Episode 2: Catawba County Vietnam Veterans: In Their Own Words with Jacob Schronce

[00:00:02] What you want, when you want it, where you want it. This is The MESH. In this episode of the Historical Association of Catawba County Podcast, Catawba County Veterans, In Their Own Words, Jacob Schronce reflects on his service in the United States Army during the Vietnam War.

[00:00:25] Born in Hickory, Jacob shares memories of enlisting in 1968, the shock of basic training at Fort Bragg, and the realities of serving in Vietnam with a transportation unit hauling cargo through dangerous mountain passes and ambush zones. He speaks candidly about fear, survival, friendship, and the lasting effects of war, while also offering insight into the challenges many veterans carry long after they return home.

[00:00:52] Jacob's story is a powerful reminder of the courage, sacrifice, and resilience of those who served. Thank you for joining us today. You're welcome. Can you tell me where you were born? I was born here in Hickory. Awesome. The old Richard Baker Hospital. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents or your siblings? What were they like? What did they do?

[00:01:21] Let's see. I was raised by a stepfather and a mother. I have a brother and three sisters. Later on, I found out about my biological father and found out I had five brothers I didn't know I had. But they all worked, or some of them are retired. Excuse me. That's great. Were any of your family members part of the military? No. No. No. Let me take that back.

[00:01:49] My stepfather was in the Navy in World War II, you know, on 10 Cannon, Pacific. And my biological father was, he drove a launch, he was in the Navy, he drove a launch for an admiral. What were your first thoughts about the war? Well, I wasn't exactly for it. Mm-hmm. And did they differ from your friends or your family?

[00:02:14] No, we all thought it was a stupid war to start with, but, you know, I got called and I went. So you were drafted then? No. I enlisted. You enlisted. Okay. And when did you enlist and why did you decide to enlist? It was, I went into service March 10th, 1968. I feel it's my duty to do it. What were your family and friends' reactions and did you feel like it maybe changed any of your relationships?

[00:02:45] Well, it changed a little bit. My mother wasn't exactly thrilled about it. One of the reasons I went in was to get away from her for a while. I was very independent and they didn't like that too much. Yeah. And which branch of the military did you join and why? I joined the Army. I signed up, I thought I was signing up for a, to be an electronic technician on the Nike Herc missiles.

[00:03:14] And instead I found out they sent me to launch recruitment school. And when I got to my first duty station, they didn't need any launch recruitment, so they put me on the radar site. And I was completely lost. But I joined that because it took four years to get into it and they didn't have those in Vietnam. I thought I was being smart. Ha ha. What was leaving to go to basic training like? Frightening.

[00:03:42] You stepping into something, you had no idea what was going to happen. And where was your basic training? Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Carolina. What do you remember about your first day? How did it feel? Ha ha ha. Oh, Lord. You get an education real quick. Yeah. Back then they didn't have the little cars where you took time out. They would kick you in the tail and do everything else. And you're just scared to death basically.

[00:04:09] And one of my favorite stories, they run you through all these tests and give you shots and all this stuff and do that. And then they say, okay, it's three o'clock in the morning. Go to bed. We'll let you sleep late in the morning. And at five o'clock, they wake you up. Ha ha ha. Ha ha. You're a weird boy, basically.

[00:04:40] And you'd make a few friends, you know, you sort of had some common interest or something. What was your daily routine in training and was it difficult to adjust to? Oh, yes. All the exercises, the PT, the running, marching in the sand and all that stuff. And it was, you know, we would go out through the rifle range and shoot all day and then march back through the sand. And once we got it packed down where you walk on it, they'd pile it up again.

[00:05:08] So it builds your legs up, I guess. But it was tough. What were your instructors like? Oh, they were a couple of characters. But they meant business. If you didn't do what they told you to do, they put a boot in you in the heartbeat. Did you go into any specialty training after basic? Well, not what I went into, but it wasn't what I thought I was going into. That's where the lunch recruitment came in. What was the hardest and easiest part of training for you?

[00:05:39] The easiest was the book work and the learning and everything. The hardest was the physical stuff. Because I always said I was about as physical as a cue ball. What did you do in your downtime while you were in training? Made sure your boots were shined and your clothes were ready to go, your beds were made, cleaned the barracks, and all that kind of stuff. What did you look forward to doing the most in your downtime?

