Constable: 'Walking Dead' Marines remember Vietnam

Every Dec. 7, our nation remembers the infamous date when World War II started for the United States. On Tuesday, a few dozen Marines will gather at a simple gravesite in Des Plaines to mark the 50th anniversary of when the Vietnam War began for them.

"If we didn't remember, who else was going to remember?" asks Joe Heater, 73, who lives in Palatine. Heater was a radio man in Delta Company of the 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment, which arrived on Vietnam's Red Beach on June 16, 1965, and soon earned the nickname "The Walking Dead."

"I was probably the oldest guy in Marine boot camp," Heater said, explaining that he felt called to enlist. "I want to do the hardest thing I can. The Marines always had this aura around them. I was still in this stage where you're feeling invulnerable. That didn't last very long."

Fellow members of the first combat Marines in Vietnam, Illinois teenagers John Miller and Michael Badsing, spent Christmas Eve 1964 together at O'Hare Airport with no idea that they'd never get that chance again.

"When we left Okinawa for Vietnam, we'd never heard of Vietnam," remembers Miller, 69, a retired Los Angeles police officer. "It was our duty to be there. Communists were infiltrating a peaceful country and we were there to stop them."

Only 18 years old, John Rosenau, who grew up in Evanston, was on a machine gun crew with Badsing. "We were supposed to be headed to Mount Fuji, Japan, for cold-weather training," recalls Rosenau, now 68 and living in Glenview. "Instead we were sent to Vietnam."

When their platoon came under fire on Sept. 6, 1965, Badsing and his machine gun were called to the front. Hit in the abdomen by a sniper shot, Badsing became the first Chicago-area Marine to be killed in combat in Vietnam.

"When I saw that it was Mike, I was devastated," remembers Miller. "It wasn't until I pulled his flak jacket away that I realized it was a mortal wound. I was in a rage and I emptied two or three magazines as fast as I could at the tree line."

A half-century later, Marines stop at Badsing's final resting place at All Saints Cemetery whenever they get the chance, often drinking Old Style beers in their friend's memory and leaving the cans on his grave. Cousin Paul Badsing, who now lives in Lombard, was just 10 years old when he went to the funeral where the Marine hero was shown in a casket covered in glass. A boy who played with plastic soldiers and toy machine guns, Paul Badsing still remembers the lesson he learned about the reality of war.

"The day of Mike's funeral, I went out and played war and my dad gave me hell for that," Paul Badsing said.

"Mike was a great, great person," Miller said. "He was a good and decent kid."

Tuesday's gravesite ceremony honors Badsing and all the Marines who died in the far-off land in locations such as Chu Lai, Hill 55, Death Valley, Con Tien, Khe Sanh and Dewey Canyon. The names aren't as well known as Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima or other legends from World War II, but the courage and sacrifices are the same, Heater says.

A rifleman, Heater became a radio man after his platoon leader stepped on a mine.

"He was walking behind me 30 yards. It killed him and the radio man, who was a good friend," Heater said. "I took over the radio that night. We had to go on patrol that night. I couldn't find my helmet and I had to wear the helmet of the platoon commander who was killed."

Cited by President Lyndon Johnson for "extraordinary heroism," "The Walking Dead" suffered extensive casualties in Vietnam.

"We'd have guys come in and you wouldn't even get to know their names because five days later, they'd be gone," Heater said. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart on June 10, 1966, when another platoon member stepped on a mine.

"It took both his legs off," said Heater, who immediately got on the radio to call in medevac Huey helicopters to rescue the wounded. The seven-pound battery pack and radio strapped to his back absorbed much of the shrapnel headed his way.

"I just got a lot of these small pieces," Heater says, pointing to his legs and arms and dismissing his wounds. "I have such vivid memories of that incident."

At the hospital, his biggest concern was that medics walked off with the dry socks he had squirreled away in his helmet. Within two weeks, he was back with his platoon.

"That was my job. I was the radio man," said Heater, who shares some of his Vietnam memories every year as part of teacher Eric Young's history class at Sundling Junior High School in Palatine. A soft-spoken man who clearly is uncomfortable with being the center of attention, Heater says he just wants people to learn about the Vietnam War and remember the sacrifices made by so many.

For "The Walking Dead" and other military forces that served in Vietnam, those sacrifices weren't as readily recognized as the contributions made by the "Greatest Generation," who helped win World War II. The Vietnam War was far more complex and the nation at home was grappling with civil rights, women's rights, a sexual revolution, generational upheavals and the assassinations of political leaders, Rosenau says.

"What a lot of people don't understand, or don't want to know, is that the Greatest Generation handed us that Vietnam War," Miller said.

Separating the war from the warrior was difficult during Vietnam.

"It's not the people who are actually there who are developing the policy," added Rosenau, explaining how the same holds true for those military members sent to Afghanistan and Iraq.

During World War II, with the vast territories that had to be traveled, a typical soldier spent about 40 days of the year in combat, Rosenau notes. In Vietnam, soldiers typically spent 270 days a year in combat.

Many of "The Walking Dead" came home to build fine careers, raise families and go on with their lives. But they remember the ones such as Badsing, a Chicago kid who never got that chance.

"I live in Southern California and I still call the wind 'The Hawk,' and every time I hear it, I think of Mike," Miller said, adding that Vietnam veterans need to be remembered. "The only ones who remember the war are those that fought it and their families."