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By Al Zdon
In the time after World War II when America was bursting with prosperity, Peter Thompson grew up in a harsh poverty.
His home was a tar paper shack near Roy
Lake, Minnesota, on the White Earth Reservation. It had a dirt floor, a barrel stove and no insulation.
"You'd have frost on the walls this thick," Thompson said, holding his fingers about an inch apart.
"I
was born right on the swamp. There were no doctors or hospitals. They just had midwives. Sometimes I take the grandchildren down to see where I was born on the swamp."
Thompson went to school at Bagley through
seven grades, then quit to work in the woods. "We did pulp work, cutting jack pines and other trees to eight-foot lengths. It was all the work there was in those days. It's what all the young men did."
When he
was 17, Thompson was ready for a change. "I was running with an older group of guys, and they were getting drafted. I had to have somebody sign for me, but I went down and volunteered for the draft."
It was
1960.
Thompson first trained at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he learned to be a heavy equipment operator. He later was transferred to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri where he spent much of his Army career. His
jobs included training other soldiers to be equipment operators, and helping to build a new airport at the Army base.
In late 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Thompson was moved to Fort Bragg in North
Carolina. The men studied maps for a potential jump into Cuba should that need arise. "None of us had jump training. That was just what the Army did in those days. They just put you where they needed you, even if
you didn't have the training."
The men waited with their gear at Pope Airfield. "One of the officers came by and said we shouldn't worry about coming back, because if we jump into Cuba there would be a nuclear
war."
When the crisis was over, Thompson returned to Fort Leonard Wood. He remembers those times in the early 1960s in the South for the racial tension. "There were riots down South. I remember when those three
civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi."
In 1963, Thompson was sent to Germany. Again, although he had no training, he was assigned to an armored unit where he learned all about tanks. After a car
accident, he was sent back to the United States.
His next job was to learn how to become a drill instructor. "Thirteen of us started in that class, and only seven of us finished. Most of the guys were Korean War
vets who were just trying to finish their time in the Army. Of course, being a drill instructor, you couldn't have a big beer gut, so some of the guys used to wear girdles to work. That was pretty
funny."
Thompson, because of his youth and physical fitness, was assigned to the more rigorous parts of the training. "I did a lot of the marching and physical training. I was doing stuff well beyond what I was
supposed to be doing."
Thompson volunteered for Vietnam, and arrived in-country in January of 1968 just before the Tet Offensive, a massive attack by North Vietnam and Viet Cong soldiers against nearly every
American outpost.
"I'm in the minority, because I didn't think Tet was that bad, at least not where we were."
Thompson was assigned to the First Armored and later became part of the Americal Division. By this
time he had risen in his Army career to staff sergeant and was in charge of a platoon. His home base was at the base at Chu Li, and his unit shared a part of the base called Hawk Hill with the 101st
Airborne.
"During Tet, I remember there were lots of enemy trying to get in the perimeter, but to me it just didn't seem that bad."
During this early time in Vietnam, Thompson's role in fighting the enemy
became more defined. "I don't know if they watched those old time movies and thought that an Indian would make a great scout, but I was usually the first one out on a search and destroy mission."
Thompson
said he did have a good sense of where he was in the field. "It was like I had an instinct about getting to the right place. I suppose it had a lot to do with growing up in the woods. I wasn't trained in map
reading, but I could always get to where I was supposed to be."
ONE
In March, 1968, at a little town called Pinkville by the soldiers, northwest of Chu Li, Thompson earned his first Purple Heart.
"Something was going on, and we took a tank in. We still used tanks in those days." The tank ran over a mine.
"It blew me right off of the tank and I landed on my head. It crunched up my face pretty
bad. I think it did some damage to my cheek and eye socket. I still have a lump right between my eyes. The doctors want to go in and see what's in there, but I won't let them."
The battered face put Thompson in
the hospital, but he was soon out and back with his comrades.
His forays into the countryside sometimes turned up prisoners. "Other units could never make their prisoners talk, but I always could." Thompson
declined to talk about his methods. "They weren't approved, but it was my way of surviving. Everybody depended on me. In order to survive, we had to make the prisoners talk."
TWO
In June, 1968,
Thompson was again on a tank. "We were going down a berm between rice paddies when we got hit by an RPG (rifle-propelled grenade). I was up firing the .50 caliber machine gun, but I only fired it twice, and it
jammed. Those guns always jammed if they weren't loaded right.
"The RPG round hit the turret, but didn't explode. It was a dud. But a piece of the hot metal flew off and hit me in the right ankle. It was the
second time I'd been blown off a tank."
Thompson said that in Vietnam, because of the mines, it was rare for soldiers to ride inside tanks or the Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) that generally replaced the
tanks as the war continued.