[00:06:09] Just resting. Writing letters, you know, that kind of thing. So did you exchange any letters from your loved ones back home? I did. I did. Were parts of military life in general easier to adapt to than others? Some, because you got a little more structure, I think. When did you find out that you were being shipped overseas and how did it feel? My colonel let me know real quick. I was going over there.

[00:06:37] Me and him didn't get along too well, so he decided he was going to send me to Vietnam. And, you know, it was one of those things where you think to yourself, oh my God, here it goes. And you don't know when you leave whether you're going to come back or not and all this stuff. You were sick, really. Absolutely. Were you allowed to tell your family beforehand? Oh, yes. And what were their reactions? They didn't like it. They thought the same thing. Well, if you go over there, you don't come back.

[00:07:07] What day did you arrive and where were you first stationed in Vietnam? It was in July the 70th. And basically, I flew into Cameran Bay. They flew us up to Quinone. And I was in a holding company for about three or four days while they figured out where to go. I got orders for the 523rd transportation.

[00:07:32] So they hauled us out to Camp Addison out in Sherang Valley and found out that the 523rd didn't need any drivers. So they put us into 669. There was three of us come out that day. One of us went in each platoon. And that's where I spent the first part of my tour. What were your first thoughts upon entering Vietnam? It's hot, it's damp, and it stinks.

[00:07:58] Yeah, I mean, when they opened the plane door, it's 100% humidity, 100-something degrees, and it smells like a rotten fish. That sounds awful. And what did you think about your station? It was a pretty nice place. We had wooden barracks when I got there. Not that I spent much time in them because we was on the road a lot. But it was nice. We had three companies there, and we had a little bar and a movie theater and all that kind of thing. Well, it wasn't a theater, but it was a place outside with some benches and a place to show a movie.

[00:08:30] How did your first day overseas compare to your feelings on your first night of training? Well, I felt like I was trained by the training as well as I could be trained, and then I was here to do the best of it. What was your unit assignment, and when did you find out? Well, like I said, when we got out there, we were supposed to go into 523rd, but they put us in the 669 Transportation. It was 124th Transportation Battalion at the time, 8th Group, 1st Logistic Corps.

[00:08:58] That was my first place, and mostly at that time, I just drove trucks and hauled car guns. And did you have any friends while you were stationed there? Oh, yeah, a lot of them. How long were you stationed in Vietnam altogether? Just a little over 11 months. And how difficult was it to keep in contact with your loved ones back home? Well, you wrote letters. That's basically all I did. They did have the Mars station set up where occasionally you could make a phone call, but I never did get a chance to do that.

[00:09:28] So, mostly letters. Are there any memories or stories about your time there that you would like to share, good or bad, anything that stood out? Oh, there's all kinds of stories. I remember the first time I got shot at. I was easing down the road in my truck, fat, dumb, and happy, wasn't bothered about a soul. And I kept hearing something go, ping, ping, and what in the world? And I look out my side mirror, these rifles sticking out of the elephant grass, and they were shooting at me.

[00:09:57] And I couldn't understand why, because there was an Arvin tank sitting up there doing a road security, and they were right there at them. And about that time, a mortar hit over beside of my truck. And I said, Lord have mercy. And the next time the mortar come and hit right behind my truck, it just barely missed my truck, lifted me off the ground, slammed me back down. And I took off, and you couldn't have caught me if you wanted to. But when I got up there, we found 29 bullet holes in my truck.

[00:10:27] And luckily, I wasn't harmed anyway, so that was good, but it woke me up. And, yep, this is real. Are there any other stories that you want to share? Well, we had several ambushes. I'd like to tell you one about going down to Tuiwa. They had an old railroad bridge we had to go through. And the mirrors just barely, almost barely touched both sides of the steel bay.

[00:10:54] So they would come in there to build a brand new, not four-lane, interstate-like bridge. And I got to drive over it twice before they blew it up. And then we got to go right back to the railroad bridge again. And I guess the worst ambush we was in was going up on Cape Pass. And had an engineer bridge up there where part of the mountain had washed away. And just right before I got to that thing, I looked in my mirror and I saw a truck behind me go up to a mortar.

[00:11:24] Not a mortar, but an RPG in the side. So I had to turn that truck around a place it wasn't big enough to turn it around. And the man said, I just know you're going to turn that truck over down that hill. I said, yeah, I had it. But we had to sit there and fight them off. And we shot 7,000 rounds that day. We only carried 10. And while we were sitting there, I figured I would go check on the guy in the truck. Well, I started over there.

