Vietnam Veteran Inspires Others

“I received a draft notice (from the Army) and so I joined the Marine Corps, reporting to Parris Island, South Carolina, January 3, 1966. I signed up as a mechanic for helicopters and they guaranteed me the position if I signed up for four years.”

Marine training during Vietnam was faster than usual, with recruits being processed through boot camp in 10 weeks instead of the normal 12 or 13. From there, Bozeman took an advanced infantry course before attending mechanic school in Memphis, Tennessee. When they asked for volunteers for Vietnam, he raised his hand. He arrived in-country in September, 1966.

Looking back, however, he thinks getting to that point was a good thing.

“I was living with my grandmother my last few years as a teenager,” he said. “We were in Montgomery, Alabama with a younger brother and we roamed around and did odd jobs, but my grandmother knew it would be good for me to go in the military. Where I grew up in the projects of Montgomery, a lot of guys joined the Marines, some went in the Army. To me it was a godsend because it did get me out of the rough environment we grew up in – underprivileged, poor, rough necks in the blocks, so I was glad to get out. To me Vietnam was an exotic place, and even though you’re getting shot at and so forth, I just wanted to go.

“I flew over as a replacement, so I wasn’t with a unit, and when the door opened up the smell and heat and bright sunshine, it was like, wow, this is not Florida, it’s just a whole different country; almost oppressive as far as the smell and heat.”

Making his way to his unit, Bozeman checked in and was assigned to a canvas-topped hooch walled with plywood, and put to work fixing helicopters.

“The first couple months you stayed on the ground but in January of 1967 I started flying as a crew member – as a door gunner. There are two – one on each side of the helicopter, along with two pilots. We did typical missions like taking infantry into zones and resupply, and as you get more experienced, you’re assigned to medical evacuations, which means you go into hot zones to pick up wounded. It was February when I started more of that.”

Bozeman honed his skill on the mounted M-60 machine gun by firing at barrels in the ocean off the Vietnam coast, learning how to lead his fire from a vehicle moving at 100 miles per hour. The practice proved important during the first evacuation mission he took part in. 

“On my first combat mission the helicopter is noisy and gunfire is going off and I heard my pilot yelling to me, ‘shoot!’. I’ve got my M-60 and looking toward the tree line but I don’t see anyone shooting at me, but I said, ‘ok’ and as I get ready to shoot, I realize the barrel of my gun is pointed at the back of two infantrymen right near the bunker line. Had I pulled that trigger just by instinct when I heard that (the pilot), I probably would have killed those two Marines. Thank God I raised my barrel to shoot over their heads. That was a learning experience right there, you had to improvise, overcome and adapt real quick, because otherwise these two guys would be dead and I’d be responsible, and you couldn’t live with that. I learned real quick that you don’t squeeze the trigger until you know damned well where that bullet’s going to go.”

During 1967 Bozeman flew regularly, accumulating most of his more than 400 combat missions, but it wasn’t all adrenaline and machine gun fire.

“I flew a lot in six to eight months of 1967 and I enjoyed it, actually. It was boring in some way as you’re just up in the air. But when you get ready to go into the zone, you know you’re going to get shot at, or get rocket attacks or mortar attacks. You get that ‘pucker’ factor. A lot of Marines and Army infantrymen, they’ll tell you that 90 percent of what war is, is boring. But that 10 percent, when you’re actually getting into a hot zone, where you look down and see smoke…”

After a mission, Bozeman reverted to his job as a mechanic, looking over the aircraft, finding and patching bullet holes, or sometimes doing work that took significantly longer.

“In one instance we had a bullet come up through the bottom and puncture a fuel bladder – which was self-sealing thank God – and so you had to spend all night taking a thousand bolts out of the floor and putting a new bladder in there and putting it back to make sure it’s working, and then fly the next morning. So, it’s always constant work.”

On the hat Bozeman wears today, it says he’s the recipient of two Purple Heart. The first one he recalls was from May 4, 1967 not far from the Marble Mountain facility near Da Nang.

