Episode 6: Catawba County Vietnam Veterans: In Their Own Words with Max Hedrick Jr.

[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 Vietnam Veterans in Their Own Words, Max Hedrick Jr. shares his story of being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 and serving as a military policeman in Vietnam.

[00:00:31] A Catawba County native, Max reflects on leaving home for the first time, basic training at Fort Gordon, and the realities of serving in and around Saigon and Nabi. He recalls patrol duty, close calls on the water, time on river and gate security, and the friendships that helped him carry through his tour. Max's story offers a vivid and personal look at service, resilience, and what it meant to return home after Vietnam.

[00:00:59] I'm joined today by Mr. Max Homer Hedrick Jr., PFC in the United States Army, served from 1965 to 1967. Thank you so much for being here this morning with us. My pleasure. Okay, so first we're going to start with some background information. So where were you born? I was born here in Catawba County, August 31st, 1943.

[00:01:28] Can you tell us a little bit about your family, your parents? Did you have siblings? I was the only child. It was my mom and dad. My dad was born May the 6th of 1910. My mother was born May the 26th of 1912. They got married on May the 10th of 1942. And then I came along in 1943.

[00:01:59] What were your first thoughts about the war and did they differ from your friends or family? To be perfectly honest, you know, I never did really think about it much. Until I got in the Army and then everybody told me that once I'd got in the Army, I'd more than likely wind up in Vietnam. But as far as thinking about it, I really hadn't given any thought.

[00:02:27] And did you enlist or were you drafted? Drafted. When were you drafted and what were your thoughts about that? I was drafted. Originally got my orders in May. And then I got a deferment until June. And then I went in in June the 16th of 1965.

[00:02:54] And I was as nervous as I could be. Scared to death. Didn't know what to expect. And what were your thoughts on the protest and draft dodgers? I didn't even give it a thought. What were your family and friends reactions to you being drafted? Did it feel like it changed some of your relationships?

[00:03:19] I don't know that it changed any of the relationships, but they were devastated just like I was. See, when I was drafted, my pastor, he was Pastor Perry, Robert Perry up here at Beth Eden, got with me and took me to the draft board. And we went in and it was Peggy Rudisall. She was in charge of it.

[00:03:47] And he told her, he said, this young man was, his father is in the hospital. And he got this darn thing today and showed him the draft papers. And so she told me what I needed to do to get a deferment because I was the only one working at the time. So I got a deferment and was deferred till July to June of the next month.

[00:04:14] So then I went in in June. And what branch of the military did you join? The Army. What was leaving to go to training like? Oh, it was my first time away from home. So it was down.

[00:04:41] And I really didn't want to go, but well, I had no choice. Where was your basic training? Basic training was at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Came home for two weeks and then I went straight back to Fort Gordon, Georgia for MP school. Was this your first time out of state? Oh, yes. It was my first time. What was it like living in a different state?

[00:05:11] You can't compare it to anything. If you've never been away, I had never been away from home even. So I was on my own more or less. What do you remember about your first day and how did you feel? Well, I was there. We first got to Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

[00:05:35] That's where we took our headget shots and haircuts and clothing issue and all that stuff. And we had a little old PFC. He acted like a sergeant. And he was getting away with it. And I was scared. Everybody else was scared with me. So that's what we went through. Did you make friends quickly in basic training?

[00:06:04] Oh, yeah. I made plenty of friends that way. There was one guy I met. We stayed together the entire time that I was in the Army. We went through basic training, MP school. Then we were transferred to Fort Ritchie, Maryland, then Vietnam. We did the whole thing together. He was from West Virginia. What was your daily routine in training? And was it difficult to adjust to?

[00:06:33] It was difficult to adjust to, but you had to. We would go march to places and have rifle training, bayonet training. And Saturdays, of course, it was devoted to physical training. Everybody hated that. What were your instructors like?

[00:07:01] Well, number one was we had a little buck sergeant. He was just a little bitty fella. Couldn't have been more than 150 pounds. And he was gung-ho. And any time you marched, you marched with him. And he made giant steps. And you had to almost run to keep up with him.

[00:07:30] And that was basically what we had to do. What was the hardest and easiest part of training? Well, the hardest part was the physical training on Saturdays. The easy part? Oh, I didn't mind the bayonet training or any of the rest of it. Firing the rifle or anything. That was easy stuff. What did you do in your downtime?

[00:08:01] Downtime? We had post privileges. We could go anywhere on the post that we wanted to go. After the second or third week, we were able to go leave the post and go into town if we wanted to. Augusta, Georgia was the nearest town. During your basic training, how often did you exchange letters from your loved ones back home?

[00:08:28] We must have written back and forth for weekly, on a weekly basis. Were there parts of military life easier to adapt to than others? Yes. Yes. You had to learn how to cope with other people.

