'I kept the dead with me:' Abilene Vietnam War corpsman Ron 'Doc' Smith remembers the fallen

Much of the engraved emblems on the Marine Corps ring have worn away, but its value remains priceless to Ron "Doc" Smith.

The high school-style ring belonged to Marine Pfc. Andre "Andy" R. Latessa Jr., 19, who was fatally wounded, along with Cpl. Jerald B. Weaver, in an explosion while clearing a minefield at Con Thien, Vietnam, on Aug. 15, 1967. 

Hearing the explosion, Smith, a Navy hospital corpsman assigned to a Marine combat unit, sprinted with fellow corpsman Bob Wilson across the minefield toward their screams.

Weaver died in Wilson's arms. The corpsmen bandaged Latessa and carried him from the minefield. He was evacuated on a medical helicopter to a field hospital, where he died. 

The two Marines' identity were unknown to the corpsmen for 26 years.

A chaplain present that day later worked in consort with the television show "The Crusaders" to have the corpsmen awarded the Bronze Star.

That's when, in 1993, Smith and Wilson met the two Marines' families.

Latessa's family later mailed the ring to Smith, who today lives in Abilene. He often wears it.

"His father wore it those many, many years. When the father died, the family wanted me to have it," Smith said.

That day in the minefield crosses Smith's mind daily, he said. But the memory is weightier each Memorial Day.

"As a veteran, as many veterans do, we remember all the heroes who came before us and who served with us and did not come home," Smith said.

The national holiday to honor Americans killed in war has its roots in the Civil War era, when communities decorated soldiers' graves. After World War I, the event evolved to include all U.S. military personnel killed in American wars. 

Initially observed May 39 as Decoration Day, Congress in 1971 designated the last Monday in May as a national Memorial Day holiday, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website.

A country's adopted son

Smith was born in Canada and came with his family to Odessa when he was 5.

Making forts from Christmas trees and playing soldiers with neighborhood kids after watching John Wayne war movies at the drive-in was part of his West Texas childhood. 

"We'd go to surplus stores and our dads would buy us cartridge belts and helmets. And, here's what funny, I always painted a red cross on mine. I wanted to be the medic," Smith said.

He pursued that dream fresh out of Odessa High School in 1966, enlisting in the Navy to be a corpsman serving Marines. He and several of his classmates were among the approximately 2.7 million Americans stationed in Vietnam during the United States' military involvement between February 1961 and May 1975, according to the VA. More than 58,000 American men and women died in the war. 

Of five enlisted classmates Smith hung out with in high school, "joking and smoking" before school, "three of them were killed in Vietnam," he said.

As a Canadian citizen, Smith was exempt from the draft. Given that hundreds of Americans fled to Smith's homeland to avoid mandatory service, his Marine buddies nicknamed him "Wrong Way."

Smith enlisted, he said, because "I had a very strong love for America."

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His classmates saw themselves as following in the footsteps of their veteran fathers, he said. 

Smith revered the movie portrayal of the relationship between medics and frontline troops. Corpsmen often were called "Doc" in the field. 

While the movies and abridged stories from veterans shortchanged the war horrors to come in the Vietnam jungles, that esteemed cadre brotherhood proved true. 

"The bond between corpsman and Marine is like no other in any branch of service – the incredible respect and the way we look out for each other," Smith said.

That bond continues today, when he lunches with other vets weekly downtown at the Bee Hive Restaurant. He also is chaplain for the local chapter of the Marine Corps League, comprised of veterans of that military branch. 

Grim Tour of Duty

After Navy boot camp and four months of hospital corpsman training in San Diego, California, Smith underwent basic training at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

During a three-week leave at home, he steeled himself for what he expected to see in Vietnam by volunteering with the ambulance service at Chapel of Roses Funeral Home. 

"That was good experience before I went to Vietnam because there was shootings and stabbings and car wrecks," Smith said. 

Smith was attached to 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines in Vietnam. He was assigned to Marine infantry platoons posted at firebases a few miles from the Demilitarized Zone that separated North and South Vietnam. 

"It was 75% boredom and 25% shear terror," Smith said about his 13-month tour that began in July 1967.

Duty included long foot patrols, usually at night, to intercept the North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong also shelled U.S. camps. A red cross on a corpsman helmet made him a target to enemy snipers, so it was eliminated.

Tents were a luxury. Sleeping on the ground in a holes or trenches was common. He had a three-month stretch with no shower. Hot dogs and beans was the occasional grand meal compared to C-rations.  

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As a corpsman, Smith tended to the wounded and accounted for the dead. 

After one frenzied episode of caring for several wounded, Smith's fingers stuck together because of the blood.  

During incidents with mass casualties, the wounded were evacuated first by helicopter. Smith said he valued speed over gentleness in getting the men on the choppers any way he could.

