The man, a Korean War veteran, then demonstrated how to thrust his bayonet into a man’s chest without flinching. Stan repeated this over and over on a practice dummy filled with straw, and then learned how to deflect the drill sergeant’s actual attacks. His fatigues were slashed, his arms bloodied. When Stan wanted to rest, the sergeant refused. He told him he was going to instill in him “the Spirit of the Bayonet Fighter, which is to kill or be killed.” As he fought, Stan felt a sense of pride at being able to defend himself. He wondered if he’d get to use this stuff in real life.
In jump school, however, he sometimes felt just plain incompetent. On his second jump, his main chute failed to fully open and he forgot to open his reserve chute as he’d been instructed in case of emergency. He looked up and saw a half-dozen lines tangled and didn’t give this much thought. He was floating along just fine, enjoying the view.
Over a bullhorn from the ground, though, he heard an urgent voice: “Would the trooper with the malfunction now activate his reserve! All other jumpers, slip away from the trooper in distress!”
He tried spotting the jumper in trouble, then realized that the others had drifted away from him and he was descending faster than anyone else. He looked up at the parachute and understood he was in trouble. He pulled the cord to deploy the reserve chute but still hit the ground at dizzying speed. He couldn’t move and lay croaking and groaning as his parachute drifted over him and then covered him completely.
He lay under the silk, gasping for breath, pretty sure that he would be drummed out of training for this mistake, when he saw a shadow pass over the billowing fabric. For a moment, he thought he might be dead and he’d just seen an angel. Then the angel yelled at him.
“Airborne, are you okay? Answer me, Airborne! ARE YOU OKAY UNDER THERE?”
It was Sergeant Gorilla, his jump instructor. All the instructors had nicknames—Sergeant Daddy Rabbit, Sergeant Shithead, Sergeant You-Bet-Your-Boots. These men, towering figures who’d jumped and fought in Korea and World War II, were to be feared. They went by the more official Army name of “Black Hats,” for the wide-brimmed head gear they wore on the training field.
Stan gasped, “I think so. I think I’m okay.”
“Trooper, You THINK so? Or you KNOW so?”
Stan then heard a Jeep pull up and skid to a stop. Whoever was driving was certainly in a hurry to get here.
“You better decide quick, Trooper, as someone more powerful than me is here to check this out.”
Stan guessed that Sergeant Gorilla was referring to Colonel Lamar Welch, commander of the Airborne School and a famed combat veteran in World War II, during which he’d jumped with the 101st at D-Day and fought in Korea and Vietnam.
Stan was sure his dream of being a paratrooper was finished. To earn his jump wings, a student had to make five successful jumps from a low-flying C-119 or C-130 transport plane, and land on target in a designated landing zone. A lot of guys, for whatever reason, seemed to wash out on the second jump. These guys were known as “two jump chumps.”
Sergeant Gorilla told him to get up and out of the way before Colonel Welch could see what happened. He told Stan to double-time it back to the recovery area.
Stan quickly gathered his chute and left. At the recovery area, he turned and stood at attention, staring out at the drop zone, and waited for the colonel to arrive and decide his fate. He thought back to the other time he’d really screwed up in jump school. He’d been on Kitchen Police (KP) in the dining area when several officers entered and Stan called out, as he was required to do, “Attention, officers present!” As everyone snapped to attention, including himself, one of the instructors yelled in his ear.
“Private, are your feet nailed to the floor? Get six cups of hot, black coffee and an assortment of pastries.”
That task was part of Stan’s duty as a member of the Kitchen Police, but he’d forgotten.
Still at attention and without thinking, Stan replied, “Okey-dokey, sir.”
“Okey-dokey?” snarled the officer.
“I mean, ‘Yes, sir’—Sir.”
The officer yelled again, when a colonel, the ranking officer, interrupted.
“Step over here a minute, son,” the colonel said. “Where you from?”
Stan, out of the corner of his eye, could see that this was Colonel Welch, and he was tongue-tied.
