THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504300052
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Les Ward remembers it like it was yesterday.
It was May 5, 1968, and he was a staff sergeant in an Army artillery outfit. He had been in Vietnam for five months, fighting ``McNamara's war,'' as it was sometimes called, after the U.S. defense secretary who helped chart its course.
His unit was dug in on a hill just outside the Khe Sanh firebase, and the enemy's guns were blazing.
``For several weeks we'd been receiving rocket rounds from across the Laotian border,'' Ward said last week, sitting in the den of his suburban Great Bridge home. ``That morning they got lucky. They hit an ammunition pile, and that started a fire. We had to evacuate the guns.''
The artillerymen worked their way around the base of the hill, taking refuge in foxholes and bunkers alongside a nearby infantry unit. Then around midnight, they were overrun by the North Vietnamese. In the resulting firefight, 10 men - about 10 percent of Ward's unit - were killed.
After the shooting stopped, Ward joined the grim task of pulling bodies out of foxholes. Two were men from his unit.
Two days later, he had a much closer brush with death: He was caught head-on in an enemy mortar attack.
As he was helicoptered out to a hospital ship, everything went blank. He was told later that he had stopped breathing.
Ward had multiple shrapnel wounds over his body, including a lacerated jugular vein and a paralyzed vocal cord. He also was blinded in one eye. He spent six months in an Army hospital and had four follow-up operations to remove shrapnel and repair mangled blood vessels.
Fast-forward to 1995. Ward, 50, still disabled from his injuries, works as a field service technician for Channel One, the in-school cable TV service. Earlier this month, he read that Robert S. McNamara had written a book calling the United States' Vietnam involvement ``wrong, terribly wrong.''
``The night I read that, I blew up,'' Ward said. ``Every time I think I'm ready to put this behind me, something comes up to open it all up again. . .
``Now McNamara says he knew in 1967 that we couldn't win. Then why was I over there?''
Ward grew up in South Norfolk and enlisted in the Army at 18. He was already married to his wife, Janice, when he went to Vietnam. His experience there ``totally changed his whole personality,'' his wife said last week. ``The first couple of years after he came back, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and he'd be on the floor.
``Once at a parade, the Blue Angels flew over and before I knew what was happening, he hit the ground. Planes, helicopters, rain, even '60s music - all kinds of things can trigger the memories.''
``It left emotional scars that I think will never heal,'' Les Ward said.
He and his wife also suspect that the Vietnam legacy has carried over to the next generation. They have two children, Scott, 25, and Tori, 17. Scott was born with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, which necessitated nine operations and caused learning disabilities. His parents believe the condition could have resulted from Ward's exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.
When he died in the Khe Sanh firefight, Eddie Chervony - one of Ward's fellow artillerymen - had a 13-month-old daughter named Jeanette.
She is now 28 and lives in California. About five years ago, she and the Wards found each other, and they have included her in their healing process. They have gotten together several times, including some Father's Day observances at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
``I look at that wall and I don't see numbers like a lot of people do,'' Ward said. ``I see individuals. Each one was a son. Some were husbands and fathers. You have to ask yourself, `Why?'
``I wish there was a court in this land that could try McNamara for treason, or for war crimes. . . . How does he sleep at night? I hope when he dies, his spirit has to run a gauntlet, facing all the people that he caused to die.
``I had very little faith in our government before because of the POW-MIA issue and the Agent Orange issue, and now I have no faith in it at all. . . . I feel sorry for the young men and women in the military today. The government doesn't care about its soldiers. It uses them and throws them away.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
KEYWORDS: VIETNAM WAR by CNB