"Bug" saved Vet's life in Vietnam

By NATHAN LAMB | Milton Independent Staff Writer
miltonreporter@yahoo.com

Doug Johnston (center) wipes his eye at the town’s Memorial Day observance last May. Johnston was initially a communications specialist in Vietnam, but became a door gunner on a helicopter because he wanted to be where the action was.

Essex native Doug Johnston expected a relatively quiet three-year hitch when he joined the Army at age 19 in 1963. However, as one of the first U.S. soldiers sent to Vietnam in 1965, it didn’t turn out that way.

“I lost a crew—I call them brothers—and I also lost a friend,” he said.

The “crew” was Johnston’s three comrades onboard a Huey assault helicopter, which was regularly assigned to move troops into hot spots and pick up wounded.

While that may sound like it’s a world away from action on the ground, the ‘copters typically flew just over treetops to avoid enemy fire, said Johnston. He estimated the top speed was 60-70 miles per hour, but said it felt like 1,000 from his door gunner’s perch.

Johnston was with that four-man crew for six months and they became like brothers, until a bug—possibly the flu—saved his life.

“They got another guy to replace me and they went out and they didn’t come back; they got hit by a surface to air missile,” he said.

That news left Johnston with a question that has lingered ever since.

“To this day I wonder why, why not me?” he said. “My wife says ‘because it wasn’t your time.”

Johnston’s time in the Army was initially quiet. He served with an artillery unit near the South Korean border, where an uneasy Cold War peace had prevailed since the Korean War ended.

After that, he was sent to Fort Devens, Mass., and Fort Benning, Ga. As a specialist, the majority of Johnston’s training was targeted toward communications, though there was some infantry-style training as well.

Though it was technically peacetime, increasingly news reports about Vietnam and a shift in training focus tipped off the soldiers that something was in the works.

“We started doing crazy stuff, running through jungles and swamps, so I kind of got the hint what was going on,” he said.

Shortly thereafter, Johnston and the 1st Cavalry Division were the first solders sent overseas in what would become the Vietnam War.

Once there, Johnston was set up doing switchboards and communications at a temporary base in An Khe, more than a couple hundred miles north of Saigon. He retained those duties for three months, but grew bored of shuttling signals and wanted to get to where the action was. When a door gunner position opened up, Johnston put in for it and was promptly re-assigned.

By 1966, however, Johnston had seen enough action. With his enlistment almost over—and the U. S. building permanent bases in Vietnam—a superior officer offered a promotion and $1,000 cash for Johnston to stay. He declined the offer, but remembers the story of a good friend and comrade who didn’t.

“He stayed and he’s now on the wall,” said Johnston, referring to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. “I found out about three months after I left.”

Johnston had a lot of scary flights in Vietnam, but the one home ranked among the worst. He was shipped off base on an old cargo prop plane and as it approached takeoff speed, rumbling down the runway and shaking more and more while not lifting off, Johnston wasn’t sure the plane was going to make it—and made a pact he’s kept to this day.

“I said Lord, if you get me out of here and into Saigon, I swear I’ll never fly again in anything—and I haven’t since then,” he said.

That wasn’t quite the end of Johnston’s ordeal: At the airport in San Francisco, somebody spit at a black friend in the unit. Johnston was quick to retaliate: he jumped the assailant and it took three MPs to get him off, he said.

Like many Vietnam veterans, the welcome wasn’t much warmer when he returned to Burlington. Walking down Church Street in his dress greens the day he got back, no one welcomed him home—instead he was “just another jerk on the street.”

Though he married a good woman from Milton shortly after and moved to town, Johnston confessed he was bitter for years about the lack of any welcome when he got home.

He was happy to report that things have changed since then, both for Vietnam veterans and those of subsequent wars, who now get the respect they deserve.

“I’m over that and I’m glad to see that for the people coming home from Iraq,” he said.