The Bee asked and Vietnam veterans answered, sharing their tales from a tumultuous time in history

When David E. Leué was 15, in the summer of 1943, he took a rowboat out on the lake at Camp Chickagami in Pennsylvania. He returned to shore a changed man.

“The calm of this beautiful scene,” he writes in his memoir, “was shattered by the blast and roar of an Army Air Corps B-26, going flat out flying low on the water. The noise was terrific. He was buzzing his girlfriend, I assume, an activity that was indulged, due to the war. He pulled up sharply, turned around and made an even lower pass right over my boat. It brought tears to my eyes. I was thrilled and overwhelmed that anyone could do such a thing. The power, the skill, the freedom, the adventure, just went to the core of me. I said a fervent prayer from the heart. ‘Please God, let me fly someday, and please, please, let me do it well.’ ”

Leué later writes: “Be careful what you pray for.” In a few years, he would become a naval attack pilot fighting in Korea and Vietnam.

When The Bee requested letters from Vietnam veterans marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, our invitation came a few months too late to get an original letter from Leué. He later became Capt. David Ernest Leué, a career military man, father of seven and stepfather of four. He died Jan. 25 in his Clovis home at age 87.

But his widow, Stella, wanted her husband’s voice to be heard in this project. She spoke on his behalf, writing a heartfelt letter with a few sentences about his reflections on the war. She included the news that he will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery July 30 at 8:45 a.m. A reception will follow at the Fort Myer Officers Club.

Stella left Clovis July 22, on what would have been their 26th wedding anniversary, to accompany her husband’s casket to Arlington, Virginia. She was accompanied by a son, Paul Leué, and his girlfriend, Anna Bobikova.

“It will be our last flight with the captain,” Stella wrote in a family email before she left. “It will be most memorable.”

From Leué’s extensive memoirs, we learn that in his 32 years of military service, he survived 329 combat missions in the Korean and Vietnam wars and family records list honors including four Distinguished Flying Crosses, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with 26 stars, three Navy Commendation meals, Korean PUC, China Service, Korean Theater seven stars, U.N. Ribbon and National Defense Medal. He was commanding officer of VA-153 in Vietnam on board the USS Constellation in 1966 and captain of the USS Canisteo, an underway replenishment ship from 1972-1974. His last duty station was serving as chief of staff at Naval Air Station Lemoore. He retired as a captain in 1977.

After retirement, he founded Leué Solar in 1982, a solar energy-efficiency business, and taught construction management at Fresno State for 13 years. He also worked with PG&E as an engineering sales representative for 20 years before his retirement at age 83.

“I am most proud of my husband’s 32 years of service,” his wife wrote.

About 65 members of the family will travel from all over the nation for the military farewell ceremony at Arlington.

Fortunately, for those of us left behind, Leué left a detailed account of his war service in two books. In his own words from his 2013 volume, “Vietnam Combat: An Attack Pilot’s Diary: The Four Freedoms Betrayed,” he left his reflections on Vietnam, nearly four decades after its end.

David E. Leué, age 85, Quail Lakes, Clovis

The battle for the free people of Vietnam arose from the philosophical, political and military power of the Soviet Union. Both the Korean and Vietnamese wars flowed directly from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s arming of Joe Stalin and the Soviets. Roosevelt betrayed his pledge given in his “Four Freedoms” speech “to fight those dictators.” If FDR had fought and defeated Stalin and the Soviet Union, with Hitler, in World War II as he pledged, there would have been no Cold War, Korean War or Vietnamese War.

In reading Richard Nixon’s “Memoirs” and Henry Kissinger’s “Years of Upheaval,” I was struck by the realization that LBJ’s, Nixon’s and Kissinger’s greatest challenge in trying to gain a meaningful peace in Vietnam and explain U.S. policy and objectives to the American people, was our own hostile media and universities that supported the socialist philosophies of our opponents! Our media’s support of our enemies was a key factor in the war’s outcome.

