VETERANS DAY
MyEagleNews.com
Van Voorhis earned
Purple Heart in Vietnam
Veteran says country was vastly different when he returned
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Bob Van Voorhis, who volunteered for the
draft in 1966 after graduating from Grant Union
High School, said there was never a question
in his mind, or anyone else’s in his graduating
class, about volunteering for the Vietnam War.
He said it’s a county tradition to serve the
country. Van Voorhis said he has not seen the
tradition change over the years.
His childhood friend Ab Bezona told him he
got his notice to get his physical one weekend
in December and that Van Voorhis should go
with him to the draft board, which was at the
Grant County Courthouse.
“It sounded like a good idea,” he said.
“December was colder than hell working in the
timber industry. That’s not a lot of fun.”
Van Voorhis and Bezona were at the court-
house that Monday with another childhood
friend Tom Skiens.
Altogether Grant County sent six people in
the draft to the Boise induction center, accord-
ing to Van Voorhis.
By early January of 1967 the six of them
were in basic training in Fort Lewis.
“We had a great county flavor in the basic
training company,” Van Voorhis said.
After boot camp Van Voorhis went on to
officer training and was selected to the Honor
Guard where he was a funeral escort.
Van Voorhis, who had just turned 19, said
the guard was doing up to 10 funerals a day, and
it started to take an emotional toll.
He said he asked to be transferred after a
young widow of a fallen soldier threw herself on
her husband’s coffin while her two young daugh-
ters looked on in tears.
“She falls on the coffin, and there’s two little
girls staring at my soul with little tears,” he said.
Van Voorhis said it took his sergeant three
weeks to take him seriously because service-
men did not volunteer out of that kind of duty to
“wade in the mud in Vietnam.”
His orders came through in November of
1968, and he served 11 months and 28 days, he
said.
Van Voorhis said the rotation system in Viet-
nam was one of the many differences between
World War II and Vietnam.
“In the Second World War, it was for the
duration,” he said. “If you’re Army infantry
you’re in a war until you’re either dead or the
war is over.”
Contributed photo
Bob Van Voorhis in Vietnam.
Van Voorhis, who earned a Purple Heart,
took shrapnel in the arm when his platoon was
attacked.
With paperwork that cleared him to go home,
Van Voorhis said he had the doctor bandage him
up and prescribe him a bottle of painkillers for
his flight back to San Francisco.
Van Voorhis said the country was vastly dif-
ferent in 1968.
“What this country was like when I left was
not the same as when I came home,” he said.
He said the changes went beyond the Viet-
nam War and the antiwar sentiments. Change, he
said, that was for the better.
“In my generation, we were watching the
desegregation of schools for example down in
Alabama and Arkansas,” he said.
Van Voorhis said, when he got to the Veterans
Hospital in Portland in his “brand new greens,”
he heard from WWII veterans that Vietnam was
not a “real war.”
“God bless them,” he said. “I have tremen-
dous respect.”
He said, however, the enemy in Vietnam
was using “real bullets.”
“I kind of think that qualifies as being a
real war,” he said. “This was a real difference
between the Second World War vets and the
Vietnam War.”
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
B1
‘I’VE BEEN SHOT AT ENOUGH’
Friese recalls fighting in
Vietnam and other battles at home
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Most American service
members who fought in Viet-
nam were not like their fore-
bears who volunteered to
fight the Axis powers after
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Soldiers who fought in
Vietnam were called upon
to stop the spread of com-
munism in southeastern Asia
after the Vietnamese nation-
alist forces took over the
country’s northern part.
Richard Friese, the son
of a World War II veteran,
enlisted in the Navy with
the hope of staying in for
six years and serving in the
nuclear submarine program.
Friese said the extent of
his conversation with his
father about WWII was about
the minesweeper boat. He
said his father operated one as
well that had been equipped
for the ocean. Beyond that,
he said, his father, like many
WWII veterans, did not talk
about the war.
The WWII veterans
sometimes referred to as the
“greatest generation” were
told to get a job, raise a fam-
ily and forget what happened,
according to Dr. Edgardo
Padin-Rivera, chief of psy-
chology at Louis Stokes Vet-
erans Affairs Medical Center.
During WWII, dubbed the
“good war” by author Studs
Terkel, the public’s general
sentiment was that the return-
ing servicemembers were
justified in how they carried
out combat.
For
returning
Viet-
nam veterans, it was differ-
ent, especially after the Tet
Offensive in 1968, a series of
surprise attacks on U.S. and
South Vietnamese forces,
and the My Lai massacre, the
slaughter of roughly 500 peo-
ple in the village of My Lai
The Eagle/Steven Mitchell
Richard Friese, the son of a World War II veteran, served four
years in the Navy on a riverboat during Vietnam. He said his
father, like many returning WWII veterans, never talked about
the war.
by a company of American
soldiers.
The impact of both events
fueled the anti-war fervor and
contempt toward returning
soldiers. From being spat on
to being called “baby killer,”
Vietnam veterans returned to
an angry, divided country.
While there was no justifi-
cation for the My Lai massa-
cre, most people did not take
into account the complexity
and constant hyper-vigilance
involved in a soldier surviv-
ing guerilla war.
“My generation’s treat-
ment of me when I got
home did more to fuel my
(post-traumatic stress dis-
order) than the war,” Friese
said.
In contrast to WWII, the
battle lines in Vietnam were
not clear, he said.
“Most of the people, they
were fighting were in uni-
form, and you could tell
one person from the other,”
Friese said. “In Vietnam, you
knew who you were shooting
at, and you did not know who
the enemy was.”
Regardless of when,
where or who he was with, he
was constantly on duty.
“Unless you were up by
the (demilitarized zone) in
South Vietnam,” he said.
“Most of the battles were
fought in that situation.”
Friese, who got out of
Vietnam in 1971, said he had
the option to reenlist.
“I told my commanding
officer, ‘No, you don’t have
enough money,’” he said.
“I’ve been shot at enough.”
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