"My job to me was I've got to keep them alive until I get them on the chopper," Smith said.

Those killed in action were flown out next.    

But if a landing zone was "hot," or under enemy fire, the helicopter transport of the bodies was delayed, Smith said. 

"After the action or after the firefight and when things had calmed down, like the next day, the choppers would come in and we'd get them out," Smith said.

Until then, "I kept the dead with me, next to my (fox) hole," Smith said. 

He also filled out the identification tags for the bodies, documenting names and cause of death, he said.

The sounds of war

Some of the sounds of the Vietnam war are on a 33-minute reel-to-reel recording Smith made Dec. 22, 1967, to send as a Christmas message to his mother.

The recording has been preserved by the Norman Lane Jr. Memorial Project and is available on YouTube.com as "A Corpsman's Christmas."

As 19-year-old Smith casually talked of six months in the field and enjoying mail and care packages from home, blasts sounded in the distance. He calmly described the artillery responsible for the noisy interruptions.

"At night here, it's not very peaceful at all, but after being here for this length of time, you really get used to it," Smith said on the recording. "And when I was on R&R (rest and recuperation), I had trouble sleeping there in that hotel because it was just too darn quiet for me."

In the recording, he references that deadly day in the minefield. Running into the minefield "wasn't scary when we did it, but boy, when we got through, I was a nervous wreck after that one," Smith said.

Minefield incident

Smith had removed his boots and was soaking his socks in his helmet when he heard the explosion, he said.

The injured Marines were clearing French mines to make way for bunkers when a blast severed Weaver's lower legs. Latessa's face took the blunt of the explosion. 

Shirtless and shoeless, Smith grabbed his medical kit and ran through the minefield. Latessa could not see, and he probably could not hear because of the blast, Smith said. 

Latessa repeatedly wondered aloud who would take care of his mother. He also was yelling the Lord's prayer through the blood and pain of his mortal wounds. 

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Every time Smith hears that prayer, he thinks of Latessa.

Returning home

Public sentiment had soured on the war when Smith returned state side. There was no public fanfare for Vietnam troops. 

"When I came back, you didn't say a whole lot because people thought you were scum," Smith said.

Even close friends did not know what to say, so they said nothing, he said. 

"There was just so much bad press about burning villages and baby killing and all that and, to be honest with you, I did not see any of that," Smith said.

In the jungles of Vietnam, his medical care extended beyond the troops around him.

"I treated a lot of little Vietnamese kids," Smith said.

On one sweep through a village in Cam Lo, a mother brought her feverish son to the Americans. His arm was swollen with infection. Smith gave the child a shot of a variety of penicillin that did not required refrigeration, he said. 

When Smith came through the village again, the mother thanked him in a broken mix of Vietnamese and English, he said.

"There was a lot of bad, but there were certain things that you remember," Smith said. 

Building a new life 

A few weeks before leaving Vietnam, Smith wrote a letter to his mother, who was the organist at their Presbyterian church in Odessa.

"I said, 'Mom, when I come home, I would very much like for you to get somebody else to play the organ so I can sit with you at church that first Sunday,'" he recalled.

He became a homebody, declining offers to party with old friends. He calls that time back home "purgatory," between heaven and hell.

"I couldn't relate to any of my friends anymore. They wanted to do things that we used to do that I used to think was funny that wasn't funny anymore. Crazy, stupid stuff. So I had a hard time," Smith said.

After serving three years active duty, Smith married the former Debbie Garmes in 1969 and became a U.S. citizen and father. He forged ahead in his civilian life while also serving another seven years in the reserves.

He earned an associate's degree at Odessa Junior College and a bachelor's in 1976 as part of the inaugural class of the University of Texas Permian Basin. 

"Even in college, you wouldn't wear anything that said that you had been in the war," Smith said.

Haunting memories

In 1977, Smith moved to Abilene to work as a sales representative for the medical technology company today known as Cardinal Health. He retired after 43 years. 

"I sold the diagnostic equipment and all the supplies that you use in the lab," Smith said. 

Memories of war still haunted him, as he shared in stories in the Abilene Reporter-News. In a Dec. 24, 1988, story, Smith wrote about Christmas in Vietnam being so different from his childhood holidays. Smith told Religion Editor Roy Jones in an accompanying story that he had occasional nightmares. 

A disassembled 3-foot Christmas tree and glass figure skater ornament that once adorned the family tree were sent to him in Vietnam. They were a salve for his homesickness. That made their loss, along with his other possessions, in a bunker fire the night of Christmas Eve all the more painful.

As Smith surveyed the damage the next morning, he was overcome with depression and wept, he wrote in the article. His despair was broken by the sound of "Joy to the World" broadcasted from the massive speakers of a U.S. military plane flying overhead. 

