Kip Hargrave

I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1969. I was a bombardier/navigator in an A-6. Sometime in October, after being in the country only a month, we (the pilot and I) were shot down on a bombing mission over the DMZ. I was rescued by helicopter after being on the ground for a very short time. The chopper crew left me at a mass unit north of Danang where the docs did the necessary work to keep me alive. (As an aside, one of the corpsman who picked me up was killed the next day doing the same thing for someone else.)

I made my way to a hospital ship for a week or so and then to a hospital in Guam. In Guam, I got strong enough to make the trip back to Great Lakes Naval Hospital north of Chicago. Six months or so later, I was out of the Marine Corps and back in my home town of Evansville, IN. In Evansville, I started a small asphalt paving business. Four years later, I sold the business and joined Maryknoll as a seminarian.

I am sure of how much of an effect Vietnam had on me. It certainly didn't leave the marks that working with the church of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador in the early 1980's had on me. Neither did it mean as much to me as the three years I spent as a Lay Missioner with my wife and children in Bolivia. It is interesting, though, that upon resettling in the United States, I got a job helping refugees resettle themselves in Syracuse, Ny. Some of those refugees were from Vietnam. Many were officers who had been imprisoned by the new Vietnam government. They enjoyed sitting around, eating, drinking beer and telling old war stories. It was something I enjoyed at times but I never got close to any of those men. On the other hand, I have many refugee friends who are Cubans, Somalis and Russians. I don't know why that happened. I do know that I don't like to tell old Vietnam war stories and that I am not close to the men I served with in the Marines.