SAIGON, VIETNAM (WTAQ) – 52 NE Wisconsin Vietnam War veterans are getting the chance to do just what they signed up for.
The Old Glory Honor Flight offered them a chance to go back to Vietnam and see some of the places where they fought half a century ago. For one of them….that meant taking a boat ride.
Green Bay Navy veteran Tom Sharp served in Vietnam in 1967 and 68.
He spent a lot of the time looking for the enemy and patrolling the maze of canals that make up the Mekong Delta. On this trip, he took a ride up some of those familiar waterways.
“The boat would go up and down. We’d go searching and sometimes we would find them and sometimes we wouldn’t”
Sharp says much of the time it was boring….
“For me, in the boats, it was 45 minutes of boredom and then 15 minutes of pure hell.”
The hell would begin when they would come across a nest of Viet Cong along the shore.
“All out firefight. A knock-down drag-out fight on the river.”
Sometimes, your head was on a swivel.
“The gunfire could come from any bank, or you could be hit from both banks at the same time.”
Tom Sharp was eventually wounded and sent home.
He also lost some good friends during those firefights. The memory of them is just one of the reasons he wanted to return.
The Wisconsin veterans will go from Saigon to Da Nang to Hanoi before returning home.
The veterans return to Menasha High School from their Vietnam trip Saturday, March 9th. The public is invited to their welcome home celebration, with the doors opening at 5 pm. And you can follow the veteran’s journey with daily updates, pictures, videos and more at the Return To Vietnam section at wtaq.com