“Are you deaf? Answer Colonel Welch!” said the instructor.
“I’m from Arkansas, sir. I mean—Indiana.”
Colonel Welch laughed and put his arm around Stan.
“Okey-dokey,” he said, chuckling. “Why, I haven’t heard someone say ‘okey-dokey’ since I was a boy. So, are you a Razorback or a Hoosier?”
“Both, sir,” said Stan, nervously. “Born in Arkansas, joined the Army in Indiana.”
“That’s good, son. A well-rounded soldier is what we need here at Airborne.”
He patted Stan and said, “You know, coffee and pastries are just okey-dokey with me.”
He thought a moment and added, “While you’re at it, bring a cup for yourself and sit down so we can talk about home.”
• • •
Stan was still standing at attention at the recovery area when Colonel Welch pulled up. Stan’s knees were shaking, and he couldn’t make them stop. He was so disappointed in himself that he thought he was going to throw up.
Colonel Welch approached and looked him over, as if trying to place Stan’s face. And then a smile spread across his face.
“Private Okey-dokey!” he said. “Well, well.”
Stan let out a smile too and relaxed—just a little.
Welch sternly lectured him about his mistake and explained nonetheless that he had earlier appreciated his inadvertent humor when they’d met at breakfast. He told Stan that he’d blurted out something from the heart and that this probably meant that he was an honest person. The colonel said that he also appreciated the way he hadn’t shown fear when faced with the prospect of being punished for his protocol lapse.
“That can be useful on the battlefield,” said Welch. “Just what a paratrooper needs to perform when fright is about to overtake him. Calmness. Now fall in line with the other students.”
Stan saluted smartly and walked back to the others, who were standing openmouthed over what had just transpired.
Right then and there, Stan knew that nothing would ever prevent him from becoming a paratrooper.
Later, at his graduation, Stan and the other students nervously waited in formation to receive their “blood wings,” repeating a tradition dating to World War II.
Colonel Welch appeared and approached Stan, holding the much-treasured metal parachute-shaped badge. He placed it against Stan’s fatigue blouse and gently pushed the two metal pins through the fabric. But instead of affixing the badge with the customary metal clasp, he reared back with an open hand and struck Stan with a hard, decisive blow, driving the badge’s metal pins into his chest.
Stan winced, his body aflame, feeling a terrible but sweet stinging as blood trickled down his chest.
Colonel Welch stepped back and saluted, and Stan smartly returned the same.
“Make me proud, son,” said Welch.
“All the way, and then some, sir.” Stan smiled.
• • •
Newly minted as a paratrooper, Stan Parker stood at the Fort Benning depot, waiting for his bus ride to the Atlanta, Georgia, airfield and a flight home for a thirty-day leave before deploying to Vietnam.
As he stood in line, he heard the name of every soldier but his own called out. He approached a clerk with a clipboard and waved his set of orders. Now that he’d passed jump school, Stan was to become part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, aka the Herd. In May 1965, the 173rd had been the first major U.S. Army ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. The other major unit, the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, had arrived in July.
The clerk studied his clipboard. “Your name Parker? Says here you’ve been scratched. You
ain’t going to the Herd.”
Stan thought there must be some mistake. “So where am I going to?”
“Don’t know. But you ain’t going nowhere in Vietnam. You’re on hold.”
“Hold? Why?”
“Don’t know, but you can go to the Head Shed and ask.” He pointed over to a set of buildings.
Stan walked up to the personnel office and explained his problem.
A secretary checked her paperwork. “Oh,” she said, “there’s a congressional against you.”
“What do you mean, ‘congressional’?”
“Evidently your daddy says you’re not going to Vietnam, and he got your congressman involved. He’s not having two sons in combat at the same time.”
“My dad’s involved?”
The clerk shrugged and pointed to a pay phone.
He dialed and when his dad answered, Stan didn’t even give him time to say hello.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, “we got a problem here in Fort Benning, Georgia. I ain’t going to Vietnam.”
