I SHOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED MANY TIMES
My mother’s youngest brother Earl Culp served in WW II.
My dad, Boyd D. Lama was in the Navy during WW II. My brothers served. Donald B. Lama was in the Marines for four years and got out just before Vietnam. He was stationed on Okinawa and said that they were flying supplies and equipment to Vietnam when he got out in 1962. Larry E. Lama was drafted and volunteered for the Marines and was in Vietnam for a thirteen month tour and back home in 1968. Earl R. Lama was in the Army for four years and couldn’t go to Vietnam until Larry came home and after Earl came home in 1969. I was to go a couple months later but I got held up for couple months because my youngest brother Randy was in Columbus Ohio Children’s Hospital. They thought he was going to die and the Red Cross had me held at Oakland California transfer station.
Randy was born in April 1958 with spinal bifida and they rushed him to a children’s hospital at birth and operated on his nervous system below his waist and legs. He was unable to walk or go to the bathroom and never got to be like the other kids. He died when he turned fifteen. His spine was curved like a question mark and deteriorated. Six months later, my dad died when he was only 57 from a broken heart.
I volunteered for Vietnam and I was put in the infantryman in ECHO Company Recon Platoon 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry 1st Cavalry Division. On May 2, 1970 Nixon ordered the Cambodian invasion and two days later, the Ohio National Guard was killing students in Kent State University. I have a CIB Combat Infantryman Badge and Purple Heart Medal, 3 Bronze Star Medals and Air Medals and the standard medals and unit citations. I should have been killed many times in Vietnam and Cambodia but for no reason it was always someone else, even when I was right beside them. I mean, we were so close to each other that our arms were touching or our backpacks or I would be right in front of them or right in back of them.
One day I was with seven other guys walking down a trail and the SSgt squad leader asked me if I would let him walk point on the trail. I was the last man in line. He walked up and the NVA enemy was leaning against a tree. The squad leader had the M16 on safety while walking point on enemy trail. He panicked, jumped on the ground and the enemy fired his AK 47 automatic. I saw the tracers coming at me and I turned right to jump off the trail and as I turned my M16 at my right side turns sideways and a bullet hit an inch from my hand and went through the hand grip and struck the barrel and put a dent in it. It would have blown up in my face if I had fired it. I walked point for the rest of the day with it while we looked for an LZ for the helicopters to pick us up. Hooks, our RTO radio operator, was a clerk that wanted to be in RECON and be with us for two weeks was shot in the shoulder and we had the medivac chopper drop a jungle penetrator down to raise him out for hospital.
I recently found Stash Demko last year after all these years from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Stash is shown in this picture on the left. He moved to Lusby, Maryland. I was having difficulty because I wasn’t sure that Stash was a nickname for Stanley. Egbert Rock Musick is in the center of this photograph and was another best buddy. I am on the far right. I finally found him about ten years ago after trying for several years. I Googled his name and sadly, it popped up in Maple Grove Cemetery in Granville Ohio about thirty miles northeast of me. He was from Columbus and his mother had his body returned from Van Nuys, California after he passed away in 1996.
I’ve really been stressed out and in poor health for long time and depressed about my children passing away and having PTSD. I’m unable to do anything or travel and try to locate and visit my Vietnam and Cambodia buddies. I did find a few of them last year. Charles E Cox Lancaster in Pennsylvania called me about three weeks ago. He said he had liver cancer and that it spread to his lungs and lymph nodes. He couldn’t walk and cancer was all throughout his stomach and he couldn’t take the pain pills. The VA doctors told him recently that they were not going to do anything more for or to him and discussed probably going to a hospice care center. I said that I would talk to him later and he kind of chuckled and said, “I don’t think so”. I don’t know what had happened and I don’t like looking for his obituary every day.
I am a 100% service connected and permanently and totally disabled Vietnam Veteran with PTSD, emphysema, serious COPD, type 2 Diabetes and chronic severe sciatica pain in my lower back, hips, neck and left shoulder and arm. I don’t have any family, children, wife, friends or anyone to help.
Sometimes I get scared and depressed with too much anxiety and pain and loneliness.
~ Roger Lama, Vietnam Vet
FOLLOW OUR VETERAN TRIBUTES:
www.JennyLasala.com