Our sacrifices in Vietnam accelerated the demise of the Soviet Union. The battle against communism was just another battle in the continuing quest for the free society our founders envisioned. It continues today in our own nation.

A celebrity visits our hospital

Forty years ago, when I was being drafted out of college into the Army to serve my country, I thought the U.S. was making a mistake. We were trying to get involved in Southeast Asia, Vietnam.

After becoming a social work specialist, I ended up working in an Army hospital, and I saw many injured soldiers.

I remember when the actor Ephram Zimbalist Jr. came and visited soldiers in the hospital. I introduced Mr. Zimbalist to a triple amputee, who was a casualty of a land mine in Vietnam. The soldier asked Mr. Zimbalist what he thought of the war in Vietnam.

Mr. Zimbalist said, “That is a hard question to answer.”

It was very hard, because the soldier had both legs and one arm missing. But the fact is that soldier helped benefit the world. Because the U.S. entered Vietnam, communism was battered.

The U.S helped millions of Southeast Asians, who have become great U.S. citizens.

Now 40 years later, perhaps due in part to the Vietnam War, the world and Southeast Asia are in a better place.

‘Eggs were thrown at me’

The men and women who were sent to Vietnam had no voice or choice about fighting a war in a country we never heard of. It was a political war, and soldiers were treated disgracefully by protesters.

In New Orleans at the airport, eggs were thrown at me. In my neighborhood, I was called an Uncle Tom.

Today we struggle with issues such obtaining benefits or getting adequate treatment in a timely manner. I was recently told that I didn’t qualify for Agent Orange Exposure because I had to apply within two years of being exposed.

So now you can imagine that there is nothing to celebrate after 40 years but painful memories of the past. I respectfully appreciate the dedicated service of our young men and women of today who defend our country. Many of them are experiencing tremendous pain, physical and mental. May God bless them and help them through these difficult times.

No excuse for what we did

The United States was wrong to go to war against the Vietnamese people and their government.

As a veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, I know firsthand what the people of that country went through to achieve the right to self-determination.

In 1941 the United States and Britain signed the Atlantic Charter, which spelled out the post-war aims of the allies. One of those post-war pledges was that people in occupied territories during the war would have the right after the war to choose their own form of government.

Japan occupied Southeast Asia during the war. Ho Chi Minh and his fighters were very effective in resisting the Japanese occupation.

The allies helped “Uncle Ho” and his people with arms and material. After the war, we withdrew that help and massively helped the French attempt to regain colonial control there. After the French defeat in 1954, the United States took over the war effort, prolonging the bloodshed until 1975.

There is no excuse for what the United States did to the people of Vietnam. In all fairness we should have allowed those people to decide their own destiny. In the end, they did.

‘Too extreme a price to pay’

I do have reasons for a lack of pride in my service in the Army and Vietnam. I have not, to this date, scripted much about that debacle. Today, as my eyes search back, I see Muhammed Ali standing strong against that conflict, a brave man.

The word I would use to describe that war in toto is “lies.” Directed by the administration, our government fed us a sickening pablum of those lies. Those who refused to swallow were considered traitors.

At 19, I was drafted into service, and I could just smell those lies. In less than two years, I was out of the Army, and the deceit was palpable.

It took about 10 years for me to calm down as a civilian. But since that time, I have been resolute in believing that war is too extreme a price — at least for poorer people — to pay without first going through some extensive national discussions and debate.

Those discussions, because the draft has been suspended, are nonexistent these days. I cannot say I would favor a military draft, but it did, and would, make us think long and hard before we act.

We chose to serve, not run

I was a part of the first lottery draft in 1969 and, following graduation from college, I was drafted. I entered the Army on Aug. 12, 1970. Although Canada was an hour away, I never considered leaving my country to avoid the draft.

I had friends and family members who fought in World War I, World War II and Korea; I was not above those who had already served.

After basic and infantry training, I was trained as a tracker dog handler and sent to Vietnam in July 1971. I walked point for my squad in the 196th Infantry Brigade.