“All day long they were getting beat up, and we were going in and bringing bullets and water and taking out the wounded and dead. About 5 o’clock that afternoon we got a call to go back to the same area, and I knew it was going to be another close one. As we came in, the pilot was trying to get to F-4 Phantom jets to come in and strafe with napalm, but it was too close to the Marines and they couldn’t do it. But he had them come in real loud and low and not drop anything, but just to scare the hell out of everybody. So, I’m watching this and gunships are peppering the area and we went in and landed quickly. We got one stretcher patient on – a big Black Marine who got shot in the chest, and another walking Marine who was shot in the leg. As soon as we are all loaded I turn to my gun and look out the window and you’ve got rice paddies and jungle and we lift off, about tree top level, and we get maybe 100 feet, 200 feet before we’re shot by automatic weapons on the top of the aircraft. Fire started leaking into the cabin, so right away I’m turning to see this and moving the patient while the crew chief on the other side is firing, and the pilot is saying, ‘we’re losing power.’ At this point I’m thinking, ‘ok, this is not normal’.”

The pilot maneuvered the aircraft for a controlled, but hard, landing, and Bozeman, with his M-60 and a belt of ammunition, cleared the aircraft to take up a position along a dike.

“The helicopter had landed, skidded around and it was still on its wheels but the fire was all over the top and coming down in the helicopter. The two pilots got out and the one wounded Marine got out and the other one was still in there. I thought for a  mini-second ‘do I go over there or should I protect the perimeter?’ Then I just dropped my machine gun and hauled ass to the helicopter and started yanking him out. My crew chief by then, came over realizing we still had one more stuck in the helicopter.  Rounds were kicking off, it was pretty hot in there, I had my helmet on, I got burned on my arms and bullets were cooking off, but thank God no one got shot. So, we got him on the ground, I grabbed one arm, my crew chief grabbed the other, and the pilot grabbed his legs and we all took him about 100 feet away from the burning helicopter, waiting for another helicopter to come in and pick him up, which they did and the two (wounded) Marines took off. 

“We stayed on the ground and I’m watching the helicopter burn and I’m thinking oh my gosh, what are we going to do about it – and I went to look for my machine gun but by that time some other Marines came out of nowhere and made a perimeter for us. We stayed on the ground for about half an hour and then took off. I got to the base, and they took me to the medical treatment to get treated for my wounds, burns, and I had a cut on my head that had a little blood coming down. Wasn’t anything big but … I didn’t feel any pain, I was just glad to be alive. I was glad to save that Marine too. Later on, the very next day, I had to go to the doctor to get an ok to get back on a helicopter as a door gunner, to fly, to make sure I was ok mentally and physically.” 

Later in life, while online at the web site of the Vietnam Memorial wall, Bozeman left a message under the name of the Marine who was the stretcher patient that day. 

“On the Vietnam Memorial site, you can post something to a particular part of the wall – a name, you can post something. So, I wrote ‘I was there that day when we picked you up’ and apparently his daughter connected with my post and then called me. His daughter was a baby, she was like one year old and he was drafted into the Marine Corps, and he had two babies – a one and maybe a two year old – and they never knew how he died. So, we had a good conversation on the phone, and I told her that we did everything we could to save him – twice – when we picked him up to medevac him out, and then when we crashed and medevac’d him again. Yeah, she was very happy.”

In 1967, after 13 months in Vietnam, Bozeman received orders to the States an found himself in Joliet, Illinois at a Marine Reserve base north of Chicago.

“I was a crew chief on a C-117 and then a C-54 which is a big four-engine aircraft used by a two-star general and we flew all over the United States. But in January/February 1968 when Tet (Tet Offensive) hit, I was watching all the activity on the TV in the barracks and I said, I gotta get back over there.”

At first, Bozeman’s request to return to Vietnam was refused, but he persisted, until several months later his first sergeant relented and about a year after arriving Stateside, he was on his way back to Vietnam.

“I just wanted to be in the action even though it was terrifying. I wanted to be back saving Marines on helicopters – but God has a way of protecting stupid people,” Bozeman admits. “When I got there, since I had experience with C-117s, they assigned me to work on that as a crew chief.”

When it came time to leave Vietnam and then the Marines, Bozeman qualified for college – thanks to a GED he earned during a stopover on his way to Vietnam several years earlier.

In college, at Lewis University in Illinois, Bozeman studied aircraft mechanics, hoping to get a job with an airline. After getting his A&P license for airframe repair, he hoped to get a job at O’Hare International Airport, but a recession meant jobs were hard to find. As a 24-year-old on a college campus, Bozeman said he was mature enough to realize the younger students knew nothing about life.

