Vietnam War veterans' bond tightens, 50 years after all-but-forgotten battle

COLORADO SPRINGS – A mallet struck a golden bell as the name of each soldier killed in action echoed through a recent memorial ceremony at Fort Carson Army Base. Three Minnesotans were among more than 100 people gathered for the final reunion of Vietnam veterans who endured a nasty and all-but-forgotten battle that erupted near an abandoned village called Soui Tre.

Near the end of the ceremony, artillery cannons, almost to the minute, blasted to salute those killed 50 years before and honor the aging veterans who survived one of the fiercest firefights of the Vietnam War. The cannons' reverberating booms tripped a few car alarms in a nearby parking lot, creating a dissonant sound as a bugler played taps.

"Two guys in my gun section, Willie Grant and David Rogers, were killed that day and I can still see their faces," said John Barr, a retired tool-and-die worker who raises horses in Northfield and competes in team-roping events.

A self-described "cannon cocker," Barr was manning the artillery guns when an estimated 2,500 enemy fighters threatened to overrun a landing zone at a clearing in the bamboo jungle near Soui Tre — about 50 miles northwest of Saigon.

In the dawn attack, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces showered 650 rounds of mortar and rocket fire to breach the perimeter of the American base. Helicopters crashed, grenades exploded and guns roared before a U.S. ground-and-air counterattack turned the four-hour battle. Accounts vary, but in the end, the Army counted roughly 650 dead enemy soldiers — joining more than 30 Americans killed and nearly 200 wounded.

"Chaotic is not a good enough adjective," said Barr, who can still recall the stench of the corpses in the days that followed the battle of Soui Tre on March 21, 1967.

Attending his first Vietnam veterans reunion, Barr turned 70 this month and his silver mustache hints at how much time has lapsed.

"We're all getting up there in age and it's good for your head to hash over this stuff," he said. "It dredges up a lot, but I'm glad I came. It's good therapy."

Like many of the veterans here, Barr said he hung his Army uniform in the closet when he came home in 1968 and didn't say much for 40 years. "In all honesty, I never talked to my folks about it," he said. "My brother got me drunk one night and I started talking."

That was in 2011. A few years later, Barr made a routine stop at the blood lab at the Department of Veterans Affairs complex in Minneapolis. That's where he bumped into George Dahl, a retired elementary school teacher from Woodbury, who was wearing a Soui Tre cap with a 22nd Infantry crest.

"You saved our lives that day," Barr told Dahl.

Dahl couldn't afford his sophomore tuition at the University of Minnesota and, like most of the vets at the reunion, was drafted to fuel a troop surge in 1966. Now 70, he was a 20-year-old squad leader in an armored personnel carrier at Soui Tre. He remembers digging a jungle foxhole, which filled with water one night, and bargaining with God: Get me out of here in one piece and I'll do something good. He taught school in North St. Paul, Eagan and Maplewood for 36 years.

When Dahl first returned home to Columbia Heights, his mother covered her ears when he talked about what happened. "My friends didn't believe me and I was stuck in silence," he said.

Dahl went back to college, first at Bemidji State and then at St. Cloud State, but tried to keep his Army service secret. "I had nightmares and would scream," he said. "I woke once to find my roommate leaning over me, baring his fist and telling me I was nuts and needed help."

The V.A., Dahl said, doesn't want to hear the war stories. "They want to know what you're doing today and tomorrow and are afraid we'll go wacko if we talk about this stuff."

So they check into a convention hotel here in Colorado Springs, visit Fort Carson, hold banquets and slide shows and agree it all provides some well-needed healing a half-century later.

Unlike Dahl and Barr, who have three divorces between them, John Mersinger came to the last all-unit Soui Tre reunion with his wife of more than 40 years, Carole Mersinger.

They grew up together in the central Minnesota farm community of Sebeka. Just friends during the war, Carole sent him letters from home. After he returned, they began dating and he started a three-decade career sorting mail in St. Cloud. They have three children and six grandchildren who live near their hobby farm in Foley. John Mersinger brings his flak jacket, helmet, ammo and photo album to any school that invites his Vietnam Veterans of America chapter to visit its classrooms.

One day at the recent reunion, the veterans were allowed to operate video-game-based training equipment at Fort Carson, driving makeshift vehicles with machine guns up top and wide video screens surrounding them with interactive scenes of urban Afghanistan. The men assuming the gunners' seats were told they had 200 simulated rounds of ammunition and could click a tray for 200 more.

"That would have been handy," said John Mersinger, who pointed a real gun out the back of his armored vehicle at Soui Tre. His wife, standing off to the side, smiled and said, "These guys had each other's back 24/7. They were crammed into these vehicles and grew closer than blood brothers."

Barr nodded and said: "We're a small brotherhood. No one has ever heard of Soui Tre and civilians can watch all the war movies, but they still won't get it."

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. A collection of his columns is available as the e-book "Frozen in History" at startribune.com/ebooks.