Going Home
I enjoyed the June 2006 issue of Vietnam. As a proud charter subscriber to this excellent publication, I read each article and learn many facts about the inner doings of that elongated war. The “Perspectives” column by Richard D. Hartwell caught my instant attention. I read on with sympathetic pain, recalling my own gunshot wounds and medical evacuation from Vietnam.

On two counts, skytrooper Hartwell was incorrect. The first is that his medical ship out of the country was not a C-5. It would have been, like my own transport, a C-141 Starlifter jet.

The other discrepancy was on the second page of Hartwell’s great article, where he mentioned our mutual brothers, “Hawthorne” (Butch), who “would forever question why he was never hit,” and “Chief” (Chief Hendricks), who lost his legs. Hartwell also mentioned me, writing of “Breen, whose mind would die but not his body.”

This is why Vietnam Magazine is so fabulous! Even misinformation can facilitate contact with my old brother and fellow warrior Hartwell. I did not mentally die, my brother. Yes, I got shot to hell trying unsuccessfully to resuscitate brother Marcus D. White from Barea, Ky. And I did place a combat dressing on Chief before I myself took a three-round burst of AK-47 fire. All of this was during the Hard Core’s violation of the February 11, 1967, Tet cease-fire.

Yes, indeed, trooper Hawthorne and I suffer from delayed stress from all of the action we witnessed and participated in, but both of us endured. Hawthorne was (like Hartwell) one of Delta Recon’s M-79 grenadiers. Later, he took over a family RV sales and rental business in Murray, Utah, and has never missed a day’s work since Vietnam. Me? After a 36-year career as a high tech machinist, I’m now working general maintenance for a large local nonprofit organization and plan to stay there for a while.

Brother Hartwell was still going strong when I left Vietnam. It was great to read his story and know he lived. God bless you, my brother, and stay well.

James F. Breen
Newtown, Pa.

Editor’s note: James F. Breen was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with “V” Device for heroic actions in Vietnam on February 11, 1967.

I served in D Company, 2-12 Cavalry, in Vietnam with Hartwell, along with Breen, Hawthorne and both Chiefs, as well as our company commander, Captain Gatanas. I was wounded shortly before Breen in early February 1967, but I am in contact with him and Hawthorne and a few of the other old war dogs, and most of them have expressed interest in hooking up with Hartwell if he isn’t hiding. And thank you for a magazine that tells it like it is/was.

Dennis Doherty
Eureka, Mont.

Palm Sunday Sergeant
I was interested to see W. Grimes Byerly Jr., M.D.’s article (“Personality,” June). I was the agricultural adviser who was among those recruited for our O negative blood. I remember walking into the operating room with my first unit, and seeing Master Sgt. Lane on the operating table. Dr. Byerly just turned and said, “I need another one.” And then again, while closing up the patient, he said, “I need another one; you’re a big guy.” So I was happy to provide a third unit and part of a fourth. Each year on Palm Sunday at our church, I sit and think, “What a way to observe this day!”

The nurses made sure I got plenty of beer and a steak, and it was gratifying the next morning to see Sergeant Lane awake. This small contribution was one of the most rewarding things that has ever happened to me, and I was thankful to hear the rest of the story.

Allen Bjergo
Corvallis, Mont.

Reflections on the Ia Drang
Enjoyed the article about the Ia Drang campaign veterans (August 2006). General Moore spoke to us at Infantry Hall when I was in Infantry Officer Basic at Fort Benning (during the days of Comanche raids and various dinosaur scares), but we didn’t yet appreciate the job he’d done in Vietnam. Mel Gibson’s movie was all right, although melodramatic in spots. Of course, Moore and Galloway did a fine job in their book, which sets a standard for literature about the Vietnam conflict. I especially liked the side-by-side pictures of the soldiers then and now. Nice work.

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