"As I arose and wiped the tears from my cheeks, I felt loving arms about me. I felt a warmth, a presence I had never experienced before. I felt true joy. I felt God's love," Smith wrote. 

In a story in the Reporter-News on Nov. 4, 1993, his wife Debbie said Smith would wake from a nightmare screaming, "No!, No!, No!."

Emotions weighed heavy on Smith when he drove to Big Spring to see the traveling version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

"But I got halfway up to it and I realized I couldn't do it," he was quoted in the 1993 article. "I just got back in the car and came on back to Abilene."

He eventually saw the original memorial in Washington D.C. in a surprising turn of events that connected his past to his future. 

The Bronze Star

In 1993, a producer for "The Crusaders" called Smith on his car phone.

Smith was unaware of the syndicated television news magazine with reporters dedicated to righting injustices, according to IMDB.com.

"She says, 'Could you be in Washington D.C. next week?' I'm like, 'Oh, sure,'" Smith said sarcastically. "I thought it was some kind of funny joke. Then she said, 'This has to do with the incident in the minefield in Con Thien.' I just about crashed the car. I was, 'What?' Because I had never told many people about that."

The producer said that in connection with Veterans Day, a story about the events at Con Thien was planned and that they wanted to pay the expenses of having Smith and Wilson, who lived in Charleston, Illinois, interviewed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Unbeknownst to Smith, the show was working with Navy chaplain the Rev. Leo Stanis to have the Bronze Star awarded to the two corpsmen.

The chaplain had witnessed the events in the minefield and heard commanders say they would recommend the corpsmen for the award for their heroism and valor, Stanis said in a show episode. 

But Stanis learned about two years earlier the awards never were bestowed. His petition to the Marine Corp to correct the oversight had been denied because paperwork that should have been submitted within three years of the incident never was located, the chaplain said in the show.   

Smith has DVD copies of the two episodes of "The Crusaders" where he and Smith talk with a reporter at "The Wall" in October 1993. There they reporter shared Weaver's name, which was engraved before them as they stood reflecting on the granite wall. Latessa's disclosure came later.  

"'The Crusaders found out their names, and we got to be with their parents," Smith said.

The producers had arranged another surprise: Stanis walked up "The Wall," too. More than 25 years after the corpsmen's and chaplain's paths diverted post Vietnam, the men hugged tightly. 

Based on Smith's recalling the name of platoon commander Peter Wymes, the producers located the officer, who then was a lawyer in Philadelphia.

In a call with the producers, Wymes confirmed the minefield heroics. That day he wrote an award recommendation, explaining that paperwork was overlooked because of several heavy combat incidents at the time.

His recommendation had a domino effect, expediting through military and other channels the approval of the Bronze Star for the corpsmen.  

Smith and Wilson returned to Washington, D.C., to be presented the medal Nov. 10, 1993, at the Pentagon by Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton. Also present were the parents of the fallen Marines.

"The Crusders" cameras documented the hugs, tears and expressions of gratitude from Latessa's father and Weaver's mother for the corpsmen. 

"It was beautiful – talk about some closure," Smith recalled recently. 

Ill health prevented Latessa's mother from going to Washington D.C. So the show sent the two corpsmen and a TV crew to her Fall River, Massachusetts home. They also visited Latessa's grave. 

The meeting was a chance for Smith to tell the mother that her son's last thoughts were about her. 

Smith afterward talked on the phone almost weekly with the senior Latessa. He also flew back to Massachusetts for a week-long visit and later was a pallbearer at the father's funeral.

Remembering the fallen

Smith's son Todd died in 1994, and Debbie died of cancer nine years later.

In 2004, Smith married his current wife, Janet.

Time has soften the stigma of Vietnam service in Smith's eyes. During a recent interview, he proudly wore a Fleet Marine Force shirt. A picture of his lean, 19-year-old self in combat uniform in Vietnam is included in the Bee Hive Band of Brothers wall hanging at the downtown Abilene restaurant. He currently is chaplain for the local chapter of the Marine Corps League. He attends the local Tet Reunion. 

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And there's the ring that often graces his hand. 

On Monday the American flag will fly in his front yard, and he plans to "throw a patty on the barbie," he said.

"Would I do it again? Yes, I would," Smith said about his Vietnam tour. 

He added that when people question that 58,000-plus Americans "lost their lives for what?," he has a straightforward answer. 

"Well, they lost their lives for what they believed in," Smith said. 

Those are the heroes he will honor on Memorial Day, he said, specifically the "many who touched my life in a very personal way and whose names are engraved on 'The Wall.'" 

He'll also will recall their families and "the sacrifice they too made. May God continue to bless each of them," he said.

Laura Gutschke is a general assignment reporter and food columnist and manages online content for the Reporter-News.  If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com.