[00:09:04] When did you find out you were being shipped overseas? I was at Fort Ritchie, Maryland, and came down on orders in probably May of 66, late May. And they told me I would be coming down on orders for Vietnam.

[00:09:34] How did you feel? Well, that was another devastating blow. I knew it was coming, but you're not really prepared for it when it does hit you. Were you allowed to tell your family beforehand? When I was told, I was able to tell my parents about it. And my mother actually wrote a letter to the president about me not having to go because I was an only child.

[00:10:02] Well, but it didn't work. They got a letter back saying that they needed their good men to go and serve and do their duty. And what day did you arrive? Where were you first stationed? In Vietnam? Yeah, in Vietnam. I first got to Vietnam about the middle of July.

[00:10:33] And they had a heat wave here. And I told everybody that I believe the Lord was getting me ready for Vietnam because it was hot over there. And I think, like I said, it was the middle of July. July. And we arrived at the airport and we were told to wait out front with our equipment and they would have buses to take us to Long Bend, which is north of Saigon.

[00:11:04] And, well, it was about 5.30, give or take, Saigon time. About 8 o'clock, they finally got the buses ready for us to go to Long Bend. Was it 5.30 in the morning or 5.30 in the evening? 5.30 in the afternoon. Afternoon, okay. And what were your first thoughts upon entering Vietnam? The heat. When you crawl off the airplane,

[00:11:32] you're on an air-conditioned airplane, the heat just slaps you in the face. And I'm thinking to myself, I've got to live in this for almost a year. And what did you think about your station? The first station I was at, they drove us all the way to Long Bend. And at that time, like I said, it was July of 66.

[00:12:01] There were only two hills over at Long Bend. One of them was the 90th Replacement Battalion, and there was some gunnery outfit on the other hill. And that was all it was in at Long Bend at the time. And so I was with the 90th Replacement Battalion until they got us ready to go to Vietnam or to go to our next duty station,

[00:12:28] which would be south of Saigon, which wound up to be Nga Bay. And what was your unit assignment? The 188 MP Company. We were told that we were the advanced party of the 188 MP Company. There were six of us. And the six of us were Keith Hitson, Arthur C. D'Amico, Wayne Denny,

[00:12:59] Earl Halls, and he was the guy that I spent all the time with. And my name, of course, and then Richard E. Johnson. Those six were the ones that was called out to go to Nga Bay. And that document that you have there, is that your original document? This is the original document. I think I carried it through Vietnam, and I'm going to let y'all have it. Wow, that's amazing. I've got copies of it.

[00:13:28] How long were you stationed in Vietnam altogether? Right at 10 months, give or take a few days. How difficult was it to keep in contact with your loved ones back home while you were in Vietnam? It wasn't difficult at all. I could call if I wanted to, and we wrote letters quite often. It seemed like we wrote letters about every other week or so.

[00:13:58] So there was no problem riding home. Are there any memories or stories about your time in Vietnam that you'd like to share, good or bad, that maybe stood out? Well, one, I can think of one incident that I was, when we were on patrol. Me, what, couldn't swim? What did they put me doing? River patrol. Of all things. Well, we were patrolling the harbor at Nau Bay,

[00:14:28] which is, it's about, as the crow flies, it's about five, six miles southeast of Saigon. By river, it was about 10 or 11 miles. But if you had to go by road, the curvy road, it was about 16 miles. And we were, we were on patrol one day. So, and me and, it was me and Wayne Denny. So, we did,

[00:14:56] done something that we shouldn't have done. It was a dumb idea. We took off one of the, the east, on the eastern shoreline, we took up one of the tributaries, which is a, a little stream going, up into the boonies. And we went about a mile and a half, two miles. And we got shot at. I grabbed the, M79 grenade launcher, and lobbed,

[00:15:27] close to a half dozen grenades over where the shots came from. Wayne Denny grabbed the 60 caliber machine gun, and cut loose with it. And, any other time, the Papa Son couldn't turn the boat around, on the Catawba River. He had trouble doing that. But that day, turned it around on a dime. And we left. We got back to the harbor at, Nau Bay. Well,

[00:15:55] we didn't tell our people what we had done. We, we'd have probably got court-martialed. But, we did tell the SEAL team, Navy SEAL teams, what had happened, and where we had went, and what, we got shot at. And they just looked at it and said, what the hell are you doing up there in the first place? Well, I don't know if they went up and checked it out or not, but I'm assuming that they probably did.

[00:16:25] But that was one of the incidents that really happened. And I wasn't, we weren't scared a bit. We knew we could get shot, killed, or anything. Where were all the places you were stationed while in Vietnam? And how was each place different? And how were they the same? Mostly in and around Saigon and Nau Bay. And, it was,

[00:16:55] it was like any place away from home. You, you dreaded the fact you were away from home. But you knew what had to be done, and you did it. Without question. And what did you do off duty? Off duty, we would go, we were able to go into Saigon, and, and go to restaurants, and eat, and whatever. We had one particular restaurant that I found. They, oh, they had great spaghetti.

