisted men manned the hoses and turned them on full blast. A chaplain organized and directed rescue teams.

An enlisted man asked to help a burned sailor. The chaplain gave the go-ahead. When the sailor reached the badly burned man, the sailor extended his hand in friendship. The burned man could not hold the hand of the brave sailor. The sailor then reached with his hand and started to shake hands with the burned man. Suddenly the hand and arm came loose from the burned man's body. He had been dead for many hours.

Years later I read a good book about the Franklin. It told about the ship being hit by a 250-kilogram bomb. The bomb set off a chain reaction of exploding ammunition and aircraft fuel. Lieutenant Commander Joseph O'Callahan, a Catholic priest, was the ship's chaplain. He gave last rites to many wounded and dying men, and he directed the rescue efforts. He was the first American chaplain ever to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

This photo was taken from Wikipedia. According to the book on the Franklin, the injured man was Bob Blanchard, and he survived.

The worst area on the Franklin was the hangar deck just below the flight deck. Three hundred sailors were trapped down there and there appeared no way to rescue them. Finally, Lieutenant (j.g.) Donald Gary found an entry place, and he was able to go in there and lead groups to safety. He also got the Medal of Honor.

Through the heroic efforts of many brave men and the light cruiser USS Santa Fe, which picked up a lot of wounded, many men were saved. But the casualties were terrible: 798 dead and more than 487 wounded. The Franklin was able to get enough power to hobble back to Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was rebuilt and reactivated, but unfortunately in 1966 the ship was scrapped.*

Our ship continued in the Pacific and gave other ships and ports supplies. Finally the big day came when the war was over. I think it was off Hollandia when we cut loose with our guns and fired the V for victory sign in the air. There was so much gun smoke we couldn't see any V (Laughs) Soon we were throwing all ammo into the sea. Who decided on this strange activity I don't know.

How did you feel about that?

I didn't like it. It was a terrible waste. The projectiles, canisters and all that stuff had to lifted on pulleys and brought to the side of the ship and thrown over. It was a big job, took a long time. We kept the guns.  

We finally returned to our stateside base, New Orleans. These were happy days. We got paid and a 30 day leave. I had a great vacation at home before being assigned to Shoemaker, California, for processing. It was a huge base, and the mess halls could hold up to 1,000 men in one or two sittings. Shoemaker was where many of us went when we didn't have enough points to get discharged. We bunked in Quonset huts. It was the old military thing of "hurry up and wait." You quickly learned that you might be called in two or three days or a number of weeks to be interviewed. There were five interview desks and the lines were very long. The interviewer always asked everybody the same question, "Ship or island?"

Finally my time came to see the interviewer, an old Navy Petty Officer. When he asked "ship or island" I said, "Neither." I thought this remark would cause some bodily problems. Fortunately it did not. He seemed to gather his senses and asked, "Well what do you want?" I told him I could type. He handled it well and said there was an opening at the Marine Brig. When I reached the brig I wasn't quite sure I'd made a good choice. No time to think things through. I went in and a young guy said, "May I help you?" I told him of my "skill." He said the job had been filled in the past 20 minutes. My heart sank.

I got back in that long, long line. Fortunately, I got the same interviewer. He told me there was an opening at Group B Headquarters. I became a clerk typist at Group B, even though I could type only 15 words a minute. Duty was good there. My sleeping area was much better than bunking in a Quonset hut.

One time I had the night watch. A big, tough-looking guy came in, face flushed, very drunk. He'd been assigned to scullery duty, and I tried to remind him of that.

Drunk: By God, I been in this man's Navy six years and nobody's gonna make me do damn pots and pans.

Lloyd: Just a minute, please.

I went to the Chief Warrant Officer's (CWO's) room. I woke him up and told him the situation. He was a tough cookie, imposing, like a bearcat. I don't recall his name exactly, something like "Workingteen." Anyway, we both walked out to meet the drunk. The guy kept raving about being in the Navy six years and be damned if he was gonna do any scullery work.

