By Steve Powell

spowell@arlingtontimes.com

ARLINGTON – Veterans Day, just like every day, Michael Cox and George Lantz remember Vietnam 50 years ago like it was yesterday.

Those memories still choke them up, bringing tears. People right next to them were shot and blown up. It’s not a video game. It’s not a movie. It’s real life and death. It’s the kind of horror no teen should have to see, let alone be in, terrified for their lives.

The way the military is politicized today, Mike and George worry that people don’t appreciate what they have been through – even on Veterans Day, a time meant to honor them.

Both have Purple Hearts for being wounded in combat. George has two. Both thank God for their lives.

Mike goes to war

Mike has a cross with pieces of metal on it. The metal comes from 1 1/2 pounds of shrapnel removed from his body. He has scars all over. One leg is 4 inches shorter.

His unit was going along a trail. They knew it was booby-trapped. “Makes a lot of sense,” he said as an aside. “We were just grunts. We were expendable,” he said of the military’s way of thinking. They sent a local mom and her child down the path first, figuring they would know the safest route. “They walked down without a care,” Mike said.

But when the mom reached a clearing, suddenly the enemy detonated the trail. “The whole squad was wiped out – wounded,” Mike said. They kept feeding one guy all their ammo until a chopper came in. They were flown to a hospital, but Mike was left in a hallway to die. “Nobody had all their parts,” he said.

Mike said he was not a Christian, but, “God spoke to me. Michael, you are not right with me.” Mike thought that referred to the killings in Vietnam. He said it took him time to figure it out. “How can God forgive me for killing people? For five years I asked that question,” he said.

Once he accepted the Lord, “God forgave me for Vietnam,” he said.

And he forgave others. For example, he hated hippies. He would lie in bed at night with a .44 magnum under his pillow. He planned to shoot them if they came through the window. But not anymore. “The hate and everything inside is gone. It changed my whole life.”

Mike was married to his wife, Nancy, and an “old man” of 24 when he went to war. “I couldn’t wait to get over there,” he said. At first, married men weren’t drafted. He ended up joining the Marines, but his wife had to OK it by signing papers.

Why did he want to go?

“This is the best country in the world. Life here is unbelievable because of the men who went before me. Now it’s my turn,” he said.

After he was injured, Mike was in a body cast from the neck down for 13 months. “All the guys in the ward would talk to each other, help each other out,” he said. Mike, who has been through 40 operations, said unlike many Vietnam vets, he was treated well when he got home to Seattle. “I couldn’t buy a beer; people would do it for me,” he said.

He tried to go to college, “but there were too many things wrong with me.”

He ended up volunteering at the Monroe prison.

Nancy says she’s proud of her husband of 54 years.

“He pushes through every day and does what he can,” she said. Mike says he’s lucky, too. “No wife sticks,” he said, remembering how fellow soldiers received divorce papers when they returned from Vietnam.

George goes to war

George was 19 when he went to war. He wanted to be on the front line to be “in on all the action.” Be careful what you wish for.

“There were VC (Viet Cong) snipers everywhere,” he said. “A bullet would miss me, but hit the guy behind me.”

George was first injured when a grenade went off near him. “I was still alive. I was surprised about that.”

George then crawled over and put his grenade down the foxhole their grenade came out of. Some of the enemy were wounded and others captured.

Two days later he had a knot in his armpit the size of a golf ball. He ended up with blood poisoning and was in a coma for eight days.

“A month later I was back in the field,” he said.

The other time he was injured he was hit by shrapnel. “They were everywhere,” he said of dead and wounded soldiers. “If they were alive they were shot in the head. There was no help.

“There was no place to hide. You just waited for your turn,” he said, adding the soldier next to him was killed in their foxhole.

Only 20 of his company of 103 survived.

“There were a lot of good people there,” he said of the soldiers on the front line. “I wanted to serve. It was supposed to be an honor and a privilege.”

Unlike Mike, George wasn’t treated well when he returned. “A World War II vet said I was a disgrace – a baby killer,” George said.

George did a variety of jobs over the years, until he became paralyzed 20 years ago from Agent Orange. He now uses a wheelchair.

“He was in one of the worst-sprayed areas of Vietnam,” Mike said of the chemical. George was told he had a year to live because of cancer of the spine. But after many prayers the cancer shrank. George, whose son just died of cancer, was treated just with radiation.

Trust issues

Both George and Mike have a hard time trusting politicians, and even the Veterans Administration.

“LBJ was an idiot. He had no backbone,” George said of the president during the later years of Vietnam.

He’s also no fan of Obamacare. He said vets receive poor medical treatment just to save a buck.

“They didn’t ask us what it cost us,” George said of the trauma of war.

“He’s received horrible care,” said George’s wife of 41 years, Marie. “He had to wait months just to get a wheelchair.”

Mike said it’s the bureaucracy. “Once you turn seventy they want to get rid of you,” he said.

George said when he became a man of God, like Mike, he was able to forgive himself. It also helped him with post traumatic stress syndrome. “I needed that inner strength,” he said.

Mike is always in pain. But it’s nothing like the pain Jesus suffered on the cross, he said. Nancy had cancer eight years ago and was told she had five years to live. “God healed her cancer,” Mike said.

This Veterans Day, Mike said he is praying for today’s military. “These poor guys go, then come back, then go, come back, go – they go crazy. No wonder they blow their brains out,” he said of those who commit suicide. “It’s not fair. Give the guys a break,” he said.

As for Veterans Day parades, they said they get irritated when people don’t stand for the flag. And don’t get them started about the NFL protest. Or the tearing down of historic statues.

“Why wipe out part of how we grew as a nation?” asked George, who is part American Indian.

He said this country needs to be reminded that our freedom cost the lives of many.

“It’s sad it’s not appreciated,” he said.