Allen B. Clark - Valor in Vietnam: Chronicles of Honor, Courage, and Sacrifice: 1963-1977

Allen B. Clark

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copyright 2012 by Allen B. Clark

978-1-4804-0651-3

Casemate Publishing
908 Darby Road
Havertown, PA 19083
www.casematepublishing.com

This edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
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To our comrades-in-arms, who did not return with us from Vietnam, and to those who did, but carry scars in body, soul and spirit.

Heroes are forged on anvils hot with pain,
And splendid courage comes but with the test.
Some natures ripen and some natures bloom.
Only on blood-wet soil, some souls prove great.
Only in moments dark with death or doom
God finds His best soldiers on the mountain of affliction.

Streams in the Desert, pg. 437-438

L ibrary shelves groan under the weight of books on the Vietnam War. They run the usual gamut of battle and campaign history, personal memoir, apologia, strategy, and so on.

This one is different. It is, literally, unique.

It verges on being allegoricalportraying and explaining the abstract by means of concrete forms. In this case, the forms are drawn from among those who served in Vietnam.

That war was surely abstract in the understanding of many. In its own timeand sinceit was quite difficult to grasp, a conflict seeming perversely to elude full comprehension, even for those who fought in it. Reasons abound: the exotic setting; its very length in years; its changing nature over those years; its location half way around the world; the eerie sense of business as usual at home; the shameful obfuscations by politicians and activists of all stripes. No wonder Americans still dont know quite what to make of it. For all too many it remains a frustratingly abstract episode in our nations history.

Allen Clark grapples with that abstraction through real stories of actual participants, stories portraying the honor, courage, and, especially, sacrifice of those who went when their country said go and did what their country said do.

Clark selects twenty-one exemplars and describes in splendid prose the exploits of each. Those accounts, tied neatly together by brief inserts provided by Lewis Sorley, the most authoritative voice on the scene today, merge to paint a grand panorama of the legions of young men and women who answered the call to arms. Those selected are representative of the host whose service in a woeful war was magnificent and who certainly deserved better than the national cold shoulder they received upon returning home. They are representative, as well, of the caliber of those who did not return, the fallen whose names appear in somber row upon row on the Vietnam Memorial on our National Mall.

As the Vietnam War slips inexorably further and further into the past (it is now nearly four decades since Americans watched the final horrific scenes of helicopters lifting frantic survivors from Saigon roof-tops), increasing numbers of researchers are striving to draw clearer water from a well seriously poisoned by the politics of the time. Their aim is to provide a fuller and more objective rendering of the war than has existed for far too long. This book about authentic heroes fits squarely into that genre.

Actually, the book features twenty-two individuals, not twenty-one. The presence of the author is evident throughout. Allen Clark was physically in Vietnam only oncean experience that cost him both his legs. But emotionally and spiritually the war has never left him. His own story is an inspiring backdrop for the others he modestly pushes to the front.

Veterans of that long ago and far away warand, of course, their descendentswill want to have this volume in their libraries. It is their story.

May 2012

Dave R. Palmer, Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (ret.)

Author of Summons of the Trumpet: U.S.-Vietnam in Perspective

E very war continues to dwell in the lives it touches or in the lives of those living through that time. The Vietnam War lives on famously and in-famously, dependent on political points of view, but those who have been there, done that have a highly personalized window on their own time of that history.

Herein are first-hand narratives by Vietnam War participants: highly intense, emotional, and personal stories. Connecting the stories is commentary contributed by Lewis Sorley that covers the historical setting of that period of the war, the geography, setting, and strategy, which are denoted in italics.

This is the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of people who experienced it. It is my hope and prayer that these stories reflect the commitment, honor, and dedication with which we performed our duty in the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War lasted for a long number of years and American troops in regular units were deployed to South Vietnam over an eight-year period in four geographical or corps areas. As a Vietnam veteran my information was limited to my year in my location. We ask each other where were you and in what unit did you serve? Unless that was our corps area or unit, we have little to no knowledge of their experiences.

Terms such as SOG, special forces, Phoenix program, Gulf of Tonkin, China Beach, Chieu Hoi, Pleiku, and Kit Carson Scouts are unknown to many people, even some Vietnam veterans. If we were not in combat units, we cannot understand the details of the horror and complexities of heavy action. Some of us participated in the war, but definitely wish we had not. Most of us lost many friends during and after the war.

This book becomes the product of my life exposed to the military and veteran world for seventy years. Through army-brat childhood, West Point cadetship, five years on active duty, fifteen months in an army hospital recuperating from double-leg amputation and post-traumatic stress disorder, and thirteen years in the Department of Veterans Affairs (four of which were as a presidential appointee requiring Senate confirmation) it has been my privilege and pleasure to have known many citizens of our country who have served the cause of peace and freedom in active military service. Most of us have our own stories and they are our personal legacies. My collection of other veterans stories runs the gamut of battlefield courage on land, air, and sea. These stories also relate the legacy of pain, sorrow, and suffering due to our commitment and dedication to our country. Unfortunately, it was my misfortune to suffer immensely from my dedication to serve my country in Vietnam. A general officer wanted me to serve in Korea as his aide-de-camp, but my personal dedication to the ideals of West Point, my loyalty to my country, and my personal honor dictated that I volunteer for service in the Vietnam War.