CWO: Are you through?  

Drunk: (cursing, babbling)

CWO: I've been in this man's Navy 33 years and I'm telling you, you are going to pull your detail. Lloyd, call the Shore Patrol. Tell 'em to bring SP's down here and escort this man to the scullery. 

Lloyd: Yes sir.

Soon three SP's came in. One took hold the drunk's one arm, another grabbed his other arm, a third handled his back and they marched the guy right down to the scullery. (Laughs)

I got to know a lieutenant who'd also served in armed guard on a merchant ship. He was a very nice guy and loved to play ping pong. He asked me if I could play and I said I could. He said, "I like to play every afternoon at three except weekends. Let's clear out the supply room and set up a table." So we did. I forget where we put the supplies, but we had plenty of room to play ping pong. (Chuckles) We played a lot of games and I beat him every time. (Laughs) When it got close to my discharge time, he wanted me to stay at Shoemaker and play ping pong. I guess he was hoping he'd eventually beat me.

After about eleven months at Shoemaker, I was sent back to Great Lakes and discharged on June 5, 1946. It felt great to be a civilian again.

The Franklin and World War II were very much on my mind when I recently attended Pearl Harbor Survivors and World War II Veterans Recognition Day. Here's a news clipping from the Gainesville Sun. That's me in the blue jacket, far right.

* Joseph A. Springer. Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II. Zenith Press, 2007.

Richard (Dick) Martin graduated from Duke University Divinity School and ministered at churches in Scotland and Virginia. In 1962 he entered the U. S. Army as a Methodist chaplain. In 1986 he retired from the Army with the rank of colonel and then joined the staff of Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida, where he directed senior adult ministries. In 2007 he and his wife Patricia brought their community spirit and expertise to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Dick has been using his video skills to help build a library of DVDs documenting many important activities at Oak Hammock. He also conducts Oak Hammock religious services as a volunteer. Pat has been doing beautiful needle work, contributes regularly to the community's newsletter, and volunteers in the Outpatient Clinic. Dick and Pat are the parents of three daughters and have three grandchildren. In the story below Dick talks about his vivid memory of an instance during World War II, how he came to be an Army chaplain, some of his experiences with a combat division during the Vietnam War, and major Army assignments he had after the war.

I was just a young kid in World War II, and I had an older brother who was in the Army. He went to OCS [Officer Candidate School] and became a tank commander in North Africa with the Second Armored Division in Patton's Seventh Army. Everybody was worried. We'd hear about the dangers. There was this helpless feeling because you didn't know what was going on. The only news sources we had then were the radio and newspapers. The news was very slow in those days. Something could have happened two weeks ago and we didn't even know about it till much later.

I have one vivid memory. I used to sleep upstairs on the second floor of our farmhouse and I remember several times waking up in the middle of the night, and I would hear my mother down on the first floor pacing around and humming the tunes to some of the old hymns. And I guess that was her way of dealing with my brother being in harm's way. Because she just didn't know. We were all dealing with uncertainty in those days.

But my brother came home safely. He was so happy to be home. He was like many combat veterans; he never talked about the war. He went to college on the GI  Bill and got his master's in agronomy.

I had a deferment while in college and the idea of the military never occurred to me then. After seminary, I spent a year in Dumfries, Scotland, as Assistant Minister of St. Michael's Church and returned to Northern Virginia to become minister of Charles Wesley Methodist Church in McLean, Virginia.  I had a lot of military people in the church and they started talking to me about the chaplaincy. So I began to investigate that as a form of ministry. After four years at the McLean church, I sent in my application. I had a colonel in the congregation and he sort of walked me through the Pentagon.

My first application came back and said I was medically disqualified because half my left thumb was missing. I'd hurt it as a kid chopping wood. That doesn't seem like much of a disqualifier (Laughs). But there was something in the regulations that says that if you're missing part of a finger you're disqualified. (Laughs) The next day I called this colonel friend and told him about being disqualified. He said, "Aw, I'll take care of that!" So I got a waiver. We had a three-year commitment. My first thought was to spend three years and then go in the Armry Reserve. But I got in, Pat and I liked the active Army, and we decided to stay.

