Honor and remember: Victory Week ranges from party to poignant

By Christine Schweickert, Fort Jackson LeaderMay 22, 2015

Hang on
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Retiree Appreciation Day
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Nice ride
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Having a blast
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Stressful shoot
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Are we there yet?
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Rockets red glare
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Running along
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Victory Week began with grunting, sweaty athletes and ended with the flash and flare of fireworks set to country music. And through it all ran the strain of a celebration 50 years in the making.

The four-day event conflated three key elements -- a second-annual open house meant to expose the public to what Fort Jackson has to offer, a retiree appreciation day for veterans and former Defense Department civilian employees, and a celebration to welcome home Vietnam veterans, many of whom had trained at Fort Jackson.

"This is the first one I've ever been to," ex-Marine Frank Donnells of St. George said on Saturday. "It's fantastic."

Firebase forges solidarity

Dane Coffman brought his military ambulance to LZ Victor, the Vietnam firebase set up near Hilton Field. He also wore his old dog tags -- he still knows the number by heart -- and the boots he was issued for Basic Training. He said his underwear was original, too, but admitted with a grin that he was joking.

During the Vietnam era, "buck sergeant" Coffman was sent to Germany as a Cold War combatant ordered to keep the Soviets out of Czechoslovakia. He loves the vehicles of the era and shares a feeling of camaraderie for those who served half a world away.

When he found the ambulance, he remembers, he asked his wife whether he could buy it. She said wryly, "If you can sleep in it." He reckoned he could sleep in it, and the purchase was made.

With a handful of fellow vets, Coffman slept at LZ Victor each night of Victory Week, under the "command" of former Army Capt. Dave Cartledge, president of the Military Collectors of South Carolina and Museum. Cartledge, a former Ranger, did not go to Vietnam but was at the firebase to honor those who did -- including the soldier whose name was on his POW bracelet.

Cartledge still wears the bracelet because the soldier never has come home. The simple silver-colored band has oxidized to a brassy color that has not obscured the name engraved there: Staff Sgt. James A. Champion.

From junk comes a treasure

Renee Kaur remembers when her housemate, Staff Sgt. Anna Maria Velasquez, bought a decrepit 1967 Mercury Cougar.

"You're not bringing that in our house," she exclaimed. "We're not 'Sanford and Son,'" a 1970s sitcom set in a junkyard.

But bring it home Velasquez did. Then she worked on it for the next 10 years -- in the times between seven deployments. A mechanic for the Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 187th Ordnance Battalion, Velasquez doesn't sit at home much.

Six months ago, she finished her work on the car.

The Cougar, a sparkling deep blue, two-door hardtop, drew a good deal of attention during Saturday morning's car show, which also included two reconditioned Pontiac GTOs, a glamorous green Ford Fairlane and a cherry-red Chevy Chevelle.

Once a tunnel rat, always a vet

C.W. Bowman of Irmo was an Army tunnel rat in Vietnam, a Soldier sent into the labyrinthine underground network dug by the Viet Cong.

"I was short and thin" back then, he said Saturday during a visit to the Moving Wall. "Now I'm short and fat."

Bowman shared a black-and-white photo of himself in the book "The Vietnam Experience: America Takes Over." In the photo, he emerges, shirtless, from a tunnel. On his arm is a more brilliant version of the tattoo that peeks out of his shirt from his right bicep.

Vets find reunion to savor

William Jones sampled the chicken and lemonade offered to retirees at the Solomon Center on Saturday. Behind him, other retirees gathered up pamphlets and free Delicious apples, and checked their blood pressure.

"This is a lot different from what we got when we came home from Vietnam" in 1968, he said. Then, Soldiers were told they would meet a rude reception and were ordered not to retaliate for fear of being locked up.

It didn't seem right, Jones said, that the people "we were fighting for in Vietnam were spitting on us." Jones was an ammunition supplier in Da Nang in 1967 and '68.

Tablemate Ray Ekseth served in the Marines a couple of years later than Jones did in the Army but had much the same experience.

"I turned 21 over there," Ekseth remembered. "When Woodstock was going on, I was there" in Vietnam.

When he came home, people asked, "Where'd you get your tan?"

"On the west coast," he would answer vaguely.

"I wasn't lying," he said with a grin. "It was on the west coast -- just a little bit farther."

Vet has own personal parade

Allen Hicks, who served with 4th Battalion, 4th Marines in Vietnam, got an unscheduled trip around Fort Jackson when he stepped onto the wrong bus.

Hicks initially thought he was on the bus to the start of the homecoming parade but later found out he was on the post shuttle.

"My family put me on the wrong bus," he said jokingly. "I got to see an up-close tour of the base."

When Hicks's family didn't see him in the parade, they began to worry. They found him safe and sound, sitting in the bleachers at Hilton Field, watching the festivities.

'It's never too late'

Anthony Saxton, wearing a Vietnam-era Army uniform in his father's honor, drove Vietnam veterans in Saturday's parade.

"I was a driver and had a Marine vet sitting next to me," he said. "He was crying and said, 'Some say it's too late, but it's never too late for me. This (seeing the soldiers cheering) really means a lot to me.'"

Saxton took his children to see the Moving Wall to explain to them that some of the people on the wall were their grandfather's friends.

Information from staff writers Robert Timmons and Jennifer Stride was included in this report.