[00:11:52] I just had an M-16, one clip of all I had left. And here come the Lieutenant LePanning running down there. He said, is he in the truck? I said, I don't know. So you look and I'll cover you. I stood out there and drew fire off of him until he found out the guy wasn't in there. He got out already. And going back, he said, he's not in there. I gave him a push. I said, we'll get the hell out of here. Now, as I was going back around the truck, I took a little piece of his ring shade in the arm. It wasn't serious. So we just wrapped it up and went on by the business.

[00:12:23] I probably got a Purple Heart if I went somewhere and turned it into it. But it re-stracted it and went on because gun truck crews are attached. You don't let it touch other people back. Anyway, that guy had gone out. He said he had a three-pointer while that truck was still moving. He both knees one elbow and his gun and others. And he shot the guy and took his truck out. And he got a Purple Heart if he got shrapnel in the neck of that.

[00:12:52] And that was the worst one I was thinking of. Well, where were the other places that you were stationed while in Vietnam? And how did each place differ from one another? Well, when the 666 and I had now, they transferred us to the 545th. And they were down in the 2U. They were on Air Force Base. And we got in there. We thought we had it made air-conditioned barracks, good chow, all this stuff. And we stayed there two or three weeks. And they moved us right back up to the barracks right beside the wall of three limbs.

[00:13:23] I guess we had it too good down there. What did you do off-duty? I don't know. I don't mind smoking dope. I played music. Group letters all around me. I mean, you know, the rims too, because it was a long day. You go back in and you have a bunch of wet tires exchanged on your truck. That took a long time. The things were in.

[00:13:50] Did you ever have any entertainment in your camp, like the Bob Hope show or anything like that? Well, I didn't see Bob Hope. He was up in the Foucault Air Base. We were about 30 miles up to the road. We was wanting to go. They wouldn't let us close the rooms. We had the little Vietnam and Filipino shows come through. They danced and had girls about hanging out. And were there any places off camp you were allowed to go?

[00:14:20] Like in the village? We weren't allowed to, but we were anyway. There was checks up and down the road to do various things. That's right. I understand. And did you ever get to go on leave while you were there? No, I figured if I ever left, I wouldn't come back. I'm still kicking my tail out. We went to Australia. My next question was where would you have gone if you could have... Yeah, I thought we had that. I would have been with Australia. Thank you.

[00:14:49] What was your rotation back home like? Well, when you got on the plane, everybody sat in there dead quiet. And you could have heard a hand drop on you. And it goes down the river right here. And you're sitting there holding your breath. And once you clear the ground, you make that turn out over the ocean. Everybody erupts into a cheer. Praise the Lord, we made it. We're out of here. And how does it feel going home for the first time? Were you welcomed?

[00:15:19] Oh, yeah. I flew into Charlotte. Took a bus to Hickory. I was trying to figure out how to get down where my stepdad worked. He worked with about two hours. I was walking down the morning and over the night. And a boy, the kid used to work with him. I was driving a cab. He saw him come in. I said, take me down to the firehouse. He went down there and everybody welcomed me home. They knew that I used to work with him. We got home and he woke everybody up in the house at 2 o'clock in the morning.

[00:15:51] He was welcoming. What kept you going while you were overseas? Well, I had people praying for me. I'm stubborn and I wouldn't let nothing happen to them. Did you keep any photos of loved ones from back home with you? Yeah, I had a couple. Very few, but a couple. When and where were you when you learned that you were going home for good? They called me in the morning room after we got back on the trip one day and said, take your stuff.

[00:16:22] Okay. I felt like it wasn't started. Well, what was your reaction to eventually learning that America was pulling out of the war? Well, I'm disappointed. I mean, in my opinion, we didn't fight the war. We called us and politicians got involved and screwed everything up. They left it alone and let us do what we're supposed to do. We would have won that war in a short period of time. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:50] But you can't do that when you take territory, lose a bunch of people, and then turn around three days later and give it back to them. Mm-hmm. What was your last night in Vietnam like? What were your feelings and what were the feelings around the camp? Well, everybody else was that's normal to me. But I'm excited that basically, I hope I can see you somewhere down the road, Betty, but I said, when I get my chance, I'll be out of here. And I haven't been in touch with some of the people I've been with. Yeah. Good.

