ELKTON – He stood tall and played basketball.

Saturday, May 27, 2000

ELKTON – He stood tall and played basketball. Football, too.

Grant Peterson remembers him. "He was a good, solid citizen. A fine young man," recalled Peterson, a retired teacher, principal and media specialist in first the Adams school district and later the consolidated Southland school district.

Those kind of compliments, coming from a the pincered perspective of a school principal reaching back in time must feel good.

Search through the Argo yearbooks for George A. Struthers and there he is in team and other photos.

Handsome, a chock of hair neatly combed. Lips pursed in a tight smile.

Just an ordinary guy, the pictures say.

But, Struthers, like so many others of his generation, would become part of an extraordinary event in history: the Vietnam War.

A bloody war

This is the 25th anniversary of the surrender of the South Vietnamese troops and the end of the war.

Two years earlier, the last United States ground troops left the country after the United States, North and South Vietnam and the Viet Cong signed a cease-fire agreement.

The Vietnam War was the longest war in which the United States took part.

The war was enormously destructive.

About 58,000 Americans were killed, South Vietnamese deaths exceeded one million and North Vietnam lost between 500,000 and 1,000,000 troops.

Much of the Southeast Asia nation was left in ruins. Untold civilians died, too.

The Communists called the Vietnam War a "war of national liberation."

The United States’ involvement was to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.

Twenty-five years ago, the business of war took Struthers from the farm fields around Adams and Elkton to the killing fields of a tropical country far away.

Drafted

His father, Arnold, now deceased, was a retired Mower County Courthouse janitor. His mother, Lucille, died only two weeks ago.

He has six brothers and three sisters.

He graduated from Adams High School in 1965 and was immediately drafted into the U.S. Army.

When basic training and advanced infantry training were completed, he was sent overseas.

His Army job: radio operator for a platoon in Company Bravo, 1st battalion, 18th Infantry.

He was 19 years old at the time.

On March 31, 1967, when his tour in Vietnam was nearing its end, Struthers was a radio-telephone operator with a squad participating in Operation Junction City.

Then a private, Struthers was the squad’s only link with base camp as it went into the jungles on ambush patrol near Quan Loi.

Near dusk, the patrol moved into its ambush position, when the squad itself was ambushed.

Small arms and automatic weapons from a larger Viet Cong force raked the soldiers.

The squad took cover and returned fire.

Nobody can explain what happened next, but the farm boy from Mower County became a hero.

The radio-telephone operator crawled forward through the jungle, exposing himself to enemy fire, to determine the exact size of the ambushers’ force and where they were.

When he got the information he needed, all the while dodging AK-47 bullets slicing through the jungle and mortars falling to the ground, the radio-telephone operator called in artillery and mortar strikes to pound the enemy.

Struthers was alone and exposed to both enemy fire on the ground and shrapnel from exploding artillery rounds and mortars smashing the jungle around him.

As darkness fell over the area, the first wave of friendly fire missed the target and Struthers lying alone in the grass called in new strikes to adjust the artillery and mortar attack.

The second wave of friendly fire was on target and the Viet Cong soldiers were killed or driven from the area.

Struthers and his squad lived to tell about the ambush another day.

There were other instances of heroism on a night reconnaissance patrol, during the Tet offensive in 1968 and less famous moments of horror and hell.

He would be wounded five different times in combat.

But he survived and came home. Stan Gilbert and the other young men he knew sent off to the war didn’t. With an honorable discharge, he attained the rank of Sgt. First Class, some medals and the mean memories of what he saw and did.

Outside of his immediate family, nobody knew what George A. Struthers did during the war.

He never told any war stories.

Again honored

Fast-forward to a Saturday night in May at the Adams American Legion Post No. 146.

It is Dennis Lewison’s night and deservedly so.

Lewison, a local boy, who is a veteran, and works for the Mower County Highway Department, is being honored.

Lewison was the first member from Legion Post No. 146 to be elected commander of the First District in the Minnesota American Legion organization.

He and his wife, Nancy, their children and other relatives and friends are being toasted by American Legion and Legion Auxiliary officials from throughout the First District.

Awards and gifts are presented to Lewison after a dinner and another presentation.

Struthers is there with his friend, Linda Cooper. Lewison asks Struthers to come forward and a presentation is made.

Struthers is handed the U.S. Army’s Purple Heart Award for being wounded in combat, the Army Commendation Medal with "V" device and the Bronze Star.