“They’ve never had a bullet shot at them and they were lucky enough to have that path to college. I bonded with a few of them – kids that just wanted to be an aircraft mechanic. A couple of guys knew I was in Vietnam and of course they want to hear all the gory details of it, and I told some of it, but I said if you want to know more you can go down to the Marine Corps right now and sign up, the war is still going on. But I wanted to stay away from the crowd. I didn’t know it then, but I just wasn’t into crowds. The coffee shop was about the biggest thing I’d go to, to get some coffee and sit in the corner with my back to the wall like most of us do now. But I had a life to live, and I had to get on with making money and raising a child.”

It was late 1972 when Bozeman discovered running as a way to stay in shape and maintain some of the discipline he’d learned in the Marines. 

“I just went out to the track and jogged around with my combat boots on. It felt good,” he recalls. “I started feeling the endorphins, even though I didn’t know what endorphins were back then, but I just felt, ok, I did some exercise. I missed the physical training and slowly I got into running. There was nobody in Joliette running at all. Nobody ran.”

As luck would have it, the early 1970s were the dawn of a running boom in the US after Frank Shorter won the gold medal in the marathon at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. 

“After Frank Shorter won the gold medal in the Olympics, more people started cranking up races and stuff and more people started running. When I moved to Lynchburg in December, 1975, they had a local 10-mile race which Frank Shorter and Bill Rogers came to. I trained for it and kind of knew that, ok, I’m going to be a runner now. I wasn’t fast, but I enjoyed it. I’m a mule, plugging along doing my slow 10 miles, but I fell in love with it.”

Despite his new-found love affair with running, Vietnam was never far from his mind, and Bozeman said he kept thinking about it. By the war’s end in 1975, he told himself, it’s over, forget about it. But he couldn’t. 

“In 1984-85 there was counsellor that came from Roanoke to Lynchburg and had a session once a week and I kind of jumped in on that for a while. But at that time everybody smoked, and I had quit smoking in Vietnam. After six months I said I’m out of here. But I was finally starting to get some therapy from this counselor who was a combat vet too, in Vietnam, and he knew what PTSD was.” 

Leaving the smoking room behind, Bozeman went back to work and started getting involved in longer distances race. Beyond marathons, there were 50-mile and 100-mile races, triathlons, and double Ironman triathlons – events that saw competitors swim 4.8 miles, followed by a 224 mile bicycle race, followed immediately by a 52.4 mile run.

“I was just trying to blow myself up in a way just to get more fit. Every time I ran, I just felt good. I felt like it saved me, and it did save me actually; I’m sure I’d be a drug addict or an alcoholic by now if I had not went that path with the athletics. I connected with a whole lot of people who I’m still best friends with 40-45 years later. A lot of these guys have PhDs, very well educated, and I’m a high school dropout.”

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bozeman started group meetings again, this time at the American Legion. But he didn’t go to the group, instead talking to those who did who told him he needed to go in person. By 2004 he found his way to the Salem VA Medical Center where he met a psychiatrist and began weekly visits.

“I had my sessions late in the afternoon and started just pouring my heart out and talking about all this stuff; I just keep reaching out and grabbing these things, these traumas – seeing these dead Marines and getting shot down and killed, rocket attacks and all this stuff is still there and it just poured out,” he said. “I lasted about a year, and I knew I had to do something else, and I signed up for the 6-week PTSD program in January 2005. It was great and I really benefited from it.”

Bozeman said he left his job with less than a year to go, forgoing a full retirement pension because he knew he had to get help. 

“My world was collapsing on me and I knew I had to get major help. The program here was great and I got more involved with the group back in Lynchburg every Thursday. John Whitlock, thank God for John Whitlock, he was a counselor, a Marine in Vietnam, he retired with 30 years with the VA I think in 2022 or 2023. John was a great savior for a lot of people. So then, the VA was my go-to for all the different ailments I had – from Agent Orange, I had a heart ailment, I had blockage, I had neuropathy, I had rheumatoid arthritis, plus my therapy, so it was a great place.”

Today Bozeman still runs 5 miles several times a week and he’s already signed up for a 10-mile event in September, the Marine Corps Marathon in October, and a triathlon in May.

Over the course of his running career, Bozeman figures he’s run about 300 marathons to include ultra-marathons, and five 100-mile races, about 100 triathlons, and double Ironman triathlons.

