By A new publication tells the stories of 28 area veterans who served in Vietnam.
Compiled by Teresa Stallings, “Giving Voice to Aberdeen, SD Vietnam War Veterans” aims to share the stories of young men who were drafted or enlisted during the 20-year conflict that ended in 1975.
Stallings, a retired college professor of sociology at Northern State, said she interviewed Aberdeen area veterans from 2014 to 2018. Then, she retired and moved back home to South Carolina.
“After reading and re-reading the interviews, I’m humbled, it’s amazing what you did,” she said while addressing a room of veterans and their family members at K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library on Wednesday, Nov. 12, the day after Veterans Day.
Teresa Stallings, retired sociology professor at Northern State, compiled the results of 28 local Vietnam veteran interviews in a book that’s now available for sale at the Red Rooster and Dacotah Prairie Museum. Stallings now lives in South Carolina. Aberdeen Insider photo by Elisa Sand.
The idea for the book came from veteran Dennis Nelson of Aberdeen, who said he wanted to do something to honor and remember the soldiers who served in Vietnam.
The book was published, in part, with a $2,300 grant from the Aberdeen Area Community Foundation. Local veteran Al Ochsner said that with the grant, one-third of the books will be donated to schools, libraries and veterans interviewed for the project.
The rest are being sold for $35 each at the Red Rooster Coffee House, 218 S. Main St., and the Dacotah Prairie Museum, 21 S. Main St.
Stallings said her knowledge about Vietnam and what led to the war was initially limited to daily newscasts about the casualties. She remembers protesting the government’s support of the war.
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The interviews, however, gave her a broader understanding of what soldiers went through. She interviewed eight veterans who were drafted and 20 enlistees. All were between the ages of 18 and 23 when they entered the military.
While the one year of required service for someone who was drafted was shorter than how long those who enlisted served, Stallings said some chose to enlist as that gave them a better chance at deciding where they would end up.
Stallings said the length of time the U.S. military spent in Vietnam was eclipsed only by the time U.S. soldiers spent in Afghanistan.
Containing communist influences în North Vietnam
She said U.S. troops were in Vietnam to keep the communist influences in North Vietnam from spilling into South Vietnam. Vietnam was divided in 1954, with North Vietnam under communist rule, and the U.S. backing South Vietnam. An effort to reunite the country under communism led to the war. Some two decades later, when American troops left, the nation reunited. That was in 1976.
“The mission wasn’t to conquer North Vietnam, but to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam,” Stallings said of the war.
The jungles, mountains and swampy areas of Vietnam posed challenges, she said, and soldiers often couldn’t distinguish between the enemy and civilians since North Vietnamese troops didn’t wear uniforms.
The Ho chi Minh Trail was a key route used for transporting goods. Stallings said while young boys ended up drafted into military service, teenage girls were often tasked with running supplies.
That trail varied in width from about 18 feet to 50 miles and had a network of tunnels under the surface. It ran through Laos and Cambodia with feeder trails into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
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Ochsner said the trail was bombed heavily during the war. A particular challenge was the network of tunnels under the surface. Enemies hid in the narrow tunnels during the day. The smallest soldiers were typically tasked with searching, he said.
Stallings said helicopters were important during the conflict because they were used not only for bombs, but to move troops in and out of different areas and conduct searches.
Ochsner said helicopters were targeted by the enemy with grenades attached to arrows that were shot into the air.
Though decades have passed, he said he still finds himself awake at night wondering how many casualties he was responsible for with the strikes he called over the radio.
Editor’s Note: A grant from the Aberdeen Area Community Foundation supported the publication of this book. That information was wrong in an earlier version of this story.