Photo provided MARTINS FERRY resident Terry Wildman poses with his friends and members of the “Dirty Dozen” in Vietnam in 1969. Clockwise, from left, are Rich Marlow (deceased), Randy Terkla (deceased), Jack Higgins, Wildman and Tim Ryan. Wildman was about 20 years old at the time.

MARTINS FERRY — Martins Ferry resident Terry Wildman was an FO, a forward observer, for the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam war. This meant that he found and helped to take out the enemy so his fellow troops could move in and take more ground.

He said he knows that he killed people and it’s something that he’s not proud of. But in the trenches of war, it was either kill or be killed, he said.

Wildman is among the thousands of veterans being honored this weekend for their service to the country as observed on the Veterans Day holiday, Nov. 11. He was a member of the 3rd Marine Division and served in Vietnam for two years.

After he served and survived his first deployment, he decided to sign up for another six months of service because he wanted to help train new FOs. At the time, he was told he would be at the rear of the battles. But that didn’t last long, as the FOs kept getting killed. He was forced to once again served on the front lines.

His wife, Jane, was back at home taking care of their new baby. She did not understand, he said, why he wanted to go back.

“At that time we lost so many guys from Tet Offensive, we had no FOs left. I went back into the field and trained new FOs. We had two or three major battles, and we lost quite a few people. That took its toll with us. I didn’t make a whole lot of friends. I made a couple friends in the beginning and they were killed and after that I just didn’t get close to a lot of people.

“I stayed and did my job and I was bounced around from line company to line company. … I stayed in the field. I finally got flight date out of Vietnam and I came home on New Year’s Eve. I landed in the Pittsburgh airport on New Year’s Eve 1969. The plane was late coming in and it snowed, we slid like 1,500 feet on the runway. And I was like, ‘Oh hell, don’t let something happen now.’

“We flew non-stop out of California and there were six people on the plane. The pilot came on and said, ‘Everybody sing Auld Lang Syne,’ and I’m like, ‘Get the plane on the ground.’

“I hadn’t seen my wife or baby for two years. My wife, my daughter, my mother and father, Janie’s mom and dad (were at the airport waiting). … It wasn’t like when I got on the plane in California. When I got on the plane, they were protesting and screaming ‘baby killers’ and profanity at us. It was hard enough to keep from beating … them.

“When I came home at first I had a hard time. I drank a lot and raised a lot of hell. I had that chip on my shoulder, I didn’t want to be around people who hadn’t served. They were trying to tell me how Vietnam was and I knew they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. They were talking about what I did and didn’t do. I don’t want to hear any of that. Don’t tell me about things when you weren’t there.

“You see your buddy’s head blown off or his arms and legs gone, and it’s every day you live in a hole and every day you eat out of a can. … At night … your ears hear everything you can imagine.”

Wildman said it was many years later, about 2009, that he finally decided to file with the Veterans Administration to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“The psychiatrist asked me, ‘How’s your sleeping?’ I said, ‘I haven’t slept for 40 years. I don’t sleep at night. Every night I wake up and I’m in the middle of a battle or I’m someplace in Vietnam.’ I’d tried to shake it and get rid of it. People at the VA wanted you to write about your battles. It’s something I just can’t write about.

“I went years not even talking about it and I reached a point in my life, I was tired of people telling me how it was, what I should have done and what I did wrong. I finally started speaking about Vietnam. We went there because we were inducted into the service to fight for our country against communism. But it didn’t really mean a whole lot because when my wife would send me a newspaper from home every once in awhile, all that was on the front page was burning the American flag and protesting.

“I thought many times, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ They are burning my flag at home and people are demonstrating, and we’re over here fighting and dying for every piece of ground we got. What’s what? What’s going on with the country? What’s going on with everything? It got to a point I was cooped up inside and had no way to release my frustrations.”

Wildman said he decided to get help from the Wheeling Vet Center and John Looney. There he got to talk with other veterans, which helped.

“We were all on a level playing field, because we all knew what we were talking about,” Wildman said. “I came home and my biggest thing was that I wanted to help people. That’s the reason I joined the fire department and EMS. Everything I did I wanted to do my best to help people the best I could,” Wildman said.

Wildman said he struggles today to understand why many people don’t seem to understand the importance of patriotism.

“We have socialists in our government and I don’t understand. Left wing, right wing, liberals. What happened to the American? The American people. The American party. Where do fit in, in this whole thing? We fought and died for this country. Who gave their life to see that we have all the freedoms we have today?

“That is what our flag stands for. Our flag stands today for the freedoms we have today because of the men and women who died. It’s not hard to understand. So many people misuse what we do. … You have the right to say what you want to say, if you want to protest that’s fine. But when you put a bandanna over your face and you burn cars and buildings, you are a domestic terrorist and should be dealt with immediately,” he said.

To help Wildman receive his VA benefits related to PTSD, one of his friends he served with, Tim “Gunny” Ryan of Virginia, wrote about what Wildman went through for submission to the VA. Wildman and Ryan called their group the “Dirty Dozen” because they were often dirty from having to dig and fill so many sand bags for use in bunkers.

“The government, you have to prove to them that you have PTSD and that you were in battles,” Wildman said. “They say, well, what did you experience that you think you got PTSD from? You have to go into sequences. I was in combat. Did I kill people? Yes, I killed people. Was it easy? No, it was the worst thing in the world to kill somebody.

“After I did it, I had no problem continuing doing it because it was either them or me. Either I died or they died and that’s the way it is. It’s not a proud thing, but it’s something you have to do in war. Being an FO, I blew (up) everything. Anything I thought was out there hiding that was going to kill us, I blew it up.

“It was my job to protect those men. It was my job, if we got into a firefight, to get artillery … on that position as quick as we could. That was my job to save lives in doing that.”

In writing about Wildman’s experiences, Ryan said there were very few men with Wildman’s “knowledge and bravery.”

“There were very few who were willing to do this very dangerous and life threatening job as observer. Observers had very short life expectations, because the radio was always targeted if observed and you had to talk co-herently to provide support both when it was ill advised and during total chaotic conditions, day or night. He did that consistently and effectively,” Ryan said. “Other men who I trained and sent out to the line companies, unknown to Terry died within weeks. … I believe Terry was an observer for nearly one year and no less than nine months.”

Wildman said there were several times during battle that he probably should have died, but others did.

“God was with me more than once. … I was in a gun pit one day and we got incoming artillery, and they called for counterfire. I was an A-gunner in the battery, and a round landed in the pit next to us. Two or three guys got killed and we never got touched,” Wildman said. “There were different times and situations that God held me in the palm of his hand. I always felt that when I came home from Vietnam that I had a purpose in my life to help someone do something.”

Wildman, a retired Wheeling-Pittsburgh steelworker, is active with the VFW Post in Bellaire. He and his wife have two adult children, Taralyn and Terry Jr., and several grandchildren.