Veterans are still battling for respect

Stacy J. Willis

Friday, Oct. 15, 1999 | 11:37 a.m.

Retired Col. Newell Henderson's fiancee bought her wedding dress the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Within months, the couple's plan to settle down on a farm was put on hold, and Henderson found himself in combat in the jungle of Morotai, a small island in the South Pacific.

"The enemy was dug in, and we were moving in, so they always got the first shot," Henderson, of Minier, Ill., said. "Bullets just started zipping around you.

"Guys will ask, 'Were you scared?' You're damn right I was scared. But I was a sergeant at the time, and my men were scared and I tried to retain confidence. You have to go forward. You have to lead. You can't ask a man to do anything you won't do."

This week Henderson and some of the more than 100 members of the National Order of Battlefield Commissions enjoyed slightly less stressful bonding. In town for their annual convention, the group of veterans -- all promoted to officers while on the battlefield -- lounged in a hospitality suite at the Plaza hotel-casino and swapped stories from days gone.

Retired Col. Bernard "Ben" Cohen, a member and organizer of the group, carried a roll of stickers with him that show a logo for the National Order of Battlefield Commissions.

It is a simple design: a soldier's helmet, a mascot mustang horse and the words "valor," "patriotism" and "duty."

For years, he has been trying to get the United States Postal Service to print a postage stamp with that logo on it.

"It's awful tough to even get recognized," Cohen, of Omaha, Neb., said. "I've sent letter after letter to Washington, D.C., but I get nothing. I don't think they believe we're real.

"It's sad really. We've got guys here who have bullet holes in them."

Indeed -- one of them had a bullet hole in his ear.

"I got hit two times -- I got a hole in my ear -- and I was so concerned about that one because I was a young bachelor and I thought, 'How will I ever find a girl with a hole in my ear?' " said Retired Col. Neal Grimland, a tall 82-year old with a quick smile.

Grimland, of San Antonio, received his battlefield commission in the Army after blowing up an enemy tank during battle in the Philippines, but he said the recognition was swift.

"They took me off the front and said, 'Would you like to be an officer?'

"So a general pinned two bars on my shoulders, gave me a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and said, 'Now get back up there,' " Grimland said.

"Ten minutes later a guy came driving up to me in a jeep and said, 'They borrowed my bars for your (promotion), and I want them back.' So I gave back the bars. But it didn't matter, because we couldn't wear insignia in the jungle anyway."

To the uninitiated listening in the Las Vegas hotel, the group's collective memories are the stuff of nightmares:

"It was 0200 hours ... You could smell a sweet smell on (the enemy) as they moved in ... we were shooting point-blank at each other -- explosions were knocking out our bunker and adrenalin was flowing and trip flares were going off and there was yelling and screaming -- one Marine was swinging a 60 millimeter mortar at them like a baseball bat," said Retired Chief Warrant Officer Gib Bolton, a Vietnam veteran who received the Silver Star and Purple Heart.

"They hit us from three sides. We fought them hand to hand. Finally -- it was a matter of life and death -- I called in artillery on our own position.

"But before I called in I got down on one knee and asked the Good Lord to help me make the right decision," said Bolton, of Portsmouth, Ohio, who has a crew cut and tatooed forearms and describes himself as "a lifetime Marine."

From behind the line, U.S. backup forces blasted the site on Bolton's request and eventually won the hill.

"Ten Marines were killed on that hill -- but 34 of the enemy were killed."

Reitred Col. Vernon Greene of Fayetteville, N.C., -- a veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam -- sat on a suite sofa and told a story about a snowy day in Belgium when his platoon was ambushed by Germans.

"The trees were crackling with artillery. I was in there shooting back, and I felt a thump on my waist -- a huge piece of (shrapnel) had hit on my cartridge belt -- which stopped it from hitting me. I was lucky. "But a lot of others weren't so lucky," he said.

Greene, recalled carrying his wounded fellow soldiers off the front, one by one, through the snow to where they might get help from medics. He recalled how he heard the news that some didn't survive -- and then he stopped telling the story and looked away.

Red Riddick is a thin, polite man from Mississippi who ends most sentences with "sir" or "ma'am," and was attending his first Mustangs convention. He was an Army infantryman who served in WWII -- he landed in Europe 12 days after D-day in one of the replacement troops.

Riddick earned his battlefield commission -- and was promoted to second lieutenant -- after shooting his way through enemy soldiers to rescue a company commander.

"The Army took me as a 20-year-old civilian and made a killer of me. They gave me a rifle, a bayonet, a .45 pistol and a hand grenade. Every day they taught me to kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," Riddick said.

"It was cold-blooded. I was putting a human being in my rifle sites and watching him fall almost every day. But at that time it wasn't hard at all. It was everyday life, like getting up and eating breakfast in the morning.

"I saw hundreds of boys slaughtered and beat up and shot up and blown up ...

"But even though it was war, it was one of the greatest things that happened to me. It made a man out of me. It made me realize how important life was.

"Patriotism was a huge thing then, and it still is for me now. It's hard for me to see so little patriotism in the younger generation. You look at all of us right here in this room, and we all made sacrifices."

Retired Col. Pete Armstrong of Asheville, N.C., is one of the youngest in the crowd. A Vietnam veteran who now works as a high school teacher, Armstrong spent 30 years in the Army -- 1962-1992. He worked in Special Forces during Vietnam, often sneaking behind enemy lines with as few as five soldiers.

This week he looked around a room in Las Vegas at the veterans who received commissions on the battlefield, and he offered a perspective on leadership.

"All of these guys started off as privates and demonstrated leadership and were singled out for it.

"But they're all very humble about it. They had a call to arms, and a personality trait that caused each person in this organization to rise. Our motto is, 'Rise from the ranks to greater distinction' -- and that's what these men did.

"And I would say we are all the better for that."