[00:17:21] What was being at home like? What was your outlook on the future? Well, I figured I'd work myself to be out there. So, I went back to work in overnight transportation and work in the warehouse. Came around and jockey. And the job was working for the trailers and stuff. And then, uh, did some local driving for them and other stuff. And, uh, that's where I figured I'd be.

[00:17:49] But things don't work out the way you plan sometimes. Was it hard to adjust back to civilian life? Yeah. Because it's, nobody, you're responsible for yourself. Nobody's there to look out for you. Nobody cares that you're in Vietnam. In fact, you couldn't even tell people you're in Vietnam, they wouldn't hire you. Because everybody hated the door and anybody was in the office. So, we, uh, we wouldn't even, when I came home, they just told us not to even hire you.

[00:18:19] Did you, um, want to go back to school? Did you get married? Did you wish you would have stayed in the military? No, I never wished that. You know, I did my family in the military. Uh, yeah, I went back to work. Uh, I did get married. I had a baby. And, uh, divorced. And, for about 25 years I was crazy out there drinking and smoking and running around and doing whatever I could do. Uh-huh.

[00:18:50] Before me and the Lord got together again. Uh, was there anything that you did that made civilian life easier? And did you keep in contact with the members that you served with? Well, I didn't know that I had PTSD. I was self-medicated. Uh, over there, I was a weekend alcoholic. A smoke and smoke. Uh, I didn't realize that PTSD was the cause of all of it.

[00:19:20] Uh, it was years later when I decided to try it. And, uh, I found out to look people up on the internet. And, uh, I got a hold of some people and they told me phone numbers of people. So, I got in touch with Walter Deeks. He was one of my gunners on the Paladin. He lives up in Grafton, Ohio. And, while I was driving, I was going up to the turnpike one day and I gave him a call. I was getting an eye out there pretty close to where he's elsewhere. And, he came up and we saw each other for the first time in 30 something years.

[00:19:49] And, had a big hug and caught up on some stuff. And, uh, he told me about the, uh, gun trucker unions. We started going to those. And, the first one I went to, he was there. And, a bunch of guys had, uh, built, wrecked me with gun trucks. And, we used to take little convoys around the pigeon boards up there. But, me and him were in the same gun trucks for the first time in 39 years. Well, the next year we got a red CYC down there.

[00:20:18] He was, uh, Ken Rutka. He was from, uh, Chicago. So, 40 years, all three of us were on the same gun truck again. My other gunner passed away at 58. I finally got ahold of his son. And, you know, he died. So, I went back to see him. And, since then, we had the reunions. Uh, a lot of the guys I served with, the same companies I lived, same time was there, different gun trucks. Uh-huh.

[00:20:46] So, we had a reading every other picture board. Did your opinion about the protesters and draft daughters change over time? Uh, not really. I mean, I figured, if I was good enough to go, everybody else should have went to, too. And, uh, a lot of us thought they were cowards for going to Canada. Uh-huh. And, uh, not doing what they should be doing. I mean, it wasn't our fault the war didn't go. It wasn't popular. Uh-huh.

[00:21:15] But, we went to fulfill our duty. I mean, that's what we was our fault. But, yeah, I didn't have too much use for the Alabama's who else to come. Has your opinion about the war in general changed over time? No, but it was no good to start with. I guess it's got worse since then. Actually, anyway, they just stopped and gave it back to them. The South Vietnamese could keep up their sales when they got their tails left every time they were out.

[00:21:43] So, I don't, it's not changed. It was a stupid war. How has service in general changed you as a person? Well, it's, uh, being raised on the farm, I had a work ethic, but, uh, that's given me a little more structure. And, uh, like I said, uh, when I was in Vietnam, I thought I was doing what needed to be done. And nobody bothered you, but you did your job, you left you alone. Whereas some of these other outfits I was in, I was spitting polish and all that crap.

[00:22:12] And I didn't, that was not my, I was not to have to get it all this time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And has your experiences in Vietnam changed you or your outlook on life? It made life more dear to me. You go up to, if you ever get a chance to go to the wall, like I did, you don't even get a chance to get down to it. You can break down as soon as you see it.

[00:22:37] And it's a very emotional experience because I've got friends on the wall. Some of them from here in England. Mm-hmm. What advice did you wish had been given to you when you enlisted? Oh, well. Fair enough. Well, I went because that's what you did.

