While the Vietnam Era was one of the most divisive times in U.S. history, there was no ambivalence or mixed feelings for William Albracht, a high school senior in 1966.
“I knew I was going to be a Soldier even when I was a little kid playing Army,” he said.
So at 18 years old, he and a friend told an Army recruiter they wanted to join the infantry, go Airborne, and ship to Vietnam. The recruiter replied, “This is your lucky day. I happen to have two slots right here.”
Albracht had no reluctance about volunteering for combat arms at the height of war. “I wanted to serve my country,” he said. “That’s the way we were brought up. Besides, I wanted adventure. I wanted to jump out of airplanes.”
His performance proved so stellar that the Army selected him for Officer Candidate School and Special Forces, and he was a Green Beret airborne officer at 21 years old.
By late October 1969, he was a captain leading a small contingent of U.S. Soldiers and South Vietnamese mountain villagers that were being overrun at Fire Base Kate, a remote outpost. Albracht, recalled, “We were almost out of ammo, almost out of water, and certainly out of luck.”
“We were not the target...but we were in the way,” he continued. “It was a buzzsaw. We had to get our wounded and get back onto Kate before we were completely cut off. Hundreds of enemy fighters would pour out of the jungle simultaneously but we held our own. But it got worse because they brought in anti-aircraft.”
There were 160 Soldiers and villagers matched against nearly 6,000 North Vietnamese regulars. With the fire base’s few artillery pieces destroyed and no reinforcement Soldiers coming, Albracht decided to abandon the fire base and lead the men on a daring escape through enemy lines.
“I could hear the enemy coming. We went down to this narrow gap and it was a natural ambush site and I thought that was where it was all going to end,” Albracht said. “There was nobody there. We were supposed to go to the left but my point man went to the right and thank God for that, because they were on the left waiting for us.”
But they were still vulnerable, and the enemy unloaded a 50-caliber that would have wiped out the entire formation were the Soldiers not fortuitously at the bottom of a hill that featured a sudden drop-off which left them one foot too low for the fire to reach them.
They eventually hooked up with a mobile strike force and made their way to safety. “Hardly anybody believed that we had made it,” Albracht said.
But while he made it out that day and out of Vietnam, the battle continued at home.
“Nobody spit on me, but there were some snide remarks,” Albracht said. And it was more than instances of anti-war protestors labeling returning Soldiers baby killers. They would also get it from veterans groups who thought of Vietnam vets as drug addict criminals who lost the war. There were no cheering parade crowds, no pats on the back, no victory to bask in. There were only harrowing memories and no one to share them with.
But circumstances gradually changed and being a Vietnam veteran went from something the former Soldiers kept secret to something they could mention to something they are proud of. Albracht said the stigma began to melt away during Desert Storm and things kept slowly getting better.
“When I first started to notice it was in 1996 when I went to Fort Bragg for a Special Forces reunion,” Albracht recalled. It was there that Green Beret icon Bo Gritz told him, ‘Welcome home.’ “That was the first time anybody had said that to me,” Albracht recalled. “Ever since then, I have said to Vietnam veterans, ‘welcome home.’ That’s when I started to see guys wearing Vietnam Veteran hats and joining organizations.”
While that helped, Albracht continued to struggle. “Sometimes there would be a sound, a smell, a phrase…and that door would come open,” he said “A memory would come out, I dealt with it, I processed it, and I put it back in there and shut the door, but the door never quite stays closed. And in 2008, the whole thing came open and I sat down to write about it.” That turned into a book, Abandoned in Hell: The Battle for Fire Base Kate.”
Penning the memoir proved cathartic and Albracht says of his time in Vietnam, “I can now stand up and talk about it.” Indeed, Albracht is a frequently-sought speaker and has addressed many audiences, to include First Army leadership professional development sessions.
Today, he and his fellow Vietnam veterans are treated with respect and admiration. “It’s amazing and it’s well deserved. We were treated so poorly,” he said.
After his military service, the three-time Silver Star recipient served 26 years as a Secret Service agent, where he worked in the Reagan and Bush White Houses. After that, he worked in the security division for the Ford Motor Company.
His time in Vietnam served him well in these roles because it left him hyper-vigilant. “I would see things before anybody else could see them,” Albracht said. “If somebody drops some dishes, most people would look at where the bang came from. But I would think that was a diversion and look elsewhere because that’s what you would do on an ambush.”
Looking back on it all, Albracht feels much better than he did before: “We left Vietnam with honor. “People say you’re a hero, that’s a very difficult thing for me. But I will say I acted consistent with my training. I did follow through with everything the Army taught me.”
Albracht used that winning attitude to conquer enemies on the battlefield and within and he emerged triumphant both times.
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