I went in as a first lieutenant. Later they started bringing in chaplains, doctors, lawyers and professional people as captains. I had a wonderful career. My first assignment was with an engineer battalion at Ft. Meade, Maryland. That was 1962, just as the Cuban Missile Crisis was heating up. About a month after I got in, we were on alert to go somewhere and do something. We didn't know what. I didn't even have my security clearance yet. The commander just said, "Pack your stuff and be ready." But we didn't go anywhere. I thought, umm, this may not be all that I had planned for. (Laughs)

I had some great assignments. I enjoyed the troop assignments. At Ft. Meade I was a battalion chaplain. By the time I got to Vietnam I was a major and became brigade chaplain. Later on, I went to Korea as a division chaplain, and then I ended up as the U.S. Army Europe chaplain. So the troop assignments are good because you spend time nearly everyday with the troops. I had my share of administrative things. I was an assistant post chaplain, I was on the faculty at Ft. Leavenworth, and I was in the Chief of Chaplains Office in Washington, D.C.  So you do your time, but you always like to be with the troops.

I spent a year in Vietnam with the 25th Infantry Division. Our division headquarters was at a large base camp at Cu Chi about 40 miles north of Saigon. I didn't spend a lot of time there. I spent most of my time out in the jungle because that's where our troops were.  To get their respect a chaplain had to be with them in the field and share the dangers of combat. Otherwise they wouldn't talk to you. I hopped around from unit to unit and caught a ride on any helicopter going my way. At each unit I conducted Protestant services. I usually announced the service at evening chow. There was no safe place in Vietnam. Each unit had a temporary base camp, and for the service we had something like a protective perimeter. The guys would all be in combat gear, flak jackets and helmets. They'd sit on the ground and have their weapons beside them. I would unpack my chaplain's kit, about the size of a backpack, and start the service. I kept it short, about 15 or 20 minutes, because the soldiers had duties to perform. We sang hymns and I gave a brief homily; then I offered Communion to those who wanted it. Most of them did. At the end of an operation I was choppered back to division headquarters and we had steaks and drank beer and got ready to go out again.

In this picture I'm holding a service in the field. To my right on the stand are the cross and Communion chalice. This situation was more relaxed than most I was in. There was no immediate danger. That's why the soldiers didn't have their helmets on.  

Were your missions primarily search-and-destroy?

The troops called them "search-and-avoid." (Laughs) Troops have a label for everything. Sometimes they didn't avoid; we did discover things. The 25th Infantry Division is nicknamed "Tropic Lightning"; their insignia has a little lightning figure. It was a good division. They had battalions of regular infantry, and they had mechanized units. I was with a mechanized battalion. They carried 50 calibers [machine guns] on their APCs [Armored Personnel Carriers]; they rode rather than walked, and that was much, much better. (Laughs) Usually I went out with a company that had mortars and a couple of tanks. Our long range artillery stayed farther back in the compound.

Were the tanks that mobile in the jungle?

It's amazing how they'd get through; they'd just knock stuff down. Sometimes they'd get bogged down in a swamp because the weather was a lot of rain. Then they'd have to bring in equipment to get the tanks unstuck.

Besides conducting services, what were your other responsibilities in the field?

I was just there with  the troops. We called it “ministry of presence.” My primary responsibility was to provide spiritual care for soldiers. I did a lot of counseling, lot of responding to troops who'd come up and say, "Can I talk to you for a minute?" So somebody's got to unburden something, you know. Almost every day I was in Vietnam I had some kind of short service somewhere. And I served Communion at every service. This was a sober time.

What kind of counseling did you do?

