HONOR AND DUTY IS ALL THAT I HAVE “My name is Charles Gant, and I am a Vietnam Veteran. I enlisted so I could hopefully become an airborne combat medic. So, I joined May 31, 1967. I turned 19 December 5, 1967 and was in Vietnam one week later. The Army did not have to honor any contracts or my request to become an airborne combat medic, so my jump school class and I were airborne infantry. A hundred of us were sent to the 2/502nd Infantry Battalion. Thirty six of us went to Alpha Company and the rest were spread throughout the battalion. By the way, we were called the Strike Force Widow Makers, thus the Widow Maker patch. The NVA and Vietcong who were pretty much wiped out in the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive, just took off their uniforms and put on the black pajamas. They referred to us as the "chicken men" since they did not know anything about eagles on our 101st Airborne uniforms. My first six months in country was spent mostly out in the jungles and mountains doing what we called Search and Destroy operations, making heliborne assault after heliborne assault, many of which involved going into "hot" LZs. Other than the rare stand down, the only time I was out of the boonies was when I was recovering from being wounded, which happened twice. At that time or my first six months with Alpha Company, I carried a M-79 grenade launcher, a sawed off twelve gauge shotgun as well as a 45-caliber Browning automatic pistol. Our rucksacks were over a hundred pounds each, maybe dropping down to seventy-five pounds just before a resupply, which was either five days or seven days apart. We rarely took prisoners alive, but we did only when necessary. The NVA feared the chicken men to the point that there was a bounty on our collective heads, something that we were actually very proud of. Right at the end of May or early June, I was one of the "old timers" transferred into the newly formed Delta Company. I guess being wounded twice and having been in country six months, even though I was only 19, meant I was an old-timer. I ended up becoming a point man, a position I held until I left country in December of 1968. Even though a point man's life expectancy was only seven seconds in an ambush and or firefight or so I was told, I was never wounded again. I came down with some kind of nasty bug, which caused my temperature to go up to 107, or so I was told. It was actually fortunate that I was wounded the first time during the battle for Hue City and thus, I was already in a hospital recovering. I was told that I would not have survived long enough to make to a hospital, if I had been out in the jungle. I was unconscious for eight days, only coming to twice, once when I was placed in a bathtub filled with ice and water and the other time when I woke up long enough to realize that I was covered with a lot of blankets. As a result of the fever, I became sterilized, thus unable to have kids of my own. I did not find out for 30 years, that I had contracted a rare kind of TB called Testicular Tuberculosis. I have always loved kids, and now here I am with no children or grandchildren. I became a paramedic, something I loved to do. But I did not believe in PTSD. I just figured that not sleeping for three or four nights at a time, the daily flashbacks and way ongoing nightmares was just normal for having gone through a terrible year of fighting in the jungles and mountains of Vietnam. It was only in 2000 after going into a thirty minute flashback, while on call, that I was finally diagnosed. I will not bore you with my survivor's guilt issues. Would I serve again? In a heartbeat. I love my country very much. ~Charles Gant, Vietnam Veteran #TheVietnamWar #military