WHS students hear veteran's story

 

November 20, 2014

Diana Zimmerman

Vietnam veteran Steve Vermillion talked about service at last week's Veteran's Day Assembly at Wahkiakum High School.

Wahkiakum High School students celebrated Veteran's Day by welcoming local veterans to an assembly on Wednesday, November 12. Steve Vermillion, a highly decorated combat Medevac pilot was invited by alum Bob Neilson, Class of '57, to speak at this year's assembly.

The event began with a quiet medley of emotional reunions between soldiers and their families caught on film, a presentation created by Mr. Cox's history class.

When the film ended and eyes were dried, the senior class lit candles as ASB Vice President Joey Moore read the names of the veterans submitted by students, faculty, and community members. The choir performed "I Hear America Singing."

Michele Haberlach, a teacher at the high school and a colonel herself, introduced Lieutenant Colonel, retired, Steve Vermillion.

"I'm an old helicopter pilot," Haberlach said, "and I can tell you, flight school is hard. You only get to be a Medevac pilot if you are the best of the best. These guys meet you on the worst day of your life, in challenging conditions. If they have a good day and you have a good day, you get to live another day. It takes not just skill, but compassion, commitment and enormous courage. Our guest speaker is not just a Medevac pilot, he was highly decorated and an inductee into the National Dustoff Hall of Fame, which is the best of the best of the best."

Vermillion stood up and looked around, acknowledging the many veterans who were there.

"She said we are the best of the best," Vermillion began, "but we refer to ourselves as the dumbest of the dumbest."

Vermillion took the first few moments of his speech to encourage the students to get to know the local veterans and to listen to their stories.

"They are living, walking, talking history," Vermillion said. "When they pass, all that history, all those lessons pass with them."

He then began to speak at length about Vietnam.

"As I reflect back to my experiences, I have to ask myself, what did it all mean?" Vermillion said. "Was all the suffering and dying worth it? For 10 long years costing the lives of 58,272 Americans and millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians. Our political leadership could not explain coherently why we were fighting half way around the world against these people.

"In times and places like this when the reasons for war are lacking," he said, "soldiers fight and die for one another."

His voice broke as he listed off the statistics.

"One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam became a casualty. In my role as a Dustoff pilot, our casualty rate was one out of three."

"Life has gone on day by day for us," Vermillion continued. "Others have paid the price in shattered, and in many cases, prematurely ended lives, including the multigenerational effects of Agent Orange, PTSD, divorce, and in some cases suicide. And yet we have taken the good with the bad and kept moving ahead, each in our own way, always with an inner understanding that we have already seen the best and worst that men can do to other men. And that nothing, not even the passage of time, can fully erase the images from our minds. For those who have gone before us, we certainly miss them terribly. Some of us revisit the battlefield in nightmares. Some of us wear scars, visible and invisible, that mark us as changed men and women who walk unseen among our neighbors. Neighbors who have never known what it's like to hold a dying soldier in their arms and watch the life fade from their questioning eyes."

"The expensive lessons of Vietnam have been forgotten and a new generation of young Americans are paying the price today, following orders of civilian leaders as they are sworn to do.

"May God bless and keep all soldiers young and old and may that same god open the eyes of all political leaders to the truth, that most wars are a confession of failure. The failure of diplomacy, the failure of negotiation, the failure of common sense, and in most cases, the failure of leadership.

"Vietnam is at peace and so should we be," he finished. "And to my brothers here from Vietnam and other wars, so should you be."

Bob Roche, a local veteran of the Vietnam War, was compelled to share his experience with a Medevac pilot.

"May 22, 1969," Roche started. "I was a first lieutenant, 21 years old and in command. We were operating on the Cambodian border and the canopy was so thick, you couldn't see the sun. I had 100 men in my company, I was supposed to have about 140. We ran into an underground complex and we knew it was sizable as soon as we got there."

They called in a B52 strike and battle ensued. He lost some of his men. Then suddenly, something lit up, instantly killing members of his command squad and nearly killing him.

Diana Zimmerman

WHS Patriot Club leader Luke Stacey described the club's gift to the school--a huge retractable American flag.

"I had a hole in my chest," Roche continued. "I had holes in my abdomen and a piece of shrapnel had cut across my gut and my intestines were wide open. The medic came up and helped me say the Lord's Prayer and gave me a shot of morphine. He reported me as dead to my battalion commander. Remember I told you about the canopy? C4 was placed around trees to make a little landing area. Helicopters couldn't land there, but they hovered. They came down through that thick, thick canopy and were able to extract the wounded and the dead and myself. I actually came to when the helicopter got off the ground and the temperature dropped. I can tell you unequivocally, I would not be here today if it was not for that Medevac pilot."

Roche has attempted and failed to find that pilot, but on Wednesday, he was able to thank Vermillion in his stead.

The WHS band played March of the Armed Forces and each of the local veterans stood when their military branch's theme was played.

Luke Stacey presented the new flag purchased with the money raised by the group he founded, the Patriot's Club, thanking all who helped, heaping extra praise and thanks on the local VFW, Bob and Esther Roche and Esther Roche's quilting group.

The assembly ended with the choir's performance of the National Anthem and thanks from ASB Vice President Joey Moore.

 

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