My memorial presentation at Grace Church in Red Lion, PA, Sunday, May 27, 2001.

 

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STORY OF A HERO

Hello friends. It's been a few years since I've been with you, and it feels good to be back, especially to share another Memorial Day service with you in this lovely part of the country.

Bob Smoker—you know, he doesn't seem to have aged a bit since we served together with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam 31 years ago—asked me to say a few words about a hero today. I've thought a lot about this, and to be honest, I just didn't know where to begin.

I've known a lot of folks who I think are a hero. Most of them are like Bob, modest, self-effacing, yet confident and sure in their bearing. They have a spiritual quality, an inner self, whose value seems to shine through. I've known Medal of Honor winners, men who have the Distinguished Service Cross, and many who have earned the Silver Star. Some are dead. Some still live. You can read about heroes in books. History is replete with their stories and deeds.

I thought that it might be interesting to draw a comparison between two different types of heroes.

My first hero is actually a small group that had the moral and physical courage to defy friend and foe alike. Their mission was to make a foray into an armed camp—a patrol into enemy territory, if you will. They were warned of possible bloodshed, but they persisted in their plan. And, to make matters even more frightening, they planned to go on their mission unarmed and in broad daylight.

Here's what happened.

"Led by a local minister who had been a chaplain in the Confederate Army, the women of Columbus, Mississippi, marched, on April 25, 1866, flowers in hand, to Friendship Cemetery, an 18-acre tract on the outskirts of the town. There they honored the dead of both sides, men who had fallen not many miles away in the Battle of Shiloh. As the women had predicted, the Union soldiers who occupied the town made no move to interfere.

"Although the ladies of Columbus had not been the first to decorate graves of the dead with flowers—the citizens of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, had apparently held a somewhat similar ceremony in the summer or fall of 1864—the Columbus event attracted such widespread interest that it is generally considered to have been the initiation of what we now celebrate in the United States as Memorial Day."

These women were heroes. They faced a condition of danger—danger that was perceived by many. They certainly must have been afraid—can you imagine that they were not? Yet they screwed up the courage—the will—to do something they believed was so important that they would risk the danger.

Now, let's meet a hero from the other end of the heroic spectrum—my friend and fellow company commander in Vietnam in 1970—Rembert G. Rollison.

The "G" stood for Gabriel, but most of us called him Rollie when we knew him as the commander of Delta Company. To some he was "sir" or the "Old Man," and to friends and family he was Gabe or R.G.

Gabe was a big man, tall, rawboned, born of Georgia parents, he attended college at North Georgia College up near the Dahlonega Ranger Camp. He'd been commissioned from ROTC at North Georgia, and had served a first tour in Vietnam in 67-68. He left Army service briefly, then came back on active duty and was sent to Vietnam for a second time. He was an airborne ranger.

There was increasing enemy activity in the 101st Airborne Division area in early 1970. Our forward fire support base, called Fire Base Ripcord, was on a 1,000-meter high mountain near the dreaded A Shau Valley that dominated enemy infiltration routes into the populated lowlands. Ripcord was important, to us and also to the enemy.

By July 1st an enemy infantry division had surrounded Ripcord, and began a siege that lasted 23 days. During that time our battalion lost more than 50 percent of its soldiers killed and wounded. Our battalion held Ripcord against heavy odds. Eventually we withdrew under fire—one of the most difficult of all military operations.

Gabe Rollison and his Delta Company seemed to be everywhere during the battle. On July 6 they assaulted Hill 1000, which was due west of Ripcord and occupied by heavy enemy forces that were placing heavy mortar and rocket fire on our base. Rollison and his men were repulsed, but not before they had taken the measure of the enemy. Still, half of Delta Company became either killed or wounded in the action, and two men were missing in action and presumed dead.

The next day they assaulted again, this time with help from our Charlie Company—Bob Smoker was there for that one. The assault made progress, but was eventually thrown back. The enemy was just too numerous, their fortifications were just too strong. Later, a sister infantry battalion tried to take Hill 1000 from the reverse slope, and they were unsuccessful after four days of trying.

During Rollison's initial assault on July 6th, he found himself and his radio operators cut off and pinned down by enemy fire from three bunkers. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Andre C. Lucas, was circling overhead in a small observation helicopter. Rollison called Lucas and asked him to adjust his throw of hand grenades. Rollison lay on his back, tossing grenades just a few feet forward of his position, trying to get one into the opening of a bunker. Lucas directed his grenade tosses, and eventually one bunker was knocked out. Rollison then assaulted another bunker and killed a North Vietnamese soldier with a blast from a Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun.

At the end of the fighting on the following day, when Delta Company was thrown back a second time, one of Rollison's men keeled over from heat stroke. Ordering the rest of his company to continue to withdraw, Rollison gave the man first aid, including CPR, and then carried him back to a landing zone where a medevac helicopter was able to come in to pick him up.