I counseled guys who were depressed or frightened, got a "Dear John" letter, or found out things weren't going well at home--just everything. I'd hear problems like a soldier felt he was getting a raw deal, or this sergeant was being too tough on him, or his pay got messed up, things like that which usually got straightened out. You know how rigid the chain of command can be. You take your problems up through the chain. That's one of the rules.

The chaplain was not in the chain of command. A soldier could go to the chaplain and say, "I want this to be confidential," and there's no way in this world I would ever divulge that. Now if I saw trends going on, and I kept hearing the same story, I'd go to the commander and say, "I think we ought to take a look at how this is being organized or what's going on here." For example, if soldiers traveling around continued to get their pay messed up, and people back home relied on that pay allotment, and I kept hearing stories like that, I'd say to the commander, "We need to do something about this pay thing." And he'd look into it and get it straightened out.

One of the 50 stories in a recent book on military chaplains is your own story about officiating at a funeral for a soldier in Iowa.*  In it you mention sharing some deeply spiritual moments with soldiers during your jungle church services. Would you give an example of such a moment?

When a soldier got up enough courage and said, "Can I talk to you?" I considered that a spiritual moment. It wasn't necessarily a religious moment per se. Sometimes it was. Some of these kids had been very faithful in their church and were wondering how they could hang on to that in the midst of all this stuff going on. Some soldiers seriously questioned whether they could participate in the war. They were not from a so-called peace church, but they were beginning to have doubts like "How can I kill this person?" When we had a long talk about it, that was a spiritual moment. 

Did the protest movement influence a number of soldiers?

Not much. Not in 1967-68. I think later on as the war wore down that became a bigger problem. They were aware of the protests. We'd get letters from home and they'd see stuff in the Stars and Stripes. But soldiers are more concerned about survival than anything else. And they want to get home. Let me survive and let me get home.

What was some action you were directly involved in?

We rode in APCs. An APC held seven or eight men. We had a doctor in our battalion. He had his own APC with supplies, stretchers and other medical things. During the day I rode on an APC with the troops. At night I bunked in the doc's APC. An APC was made for soldiers to ride inside; supposedly the armor would protect you. But the Viet Cong had these armor-piercing grenades; they were almost like homemade weapons but very effective. They'd pop up out of a hole and fire the thing through some kind of bazooka-like device. We went back to Vietnam a couple of years ago--first time I'd been back--and we visited a place where they had a display of homemade weapons, just simple little things but they could do a lot of damage. When we went out on a mission, guys would ride on top of the APC. If you got hit by an armor-piercing grenade, you'd get blown off but not killed. The APC driver was the most vulnerable of all. We lost more drivers than anyone else.

One day we came into a large clearing and ran into a big ambush. We got hit bad; stuff was flying everywhere; our soldiers flew off the tracks and were firing in all directions. We hunkered down and had sort of a perimeter. I looked up and there was a soldier lying out there in the clearing. I just took off and went out there and got him. He was in very bad shape; I won't even describe how he looked. He later died in my arms. I remember him very well. He was a great young Catholic. He was one of the guys who'd round up Catholics when we had religious services. Whenever possible, I would travel with a Catholic chaplain. We would share the first part of the service; then we would separate so he could serve the Eucharist and I could serve communion. It was a great arrangement.

But when this soldier got hit that day there was no priest around. We had only one medic in the company, and he was busy patching up somebody else. The soldier was calm, probably in a comatose state. But his eyes were open and I thought, Maybe he can see and maybe he can hear, so I talked to him and prayed with him. That was the best I could do. We got him on the chopper; then the medic showed up. But the soldier was gone. I ministered to many wounded soldiers and some died while I was with them, but this young man was the only one who died in my arms. I'll never forget him.

Chaplain Martin conducting a memorial service for fallen soldiers at the 25th Infantry Division base camp at Cu Chi, South Vietnam ca. 1968

How did you feel rushing out during the battle to get that soldier?