Stan could hear his father sigh. Finally, he replied, “I know it.”
“You do?”
“You’re not going at the same time as your brother,” his dad said. “One or the other.”
“I’m going. I got my orders.”
He cut him off. “Your brother’s already got his orders. He’s going.”
“But he’s married and I’m single.”
“He beat you to the punch. You’ve been reassigned.” And then he explained what he’d done.
Shortly after his wife’s death, he had called his congressman and asked him to notify Stan’s Army superiors that by no means was Stanley Parker to be sent to the front lines in Vietnam. He told the congressman that one son in combat was enough for any family. The congressman agreed.
“So where am I going then?”
His father told him that he was going to Germany.
“Europe!” Stan protested. “I don’t want to go to Europe!”
His father explained that he’d serve his time as part of the U.S. Army’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol or LRRP (pronounced “lurps”). It would be honorable service with a venerable unit, his father told him.
“But I want to go to Vietnam!” Stan shouted, and hung up the phone.
• • •
He went to Europe.
Shortly after he arrived in Germany in March 1967, he got a letter from Tom Gervais, who had gotten to Vietnam first. “Boots,” he wrote, “do not come over here. If you need to, fine. But if you don’t, do not come. People are getting shot and killed.” Another high school buddy wrote, “I’m not even in the infantry, I’m a dental assistant. I have a cot, a place to sleep, and I hate it here. Stay in Germany!”
What could his friends possibly mean? Then came a letter from Dub, also in Vietnam, who warned him to stay where he was. Stan looked at the letters, disbelieving, and decided to ignore the advice.
Thinking he still might avoid LRRP duty, Stan pointed out to his new commanding officer that he had not received the proper training and wasn’t qualified. Don’t worry, he was told, we’ll train you. Having just finished jump school, he was in excellent shape, and after a series of punishing running, marching, and shooting exercises, which he passed easily, Stan was now a qualified LRRP soldier. He wasn’t happy.
As a member of Company C, 58th Airborne Infantry, Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol, he was part of a storied tradition of reconnaissance soldiers dating to America’s French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. A LRRP soldier is trained to raid in enemy territory and to be the eyes and ears of a larger fighting force. In Germany, Stan’s LRRP company had the job of standing eye-to-eye at the Czech border with the Soviet Union soldiers. Should the Soviets go to war with Europe, Stan and his 208 fellow LRRP scouts would parachute behind enemy lines and report their positions so that artillery and firepower could be brought to bear.
One day, a Soviet soldier from the Czech side of the border walked up and offered Stan a cigarette, as if they had nothing better to do than have a friendly conversation. This isn’t war, Stan thought. I’m babysitting a piece of ground. He pulled out a laminated card his company had printed as a joke: It read, in sum: “In case of invasion, call HQ, tell them World War Three has started, bend over, and kiss your butt good-bye. It’s over.” After seven months of guarding the border from Soviet attack, he couldn’t stand any more boredom.
He approached his company commander and told him he wanted a transfer.
The officer asked him where he wanted to go.
“Vietnam,” said Stan.
The officer was dumbfounded. “You’re kidding. I have people who’d die to be assigned to this LRRP company.”
“Well,” said Stan, “I’ll switch with one of them.”
The officer brought up the fact that he already had a brother in Vietnam. He refused to let Stan leave the unit.
Nonetheless, every Monday morning, Stan showed up at the commander’s office and asked for a transfer. He knew that the Army couldn’t deny his effort even if it could deny what he was asking for. And every week his request was denied.
Then Stan saw that his fortunes might change. The Army was planning to increase its presence in Vietnam, which meant it would need more soldiers like him, and it enacted something called a levy. Stan wanted to be on the levy list of guys headed to the 101st Airborne Division who would get shipped from Germany to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 101st’s home, and then to Vietnam.
He pulled the company clerk aside and asked, “Any way you can get me on that levy?”
“Not with your brother over there—unless you sign a waiver.”
