Soldier, Van Zandt resident recalls time stationed in Vietnam

Valentine’s Day cards like the ones the nursing home residents at Van Zandt VA hospital received from local school children Wednesday in a recognition ceremony tend to be straightforward in their sentiments — in contrast with the complicated feelings of one recipient about the service time that entitles him to such recognition.

Starting in May 1970, Centre County native John Pressler served in a long-range armor reconnaissance unit in Vietnam, doing what a superior said would be a “soft job” that turned out to involve twice driving an armored personnel carrier into a mine; frequently driving snipers to postings deep into enemy-infiltrated territory at night; and periodically experiencing firefights, rocket fire and living on bases where enemy soldiers would sneak up to the perimeter at night to create havoc.

“In a way, I enjoyed it,” said Pressler, after a crowd of Van Zandt management, staff, volunteers and media had left the “National Salute to Veteran Patients Week” event, where Pressler and others received certificates, pins and the student-made cards. “I was young and dumb,” he said.

Pressler served under a colonel who was indulgent with his men; enjoyed occasional time at a Vietnamese beach; liked trips into the mountains, where the sympathetic Montagnards lived; and liked working with his unit well enough that he considered re-enlisting for another tour — except that the Army couldn’t guarantee that he would be back with those same men.

Conversely, Pressler was “embittered” by the reception he received on the West Coast from a crowd of rock- and egg-throwing protestors who called him and his fellow service members “baby killers.”

He was also mortified on his first night home, when, as he was getting a drink of water, he knocked his wife unconscious, after she tapped him from behind on the shoulder, triggering an automatic reaction.

And for the rest of his days, he always needed to sit with his back to a wall at restaurants, to ensure no one could come up from behind him.

“We had a good time,” Pressler said of the Vietnam experience. “(Yet) it sucked.”

He was drafted in 1968, despite being married, and was sent for basic training to Fort Dix, N.J.

He went with three Centre County friends, Marvin Foy, now deceased; Wayne Weaver and Rodney Hoover.

They were determined to stick together, but learned to their surprise at Fort Dix that officers were assigning inductees to the service branches by virtue of their places in line, as they counted down the rows — Army, then Navy, then Marines, then Air Force, and back again to Army, Pressler said.

The four friends managed to insert themselves in the ranks so that they all ended up in the Army, he said.

They stuck together through basic, then advanced training and ended up in the same general area in Vietnam, Pressler said.

In addition to the dangerous, Vietnam could offer the ludicrous.

Once, officers were trying to construct a base camp in the area of a muddy creek bed, and a bulldozer sank into the ooze.

Pressler was instructed to use a 48-ton tank to pull it out.

It didn’t work, and the tank itself began to sink.

Pressler bailed, although someone was yelling at him to back up.

“How was I going to back up, when the mud was already over the boards?” he asked rhetorically.

The last he saw of the tank was its antenna projecting above the mud.

The Army summoned a 58-ton vehicle retriever to the scene, but it couldn’t do anything to help.

At one point, Pressler was present at a self-inflicted misfortune.

During a vehicle recovery operation, a new soldier decided to unleash a grenade to see what it sounded like, drawing fire from American forces that ended up killing two soldiers, Pressler said.

The soldier who caused the debacle was court martialed and sent to military prison in the U.S., Pressler said.

After the war, Pressler returned to Centre County, got a job in maintenance with the State College School District, then retired after 22 years at the age of 42.

He then drove a truck for Transport America for five or six years.

He broke off the over-the-road work that kept him away from home and got a job driving a truck for a local construction company, so that he could attend events in which his daughter, Sandra, participated.

He retired in 2015.

His wife, Dorothy, died in 2003.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

Full Story here: https://www.altoonamirror.com/news/local-news/2024/02/soldier-van-zandt-resident-recalls-time-stationed-in-vietnam/