Colonel Lucas so admired Rollison that he seemed to always pick him for the toughest missions. And Rollison loved Lucas in a way that only combat soldiers can understand.

On the 20th and 21st of July, a company joined our battalion from a sister battalion and air assaulted into the midst of a superior enemy force. Surrounded, they called for help. Rollison and Delta Company led the relief effort, and Charlie Company came right behind to secure a landing zone for extraction. That company from the sister battalion was commanded by a West Point classmate of mine—Don Workman—who was killed minutes before the last helicopters evacuated what was left of his company. And it was Rollison who got them out.

On July 22nd, my company—Alpha Company—tangled with a North Vietnamese battalion in a rare daylight action. We were deep in a jungle valley two kilometers southeast of Ripcord. It took an afternoon of vicious fighting before we were able to secure our position and send the enemy fleeing into the jungle. My company was, in Rollison's words, "shot to doll rags." Only six of my 74 men had not been killed or wounded. We were ineffective as a fighting force.

Rollison and Delta Company tried to come to our aid that evening, but helicopters couldn't land because the landing zone was on fire from napalm. They returned to the rear base at Camp Evans and slept that night on the heli-pad. The next morning they tried again, setting down before the sun was up. Rollison and his men literally fought their way through two kilometers of jungle to get to us. Meanwhile, what remained of the battalion on Ripcord was being evacuated.

Well, Rollison and his men got us out safely and were themselves the last to leave the Ripcord area.

Our battalion commander, Andre Lucas, was killed on the final day. He and his operations officer were consumed by a sheaf of 120mm mortar rounds that impacted on top of Ripcord in the final moments of the withdrawal. When Rollison heard of Lucas' death, he wept openly.

Later—years later—the tears and the emotion over Lucas' death were still there. "I wish it had been me instead of him," Rollison would say, "I wish to God it had been me."

God's will is sometimes obscure to us. The man who saved so many, who pulled others out of tight spots time and again, finally met a foe he couldn't defeat. Cancer claimed Gabe Rollison's life at 0438 hours, Wednesday, October 4, 2000. He died with dignity and with his wife Marty at his side.

I was able to visit Gabe and Marty over the years, and was fortunate to be able to see him in September less than a month before he passed on.

Well, there it is—two different kinds of heroes from different ends of the spectrum. And I can not tell you which one I value more.

Gabe Rollison led the effort that saved my life and the lives of my surviving soldiers. I value that heroism more than I can say.

But, those wonderful, courageous ladies of Columbus, Mississippi, 135 years ago, gave us Memorial Day—a day without which we would not be drawn together, as we are now, to honor our fallen heroes. Somehow, for me, I think the value the scales are weighing is the same.

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Some Men
 
Some men are stronger than other men.
And some men live lives of desperate agony,
Wondering if they could have been as strong,
If they could have been as courageous
As some men, who are men.
 
And those men, who are men,
Have a duty, nay, an obligation
To reach out to those less endowed
To help them see themselves
For what they are, and what they can become.
 
On the battlefield of life,
The clarion call is not for the brave,
For they have proved themselves.
It is not for the man in metal clothes,
For he is proven in fire.
 
The clarion call is for the weak,
The faint of heart, for they,
And only they, have yet to make
Upon this world a mark
Worthy of those we call warriors.
 

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Rain, and the Promise of Life
 
The rain poured down in buckets
Drenching the jungle with its promise of life
And I threw back my head and laughed
For there was no more life.
 
What good, then, is the rain?
Does it wash away my sins?
Or restore the dead, who a moment before
Were living monuments to God?
 
My laughter died in my throat.
The rain continued, uncaring.
 
I looked over at Steve, my forward observer.
The rain couldn't help him,
Couldn't put his shattered body back together,
Couldn't make his lifeless eyes see.
 
"Wanna go on patrol, lieutenant?" I whispered.
"Wanna go out and chase some bad guys?"
"No? Well, you just stay here then," I smiled,
"I'll go. I'll go get some for both of us."
 
I tried to stand, but the rain knocked me down.
So I sat and chuckled. Stupid rain.
 
"Lieutenant," I looked over at him again,
"You seen my boots? Gotta have my boots
To go on patrol." I cursed under my breath.
The rain must have washed my boots away.
 
Then I heard a faint sound, a rustling of air,
And an angel appeared over me. I shot him,
And watched him bleed until his wings stopped beating,
Then the rain washed his brown pith helmet away too.
 
Later on, more angels showed up,
Big green ones this time, with white teeth.
I waved to one of them and he came over.
"Get my boots," I rasped, "need my boots."

I looked at Steve. He was smiling.
"You don't need boots anymore, capt'n," he said.
 
The rain poured down in buckets
Drenching the jungle with its promise of life.
The angels bowed their heads, and cried,
For there was no more life.
 
But Steve and I threw back our heads and laughed.
 

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