When he was 19, my father was shipped off to Vietnam. He served two tours of duty, totaling about a year and a half in country. He’s never really talked about his time over there. All I’ve ever known was that he was a chopper pilot, and he was awarded a handful of medals, including a Purple Heart from when his chopper was shot down. I never asked him why he never talked about the war; I just assumed it was a miserable experience that he didn’t want to talk about. But today I had a couple of questions about the war, so I gave him a call.

It turns out that the reason my dad never talked about Vietnam is because back in the seventies, soldiers who returned home from the war weren’t warmly received by the general public. So rather than deal with idiot hippies calling him a “baby-killer,” he just hid the fact that he was a veteran.

When my parents separated when I was a kid, my dad gave me a couple of his medals to hold onto. I didn’t know it at the time, but I recently realized that one of the medals was a Bronze Star Medal. I asked him what he did to earn it, figuring it was something pretty impressive, but he said that back then the Army pretty much handed them out to anyone who showed up for the war.

But then he told me an interesting story about another medal he earned. One day he was on patrol with a couple of other choppers when they noticed a platoon of about 14 American soldiers on the ground who were about to be ambushed by at least 100 North Vietnamese soldiers. My dad called for reinforcements, and then he and the other pilots swooped down into the middle of the ensuing firefight and started airlifting soldiers out of the fracas. They saved a lot of lives that day.

As a result of his heroism, and because he was the one who called in the reinforcements, the Army decided to award my father the Silver Star, which is the third highest award given for valor in the face of the enemy. But for some reason, they weren’t planning to give Silver Stars to the other pilots who accompanied him. My dad didn’t think that was fair, so he turned it down. (Actually, he says he told them to “shove it,” which may be a bit of creative license on his part. But knowing my dad and his feelings towards authority figures, I can easily imagine him flipping off a commanding officer and telling him to “shove it.”)

How cool is that?

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