"In the tank, there was usually nobody inside except for the driver. We were so short of men in those days, that we'd often only have three people on a tank. On that day it was just
me, the driver and the loader.
"In the APCs, it was the same story. If you hit a mine, everybody inside would burn in there. Nobody rode inside."
Again, Thompson's stay in the hospital was brief. He's not
sure, but the piece of shrapnel might still be in his ankle. He can only bend the ankle today a fraction of its normal flexibility.
THREE
In January of 1969, Thompson went home with his tour
completed. He ended up back at Fort Leonard Wood. "But I turned around and went back right away. I kind of missed it. It's hard to say why."
One reason was that his brother had entered the Army and was going
through boot camp. Thompson didn't feel his brother was ready for the war, and he knew that the Army would not send brothers to Vietnam. He felt he was protecting his brother.
Back in Vietnam, when Thompson and
his men took the APCs out on a mechanized infantry reconnaissance, they were supposed to be guided and controlled by the "Big 6," an officer flying in a helicopter overhead. Part of the reason for the topside help
was to make sure that the troops weren't shooting at "friendlies."
Thompson said his experience in the war was that 40 to 50 percent of the American casualties in Vietnam were caused by friendly fire.
Still,
getting permission to shoot, as Thompson was required to do, was a slow and awkward procedure.
"I'd just start shooting," he said. "If I had to wait for permission, it would be too late. Some of my guys might get
killed."
In November 1969, Thompson's APCs had overrun a North Vietnamese Army position. The APCs pulled into a circular position , much like the covered wagons would do in the old West.
All the enemy had
fled except for three NVA nurses who were hiding in the tall grass. When they were discovered by the Americans, Thompson said, some aggressive GIs were threatening the women.
"I chased them away, but because I
did that the NVA nurses must have known I was some kind of leader. One of them threw a grenade at me as I was walking away. It fell short, but I was sprayed with shrapnel.
"It didn't even knock me down, and I was
too busy with what was going on at the time to pay much attention to it. I was worried about the situation we were in.
"But my kids have been picking pieces of metal out of my back for
years."
FOUR
Thompson admits that his head-first style of combat didn't sit well with some of his fellow soldiers. "Nobody wanted to go out with me. They figured they were taking their lives in their
hands."
The two enemies the Americans faced were the NVA, regular army troops, and the Viet Cong or VC, generally guerilla fighters. "People would say that they couldn't tell the difference, but I always could.
The NVA had good personal hygiene. They had clean teeth and clean clothes. The VC were not like that."
Back at Chu Li, Thompson's unit was in a stand down situation, a chance for the troops to rest and relax for
a week or so. Thompson said the men were only allowed into the neighboring village during the day. "We'd be in the bars in the daytime, and the VC would be in the bars at night."
One day, though, Thompson
overstayed his welcome. "The girls told me the VC were after me. They had a little trap door with a hole underneath it, and I stayed there all night. I could hear the VC above me. When it became daylight, I got
right back to the compound."
One night during stand down, Thompson decided not to join in the partying.
"We had our tents all set up, and I was sleeping. During these stand downs, the guys would get pretty
drunk. I got hit by a fragmentation grenade, and pieces of it went into my spleen and my kidney. Those pieces are still there. The doctors said it was too dangerous to take them out.
"They said later that it was
a VC that threw the grenade, but there's no way a VC could have done it. I'm sure it was a drunken GI."
FIVE
In February, 1970, Thompson was told by South Vietnamese troops that there were enemy
soldiers on the other side of a rice paddy.
"We could see a little pagoda over there, and we headed over. Six or seven guys came out, but they weren't armed so I stopped the guys from shooting them. But we knew
they were NVA. They were probably up from the tunnels just getting a breath of air."
In fact, the men that came out of the pagoda soon disappeared into the tunnels that honeycombed much of Vietnam.
He was
perched on his APC when he was struck in the right temple with a bullet, likely fired by an enemy sniper hiding in a tunnel.
"I didn't even know I was hit. It just dropped me."
It was another trip to the
hospital.
"I didn't even know I had a bullet in there until I was back in the United States at the hospital. I told them I was having headaches all the time, and so they looked. The bullet was in sideways, it
didn't even penetrate the skull.
The problem was that the Army's paperwork had said I was shot on the left side of my head, and so I never got any compensation for that."
SIX
On May 27, 1970, the
American army made a thrust up the Ashau Valley where the NVA had a stronghold. Thompson, as usual, was in the leading APC. He had left the hospital at the request of a senior officer because he was needed for this
action.
"We were headed for what we called Million Dollar Hill. We were waiting for more units, more tracks and stuff, to come up. I think there was a whole battalion behind us."
On the way, the unit
was ambushed. "I was doing a recon on foot to see where we should go when they declared a mad minute."
