Some of the individuals who served in Vietnam didn’t even have a chance to really pack and say goodbye before being sent off for training and inevitably going to fight.
This was the case for Ronnie Robinson, who served in the Army in 1968 and 1969.
“When we turned 18, everybody would go to Jackson for our physical. There was a place across from City Hall that we would all go, and then a bus would come there to pick us up and carry us all to Jackson,” remembered Ronnie. “Those boys would turn 18, go over there and drink a beer, and come back and laugh about it for six months. It was February 18, and we were called to meet up and go to Jackson for a physical. We went over there, and them boys hooped and hollered all night. They’d come over and tell them to be quiet, and they’d cuss them out and say we ain’t in the Army. The next day, they gave us a physical and then took us into a big room and said raise your right hand, put us under oath, loaded us on a Greyhound bus, and sent us right on to Fort Benning, Georgia. We didn’t come back home.”
They provided just a little training before sending them over to fight in Vietnam.
“He wanted us to go Army Infantry, and I told them I wasn’t for walking anywhere,” continued Ronnie. “They sent us for six weeks of basic training, and we came home for a day or two before they sent us on to Fort Knox, Kentucky. After that, I was home for a few days before they sent me right on to Vietnam. People think it was a bunch of older men, but we were a bunch of young boys. We were 18 and 19 and going to Vietnam.”
True to his word, his didn’t have to walk in the infantry. Instead, he took on a different job where he was stationed.
“I was on a tank,” informed Ronnie. “I would drive or do whatever it took. I was stationed at Pleiku or Camp Enari. It’s right there together. Pleiku is what you read about in all the old books. It’s in the central highland in the northern part. We went below it and everywhere else on those routes and stayed in the jungle. We’d go through these villages and check them out. The ones in the infantry wouldn’t ride. They liked the tanks, but one of them said that he wouldn’t ride because they could hide and we couldn’t.”
One of the things he would come across in the tank was the land mines.
“I ran over a mine or two and blew the track off. We had a boy that had just come in the country. It was getting dark and we had to go through some hilly country up there. I told that boy to stick his feet in the hatch at the top and if something happened to get in that tank out of the way. I was leaning up against a 50 caliber machine gun,” recalled Ronnie. “We ran over that mine, and it blew up and blew that sand all over us. I’d already stomped all over that boy cause he didn’t get in there quick enough.”
Of course, he can also recall some unexpected events that happened while they were out on a mission.
“We had a guy driving the tank, and we were having to push down the trees,” stated Ronnie. “We were to the last tree we had to push down. We pushed it down, and I was leaning against that machine gun on top. I always rode in that corner so that if something happened I could grab it. Something came by me, and I jumped up. The boy who was sitting on the patch, his eyes were that big around. It was something like a big wild cat with a striped tail that went in that tank. That guy came out since he was in there driving. That thing went under the floor of that tank and took that tank over. I got a bayonet and put it on a rod or something and jammed it. I shot him in that tank with a pistol.”
When he first came back from Vietnam, he still had a few months left in the service.
“They sent me to Germany since I had a few months left,” explained Ronnie. “I was sent over there, and it snowed. They had like a medic building across from the barracks. Every morning, in our formation, they’d holler out sick call, and I’d jump out and say I had to go. They’d ask what was wrong with me. I told them I needed something for thin blood. They asked me what I meant by thin blood. I said to look at all those boys with their sleeves rolled up standing out there freezing all day. I said nope and that I needed something for thin blood. It was a different kind of snow there. It was cold but not like it got cold here though.”
After returning to Mississippi, he had friends he was able to talk to and has come across people all over that recognize him from Vietnam.
“Coming back to life as a civilian, I can’t stand noises around me. Strange noises make me jumpy, but that’s what kept me alive while I was over there,” expressed Ronnie. “When I came back, I’d go pick up Bobby Hicks, and we’d ride around and talk about it. I don’t know how many months he was over there when he stepped on a mine and it messed him up. He was crippled for a while, but he went to work in Kirkland’s, and we laughed and talked. He was amazing. Then, I met Douglas Mathis that went in the Air Force. You meet people everywhere. People see me, and I forget who they were, but I run into people everywhere in passing and all that. When I was in Vietnam, I had a cast on my leg at one time and went into base camp and stayed there a few weeks. They had a club that I went to and saw a little boy sitting over there. It was getting late, and I walked over there, and it was Roger Mason, an ole boy from Stonewall. You just run into people everywhere.”
He will always remember the experience he had in Vietnam, both the good and the bad. The sacrifice he and many others made serving the country will forever be remembered.