An ovation erupts as he mutters a "Thank You" and around the room tears trickle down the faces of the veterans and their wives.

Then, Struthers returns to his seat, holding the medals.

His time in the spotlight is over.

A quiet hero

A yellowing copy of the old Adams Review newspaper and official U.S. Army records verify Struthers’ silent claim of heroism.

Through the years, he never talked about. If anyone wanted to know what Struthers did during the war, they would have to get that information elsewhere.

Even the medals, that so many others prominently display.

Struthers had them and then lost them.

"It’s taken us four years, but he’s got ’em," said Cooper, a friend of 14 years of Struthers. "It took some doing, but we talked to Denny Lewison and he got the job done."

In 1980, when Struthers was living in a house along Highway 105 South, the home burned to the ground and destroyed all of his possessions.

Since his discharge in 1968, Struthers worked here, there and almost everywhere as a meat cutter, dairy herdsman, farm hand and handyman.

When he was diagnosed with diabetes, another cruel fate was soon discovered. He also suffered from a rare cellular vacillitis disease. The infection and inflammation of blood vessels caused by the disease so weakened Struthers, that it took on stroke-like symptoms, causing him to have to learn to walk and talk all over ahead.

Now 53 years old, his recovery is slow, but steadily nurtured along by his friend Cooper.

Through the healthy years after the Vietnam War and including the years of disease and despair, Struthers kept something secret.

"He never said a thing about it," Cooper said.

She discovered an old metal file box in a closet. Inside it were charred ribbons and the remainder of what were medals.

Cooper prodded Struthers to talk about them and, more importantly, get copies of the awards.

A letter-writing campaign was begun and elected officials, as well as American Legion Post No. 146 assisted.

But another four years would pass until the medals would find their way to the man.

"When we visit his Army buddies, like we did on a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, once, George is the one who just sits and listens. There’s one of them – he calls himself ‘Rattler’ – who’s really into the Army and war thing. He talks about it all the time. George doesn’t. He’s talking about it more lately, but most of the time he won’t talk about it, and I don’t know why. He has so much to tell. He’s just as much a hero as anyone."

It could be the illness or it could be something else that keeps the Vietnam War veteran from sharing more about his military service.

Only George knows.

Final thoughts on the past

The couple live on an acreage midway between Elkton and Adams. It’s quiet and peaceful there.

Their house is surrounded by a thick windbreak and the couple are in the midst of remodeling it. The results are impressive.

Cooper is frank about the troubled times, long periods of unemployment while George convalesced and other financial hardships. She does remember the good Samaritans in the area who have helped them.

Lewison, another Vietnam War veteran, said he is happy Post No. 146 could help Struthers.

"We went back and forth with the Veterans Service over this, but things finally started moving last fall when we had the District Legion Rally at Adams. Everybody was behind it," Lewison said.

Struthers, as gracious a host as one can be, seems a little uncomfortable being asked so many questions by a reporter. Frequently, Cooper will fill-in the answers for him.

"I want to get a trophy case some day for his medals and pictures and other things. I want to do that for his kids and grandchildren. We shouldn’t forget about our veterans," Cooper said.

Struthers, that tight smile on his face, listens, and when he speaks, it is with a soft raspy kind of voice.

"It felt pretty good to get the awards that night at the Legion Post. I really appreciate what everybody did," he said. "I’m starting to feel a little bit better all the time. It’s been kind of hard and slow, but I think I’m getting better."

"I don’t watch much of those movies about the Vietnam War on television. I think there’s too much Hollywood in them to be true," he said.

"It was just something that I did when I was younger. A lot of the boys, Stan Gilbert, Wayne Mees, Dan Rasmussen and others served in that war and not every one of them came back. I was just lucky," he said.

Struthers was asked if, like other Vietnam veterans, he would like some day to return to the Southeast Asia country where he fought in a war. His voice is soft, but his answer clear. "No, I never want to go back," he said.

Then one last question for the veteran is asked. "Do you think enough respect is shown for veterans?"

His face crinkles with a smile and again the soft voice is heard. "I think so. Look what they did for me," he said.

Last words come from Lewison, who arguably did more than any other individual to help Struthers retrieve his medals.

"I think this explains what the American Legion is all about and that is veterans helping other veterans and their families," Lewison said.

"But," he added, "it’s a shame that we have to fight to get something that is owed a veteran."