Tishomingo County Vietnam Veteran Returns to Battle Site
More than 55 years after a hand grenade ended his time in combat, a Tishomingo County Vietnam veteran has stood again on the ground where he was wounded. Bruce Lemont returned to Vietnam this month with a group of 10 veterans, a trip he says brought him a measure of peace he had waited decades to find.
A Tishomingo County Vietnam veteran’s long road back
Lemont served as a private first class with Delta Company, 3rd Battalion of the 196th Infantry, according to the Daily Corinthian. In September 1968, a grenade blast left him with a leg wound that sent him home after about seven months in the country.
For years, Lemont told his wife, Robin, that he would go back to Vietnam if he ever got the chance. That chance came through one of his regular battalion reunions, where Theresa Sheets, the daughter of his former commander, invited him to join a group heading back to Southeast Asia.
Sheets runs the Steel Thread Project, an oral history effort that records the stories of military veterans, especially those who served in Vietnam. She spends much of her own time researching unit histories and battle locations so veterans can visit the places where they served.
The trip, organized by the Longest Climb Foundation
The journey was coordinated by the Longest Climb Foundation, led by retired U.S. Army Col. Martin J. Bowling. The foundation works to help veterans heal from the emotional and moral wounds of war, with the stated goal that no veteran should carry that weight alone.
The group left on Aug. 31 and returned in mid-September. The travel alone was a test of endurance:
- A short stop in Detroit
- About 14 and a half hours in the air to Seoul, South Korea
- Roughly four and a half more hours to Saigon
Lemont said the flight home was harder than the flight over because of the time change.
Standing where it happened
Guides led the veterans to the specific sites where they had fought. For Lemont, that meant the exact spot where he was wounded in 1968. Robin said he needed a few minutes alone there and stood quietly while the rest of the group moved on ahead.
The landscape looked nothing like he remembered. The scrubby treelines and hedgerows that once ringed the rice paddies are gone, he told the newspaper, and the country has rebuilt and grown in the decades since the war.
Meeting the survivors of Agent Orange
One of the most powerful stops was a Peace Village that is home to third-generation survivors of Agent Orange, the herbicide used by U.S. forces during the war. Some residents were born without hands or lower legs. Lemont said watching one woman walk on her own despite her disability became one of his favorite memories of the trip.
“I always wondered what happened to the Vietnamese people after we left because we left them with the Agent Orange,” Lemont told the Daily Corinthian. He noted that he was there for only seven months and knows what the exposure did to his own body.
He had hoped to talk with former enemy soldiers and tell them they were now his friends, but that meeting did not happen the way he had hoped, which he called one of the few regrets of the trip.
A message to other veterans
Lemont’s advice to fellow veterans is simple: if you are still able, go back. He told the newspaper he cannot recommend the trip enough to those who still can make it.
Veterans in Tishomingo, Alcorn and Prentiss counties who want to share their own service stories can look into oral history efforts like the Steel Thread Project or reach out to their local veterans service officer. For more stories honoring local veterans, read about the Polk Street Bridge memorial dedication in Corinth.
Source: Daily Corinthian