Stan had never heard of such a document. He asked the clerk when he could sign it.
“I can’t talk about it now,” said the clerk. He told him to meet him after hours.
That night, the clerk produced a piece of paper and told Stan that if he signed it, releasing the U.S. Army from any responsibility should anything happen to him while he was in Vietnam, he could get him orders to leave Germany. Stan signed the document.
“But this’ll never work,” Stan realized, “unless the commanding officer signs it too.”
“You let me worry about that,” said the clerk.
The next day, the clerk walked into the commander’s office with a stack of papers. “These all need your signature, sir. Just standard paperwork.”
The commander signed Stan’s waiver.
As the clerk handed the paper to Stan, he said, “Now get the hell out of here before anyone finds out what I’ve done. There’s a truck leaving at dark. You get in the back and hide. It’ll take you to the air base in Frankfurt. A lot of guys are already there, waiting to fly to Fort Campbell.”
In the dark of night, Stan snuck into a supply truck, curled up, and covered himself with a canvas. He had no idea what would happen if he got caught—he’d probably be court-martialed. Who would believe him when he explained that he was trying to sneak into the war?
The three-hour truck ride was bumpy and miserable. Stan banged up and down on the metal bed, trying to lie still and not make any noise. When the truck arrived at the airport, he peeked out of the back, slipped to the ground, straightened his uniform, and looked around for other paratroopers headed to Fort Campbell.
He finally spotted the group and recognized a few guys he knew from the LRRPs who’d also gotten on the levy list. Two of them he’d become good friends with: Dwight Lane, from rural Indiana, and Brian Riley, from Maryland. Stan was glad to see them. They were always good company, ready with a joke, and always ready for adventure. Riley had a wicked tattoo of an eagle across his broad shoulders. Stan was hopeful they’d have even bigger adventures in Vietnam.
On September 18, 1967, a little over a year after he joined the Army to become an airborne soldier, Stan Parker walked off the plane at Fort Campbell, into the sunshine of a Kentucky autumn as a member of the 101st Airborne Division. When his other friends from the LRRP saw him, they w
ere shocked. They had known about his father’s decision that he shouldn’t be allowed to fight in Vietnam.
“Jesus, Parker,” they said. “How’d you get here?”
Stan flashed his smile. “By hook and crook, fellas,” he said. “By hook and crook.”
His journey had begun.
September 18, 1967–January 30, 1968
Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to LZ Jane, South Vietnam
After Stan got off the plane, he and hundreds of others were loaded onto buses and trucked to their barracks at Fort Campbell. As they got off the buses, they were met by platoon sergeants shouting at them, “Who’s a medic?” “We need radio men!” And, “Where are the LRRP soldiers?”
Stan had entered the 101st just as it was undertaking the biggest airlift of troops and matériel in U.S. history, code-named Operation Eagle Thrust. The 101st’s 1st Brigade had already been in Vietnam for two years, slugging it out in some of the earliest fighting Stan had seen on TV news back at home. The 2nd and 3rd Brigades were part of this massive airlift and would comprise its main force. The 101st would be the largest ground unit fighting in Vietnam. Over the next four weeks, 10,024 men and 5,357 tons of equipment were shipped overseas in preparation for the war’s biggest buildup at the end of the fourth year of fighting. By December 1967, some 500,000 men and women would be serving in the country.
As Stan stepped down off the bus, a gruff-looking first sergeant bearing a clipboard in massive hands approached. The sarge had the crisp manner of a professional lifer who had seen serious battle and for whom garrison life was a bore he would quietly endure.
He was Echo Company’s First Sergeant Lawrence Koontz, a thirty-three-year-old West Virginian and veteran of the Korean War. Koontz had already seen extensive combat in Vietnam with the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne. At Fort Campbell, he’d been put in charge of standing up Echo Company’s Reconnaissance Platoon, of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 501st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade. He was joined in this task by Staff Sergeant Freddie Westerman, from Missouri.