jdaJuly 28, 2010

AFP via Yahoo! News

In life, rarely do we find ourselves in the presence of someone who we can genuinely call hero. Hero is so bantered about in our culture that it is downgraded somewhat. Still, I give it special meaning.

Most often we hear the word "hero" in reference to soldiers and rightly so. But, there are heroes and then there are heroes. Warren Chan is a true hero. He didn't just do his duty, he personified duty. I've read somewhere that the WWII combat soldier was in actual combat 70 days. The average for Vietnam combat soldiers was something like 200 days. For Warren, it was like 365 days. I don't think that he ever came out of the field.

Warren went into the Army during Vietnam and was assigned to an infantry unit in the 101st Airborne Division. One would almost have to get into the psyche of the 101st and the country to understand what this means. The Vietnam War was escalating. The generals wanted more troops. The 101st Airborne was training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was a proud division at that time, one of two airborne divisions in the Army, the other was the 82nd Airborne.

Warren went to jump school and became a paratrooper. The 101st deployed to Vietnam. The 1st Brigade was already there. It was just before Christmas, and of course, as we now know, just before the 1968 TET offensive which many believe was the turning point of the war. Warren became the RTO (radio telephone operator) D (Delta) Company Commander of the 1/501st Airborne Infantry battalion.

From that time forward, Warren never left the field. He was essentially in combat every day. During that period, he saw his platoon leaders wounded or killed, to include his company commander. At one point, because he was the ranking person alive, a Sergeant E5, he literally was in charge.

A Great Warren story: All his life, Warren had a speech impediment. He participated in speech therapy from elementary school through high school. And according to him he especially, "slurred his R's." And, of course, this brings me to something that makes me smile. Warren,obviously, was hard to understand. But what does the Army Do? You got it! The Army gives Warren a job talking on the radio constantly saying something like "over, out here," Maybe this doesn't require oratory skill, but there are times in a war when you need a clear voice. His commander, Captain Holland, multi-toured Vietnam leader is his CO (commanding officer),and is with Warren 24-7. Warren is monitoring radio traffic. They are operating in the AO (area of operations) when they have contact. The Artillery FO (forward observer) calls in for the 105s (artillery guns) to fire. They catch a "short round." (a round that falls on their position, rather than the target). Captain Holland gets hit, a sucking chest wound. Warren realizes what happens and calls for a cease fire. They say at first, they can't understand him. Of course they can't. He is excited and this makes his impediment worse. He prays, Please God, I have got to do this. His speech impediment disappears. "Cease fire, cease fire." They understand him. The firing stops. He calls for a medivac. In the meantime, he is on top of Captain Holland applying pressure to his chest wound as the blood is pumping out. The medivac arrives and they load Captain Holland aboard. He lives. NOW, THIS IS WHO WE CALL A HERO.

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