NATICK, Mass. (Aug. 25, 2014) -- Richard Norton arrived in Vietnam in 1968, not long after the infamous Tet Offensive. It didn't take him long to begin wondering what he was doing there.
"I wasn't prepared for that war at all," Norton recalled. "I knew very little about it. You learn very quickly in combat, as many of you, I'm sure, have discovered already."
Norton was speaking Aug. 22 to an audience at Natick Soldier Systems Center, where he was taking part in a "Vietnam War Living History Discussion" some 50 years after America had entered the conflict when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the wake of a skirmish between North Vietnamese torpedo boats and an American destroyer.
"I hadn't really thought very much about the war," Norton said. "I probably had other interests in those days -- maybe young women, cars. Who knows?"
So, after he was drafted at age 19 in 1966, he decided to enlist in the Army. Norton was chosen for Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a 20 year old.
"I quickly figured out that second lieutenants didn't do KP," Norton said. "It seemed like a good deal to me."
Another part of the deal in those days was the Vietnam War, a divisive conflict taking place during a tumultuous time in American history. On the day that Norton left for Vietnam -- March 31, 1968 -- President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for a second term. He also announced the beginning of the Paris Peace Talks.
"That, for me, was the most significant thing," Norton said.
It did not, however, save Norton from the Vietnam experience. In the first of his multiple tours, he served as a platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Central Highlands.
"For many of us who were replacements in the war, this was an on-the-job training experience," Norton recalled. "Contrast that to today's Army, where I think the training is much more sophisticated, much more professional.
"Sixty-eight was a very intense year of combat. I didn't have a sense that we were particularly winning the war."
According to Norton, the 173rd Bde. often went up against the 3rd Division of the North Vietnamese Army.
"It was an extremely sophisticated unit," Norton said. "We had some really hellish battles with them, and they were tough."
Norton said he never had trouble with his Soldiers in the field, despite what was happening at home.
"You wouldn't know that America was going through a gigantic revolution in terms of the Civil Rights Movement," Norton said. "But once we got to the rear, it changed. In that setting, the Soldiers would separate along racial lines, and the tensions were extreme."
And those Soldiers returned home from that war to far less than a hero's welcome.
"I do think that there is a public regret for the poor greeting given Soldiers when they returned," Norton said. "So I think there is a desire not to sort of repeat that treatment. But, let's face it, after September 11th, everything changed."
Norton finished his 27-year Army career as a lieutenant colonel teaching at the U.S. Military Academy. The author or editor of a number of books, he is currently a professor at Boston University.
Now, when people discover that he fought in Vietnam, the reaction is much different than it was four decades ago. They usually thank him for his service.
"That's a change," Norton said. "That's a very significant change, and I'm very grateful for it."
Another change, Norton said, is today's 360-degree battlefield.
"I think what you're facing today are environments where the enemy is almost omnipresent," Norton said. "That's very different. And that creates a different kind of psychology. We could unwind in a way that, I think, Soldiers in many combat environments today really don't have the luxury of doing."
When Brig. Gen. William E. Cole, NSSC senior commander, began his Army career in 1983, he was mentored by Vietnam veterans like Richard Norton.
"I learned so much from them," Cole said. "It was a great opportunity to absorb the lessons that they learned in combat and … apply those to my early leadership training.
"The Vietnam veterans were like the gods. They were the guys who had been there and done that."
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