In November I transferred to a scout dog platoon. I handled Champ, a German Shepard, one of the greatest experiences I have had in this life.

I remain humbled and privileged to have fought side by side with soldiers in my squad. We all served this country with pride. We were nothing like the way we were portrayed in the media.

Should we have been in Vietnam? Absolutely not, but our soldiers did what was asked of them and did it well.

“We chose to serve, not run. We chose to obey not defy. We are true Americans.”

We didn’t learn

If there is anything we learned from Vietnam, it’s that we didn’t learn anything from Vietnam.

Why did I go? Obligation

When I received my draft notice in 1967, I made the decision not to pursue to a college deferment.

My buddies, at the time, applauded my decision and talked about how they would soon be joining me. Many of these same guys had a whole different opinion of me and my decision when I came home on leave a year later.

Within 10 days after arriving in Vietnam, we had our first casualty. No one knew that I did not support the war.

So why did I go? In part, because of a sense of obligation. My older brother had served in ’Nam and several of my extended family members had served in World War II. The man I was named after was wounded on D-day. I simply could not justify not serving while others in my family had.

Like most of the men I served with, I did not want to be there. That said, the majority of us served with honor. My Vietnam experiences have helped me to filter through all the noise made by the chest-pounders in our midst who lack the imagination to see any solutions to our conflicts other than war.

‘We still have not learned our lesson’

I was a Navy aviation ordnanceman (E6) and served on several aircraft carriers off the coast of Vietnam.

During our tour in the South, we bombed many insignificant targets day after day, with no impact on the war except for the risk to pilots’ lives and the complete waste of millions of dollars of munitions.

Later, we moved off the coast of North Vietnam and were finally allowed to take out targets such as rail yards, refineries and most importantly, the Ho Chi Min Trail at night — since this is when the enemy moved most of their supplies.

This war turned out to be just another Korea and, in the end, accomplished very little except the loss of 58,300 American servicemen and women and many more innocent civilians. Politics drove most of the decisions, and it seems like we still have not learned our lesson; hence: Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows what next.

Everything since World War II seemed to change militarily to unwinnable guerrilla warfare, with no real objective in mind that made any sense. Many servicemen and women veterans feel the same way.

God help us during the next president-initiated conflict.

We’ve forgotten how to win a war

Our nation’s history is filled with examples of our support and defense of our allies. It could be argued that our struggle for freedom from Great Britain would not have met with success had it not been for assistance from France.

I believe that our initial attempts to support the Vietnamese in their struggle for freedom were a noble and proper thing to do however, in the words of Kenny Rogers, “You got to know when to fold them.”

The lack of wisdom and the political corruption of both Vietnamese and American leadership, especially Lyndon B. Johnson, cost the Vietnamese their freedom. It also cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. That loss increases as Agent Orange continues to take many of us down.

Having served as a member of the “Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club” in 1967-68, I experienced the fact that from the day President Johnson called a halt to the bombing of the enemy in Hanoi, our defeat was signed.

Our nation has a proud but bloody history in its defense of freedom. While we’re still quite capable of winning battles, we seem to have forgotten how to win a war.

Now we buy underwear made in Vietnam

Vietnam: a 15-year event, thousands of casualties, 58,000 dead Americans, cost billions, divided country!

In 1965, I was on the U.S.S. Cimarron, an oiler, or floating fuel station. We deployed to the South China Sea for blockade support to prevent sea-going vessels from entering South Vietnam. We did underway replenishment with aircraft carriers, destroyers and Navy small craft, and delivered them equipment, candy bars, cigarettes, clothing, etc., and 3 million gallons of fuel every four to five days for eight months.

Later, in Coronado, we trained Navy sailors going to Vietnam how to conduct small, fast boat operations. Boat support personnel rotated between Coronado and our base in Da Nang, South Vietnam, every six or seven months.

We trained our friends and allies, South Vietnamese soldiers, how to conduct small, fast boat operations and tactics. I would love to know what happened to those brave, young men of both navies, that I worked with during three tours. Everyone had a strong sense of duty to their countries and fought to protect them.

