Tank Soldiers Recall Comrades Lost in Vietnam

For many of the former tank soldiers who gathered solemnly Saturday at the mission here, one day they spent nearly 24 years ago in Vietnam is painfully etched into their memories.

On Nov. 3, 1966, many of them, fresh out of boot camp and still green to the escalating Vietnam conflict, first felt the unforgettable pang of losing a brother in arms.

“I won’t forget that day, ever,” said Robert Washington, now a 30-year Army platoon sergeant who accompanied the tank battalion to Vietnam in September, 1966, recalling the tragic events of that date: Two men died when the personnel carrier they were driving ran over a 500-pound bomb and exploded in a ball of fire. They were the first of 75 men to die in combat in the division’s four years in Vietnam.

On Saturday, about 100 veterans of the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armored Division’s Vietnam tour of duty met in San Juan Capistrano--the second day of a three-day reunion--to honor the two men, Staff Sgt. Upland Ashley and Pfc. Kenneth Sanders, as well as their other fallen comrades in arms. They also came to remember the good and the bad times they shared.

With the picturesque Mission San Juan Capistrano as a backdrop, the former tank soldiers--some of whom came from as far away as New York--stood at attention during a 10 a.m. ceremony and silently saluted as the names of the dead were read aloud.

“When this unit was put together,” said San Juan Capistrano resident Pat Forster, a former lieutenant who served with the tank corps from 1969 to 1970, “we knew where we were going.”

“Bravery and valor are the most meaningless concepts if you don’t know how to handle them,” added platoon Sgt. Curtis Patton, who trained the first batch of the battalion’s draftees at Ft. Irwin in Barstow.

“These (dead) men knew how to handle themselves,” he said.

The reunion was organized by Forster and other veterans of the armored division--the only one of the 200 battalions to be formed and trained in Southern California for Vietnam combat duty.

“This really brings back memories,” Forster said after the ceremony.

Today, the veterans will gather in a private ceremony to say a prayer and to dedicate a monument that bears the names of the 75 who died in combat, Forster said.

The boulder-shaped monument eventually will be shipped to Ft. Riley, Kan., the current home of the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armored Division.

Saturday, as the former tank soldiers drank beer and ate barbecued beef, chicken and baked beans after the memorial ceremony, conversations drifted from hair-raising combat situations to the often wild off-duty adventures.

Many of them were seeing each other for the first time since returning to the United States.

“I haven’t seen these guys here for 23 years,” said Wayne Hensley of Orange, a former personnel specialist who was 25 when he processed the first bunch of boots at Ft. Irwin.

From Ft. Irwin, the tank corps loaded their equipment in Long Beach and then boarded a ship to Vietnam in August, 1966, two years before the infamous Tet offensive.

Patrick Hopkins, 42, flew to the reunion from Kansas, where he still works with the tank division as a civilian. He said that he had already been in Vietnam for almost a year when the first of the battalion’s tanks arrived for action.

At the time he scoffed at the soldiers’ inexperience.

“These guys rolled in with these brand-new tanks, all buttoned up so you couldn’t even see the heads of the tank commanders,” Hopkins said. “It was the funniest thing I ever saw.”

Three years later, he was requesting a transfer to be part of the unit, which had already weathered the Tet offensive and had been decorated by President Lyndon B. Johnson for its role in a 1967 charge that turned back 2,000 North Vietnamese troops who had taken over an Army outpost of 450 men.

“I had a choice of two assignments,” said Hopkins, who wore a metal wristband with the name of a missing U.S. Navy fighter pilot. “I wanted to go with these guys.”

While some of the fellow soldiers talked boisterously about some of the rowdier times, others talked quietly about poignant moments.

Jerry Ueblacker, 41, of Santa Cruz was only 17 when he joined the Army and was assigned to 2nd Battalion in 1968, just before the Tet Offensive. He came home a year later with a purple heart when he was hit in the leg with shrapnel.

“We were on patrol and what we thought was a few of the enemy turned out to be a lot of the enemy,” Ueblacker recalled. “They turned around and kicked our butt.” Two of his tank mates were killed when their lumbering machine was set ablaze by an anti-tank missile.

Gary Ernst, 42, of Fountain Valley was riding in a personnel carrier when it was hit by enemy fire. He was doused with burning fuel. The lower half of his body was covered with third-degree burns.

Platoon Cmdr. Jerry LaRoache later visited Ernst, who was recuperating at a base hospital.

“I took a look at him and didn’t think he was going to make it,” La Roache said as he and Ernst stood together near the monument. “I went outside and broke down. It was emotional.”

Some of the almost unsolvable problems facing the soldiers were not discussed in basic training, they said.

They recalled that curious and belligerent spider monkeys sometimes would discover the warm interiors of the bulky, four-man Patton tanks.

“It was weird,” said Col. Ray Stailey, who was stationed at battalion headquarters. “They (monkeys) would get inside those tanks and you could never get them out. They’d attack the soldiers.”

Organizer Forster said that he dreamed up the reunion two years ago when he was contacted by a historian who was putting together a military history of the battalion’s Vietnam tour of duty.

In the process of contacting other veterans, he came across a veteran who had a photograph of Nui Ban Den, the mountain that overlooked the battalion’s base camp and was continually occupied by enemy forces.

Forster said that hundreds of American soldiers died trying to take the 3,000-foot-high mountain, which rose ominously out of the flat landscape and offered the North Vietnamese a bird’s-eye view of base operations.

Forster obtained the photograph and had it framed with the caption: “The spiritual home of the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor.” The photograph remained on display during the morning ceremony.

“There are a lot of of our boys’ spirits still at that mountain,” Forster said. “That’s why we called it our spiritual home.”