The Promise

Lloyd Henry Kent. Grenada, Miss. Casualty Date: 1/12/68, South Vietnam. Age: 21.

Gregory Ellis Cox. Pleasant Hill, Calif. Casualty Date: 1/4/68, South Vietnam. Age: 20.
Francis Paul Rybak. Syracuse, N.Y. Casualty Date: 1/5/68, South Vietnam. Age: 25.

'I made a vow that I'd never forget those guys,' said Terry Neilen, who lives in Saratoga Springs and was a member of the 1-27 Wolfhounds during the Vietnam War. 'I think it's the only vow I ever kept, that I would never forget them,' he said.

'I went to Vietnam in October 1967 during the build-up of troops. They flew me in by Saigon and then drove me down to the tunnels of Cu Chi,' Neilen remembered. 'When I got there, I was the scaredest bastard you can imagine. That's where I first met Ed. At the time, I didn't even know he was from Mechanicville.'

'We were all scared, brother,' recalled fellow Wolfhound Ed Shiffert, whose extended tour as an assistant machine gunner was from 1967 to 1969.

'I would go ahead of the line looking for booby traps,' said Shiffert, who would climb into the pitch-black underground of Cu Chi tunnels or wade through neck-high water probing for weapons that the Vietcong would hide in plastic bags for later retrieval.

'The night belonged to Charlie,' Shiffert said. 'They did their best work after dark, but when the daylight came, they got their asses out of there.'

'We didn't do too much in the dark,' Neilen agreed. 'You spent midnight just looking around when there would be nothing there but you. When the sun came up, it was the most beautiful thing you could see.'

'I was there for a year, and this is not to sound unpatriotic in any way, but the truth is that when you're there, your fighting doesn't have anything to do with waving a flag. It's about surviving and about protecting each other,' Neilen said.

Losing a buddy, he lamented, was heartbreaking.

'It's very emotional. They're there one moment and the next moment they're gone,' Neilen said. 'You get to know a person, and when they get killed, you know that they will never exist again. You grieve for their death. Then, somehow, you go on.'

After spending weeks at a time on the battlefield, memorial services for fallen comrades would be held when returning to the relative safety of the camp. He remembered many ceremonies marked by M-16s with bayonets stuck into the ground and crowned with the helmet bearing the Wolfhound logo.

'People think when they talk to a vet they're just going to hear old war stories, but that's not it - it's about how much your heart hurts for the people you lost,' Nielen said.

'Lloyd Kent was a friend of mine, a kid from Mississippi,' Nielen said. 'I remember sitting on my cot on a hot, hot day. I can remember the screen door opening and a guy walking in. He looks at me and says, 'You a friend of Kent? You better get over to the hospital 'cause he don't look so good.''

'I remember walking over to see him, saw the tubes in his arm and the smell of the place. Boy, I remember that stench. I sat there and said a prayer and I asked him, 'Hey Kent. How ya doin' man?' Later two guys came in and picked up Kent's supply locker,' Nielen said.

'Gregory Cox was another - good-looking kid from California. A happy kid, engaged to be married,' Neilen said. 'He had a card that came from back home that he had hung up. After he got killed, nobody would take that card down. And Lt. Rybak, a guy from Syracuse. The way I remember it, I ended up in the hospital for a week. He was the guy who was carrying the radio for me while I was in hospital when he was killed.'

'When they speak of the Vietnam Wall, the first thing that should be mentioned are the Gold Star Mothers. These are the mothers who lost their sons in the war. Think of the closure at The Wall. That's what the wall did for me. Not only can you talk about it, but it's encouraged,' he said.

'For me, The Wall is about trying to experience the guys you lost, a healing process, some kind of closure,' Neilen said. 'The wonderful thing is you could talk about the war. When we got back there was nobody to talk to. If you go up to a vet, don't ask them, 'Did you kill somebody?' Ask them if they lost anyone.'

Shiffert visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., about seven years ago. Like Neilen, he will be going to Malta to visit The Moving Wall.

'I was very nervous and shaking when I went there,' Shiffert said. 'I looked for names of some people I knew and started crying. When I read their name, it was like I could see the person's face.'

Lloyd Henry Kent, Panel 34E, row 37, born: 5/23/46.
Gregory Ellis Cox, Panel 33E, row 35, born: 6/4/47.
Francis Paul Rybak, Panel 33E, line 52, born: 12/26/42.

'I made a vow that I'd never forget those guys,' Neilen said. 'I never did.'

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, June 11, 2006