[00:17:25] And a friend, they was playing, I don't know, this off the wall, Vietnamese type music. And I asked the, waitress one day, if they didn't have something different they could play, I said, like country music or something. And first thing I know, Hank Williams come on. And they started playing that. Every time I'd go in, they would play that, Hank Williams music. And a friend of mine, John Sprouse, who,

[00:17:54] who lived in, Ohio, we and I got to be good friends. The first time he went with me to Saigon, I said, watch what happens when we go into the restaurant. We walked in, I said, hear the music? He said, yeah. First thing you know, Hank Williams, he said, where'd that come from? I said, every time I come in, I said, they do that. What was entertainment like in camp? Did you get to go to any of the USO shows? Oh,

[00:18:23] they had plenty of USO shows. Liza Jane and the country music band was there, and they had other groups that would come in. We didn't get to go into any of the Bob Hope shows or anything like that, but we had entertainment that would be brought into what was called Pershing Compound at the time. Pershing Fields, same difference. Did you ever get to go on leave while you were in Vietnam? I went on leave first.

[00:18:54] I was spent after four months, give or take a few more days. I was transferred back into Saigon, and that was along about the 1st of December, and they told me, they said, don't even unpack, said you're getting ready to go on R&R tomorrow. So I went on R&R to Tokyo, Japan. I left Saigon. It was 135 degrees. Wow. Landed in Tokyo,

[00:19:23] and it was 35 degrees. And all we had on was short-sleeved, thin khaki clothes, and we couldn't get enough clothes to put on. And it was four o'clock at Tokyo, and it was already dark like midnight. Did you enjoy your time in Tokyo? Do you have any memories from your time there on leave? I enjoyed that time in Tokyo.

[00:19:50] What was coming back from leave like? How did that feel? It was almost like the first time you're going from home to Vietnam. What kept you going while you were in Vietnam? Knowing that one day I would be through and get to go home. Did you have any photos of loved ones back home with you that you carried? Oh, yeah. I carried a few pictures.

[00:20:19] I always had them with me. I even fell in the river with them. Do you mind sharing who those pictures were of? It was my mom and dad, and basically that was it. And when and where were you when you learned that you were going home for good? I was still in Saigon at Pershing Compound,

[00:20:45] and everybody at that time was always carrying what they called a swagger stick. It's a stick about, oh, I guess about 12 inches long. It's got notches in it. It's a reminder that you are going home. And time came for me to be moved out, and they told me I was going to be transferred up to Long Bend

[00:21:13] and would ship out from there to go back home. And why were you going back home? Was it just because of rotating out? End of tour. I had completed my tour of duty in Vietnam and was going home. What was your reaction to learning that America eventually was pulling out of the war? I know you'd been back home for a little while by that point,

[00:21:41] but how did you feel upon hearing that? I was glad that we were getting out of Vietnam, but I thought it was a disgrace because those of us who were there didn't want it to end with us being defeated. And personally, I don't think we were.

[00:22:10] We won the war. The government lost it. What was your last night in Vietnam like? What were you feeling, and what were the feelings around your camp? Oh, I was so excited. I really didn't know what to do. But I hardly slept.

[00:22:33] But I did think about one particular incident where there was a guy that was getting ready to go home, and he went up the gangplank to get on the aircraft. And he got up there, and the people told him, said, you aren't clean shaven. You're going to have to come back tomorrow after you clean shave. Well, he left and went back to the barracks,

[00:23:02] and he shaved the next morning. And then when he came back, as he was getting up to go into the aircraft, he was killed by a sniper. What day did you return home, and how were you greeted? I finally returned home. It was June the 9th of 1967.

[00:23:29] And, oh, everybody treated me with respect. I was fortunate. I didn't have anybody spit in my face or call me a baby killer like some of the places that happened. And when people would ask me if I was in Vietnam, I said, yes. And damn proud of it. What was your outlook on the future after being home?

[00:23:59] I thought the future looked bright. See, I worked at Carolina Mills, and being a draftee, my job was still waiting for me when I got back home. I had 90 days in which to go back to my job or to go back into the military. So I went down to where I worked at with Plant 4, Carolina Mills.

[00:24:26] And so I went down there and told them since the July 4th holiday was coming up within a couple of weeks, I'd just wait until after the July 4th holiday and then come back to work after that. And they said that was just fine. Was it hard to adjust back to civilian life? Not really. I went back in knowing I could handle anything that they threw at me since what I'd been through.