There was no sense of danger. I don't know how to explain it. If I'd thought about it, I might not have done it. It was just something that needed to be done. There was nobody else around him and this guy needed help so I tried to help. It was an instinctive reaction.

I was in other combat situations but not quite as serious as this one. We had enough firepower. These small Viet Cong units didn't want to engage. Once the engagement took place, they'd escape into the jungle and down into tunnels.

How did you get the Purple Heart?

I got a little shrapnel in my arm here (Shows right arm) and the medics patched it up. It was nothing compared to the really bad wounds some guys got. I felt guilty getting the Purple Heart for this, but once you are treated by the medics you have no choice.

How did you reconcile your devotion to the non-violent ideals of Judeo-Christianity with your service in the Army and its violent objectives and tactics?

That's something every person has to work out, I think. My overriding concern is the church needs to be where people are. And if they have to be in combat, the church needs to be there. So that was the motivating thing for me. There are others who could not get to that point and chose not to do it; that's okay. But I didn't really have a problem with that. I'm a just war person. I do think there are criteria about any war that need to be examined. But once we get in there, a soldier doesn't have any choice. He's just sent there. So the church needs to be there too. It's a constitutional thing as well. A person has the right to freely exercise his faith. So that's partly what we were doing, giving people a chance to exercise their freedom of religion.

How was morale in the 25th?

Pretty good. Part of the chaplain's job is to be sensitive to morale. That's what the commanders want us to do because we're on the ground with the troops. Commanders are wrapped up with many other things.  So chaplains are their eyes and ears. Chaplains can answer questions for commanders like, what's going on out there? Commanders would be sensitive to the fact there were times when we needed to go back to the base camp, rest up, and get regenerated. Chaplains pretty well monitored things like that.

Food was very important to soldiers. It's hard to believe, but we'd be out in the middle of the jungle, and we'd usually have one hot meal a day. They would fly it out to us from our base camp at Cu Chi. We got steak and ice cream all running together. (Laughs) One hot meal a day really helped morale. Also, soldiers would store things in APCs. There was a lot of space in there for ammunition, but they'd also put other things in there: K rations, ice, sodas, and stuff they got from home like cookies and crackers. We'd be in the jungle and stop for lunch and start breaking out all these things and have some pretty good meals. (Laughs) Food was never a problem.

Any drug problems?

No. We had a few alcohol problems. Guys would sometimes drink too much when they got back in base camp. Drug abuse came later when the war was winding down.

Desertions?

The guys I was with were busy every day. They had no time to desert. They were just trying to survive. Soldiers look out for each other. The guy on your right, the guy on your left, they're friends; they're the ones that protect you. There was the feeling in those small units: I don't want to let this unit down. And that's the reason so many guys did so many heroic things. They would do some amazing things just for their buddies. If one of their buddies got shot, they would run out there and sometimes they got shot, too. They wanted to look out for their buddies. Desertion would be letting your unit down.

What were your impressions of the Viet Cong?

When I first got there I thought, This thing can't last much longer. We had such overwhelming firepower, total air superiority. So I thought we ought to be able to wrap this thing up in a couple of weeks and go home. But the Viet Cong were just tenacious, and we never quite figured out how to deal with that. Their whole underground system of tunnels and underground hospitals; they just lived underground. We had guys called "tunnel rats" that would go down in those tunnels. It was said the VC had tunnels underneath our division headquarters, but I'm not sure about that. I don't think we understood how tenacious they were or how to operate in an unconventional environment. We had all the stuff for conventional warfare, but it took a while to figure out that we were dealing with an unconventional situation.

The Viet Cong used a lot of mortars. I remember being at a temporary base camp north of Cu Chi. I'll never forget the 4th of July when a thousand rockets came into our base camp.

The Tet Offensive in '68 was the turning point. That's when we realized that this thing is not going away. I was out in the jungle then, and my battalion was transferred to Saigon. I spent some time in Saigon after the Tet Offensive. Tet was a military failure for the communists, but it boosted their morale. Once the North Vietnamese got into it, they thought they could do pretty much anything they want.

