Peter Weiner tried to join the U.S. Army when he was still 16, and eventually got into service just after his 17th birthday in January, 1965.
He wasn’t sure exactly why he joined, but he didn’t expect to be assigned to the ongoing conflict in Vietnam.
The Army sent him to helicopter repair school in Virginia, where he spent 19 weeks. He might have suspected something when the Army did not assign him right away, but transferred him to Oklahoma to wait until he was 18. He thought would be going to Germany, only to discover that he would be going to the war zone. Then, he got his orders for Vietnam, and served in several locations during a yearlong stretch from 1966 to 1967.
“I was part of a recovery team that picked up helicopters and small planes,” he said.
Most of these were in combat zones, and many, he noted, were Red Cross vehicles or other unarmed transports. He said he served at two locations there, signing up for a second tour that carried him into 1967, when he finally left. After the war, he actually taught or worked at civilian helicopter repair for a while.
“I have a lot of things that went on before I became a lawyer,” he said. Weiner currently serves as the town’s public defender.
In the month leading up to Veteran’s Day, Weiner and two other Secaucus officials shared their memories of the Vietnam conflict.
A pair of boots
John Reilly, who currently serves as deputy mayor, lived in Union City when he got drafted. He had worked on and off for a funeral home there for most of his time in high school, so he didn’t think death would shock him.
Reilly was assigned to 196th Light Infantry Brigade, a new concept in combat for Vietnam.
The unit landed at its base camp just west of Tay Ninh in 1966.
In its first serious combat effort, Reilly was wounded and was evacuated to a medical unit out of the combat zone. He remembered being only semi-conscious when someone sat down on his bed a while later at the hospital.
“I couldn’t see who it was at first,” Reilly said. “I just felt the bed sink a little. He asked me where I came from and what I did in civilian life.”
Reilly told the man about his career in the funeral business and watched the man’s brows rise.
“That’s when I noticed the general’s stars on his shirt,” Reilly said. “He turned to one of his aids and said, ‘This boy ought to be in graves registration.’ Then he asked me if I would like that.”
Reilly envisioned a plush assignment in Saigon – something that had been typical previous to that moment when graves registration had been in the hands of the Air Force. The Air Force had run the unit during the early years of the war partly because the death rate was low enough where they could handle it. A civilian mortician ran the operations at Clark Air Force Base with a small two-room mortuary located on Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon.
“I pictured myself walking around Saigon without a care in the world,” he said.
What he didn’t know was that in early 1965, the Army had made plans to take over operations from the Air Force and that by the time he arrived, most of the operations had been moved inland to a remote part of a military base.
“They kept it outside the base itself because they thought the sight of all the dead bodies would depress our troops,” Reilly recalled.
It was a cinder block building, and those inside had to be very careful with the lights at night because they were easy targets for snipers.
“I remember stepping over things in the dark,” Reilly said, realizing later these were bodies. He didn’t merely treat the bodies on base, but often went out to the combat areas to pick them up.
“The United States had a policy never to leave a soldier behind,” Reilly said. “We tried to live up to that.”
But a huge part of his job was putting bodies of deceased soldiers into a condition to send them home, thus becoming witness to nearly all the fallen during that period of time.
The one moment that stood out in Reilly’s mind, however, was when a lieutenant came in carrying a bag.
“He just dumped in on the table and told me I would know what to do with it,” Reilly said. “I looked inside and saw it was a pair of boots and tried to stop the man and ask him who they belonged to. But the lieutenant just told me I would know what to do with them, then left.”
On closer examination, Reilly realized that the feet were still in the boots, but there was no body attached.
“We learned later than the soldier the boots belong to had been evacuated elsewhere,” said Reilly. “I don’t if he lived or died.”
A long walk home
Mayor Dennis Elwell called the Army an education. His unit was transferred to Vietnam on June 6, 1966. Out of 850 men, he was one of only 14 who had not suffered malaria, and one of 25 not wounded or killed.
He said he didn’t know why he came back unscathed and wondered about it from time to time, especially during the first few years after his return home.
“I used to wake up from a dream that I was still over there waiting to leave,” he said. Part of his survival had to do with being in the right place at the right time, but another part was the cohesive nature of the unit. Trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, Elwell was in among the toughest and most disciplined units in the American army, and described much of his experience in Vietnam as digging a hole in which to sleep and regimented guard duty.
“I tried to be good at what I did, and I learned that in the Army, it’s easier to get along if you do what you’re told.” Elwell said. “I learned quickly that people who did a good job moved up.”
A good job in Vietnam was survival, and survival meant strict attention to detail.
“We paid attention to what to do and not to do,” he said. “If we planned an ambush, we did it, and we looked out for one another. Looking out for each other was a big part of staying alive.”
Although Elwell was a decorated war hero, receiving a commendation for saving the life of his platoon leader, he didn’t consider himself particularly brave.
“The airborne taught me how to control my fear,” he said. “When we were jumping, they told us that jumping out of an airplane at a thousand feet is an abnormal thing. Most of the guys had shaky knees. The idea was to control the fear and do it anyway. If you can control fear, you can do just about anything.”
Exactly a year after being sent to Vietnam, Elwell came home.
His future wife and his aunt both saw him in the Secaucus Plaza and offered to drive him to his house on the north end, but he refused.
“I wanted to walk,” he said, and walk he did, arriving at the house just as supper was being laid on the table. He sat and ate with the family, then went to bed.