Plains man recalls Vietnam

U.S. Marines are said to be the few and the proud. If that’s true, then members of the Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance (Force Recon) are fewer and prouder still.

Having been established in 1957 this elite group first saw action during the Vietnam War. A war, which by any account, was as unpopular and controversial as any in American history and took place in a time that was equally tumultuous.

What then, would motivate someone to volunteer, serve two tours of duty and then agree to an eight-month extension in order to train his replacement?

“Everybody in my family had been in” Ben Kirschbaum of Plains said, referencing his grandfather and father who had previously served in the military.

Kirschbaum, who grew up in Bull River Montana, signed up when he was 19 in Oct. 1967 and served until Aug. of 1972. After graduating from basic training in San Diego Kirschbaum was given orders for deployment in Vietnam. For the majority of his deployment, he was in the jungle and under fire.

“I went out just before [the] Tet [offensive] the first time in ‘68,” he said. “We worked way out all the time. We were on our own.”

In combat there’s no prize for second place and front-line units had to be quick on their feet and learn to do things right the first time.

“You grow up in a hurry,” Kirschbaum said. “Especially when you get promoted in a certain situation and other people are counting on you. You learn you’re not a kid anymore.”

Unlike troops who are stationed overseas today, there was little contact with people back home for troops in Vietnam, as letters may take up to three weeks in the mail. They learned early on to depend on one another not only for survival, but for support in trying times.

“You count on the guy next to you,” he said. “He’d save you. At least you’d hope he would. If he wasn’t any good, you’d find that out quick enough too.”

Writing and receiving letters was both a sweet and dangerous distraction, and soldiers had to be careful not to get too wrapped up in what was going on elsewhere, as such a lapse in focus could prove deadly.

“You’ve got to worry about yourself. They can do all the worrying,” Kirschbaum said. “You do that and you won’t be any good.”

“You just knew your job and you did it,” he said.

Although Kirschbaum said he would join the Marines over again if he had the chance, he said his favorite memory of Vietnam was the plane ride home and that he wouldn’t care to visit.

Years later, perhaps the unpopularity of the Vietnam War can be explained away as a violent convergence of cultural movements in the post World War II era, but living through it and experiencing such animosity first-hand was quite different.

“You’d have had to have been there I guess. In the sixties there were protests all over,” he said. “There were a lot of hard feelings there.”

Kirschbaum even recalled students from the University of California, Berkeley writing letters to the North Vietnamese troops, leaving American troops with a bitter taste of cruel irony.

Kirschbaum has been pleased, however, of the respect more recent veterans, like those from the gulf wars, have received, even though the War in Iraq has been unpopular in its own right.

“I just like the way they’re treating the guys that come home now. They’re giving them the respect that they earned. I wish I would have seen it,” he said. “I don’t begrudge them getting anything.”

Kirschbaum, now a Plains resident, says he still keeps in touch with a few of his “old cronies” from Vietnam, but on a semi-regular basis. He was been the owner of a rock company in town for the last 14 years.

When asked of his inspiration for starting a business, he said it was simple, “I saw someone else doing it once and I thought he was an idiot. Then I found out what he was selling it for and I went ‘whoa!’ And I thought, ‘well, he’s not as stupid as I thought.’”