What did you think of the ARVN? [South Vietnamese Army]

The ones I saw were pretty effective. I talked to some advisers and they thought the ARVN were pretty good soldiers.  They needed a lot more training than they had. It was a difficult situation because they were fighting their own people. It was a little hard sometimes to get the ARVN to really go strong, but probably did the best they could.

After the Vietnam War I had some great experiences at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. There was only one chaplain on the faculty. I first went there as a student taking courses in tactics and military things like that. When I graduated, they asked me to stay on the faculty. I was on the faculty from 1975 to '79. It turned out to be a really great assignment. I met some great officers coming through there and met up with many of them later on. The training doctrine was changing at that time, and the Army was beginning to teach in small groups. The Army had finally discovered that a lot of learning could occur in small groups instead of standing up there on a platform with an overhead projector and saying write this down. We had some lectures, but most of the instruction was in small work groups.

The first course I wrote for the Command and General Staff College was a course in Group Dynamics, how to operate in small groups. Like most instructors,I wrote as well as taught at the College. We had to write what we were teaching and write the exams for our resident students and also send the material out to non-residents. That was the drudgery part; the fun was teaching. The whole first day of class for resident officers was devoted to Group Dynamics, and that was my course. We talked about effectiveness rather than good and bad, how can you work effectively as a leader, how to listen better, and other leadership skills.

Then I helped to develop an elective, sort of a catch-all thing, called Human Resources Development. It dealt with communications. It dealt with ethics. The military was just beginning to talk about ethics in those days because there'd been some serious issues. This elective was very popular, so we had a whole bunch of sections taking it and a bunch of instructors. We had a lot of students from other countries who were our allies. We had Israelis, Saudis, and other foreign nationals. We had an officer from Saudi Arabia who was a prince. He came to my office one day and said, "I would like to transfer to another section, if it's okay with you." The computer had matched him up with an Israeli officer, and he didn't think that would produce the best learning environment. (Laughs) But it was interesting to me that he took the initiative, "Reassign me. Don't reassign him." And it worked out fine.

Leadership, team-building, ethics and communications, the soft subjects, were all grouped in the Human Resources course. Some students, the hardcore guys, thought these courses were stupid. They'd call them "touchy-feely" and stuff like that. But a lot of students got into it and found a lot of value in learning to listen and figure out what's going on because every one of these people was going to have staff and command positions later on. And the College was a perfect laboratory to work on these things in a non-threatening way.

There was an instructor in all these peer groups. We didn't turn them loose on their own. And the instructors gave constructive comments. The idea was to build up the whole peer group. Students started helping each other. The students were mostly majors and a few senior captains and junior lieutenant colonels. Basically they were middle managers.

Besides Vietnam, what's your overall opinion or impression of the Cold War?

My last assignment was in Europe at 7th Army Headquarters in Heidelberg. That was '83 to '86. The last half of my time in Europe I was also the U. S. Army Europe Command Chaplain. That's the U. S. component of NATO. So I had two hats. Constant training was taking place. The situation was relatively calm, but the Soviets were on the other side of the border, and we had troops all around that border. We had a number of alerts, had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. I was impressed with the constant sense of urgency. Our forces had different scenarios: the Russians would come through the Fulda Gap and other possible Soviet attacks. We would war-game those things and get down on the ground and train for all that. I was really impressed. We never really got complacent. What part that played in ultimately having the Cold War come to an end I don't know, but it must have had some impact.

General Glen Otis, then Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Army, Europe/7th Army, Chaplain Martin, Pat Martin. The general had just awarded Dick the Distinguished Service Medal.

What was the funniest experience you had in your military career? 

