Enlisting at 15, Franklin Twp. veteran served all over
Whiling away the time one summer day in 1945, Joe Jenkins, 92, of Franklin Township wandered into the Butler County Courthouse.
The 15-year-old walked past the draft office and decided to stop in out of curiosity.
“The guy asked me, 'What do you want?' and I said, 'I want to sign up for the draft,'” Jenkins recalled as he sipped a bottle of beer at his dining room table recently.
The officer asked Jenkins' birthday, and the young man knew he had to be 18 years old to enter the service.
He replied with a date two days before, but three years prior to his actual birth year of 1929.
“The atomic bomb was dropped about two days before I went in,” Jenkins said.
After 16 weeks of Army Air Corps basic training, he shipped out to Panama.“I wanted to get in there and be busy like everyone else,” Jenkins said.He returned home in 1948 and immediately joined the Pennsylvania National Guard's 28th division as a master sergeant in intelligence.The entire division was shipped to Germany, where Jenkins spent the next four years.Upon returning to the United States, he attended Officers Candidate School and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Army.He then shipped to Korea, where he spent a year and half as an intelligence officer in the 101st Airborne Division before returning home to an assignment in Pittsburgh.“I commanded a 90-mm gun battery on the South Side,” Jenkins recalled.While in Pittsburgh, he decided he wanted to step his knowledge up a notch from artillery.A friend at the Pentagon warned him the electronics class was a long and arduous one, but Jenkins persuaded his superiors to send him to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to take the course.“I was that interested in getting upgraded from guns,” Jenkins said.He emerged from Fort Bliss with the title of guided missile officer and spent some time at the New York Air Defense base in Sheepshead Bay outside New York City.There, he served as an intelligence officer, inspecting radar and other equipment during surprise unit inspections in the middle of the night.“While I was in New York, I asked if I could go to Alaska for some reason,” Jenkins said.His request was granted, and Jenkins, by now a captain, moved to Alaska to command a Nike Hercules missile battery for the Army.The Vietnam War was raging during the three years Jenkins spent in Alaska, and he heard his former outfit, the 101st Airborne, was experiencing difficulties in Southeast Asia.“I called the Pentagon and asked if they could use another captain down there,” Jenkins said. “He laughed and said, 'How fast can you pack your bags?'”Not having established a permanent home since joining the military, Jenkins asked his wife where she wanted to settle with their young children.“She wanted to live in El Paso,” he recalled of his late wife.
After ensuring the family was settled in the Lone Star State, Jenkins shipped out to the jungles of Vietnam, where he commanded an artillery battery.“We were out in the woods,” Jenkins recalled, his jaw tightening. “There were some things you don't want to remember.”He recalled one incident when he heard gunfire a mile away where he knew 120 American GIs were located.The Viet Cong had come through and slaughtered every man in the unit.A lieutenant friend of Jenkins told him he had played dead as the enemy advanced through the dead and dying American soldiers, shooting anyone who exhibited a sign of life.The Viet Cong troops advanced to the location of Jenkins' battery, and Jenkins saw four Viet Cong carrying a bazooka.“I watched them load up the doggone thing and shoot it right at me,” Jenkins said with a distant look in his eye.He was hit, but not seriously injured.But his own terrifying experience with the bazooka is not what upsets him about the attack.“I lost 16 men that day,” Jenkins said. “There were 16 bodies laid out.”One man suffered dismemberment when a grenade exploded in his hand, and Jenkins noticed his toe tag read “unknown” as his shattered remains lay on a stretcher.Jenkins insisted in no uncertain terms that his soldier's name be placed on the tag.The old officer's veneer cracks when discussing the gruesome tasks he performed and the unimaginable things he saw in Vietnam.“If anyone wants to talk about the military, he'll talk about it,” said his wife of 30 years, Joann, “then he doesn't sleep that night.”Jenkins spent 13 months in Vietnam before returning home to his previous post in Pittsburgh, where he was promoted to major.
Like so many who served in Vietnam, he struggled with his return to normal life in the United States.He recalled attending a party after his return home.“A friend said, 'Hey Joe, how are you?' and I said, 'None of your (expletive) business,” Jenkins recalled. “I called the VA and said, 'I need help.'”But the Veterans Administration did not recognize post-traumatic stress disorder in the late 1960s, and he was told he would be required to fill out multiple forms and wait for months to see someone at the VA.He refused the services and returned to his life of wariness, watching for movement in his peripheral vision as he had in the jungle.“What gives you PTSD is coming home and everyone is happy and singing, and you think, 'How can everyone be so happy when there are guys dying?'” Jenkins said.He served in his Pittsburgh post for a short time before finally leaving military service.“I retired on Dec. 31, 1967, and we had one hell of a New Year's Eve party,” Jenkins said.He went to work at Magnetics as a foreman for three years before filling out documents to become a federal air marshal.He got into the program in 1972 and became a special agent for the Federal Aviation Administration.“I was all over the world,” Jenkins said. “I retired in 1993 and built this house.”Asked if he would pass up that draft office in the courthouse if he had it to do over again, and Jenkins answers immediately.“No way,” he said. “I volunteered for everything.”As for Veterans Day, Jenkins said he likes to see veterans recognized for their sacrifices, but he does not need the kudos.The VA Butler Health Care System, where he gets his hearing aids, found out he served in Vietnam and encouraged him to apply for Agent Orange benefits.“Now, I get some money and I can hire someone to cut my grass,” said the spry nonagenarian.Jenkins was an active member of Veterans of Underage Military Service for many years until the organization disbanded due to dwindling membership.He still splits wood, enjoys a few glasses of homemade wine each night and drives where he needs to go.Jenkins always greets veterans wearing Vietnam hats like his own with a hearty “welcome home.”He thinks of his experiences serving in the military on each Nov. 11 as well as the sacrifices of thousands of others living and deceased.“I think it's appropriate that veterans get recognition,” he said.