We were right to be there to support an ally, and, maybe, prevent a possible collapse of an Southeast Asia. If the military had been allowed to do its job, without the politics, the end would have been different.

Have we gained? Yes, now, if one wishes, you may buy underwear made in Vietnam!

Vets slink home and sneak in back door

I am a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran. The question “Should the U.S. have entered the war?” shouldn’t be asked of the Vietnam veteran. We had no say and any opinion is moot.

What is more important is how the veterans of that war were treated by America. Their treatment was an abomination and a disgrace to any country.

What did we gain? Proof of our freedoms, such as freedom of speech and patriotism. For instance, Jane Fonda and many others.

Compare with that with Desert Storm, with ticker-tape and hometown parades. The Vietnam veteran had to slink home and sneak in the back door.

There are many documentaries on Vietnam but few explore the true treatment of returning vets. The American public learned the error of their treatment and consequently, changed its behavior. Now, it is politically correct to praise our military.

And so it should be.

You win with support of the people

You may not get a lot of responses from Vietnam vets, because we still don’t like to talk about that place. I hope you do, and I hope this letter is what you wanted from us, just a perspective from then to now.

After serving with the Marines in Vietnam and losing an older brother there, I feel I have earned the right to answer your question.

It is not disrespectful to those who served to talk about what happened, should have or could have. Conversely, having the conversation sheds light on actions and results.

First, in Vietnam, we fought like the British during the Revolutionary War. We still haven’t learned that a superior trained and financed military does not always win. See also Iraq and Afghanistan.

You win by having the support of the people. See World War I, World War II and Korea.

In conflicts we prevailed in, we had the support of the people and the government. In the conflicts we failed in or are failing in, we were not wanted by either the people or the government. We had been fed false information by the war mongers about the Gulf of Tonkin and weapons of mass destruction.

You can’t invade a country, replace the government with a puppet and expect their people to be happy.

We rarely learn. We waste a lot of lives (tens of thousands of ours and hundreds of thousands of the home country) and taxpayer money (too many billions to count accurately). But then again, the politicians and the military industrial complex have made fortunes off the blood and bodies of those thousands in our misguided actions.

We took our uniforms off to escape public humiliation

Was Vietnam a good war?

As a veteran of the Tet offensive, and one who kept up with later information about the war, yes, it was a good war.

History has shown that many countries in the middle and Far East (specifically Japan) were leaning toward communist governance and that the United States’ involvement was significant in decisions to adopt capitalism.

On the other hand, the war was a disaster! It was led by politicians more interested in elections than the war’s mission. They listened to Vietnamese aristocrats and diplomats heavily influenced by French occupiers through media reporters with strong bias against the war.

These advisers had no idea what was happening in the rural areas where the war was being fought and gave bad advice.

In this country, we allowed communist-leaning individuals such as Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and others, now professors in our universities, to lead students and then non-students to false beliefs about the purpose, accomplishments and actions in Vietnam leading to hateful attitudes toward military personnel.

Some, including me, took our uniforms off on the way home to escape public humiliation.

Mothers brought their babies for medicine

Hey, it’s only been 50 years. Just give me time, I’ll get over it!

In May, 1965, my unit left Okinawa, Japan, and set up a camp east of Da Nang, Vietnam. I served with the Shore Party Battalion, 3rd Marine Division as a corpsman. Equipped with helmet, flack jacket, medical bag and a .45 pistol, I was the last man in a seven-man patrol going into nearby hamlets in search of suspicious activity and weapons.

I thank God I never came under direct fire.

One meaningful activity was going into nearby schools to provide medical assistance to the children. Our team of four corpsman and one doctor provided the care. Mothers brought their babies for needed attention and medicine. I enjoyed the people and respected their culture.

My overseas tour of duty ended in January. After arriving at the El Toro Marine Base in the middle of the night, I stepped out of the plane, laid prone, and kissed the ground.

The communist system has proven to be detrimental to the freedom-loving, human spirit. Wherever it has been tried, it does not last.