What can I say? Everything is funny. (Laughs) Soldiers make fun out of everything. In Vietnam I would have my services usually after the evening meal, just as it's getting dark. Frequently at night we would get mortared by the Viet Cong. Shells would come flying in and hunker us down in holes our guys had dug. I'd usually have a service not too far from one of those holes. I went through a whole series of evenings when, just as we would get going on the service, here would come the mortars, so we would jump down in the holes. (Laughs) After several of those episodes, one guy said, "Chaplain, I think we ought to change the benediction. It ought to be In the name of the Father and the Son and in the hole we go.” (Laughs)

Did you spend time on the border between East and West Germany?

Our headquarters was in Heidelberg, but I would visit the troops on the border from time to time.  Pat and I spent a memorable Christmas Eve out there one year.  I was always impressed by the sense of vigilance among our troops.   

I have a border story for you. The last six months I was in Europe, the commander got a request from a local television station. They wanted to do a documentary about the religious life of the American soldier. Unusual, but it seemed OK. The Chief of Staff told me, "We'll approve this as long as you go along. Don't let them out of your sight!" (Laughs)  The crew consisted of a reporter and a camerman from Norway. I’m sure they were looking for something sensational, but, in one instance, they got just the opposite.  One day we were out near the border having lunch in a mess hall. After lunch, the reporter, who spoke beautiful English, saw a soldier sitting at a table with a Bible in his hand.

Reporter: I see you have a Bible.

Soldier: Yes, sir, I take it with me any time I can.

Reporter: Would you be willing to be on camera? I'd like to talk to you about that.

Soldier: Sure.

Reporter: This Bible you have, it says in there that you should love your enemies. Do you love your enemies?

Soldier: Yes sir. I love my enemies and I pray for them every day. I pray that someday these walls will come down and we will be able to live in peace. But, until that time comes, I am a soldier and I will do my duty.

I went to Norway to assist in editing that film and to insist that the soldier’s comments be included.  I often wondered what the people in Eastern Europe thought when they saw that young American and heard those words:  “I love my enemies, I pray for peace, but until it comes, I am a soldier and I will do my duty.”  That sums up the religious life of one soldier in Europe in 1986. 

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

HEADQUARTERS 25th INFANTRY DIVISION

APO San Francisco 96225

GENERAL ORDERS                                                                                                                                   

NUMBER  1403

20 March 1968

AWARD OF THE BRONZE STAR MEDAL FOR HEROISM

MARTIN, RICHARD K.  OF104250   MAJ   CHAPLAIN   USA

HHC, 2nd Bde, 25th Inf Div

Awarded: Bronze Star Medal with "V" Device

Date action: 24 January 1968

Theater: Republic of Vietnam

Reason: 

For heroism in connection with military operations against a hostile force: Chaplain Martin distinguished himself by heroic actions on 24 January 1968, while serving as Assistant Brigade Chaplain accompanying Company C, 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry, on a search and destroy mission in the Ho Bo Woods, Republic of Vietnam. Company C was savagely attacked by a Viet Cong Force with 2.75 inch and RPG rockets. Within minutes of the initial contact there were many casualties scattered over the battlefield. Seeing the need for assistance Chaplain Martin voluntarily went from casualty to casualty,  repeatedly exposing himself to intense hostile fire, to provide spiritual and moral support to the wounded and dying. With complete disregard for his own safety he led wounded personnel to the medical evacuation area and helped with their evacuation. Through his personal courage and outstanding leadership he was an inspiration to others around him. Major Martin's personal bravery, aggressiveness, and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, the 25th Infantry Division, and the Unites States Army.

Authority:  By direction of the President under the provisions of Executive Order 11046, dated 24 August 1962, and USARV message 16695, 1 July 1966.

FOR THE COMMANDER:                                            

B. F. HOOD                                                                                                

Colonel, GS                                                                                                

Chief of Staff       

OFFICIAL:                                                                                 

CLARENCE A. RISER

LTC, AGC

Adjutant General

* Dick's touching story "A Mother's Photo" appears in  Miracles & Moments of Grace: Inspiring Stories from Military Chaplains by Nancy B. Kennedy, Leafwood Publishers, Abilene, Texas, 2011.