[00:24:55] Because I had gotten to the place I could do just about anything at the plant, any of the machinery or jobs that I could handle. I could handle any of them. Were you able to keep in contact with the members you served with? I was able to keep in contact with some of them. One of them, John Sprouse, we wrote letters back and forth to each other.

[00:25:20] And then finally, I think it was about 2013, I made a trip out to Ohio and we got together. It was the first time we'd seen each other since we'd been in Vietnam. That must have been really special. That was. It's been a week and a half out there. Did your opinions of the protesters and draft dodgers change over time? Not really.

[00:25:51] My mother said what they ought to do is go get them and send them to Vietnam. And we said, no, we don't want them over here. She said, they'd probably be the first ones we shot. Has your opinion on the war changed over time? No, not at all. How has service changed you? Just like anybody, it'll make a man out of you.

[00:26:18] If you're not prepared for anything like that, you learn and you are educated by it. I think everybody that's physically able should have to spend two years in the Army. They made a mistake when they did away with the draft. How did your experience change your outlook on life? It was totally different.

[00:26:49] Since I'd been through a war. See, one of my favorite things growing up as a child was playing war with the other kids in the neighborhood. And my mom said, you better get enough of it. She said, you're probably going to wind up being there one of these days. And sure enough, I was. And it will change you immediately. And immensely.

[00:27:18] Is there anything that you would have done differently? Right now, nothing. What advice do you wish was given to you when you were drafted? And what advice would you give to people thinking about enlisting? You see, I'm with the VA now.

[00:27:41] I didn't realize that you could get and be involved with the VA and get health treatments and things like that. And it was a long time after that that I found out that you could join the VA and have medical treatments and things like that. And I wish somebody would have been able to tell me that you could do that long before I got involved in it.

[00:28:09] And people need to know that you can get into the VA. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you would like to add? Anything else you'd like to share? Just one incident that I was, when I was, I said I couldn't swim. Well, we were posting one night going out on the post. It was on the water. And I fell in.

[00:28:34] And you had a little sampan, a little Vietnamese type canoe. And that's the only way they had to get from one place to the other. And you'd take a few steps and that thing would go back and forth like that. Take a few more steps and it'd go back and forth. And I got right to the end, was getting ready to step over on solid dock work. And it slipped out from under me and straight down I went.

[00:29:04] And I went down and I could look up and see several people just standing there watching. Well, I came up and I was going to holler for help, but something shut my mouth. I don't know what. I went down a second time. I felt with my left arm, I felt something like a cable or a rope or something.

[00:29:35] And I knew that was in my mind. I had to get hold of whatever it was. And when I came up, I went over with both hands and got hold of it. And pulled myself out and got up on the dock. And I was on the wrong side of the dock, on the wrong side of it. I had to get over to the other side. Well, I made my mind up then. That was like a warning to me to stay off the water because you can't swim.

[00:30:06] Well, a week or so passed and somebody came to me and says, guess where you working tonight, Max? I said, where? He said, you're out on the river. I said, I'm not going out there. So I went down to the NCO lounge, checked the duty roster. Sure enough, I was out on the river. I went in and there was a Sergeant East 6 behind the desk. I looked at him.

[00:30:34] I said, he said, what can I do for you, Hedrick? I said, they got me scheduled to work post number so-and-so. I told them what it was. I said, I'm not going out on the river anymore. He flew mad, turned red and said, don't tell me what you're not going to do. I said, I almost drowned one time out there. I said, I will not go out there no more. And the top Sergeant E9 walked up and asked me, he said, can you swim? I said, no, sir, I can't swim.

[00:31:03] He said, well, you ain't got no damn business out there. He said, put somebody else in his place. Well, as it turned out, Westmoreland couldn't swim either. So he, when pay call came, there was papers. We had to sign whether we could swim or could not swim.

[00:31:24] And that was when they took those of us who couldn't swim, they took us off the water and put us on walking patrols, jeep patrols, gate shacks, stuff like that. And the first day on the gate shack, what happened? About five minutes before I got posted on the gate I was going to work that day, they threw a grenade at the gate.

[00:31:49] But I can walk on solid ground better than I can walk on water. My faith's not that strong. What do you hope people will remember from your story? And what do you hope that they will learn? That I did my duty to the best of my ability. And what do you wish more people knew about veterans? Who we are and why we do what we do.

[00:32:18] You want to elaborate a little bit on that? Veterans. We're not, we're, I got a shirt at the house. It says, I'm not a civilian. I'm a veteran. And we needed to be treated like veterans. Like I said, I was fortunate in the fact that I was not spat upon or, or called baby killer like some were.

[00:32:46] I was lucky because I lived here in Newton and they treated me, they did treat me with respect here. And I was glad for that. Well, thank you for joining us again today and thank you for your service, sir. It was my pleasure.

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