A "mad minute" is where American troops will throw everything they've got into the surrounding area to blunt
any enemy offensive.
The trouble was, Thompson was out on the perimeter. "I was able to get down in this little drop off and wait until it was over. I was as close as I could get to the ground, and I could hear
all that stuff going over me."
Thompson's squadron made it through the ambush, but then was ordered back to help the troops to the rear that had come under heavy fire. Because of the change in direction, Thompson
was now in the rear and his APC came under fire. "I was hunched down, but there's a little space on the APC where there isn't any protection. That's where the round came through and hit me.
The bullet tore
through the back of Thompson's arm and removed most of the flesh and muscle from the inside of the arm.
"My buddies wrapped a shirt around it to stop the bleeding, and they gave me two shots of morphine. They
brought me back to Hawk Hill on the same chopper with the dead, and it was part of my job as platoon leader to identify them. So I did that. Then they hustled me over to the hospital at Chu Li."
As they brought
Thompson into the hospital, the nurses were cutting his clothes off him, including his shoes, to get him ready for surgery.
"That's where I lost my dog tag I think. We used to put one dog tag in each shoe, to
keep them from jangling when we were out on patrol. You put one in each shoe because if you got one leg blown off, they still could identify you."
Strangely enough, three decades later some Americans were
traveling through Vietnam and, near Chu Li, encountered a merchant selling American dog tags. One of them was Thompson's.
The reuniting of Thompson with his dog tag 33 years after he lost it was reported in
several national magazines.
The wound was serious enough to end Thompson's combat career. He was flown back to the states and spent considerable time at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Colorado.
Thompson, who
didn't like the confinement of the hospital, went AWOL and was later arrested in Minneapolis on a terrorist charge. Because he had been in the Army, the police suspected him of making bombs. The charges were later
dropped, though, and Thompson ended up back at Fitzsimons Hospital.
He already had about 11 years of service at this point, and the Army was willing to keep Thompson in the service at a desk job. The duty,
however, did not agree with someone used to spending his time outdoors. "I couldn't be confined. I just couldn't sit in an office."
He finally left the Army in 1972 with 12 years of service.
Thompson said he
was so eager to get out, that he would have signed anything. What he signed provided him with just over $100 a month in compensation for his wounds to live on. "It was just enough so I couldn't draw welfare."
He
is now working through his veteran's service officer and others to get fully compensated for his injuries. His left arm is permanently disabled, both hands are numb, and he has other ailments.
This past fall,
he was stricken with a staph infection that went septic. They told his wife, Evelyn, that his condition was terminal. Somehow he pulled through, but he is only now beginning to walk again. Again, he had trouble
living in the hospital and had another AWOL experience.
"I just couldn't stay there anymore. I stayed at home, and the grandkids put their beds next to mine to stay with me."
Thompson, now 67, has had over 40
years to think about his experiences in Vietnam, and he has drawn some conclusions. "We shouldn't have been in Vietnam. The people there were having like a civil war. It was brother against brother. The north just
wanted to bring the people back together, and that's what they did."
When he was there, Thompson said, sometimes in villages people would see him and come up to him and say, "Same, same, me." The Vietnamese were
reacting to Thompson's Indian features.
"And, in a way, they reminded me of the Indian people."
Both sides did brutal and horrible things during the war, Thompson said. "We'd burn a village during the day, and
the NVA would come back and burn it again that night."
Thompson said he was present when the My Lai massacre occurred, but he had no part in the killing. "The first thing I can say is that there were enemy troops
there. We were the first ones in. What they said later was wrong. The enemy was there. I saw them.
"But later on, I saw the bodies, all piled up. I don't know what happened, but I saw the bodies. People
were killed in Vietnam all the time, but not like that."
His other conviction from looking back was that the American Army was pretty much made up of "the poor and minorities. They did all the fighting. As a
squad leader, my three NCOs were all black. They were always right there for me."
After he left the Army, Thompson had a variety of jobs including being a prison guard at Sandstone Federal Penitentiary, a
policeman in Red Wing, and a predator control specialist on the White Earth Reservation.
He is now retired and lives in a house with Evelyn about four miles from where he was born.
Thompson is often honored
at tribal occasions. The Ojibwe people gave him a beret with six red feathers on top. Each feather is missing a part, symbolizing his war wounds.
A few years ago, he was attending a Dakota ceremony in North
Dakota, when he was presented with a headdress, which he now wears at ceremonial events. The headdress indicates his stature as a warrior.
During his time in the war, he earned two bronze stars and two Vietnamese
Crosses of Gallantry, presented by the government of South Vietnam. He probably was deserving of more.
"There was no time for medals when that was going on. Nobody wrote up medals. You just lived from day to day."
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