A Shelter Island Vietnam veteran remembers: George Rowland, and a war that changed everything

In 1969, George Rowland, a fourth-generation Islander, graduated from Shelter Island High School.

He was an ambitious youth, especially drawn to art and mechanical drawing, and participated in school activities, including the varsity basketball team, which is honored in the School’s Athletic Hall of Fame for winning the 1968-69 League VI Championship.

Gregarious and warm as a boy, if you have breakfast with him at the Islander these days, you’ll see those virtues are still there, as nearly everyone who sees him will stop by for a quick chat, some friendly teasing and smiles all around.

But the optimistic fellow on the doorstep of manhood in 1969 had, within a year’s time, been radically changed. “I didn’t care if I lived or died,” he said. “I just didn’t care. I wanted it over, one way or the other.”

George was speaking about his tour of duty in Vietnam when he suffered, along with his comrades-in-arms, periods of daily artillery shelling, fire fights, and combat in tunnels beneath jungles and rice paddies.

It was a place where he lost 90% of his hearing, was exposed to Agent Orange while working with the toxic and deadly chemical, which led to serious problems with his kidneys and heart, and gave him emphysema that resulted in the collapse of one of his lungs years after his service.

“I’ve never really talked about this,” he said, over coffee and corn muffins. “Not specifically about Nam.”

Speaking quietly, even stoically about his experience, with flashes of wicked humor, he only showed emotion once in an hour’s conversation, when asked about the ferry trip back to the Island when his tour of duty in Vietnam ended. Starting to speak, his voice caught, trembled, and he shook his head, silent, pausing for a long time before finally saying, “I thought I’d never see this Island again.”

A NATION AT WAR

This Veterans Day all veterans, as always, will be honored. On Shelter Island, particular attention will be paid to veterans of the Vietnam War era, which lasted from the early 1960s when American military advisers were on the ground, to the latter part of the decade and the early 1970s when more than 500,000 American military personnel were stationed in the southeast Asian nation.

By the time American forces withdrew in 1973, 58,220 members of the U.S. military had perished. It’s also estimated that between one million and three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

According to Janet Resnick of Shelter Island’s American Legion Mitchell Unit 281 Auxiliary, about 200 Islanders served during the Vietnam War era, with one killed in action, James “Jimmy” Wilson Jr. He was 24 when he died in Quang Tri province on Oct. 30, 1967. The Wilson Traffic Circle in the Center is named for the Wilson family: Jimmy; his father, James Wilson Sr., a combat veteran of World War II; and his wife and Jimmy’s mother, Genevieve Wilson, who died in 1992, and was one of the guiding spirits of the Island’s American Legion Post.

It was a war that divided America: mass protests against our involvement, some turning deadly, such as the four dead and nine wounded by National Guard troops at Kent State University in May 1970; a national political convention held with enormous demonstrations that turned violent, convulsing a city; one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century losing support of his party and deciding not to run for re-election; and the birth of a debate about America’s military involvement in foreign countries that is alive to the present day.

SIGNING UP

George Rowland enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after high school graduation that summer of 1969. He was sent to basic training in San Antonio, Tex. After basic, he had faced a choice of joining a special forces unit or becoming a fuel specialist. “Part of being a fuel specialist meant driving trucks,” George said, smiling. “And I liked driving trucks.”

But the duties were much more than just that, involving proper safety measures for storing, delivering, and fueling aircrafts from fighter jets to helicopters, as well as ground vehicles such as tanks and personnel carriers.

He was assigned to Bien Hoa Air Base, a huge facility used by U.S. Air Force, Army, and Marine units as well as the Republic of Vietnam Air Force. “We worked 12 hours on, 12 hours off,” George said, “six days a week. The flights in and out never stopped.”

And for periods of time, shelling from Viet Cong and regular North Vietnam troops never stopped, either. He remembers off-loading fuel barrels at a river dock for transport, checking them later and finding them riddled with bullet holes.

He transferred 5,000 gallon fuel tanks to American bases far up into the hills under fire. “Scared? Yeah,” he said.

His outgoing personality got him involved in one of the most dangerous missions Americans were involved in — the so-called “tunnel war” — when U.S. Army soldiers who he had become friends with asked him if he wanted to be attached to their unit. “I was a little guy with a bad attitude,” he smiled. “Perfect for the tunnels.” He was then officially attached to what were unofficially called the “tunnel rats.”

The Viet Cong employed thousands of miles of tunnels that ran from Cambodia into Vietnam, some all the way to Saigon. They were reinforced, expertly designed and built, and difficult to demolish from above. The tunnels, George said, were mostly used to move arms into the country, but were also sources of communication and were used to stage attacks.

“We’d go in and clean them out,” George remembers. Armed with a pistol, he said he blames his loss of hearing on the tunnels. “The sound of gunfire in a tunnel? That will do it.”

Asked if he was claustrophobic, he said, “Not then. Now? Yes.”

It’s also where he came to grips with despair. “It’s the only time in my life I just didn’t give a damn. I didn’t care anymore about living or dying.”

But then he did care, and real fear came over him. With about two months to go before he would return to America, “I really got scared. To go through all of that, with just a short time left, and to get killed? Yeah, it scared me.”

He and other personnel were flown to Fort Dix, N.J. and after an agonizing period of debriefing, and military bureaucracy wrapped in red tape, he was released. His girl friend, his high school sweetheart, who became his first wife, Marian Brigham, ran to greet him, followed by his mother and father.

COMING HOME

And then he was home, after that emotional ride across the bay to the Island.

Like many other returning Vietnam veterans, he was often ignored, and worse, disrespected by his fellow citizens who had been opposed to the war. George recalled visiting Marian in Boston where she was in college.

He’d fly on commercial carriers in his uniform because he could get a free ride from the airlines, and received dismissive looks along with some negative and even vile comments. Once he was even turned away from checking into a motel when he was in uniform.

John D’Amato, a former Island Fire Department chief and veteran during the Vietnam War era, recalls the same treatment. “We had to stick to ourselves,” John said, “to stay in the shadows at times. We were not well-received or respected.”

He finds the new, younger veterans who are in leadership at the Island’s American Legion Post an encouraging change, and is heartened that Islanders respect and honor their service.

“I’m thrilled they don’t have to go through what we did,” John said.

He’ll be at the Legion on Monday for the traditional Veterans Day breakfast and ceremonies at Wilson Circle. And so will George Rowland.

At the Islander, George said something telling that sums up a great deal of his character: “You know, I lied in every letter I wrote home. I never told them what it was like, what was happening to me. I wrote that it was all a piece of cake.”

An act of kindness, sent to loved ones across the globe, to shield them from the reality and pain of war.