Lost Records Made People Doubt Vet's Story

Vietnam veteran waits 40 years for recognition

Vinnie Ferraro, left, becomes emotional as he talks about being a soldier in the Vietnam War. Dick Crawley, another Vietnam veteran, listens as the two sit in Ferraro's home in Chelsea.

Lost records made people doubt vet's story

Fellow soldier helps him get his due

BY LISA ALLMENDINGER

News Special Writer

The first thing 18-year-old Vinnie Ferraro noticed when he stepped off a Flying Tiger commercial airplane and onto the soil of Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam was the heaviness of the air. The date was Feb. 22,1968.

“It smelled of diesel; it smelled like death, it just engulfed you,” he said, recalling the first of 89 days he spent as a soldier in Vietnam.

Ferraro said he turned around and waved to the flight attendants who were wearing blue miniskirts, wiggling his fingers at them and saying, “Bye.”

They waved back, smiling, calling out to the soldiers saying, “Bye, see you later.”

The image of those flight attendants has stayed with Ferraro. “I still like blue,” he said.

It was a lighthearted moment that didn’t fit with the rank odor
in the air and which gave no hint of the horrors Ferraro was about to face.

In the ensuing months, he would fight the North Vietnamese and the dense jungle foliage. He would see the remains of bodies lying in fields and know the chaos and savagery of war in the way that those who have not experienced it cannot know.

He would eventually leave Vietnam badly wounded and devoured by guilt, convinced that somehow he was to blame for the casualties he and his fellow soldiers suffered on April 29,1968.

He also returned home with neither the respect nor the recognition he’d earned because somewhere between three different hospitals, his service records were lost.

Fellow veterans doubted his word. His superior officers didn’t believe he’d been to Vietnam or earned the medals he said he was owed.

But Ferraro’s profound disappointment in his lack of validation has begun to lessen 40 years later - thanks to a fellow Vietnam veteran who believed in him.

The war

Ferraro, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who has lived in Chelsea since 1992, enlisted in the Army in August 1967.

He completed his basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., his advanced infantry training at Fort Gordon, Ga., and  from there it was on to Fort Benning, Ga., for his parachute training.

While on a 30-day leave, he married Dianna, his wife of 40-plus years.

"I was a ditzy teen," Dianna Ferraro says of their early days as a young wife. "I supported Vince but not the war," she said, admitting she was not a good military wife.

Ferraro was a member of Company B, 1st of the 327th Infantry, 101 Airborne division and part of Operation Delaware in A Shau Valley, an area between two mountains in southern Vietnam near Laos. The area was a major supply route for enemy forces.

While on patrol, a soldier next to him was shot, and he consoled himself with the thought: "You are more blessed than the other guy; that the other guy did something stupid to get shot." He daid, "You thought you were bulletproof."

On April 29, 1968, a couple of months after he'd seen his first bloody remains of war, Ferraro found out the reality of war. He'd been given orders to "take the point" -to lead the way for a company of about 100 soldiers.

Twice during the trek up a hill, he said he stopped the company when he sensed danger and twice he requested artillery assistance.

He was told none was available until the company had engaged the enemy. 

"I knew we were close. I could see where the dust was settling; the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) had been there, maybe minutes before," he said.

Then he saw a bush with a rifle barrel sticking out.

"When it disappeared, I opened fire, he said, and was himself hit from behind by fire from another enemy soldier. It was the first of three times he'd be wounded that day.

What he remembers most vividly, though, was the chaos, the dirt flying around him getting into his eyes; the screaming of fellow soldiers calling for medics and saying they'd been hit.

"You could hear the voices echoing in your head," he said, but he was "too hot too afraid to move." Then Ferraro was hit by a mortar shell explosion.

"I feltt like I was hit in the back with a baseball bat, " he said. Recovering from the shock and impact, he said he looked on the other side of the parth and saw four soldiers carrying off the medic.

"Part of his scalp was peeled away," Ferraro said, crying openly while recalling the scene.

Ferraro rolled over and was hit again. "I thought it was sniper fire," he said. Actually, there had been an explosion that had literally blown him back up the hill.

He began crawling away from the scene, then was rescued and carried to safety. Looking around at all the chaos, he saw the Army had run out of body bags and the dead were being wrapped in their poncho liners.

"I'm looking at these guys; you can't not look, and you feel so helpless" he said.

Ferraro said he was on of the lucky ones that day. Of the approximately 80 soldiers tha were ambushed by the enemy, 35 men were wounded and 11 were killed. Ferraro still blames himself for the casualties.

"I was the point person; I initiated the ambush," he siad.

The aftermath

Ferraro was airlifted out of the area with shrapnel embedded in his back and legs. he wa treated at two hospitals before eventually making it back to the United States.

While flying home from Vietnam, he said, he remembered thinking, "I'm coming home and, wow, I'm a veteran.

His wife didn't know he'd been wounded until she received a telegram saying he was at a hospital in Valley Forge, Pa.

And even then, she was not informed about the extent of his injuries.

When she saw her husband for the first time, Dianna Ferraro said she barely recognized him.

I wondered if he'd make it. He was nothing but a rack of bones," she said. the couple had been married less than six months. 

After months of physical rehabilitation and recuperation, Ferraro reported to Fort Bragg to finish out his enlistment. It was September 1968.

"I was very proud of everything I did in the military, and I wanted to be just as good as everyone else," he said about arriving at his new assignment. That would not be the case.

"They never got the records of me being in Vietnam," he said. "it was like I was never there."

As a result, he and his commanding officer butted heads from the start, Ferraro said, and the relationship never improved.

When his wife was hospitalized in Ann Arbor, Ferraro asked for emergency leave time, something that is usually automatically granted. His request was denied. When Ferraro couldn't get permission, he left the base anyway.

"I needed to be with my wife," he said.

considered AWOL by the military, he was arrested and faced a military court martial. although he was eventually given a honorable discharge, it took months.

He tried to locate his records three or four times over the next 40 years, but he was unsuccessful.

Validation

Enter fellow Vietnam veteran and Army helicopter pilot Dick Crawley of Jackson, who met and befriended the now 59-year-old Ferraro at the Veterans Administration hospital in Ann Arbor. Crawley believed his fellow veteran and knew how to navigate the system.

He contacted Republican Rep. Tim Walberg of Tipton, who worked with the military to secure all of Ferraro's records and medals.

in march, Crawley surprised his friend with the 10 honors he'd earned -- all beautifully displayed in a glass frame and accompanied by a letter from Walberg, whose district included western Washtenaw County.

Among the medals were the Bronze Star, purple heart, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service  medal (with two bronze service stars), and Republic of Vietnam campaign ribbon with Device (1960).

"Vincent is a American hero who served our nation with distinction and honor," walberg said in the letter.

Crawley understood how important it was for Ferraro to receive these honors. he wanted to help his friend start down a road that he hopes will end in the respect Ferraro's spent 40 years chasing.

"I had a command in Vietnam. I did this for him, and I did this for them," Crawley said, choking up.