It was honorable for our country to help the self-determination cause of the South Vietnamese government.

I am proud to have served my country.

Looking for adventure

When my California friends ask why I went to Vietnam, I say I’m a Texan, my dad’s a military man, and I was looking for adventure.

I grew up reading about special warfare. In the Boy Scouts, my hero was a friend and a sergeant in the First Special Forces.

The experience of war ravaged my patriotic assumptions.

Having grown up in Asia, I felt a kinship with the Vietnamese people. I saw Americans were destroying an entire culture with weapons of mass homicide.

In March 1968, my outfit, the 101 Airborne, went on the offensive in A Shau Valley. On the second day, six men in my platoon, including my best friend, were killed. I was wounded along with 12 others.

While convalescing at Cam Ranh Bay, I discovered the Special Services Library. I read books by Bernard Fall, the doyen of Vietnam studies, and Hans Morgenthau and others. This began my graduate studies.

These authors taught me we were fighting on behalf of an unrepresentative, corrupt regime against a broadly popular resistance. I asked myself how I would deal with these revelatory, traumatic experiences. I vowed to be truthful.

Our war in Vietnam was criminal and genocidal.

‘Your focus was not getting killed, period’

I came from the generation born in the late ’40s; my father and uncles were drafted into the service when World War II broke out. There was no question about their duty as citizens, they reported as directed.

They all served with honor and returned to resume their lives. They spoke very little of the horrors they experienced. This was the example that I wanted to live up to if I ever had to.

In 1967, I received my 1-A draft classification, so now it was my turn. Most of us going to Vietnam, at the time, believed it was a just cause to thwart the spread of communism and the mass murder of innocents, which was, in fact, happening.

I served the majority of my 16-month tour as a Huey door-gunner; our job was to carry troops and supplies wherever needed. I experienced everything the Vietnam War had to offer. While there, I don’t recall very much debate about our cause. You were there, and that was it. You had a job to do and you did it.

Your focus was not getting killed, period.

My return home was like so many others, arriving alone without any fanfare or expecting any. Within about three days, I found work as an apprentice electrician and proceeded to slip back into my Fresno routine with family and friends.

But it really wasn’t over, was it? Now began my soul searching. How did I make it back when so many others did not?

I recall watching TV with shock as town after town in the South fell to the North Vietnamese, watching with heartbreak as helicopters were being tossed into the sea. Why was President Gerald Ford allowing this to go on unchecked?

What we should have learned from this experience is that our servicemen and women are a special breed of citizen, skilled and willing to defend this country. We will always need them. They are not political pawns; they should never be placed in harm’s way without great need and full support.

Was the United States right to enter the war? I’ll leave that to the historians.

Military did its job well

Was the U.S. right to enter the Vietnam War?

Yes, under the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO); Asia’s version of NATO, alliances post World War II to stop the expansion of communism.

The mistakes were made by the Johnson administration by expanding the war after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964. After the incident, it was decided by the administration and under the worst secretary of defense in our nation’s history, Robert S. McNamara, that U.S. Forces would do most of the fighting.

In spite of no gun on the F-4 Phantom in a gunfight over Hanoi, and the misuse of the F-105 and the M-16 rifle, we won all of the battles.

In 1975, the Democrat-controlled congress cut the money off and ran out on the Paris Peace Treaty. Several million people died in Laos and Cambodia as a result.

This was just like the Obama administration running out on Iraq; we lost on both decisions. That is on the cowards in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. military did its job well, paid with lives and blood.

Some things you know, some things you hope

When I heard “Uplink” over the intercom, I knew two things and hoped two things.

I knew that a missile site had just launched a SAM (surface-to-air missle) at my B-52, and I knew that it would be around 55 seconds before I would know if it would hit us.

I was hoping that I remembered to securely fasten my seat belt so the ejection seat would not leave the plane without me, and I hoped that I switched the right switches to keep the aborted mission from scattering 88 bombs randomly over Vietnam.