[00:23:02] Back then we were more of a duty-oriented society as far as the military. What advice would you give to people thinking about enlisting today? I think it's a good thing. A lot of these young guys don't have the structure. The farm life is that way we have, living on the streets and everything. They need to go in there to get the structure, get the discipline,

[00:23:31] and go to some of these other countries and see how good we have it. Some of these people that put down this country over here, if they would go to these other countries and live for a year, they would come back and kiss the ground in this place. Their attitude would change. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you might like to add or anything else you want to share? Oh, nothing too much. Like I said, we just did our duty day in, day out. I know I drove 22,500 miles over there.

[00:24:01] And it was, I wouldn't trade the experience for a million dollars, but you couldn't give me 10 million dollars. Fair. What do you hope people will remember from your story? And what do you hope they learned? Well, I said most people think of Vietnam. The first thing to think about is infantry, helicopters. They forget about a lot of other jobs on our behalf. Transportation is one of the biggest ones.

[00:24:31] In fact, when we first came back, they tried to tell us that we were flying for benefits, that we weren't out in the, how do you put it? We weren't out in the, out of here as much as people come to find out. We were out outside the wire, as we call it, more than the infantry was, because they had bases set up they was in. We were out there, just by ourselves, and the whole line of it was going somewhere.

[00:24:57] And, uh, so it's, uh, I was, it was a lot more dangerous line of the plane, because it's hard to find, how to tie a ton truck on the road that they know where you're at. And you know them mountain passes, you're going to slow down to a crawl. That's where they used it. Because we got hit in, uh, Onyek Pass. We got hit in Man Yang Pass. I lost a couple of people over there. They were, uh, two people in the transportation corps in Vietnam about the Medal of Honor. I knew one of them. His name was Da, Larry Da.

[00:25:27] He was on the gun truck for Uris. Uh, they'd been in ambush at Onyek Pass. And, uh, it was over, they was packing their stuff, getting ready to go. And somebody slipped out of the bush and threw a grenade up in the box. He, uh, a grenade jumped on it. And, uh, so I knew Larry. The Medal of Honor, Winter of Posse. If anybody's ever interested about gun trucks, go to Fort Houston, Virginia.

[00:25:55] There's a gun truck up there called the Even Destruction. And it's the original one that was in Vietnam. They brought it home, they cleaned it up, made it pretty. And it's sitting up there. And I know some of my friends used to die in that truck. Is there anything that we should have talked about but didn't include? Eh, I think we've heard of a couple of them. What do you wish more people knew about veterans in general?

[00:26:23] I wish they knew more about, uh, what we went through and how it changes when we come home. Uh, but a lot of us didn't find out we had PTSD to 40 years later. And it hits you all at one time and it just completely destroys your world every while because you don't understand why it's happening. Uh, but it does happen. And thankfully now we do have some mental health things going on. We've got some group sessions, things like that.

[00:26:50] Uh, I see about here in Hickory is a great place. Actually one of the best hospitals there is. In fact, there's the number one hospital in the VA system, nationwide. And, uh, they've been good to me. They've been placed on my knees and, uh, one of my knees. And, uh, even if I have a problem, I go up there and they fix it. So I can only keep graves on them. But, uh, you know, you have to sort of give us a little slack.

[00:27:22] Because some of the things that we've done and things we've seen, it, it, it, it, it makes us, the way it's later in life. And you can't unsee some of this stuff. And it comes back to home to you. You have nightmares, flashbacks, stuff like that. And I thought when I got home, I said, well, it ain't good while it'll be that much. But third day at home, I woke up screaming in a cold sweat and woke up back in the house up at about four o'clock in the morning. So, it affects you.

[00:27:52] Mm-hmm. And some of the dreams you have are in Technicolor, Panavision, and Stereo. And it's like you're a player. Not like a dream. It's like you're actually happened to you at the time. But you just have to understand that, uh, well, it's hard to understand if you ain't been there. And I'll put it that way. But if you've not been in a war zone and you don't see what it's like, you have no idea what we're listening. You can't talk to people because they don't understand.

[00:28:21] That's the reason the vendors talk to each other. Because we know we've been there if we understand. Kind of like my brother-in-law. When I met him before we got married, before we married his sister, he never talked about the war. So, I sat down, we was talking, telling the war stories in five minutes after I met him. And then the women are so, they're bouncing, they can't believe he's talking about it.

[00:28:51] You know? So, hopefully, people will understand to some degree that we're not exactly normal like he did. Well, thank you so much for joining us once again. And more importantly, thank you for your service. Your pleasure. Thank you.

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