“I was never fast, but I was steady. I had the endurance. I had the Marine mindset of improvise, overcome and adapt and just don’t quit. I feel I can still do it, so I keep moving.”

To other Veterans, especially those battling PTSD however, Bozeman doesn’t preach running marathons; he only preaches exercise.

“I think exercise – not just running marathons or anything, but just getting out there 3 or 4 times a week and just walking or bicycling or mountain biking or anything – exercise will make you stay young, it will make you feel better.”

Running has saved Bozeman’s life – not just metaphorically. In 2011 he was told he had blockages in his heart of 60 percent in one artery and 100 percent in another. Running and exercise, it turned out, saved him.

“The doctor said I had collateral circulation around the artery that was 100 percent (blocked) and it means that all this exercise I’ve been doing, bypassed that blockage and created its own little bloodflow. That’s why I have a contract with this heart – I’m going to go out and run about every other day and as long as you keep beating, I’ll be happy. I’ll be 78 in September yeah, but I still feel like I’m maybe in my 50s maybe – I know I’m not fast, but I can still bike, run, swim. I try to tell other Veterans to get out there and do some exercise, do something - yoga – - It makes you feel good. Motion is lotion so long as you’re bending over and touching your toes and moving your joints.”

In addition to running, swimming, and biking, Bozeman still works with Veterans too. 

“I came out of my bunker, I call it my bunker, in 1986 when Lynchburg dedicated Monument Terrace which is an icon of Lynchburg. They’ve got a World War I Doughboy at the base of it and he’s got a bayonet on a rifle, and he’s always on watch. 

“In 1986 (Lynchburg) had no WWII memorials recognizing the 182 men from Lynchburg who were killed. So, the story is, (the Vietnam Veterans) wanted to build something to honor the Vietnam Vets which is 27 veterans from Lynchburg who were killed. So, then they said, ‘well heck, we don’t have a Korean War Memorial or a WWII Memorial’, so they just had one big fundraiser and they dedicated these three different, beautiful memorials up on Monument Terrace. When I came out to the dedication I thought this is great, the city of Lynchburg is recognizing the Veterans so then I joined the Vietnam Vets, I joined the American Legion, the DAV, I helped start the Purple Heart Chapter in 1993; in 1991 I started the (chapter of) the Marine Corps League, so I’ve been very involved with Veterans and just trying to get the recognition that what we did was not unknown – we sacrificed. All gave some, some gave all.”

Part of his outreach to Veterans includes discussing with them how the VA can help. Every day, he says, he speaks to Veterans who don’t use the VA because they mistakenly believe they are ‘saving it for others’.

“I hear that every day. The Afghanistan war guys, same thing, they say well, I’m still young, I’m ok. And I didn’t really get the benefit from the VA – it was 2004 when I really started using the counselling and all the other specialty doctors, and even now I think it’s the best healthcare system around, I really do. 

“I’m always advocate. In fact, I was in a nursing home yesterday and there was a Navy vet who is zero percent disability – wasn’t in Vietnam but spent two years active duty with the Navy and 16 years Reserves. So, he can’t use anything VA right now even though he’s in a nursing home. So, the social worker was there yesterday and she didn’t know he was a Veteran and once she heard me talking about him she said, ‘oh let me write this down and when we meet with the group and see if we can’t get some benefit from the VA for him’.”

Overall, Bozeman thinks the providers within the VA do a good job, and he’s had providers who have gone out of their way to make sure he was taken care of.

“I had the private phone number of one doctor, who was going to make sure I was ok. He’s since retired. But he was willing to give me his cell phone to call if I had any problems. If I could speak to providers, I’d say listen to the stories and be polite and be kind and next thing you know they want your help. If they’re short tempered, they probably have a reason for it, but don’t take it out on them, just let them calm down and listen and just be kind. I think everybody I’ve known now, all these different providers, about 10 of them now that I see up here, they don’t rush you in and rush you out. They try to listen to you and ask you what’s going on and if we need help and I’m very pleased. I would give it a Michelin 5-star rating – they’re great.”

Looking back over his war experience and his life as a civilian after Vietnam, Bozeman reflects and sums it up succinctly.

“You don’t think about these medals, you’re just doing your duty. Later on, you realize, damn, you’re one lucky son of a gun.”