Published: April 17, 2018
County veterans take part in the
Stars and Stripes Honor Flight
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
ndettmann@conleynet.com
262-306-5043
WASHINGTON — Standing near the
Vietnam War Memorial on a cloudless 80-degree day in the nation’s capital,
Joshua Maas got a greater admiration for his grandfather, Vietnam War Army
veteran John Pedersen of West Bend.
Pedersen found the name of a man he
went to high school with engraved on the wall. When asked what it was like to
see the name, Pedersen said, “I prefer not to see it on there at all.”
Having Maas there, though, made it
easier for Pedersen to get through the sad emotions of seeing someone he knew
immortalized in stone, along with more than 58,000 other names.
“It was moving to me,” Pedersen
said. “I hope Josh was able to comprehend what the Vietnam guys were going
through. It’s been made faded with time, but when you get something up-close
and personal like that, it reawakens memories.”
Then, a story was shared by Pedersen
to Maas about his time in Vietnam.
Pedersen was attacked by an enemy
holding a gun and pulled the trigger. But the gun misfired, which allowed
Pedersen to defend himself, get off four shots with his own gun and killed the
attacker.
“It kind of made me realize ... he
said that he kind of had survivor’s remorse about that,” Maas said. “I wasn’t
thinking about that. I thought, ‘I’m here because that didn’t happen.’” Here’s
what happened.
“We were going through a part of
Saigon, we were going house to house and he jumped out of a doorway and pulled
a gun on me,” Pedersen said. “It was a World War II or earlier mauser, a German
mauser, but it was pitted and ugly, but the insides were clean. He forgot to
clean out the bolt, the different mechanisms, so the hammer hit, but didn’t hit
hard enough.
“His misfired and mine didn’t.”
Maas, who graduated from Kettle Moraine
Lutheran High School in 2016, was Pedersen’s guardian for Saturday’s Stars and
Stripes Honor Flight. Pedersen was one of 10 veterans from Washington County
who participated in the day’s activities. Joining Pedersen were Wayne Fischer
(Vietnam War, Army, Colgate), Greg Eggum (Vietnam, Army, Germantown), Brad Wing
(Vietnam, Navy, Hartford), Dave Lowe (World War II, Army Air Corps, Hartford),
Thomas Kohn (Vietnam, Marines, Kewaskum), Jerry Goratowski (Vietnam, Navy, West
Bend), James Meinberg (Vietnam, Air Force, West Bend), James Pogantsch (Vietnam,
Army, West Bend) and Billy Crowley III (Vietnam, Army, West Bend).
“It’s awesome,” Meinberg said. “I’ve been here
before, but I would see this over and over again. It’s the history of our
country. It means a lot.”
For Crowley, the trip was more favorable than
his first visit in 2015 with a friend.
“It was raining,” Crowley said with a smile.
“The weather was a lot more pleasant this time.”
When he and his friend toured the Vietnam
memorial three years ago, Crowley said it was eerie.
“I didn’t have a name to look for, but my buddy
did,” Crowley said.
When they found it, Crowley said, “He was
emotional.” He got chills seeing it himself.
On Saturday, it was much different. He said he
got to enjoy the trip and get some closure, too.
The first time Eggum visited the Vietnam War
Memorial, it was in the early 1990s, it was 2 a.m. and he was alone. He had
some reflection there — alone for nearly three hours — and got his closure at
that moment.
On Saturday, at the Vietnam memorial with his
daughter, Hartford’s Jennifer Gilmore, Eggum remembered the smells that greeted
him in Vietnam.
“It was so unbearably hot and the smells of
rotting ... whatever, I don’t know what it was, I’ll never forget it,” Eggum
said. “I walk down this ramp and my uniform was drenched in sweat in right
away.”
The collection of veterans and their guardians
landed at Dulles International Airport shortly before 10 a.m. eastern time and
boarded five coach buses — red, white, blue, green and gold. From there, buses
went separate ways to avoid congestion at the different memorials on the
itinerary — the Korean
War, the Vietnam War and World War II
memorials. Stops also included the Arlington National Cemetery and the 9/11
Pentagon Memorial.
Pedersen and Maas were on the red bus, which
stopped at the Korean and Vietnam memorials first. Both memorials are next to
the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
The stroll through the Korean memorial was short. When they got to the Vietnam
memorial, Pedersen had to pause.
“This will be tough,” Pedersen said, adding,
“That wall makes it very personal. Behind each name is a family, a life lost.”
Before arriving at the war memorials, Paula
Nelson, the Stars and Stripes’ Board of Directors president, read information
about the wall and the names on it. Some of the data she shared included 997
people were killed on their first day in Vietnam and more than 1,000 died on
their last day. And, about 50 percent of the people on the wall were 22 and
younger, including as young as 19 — right about Maas’ age.
“It helps you put it in perspective,” Maas
said.
Wauwatosa’s Jerome Neary, who lived in Allenton
from 19962017 and served in Vietnam with the Army, found a classmate on the
wall as well — Private 1st Class David Siemanowski of Milwaukee, Panel 6E, Line
52.
“I looked him up and said a prayer,” Neary
said.
Pedersen wished the tour could’ve seen the
White House. But, that was OK.
“The day as a whole was very successful,”
Pedersen said. “For me ... I’m very proud to be an American.”
It was successful because Pedersen shared the
day with his grandson. Maas wasn’t originally supposed to go, but his mother
had eye surgery and wasn’t cleared to go, so he filled in for her and did so
admirably.
The day in the nation’s capital ended at about
6 p.m. eastern time where another procession line awaited veterans at the
airport to send them home to Milwaukee.
“I just wish we had time to do more
sight-seeing, but what we did was special,” Pedersen said.
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