Sad Memories - Vietnam Era

The Final Chapter

Heroes of My Hometown

It was the early '90s and towards the end of my second marriage attempt that I found myself with too much free time on my hands and little to occupy my muddled mind. This provided ample opportunity for my troubled mind to once again begin reliving my Vietnam moments.

At that time, details about my San Benito High School classmates’ fates in Vietnam were only then becoming available online. I had never previously known that a total of twelve of my San Benito brothers had been lost to that damned war. They and the countless others who returned home maimed and mentally or physically crippled or scarred for life make a powerful statment on the cruelity of war, of that senseless, horrid and godless war in Vietnam.

The year 1968 was a terrible year to be in Vietnam. I was with Advisory Team 99, 25th Vietnamese Infantry Division in Duc Hoa and with Advisory Team 51, 21st Vietnamese Infantry Division at Bac Lieu that year and lost some six Advisors to the enemy. During that same year, seven of my San Benito martyrs were killed in action. Two others were killed in 1966 and one each in the years 1969, 1970 and 1971. Staff Sergeant Genero Garza had been in Vietnam less than a month when he was killed in action. PFC Antonio Morado and PFC Alberto Perez had been in-country only two months when they were killed in action.

Ten of the twelve San Benito Martyrs were Mexican-Americans.
Eight were in Army service.
Four were in Marine Corps service.
Six were friends or acquaintances.
Two met their fate while serving with the 101^st Airborne Division, my unit during the 1970 to 1971 period.

At that point, it had been some twenty-plus years since the end of the Vietnam war, but the grieving was just then setting in. I decided to build a website honoring my San Benito brothers, but, unfortunately, YouTube with its massive number of instructional how-to videos had not yet been founded, and today's Dreamweaver¹ version was not yet fully functional. I visited bookstores in Austin, Texas, looking for website instructional guides. I found two good website development books, took two weeks’ vacation from work and spent my vacation at home learning HTML and developing my website. Working furiously and coding my website as I learned, it took me some three weeks altogether to develop my website.

I kept reworking my website after work each day for several weeks until I had the final version of what I believed to be a fitting tribute to honor my San Benito brothers. Based on my research and what I remembered about each of my hometown heroes, I developed individual profiles for each of the twelve. I never posted it to the internet. I had second thoughts when it occurred to me their families might not have wanted to relive the grief and sadness of their loss upon visiting my website tribute to them. I thought of contacting my classmates’ families and ask for permission to publish my website along with their profiles, but I would not know whom to contact. In the end and without regret, I deleted all files of my website. But the time and effort I spent developing my classmates’ website served an immensely significant purpose, that of calming the sadness which had filled my mind and soul for the previous several months. Their reworked and current profiles as they appear on the Vietnam Wall Memorial follow below.

LCPL Donald R. Allen

CWO Ross O. Barlow

LCPL Robert A. Corkill

SSG Genero Garza

CPL Antonio Hernandez

Sp5 Sigifredo Montalvo

PFC Antonio Morado

PFC Alberto L. Perez

Julian R. Rodriguez

CPL Timoteo M. Santiago

Sp4 Rodolfo Villafranco²

SSG Rolando G. Villarreal²

¹ Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.
² Both Specialist Four Rodolfo Villafranco and Staff Sergeant Rolando Villarreal were serving with my own 101st Airborne Division when they were killed in action.

. . . On Fighting and Dying in War

Now we have a problem in trying to make our power credible, and Vietnam looks like the place. - President John F. Kennedy in 1961 interview with James Reston, New York Times reporter

That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his felllowship to die with us. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother, And gentlemen now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here. - William Shakespeare, Henry V

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