I did not think about the college fool who, when seeing me in uniform on campus had asked me how I liked killing babies, and I did not think about my sarcastic response, which now seems too offensive to repeat. Back then, it was a time when you had to make a choice to serve or not serve because of principle — or run. My only disdain was for the runners.

At that moment, the reasons for the war were irrelevant. I had more important matters on my mind.

I was there in that B-52 for two reasons. One, I could not justify others being killed or wounded in my place, and two, as long as I was going to be there, I wanted to be as far off the ground as I possible. So I joined up.

By the way, the SAM missed.

I call this country home

April 30 marked the anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese communist forces. Every American I have ever met vilifies the American involvement in that war. I understand why. It was the first televised war, which brought home all the savagery that war entails, the loss of lives and treasure, the way it ended in a face-saving exit for the U.S.

I am conflicted. It would have been good if we had won. Untold numbers of Vietnamese would have avoided the re-education camps and the “new economic zones’’ (Vietnam’s equivalent of being sent to Siberia). Vietnam’s economic development might be at the level of South Korea rather than where it is. On the other hand, I would not have come here as a refugee if the war had turned out differently. I would not have had this education, met my wife and had this medical practice in Fresno for the last 15 years. My son, Michael, would not exist.

Sometimes amidst chaos and tribulations, the actions of a few shine a bright light on what it is to be human. My family was able to leave Vietnam two days before the end via an airlift for Vietnamese dependents whose lives would be in jeopardy under communist rule. The airlift was organized under the table by a few brave CIA agents in country against the wishes of the American ambassador to Vietnam at the time.

It is too easy to sit idly by minding one’s own business rather than take a righteous action demanded by one’s conscience. If it weren’t for those guys I would not be here. Thanks to those (CIA) “spooks,” I can call this country home.

It’s not too late to treat vets well

It is hard for me to believe that almost 47 years ago, I was serving as a rifleman in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. I had the honor to serve with many of America’s finest young men from July 1968 to July 1969, in a war that was not fully supported at home or clearly understood by the military leaders or politicians that were in charge of making the day-to-day decisions.

I went back to Vietnam with another Vietnam vet friend in 2008. We were both still very troubled by not knowing what impact the American War had on the Vietnamese people, and we needed to deal with our own unfinished business that we had struggled with for many years.

I am so glad we made that trip. South Vietnam is still much like it was in 1968, still very poor, but much larger. Over 60% of the population was born after the fall of Saigon in 1975, so most of the population has had no experience with Americans. They know only what they have learned on their own or what the government tells them.

We were welcomed and treated with great respect everywhere we traveled. The only true resentment that was expressed to us was the fact that we completely abandoned our support of the South, while the North continued to be supported by Russia and China, leading to the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.

They didn’t blame the American soldier, who fought for them; they blamed the government leaders who didn’t follow through with their commitment once the decision was made to send American troops into their war.

I wish the American people had treated the Vietnam vets better on their return home. Let’s not make that mistake again. Even though there are only about a third of the Vietnam combat vets still alive, it is not too late.

I would do it again

Having the Vietnam War explained by veterans is similar to having the game of football explained by different players. If one knows nothing about football and had the game explained by a wide receiver and then by a defensive lineman, one would doubt both players are describing the same game.

Veteran experiences in Vietnam were just as varied. The experience an infantryman in the 4th Division had was extremely different from the airman loading bombers in Cam Ranh Bay or the “clerks and jerks” in Saigon.

We all were affected by our experiences in one way or another. Most of us had good friends who didn’t make it home or made it home and were badly injured physically and/or mentally.

I arrived in Vietnam in February 1968, which was to be the bloodiest year of the war. I spent most of my time in a Special Forces A Camp on the Cambodian border.

I’m proud of my service and the men I fought with, and given the option I would do it again. I still remember the three from my camp who didn’t make it home and the brave, indigenous soldiers Congress forced us to leave behind.

This story was originally published July 25, 2015 at 3:29 PM with the headline "The Bee asked and Vietnam veterans answered, sharing their tales from a tumultuous time in history."