Vietnam veteran talks to South Butler students about war, coming home
SAXONBURG —Tom Foor told Lauren Lemmon’s ninth grade history classes stories about the year he spent in the Army’s First Cavalry Division during the Vietnam War.
In a live FaceTime chat Thursday from his home in Mechanicsburg, Foor spent an hour speaking with each of Lemmon’s five classes about combat, life in war-torn Vietnam and his journey home.
It was an experience he volunteered for.
Foor said he grew up in Bedford County and a friend on the draft board told him he was going to be drafted into military service in March 1969.
“I decided to go in early,” Foor said.
He was 19 when he signed up for a two-year enlistment in June 1968 and, after basic training, he was sent to Fort Lewis in Washington for artillery training.
He found some soldiers there couldn’t read. Others had reactions to the daily regimen of malaria pills and were not sent to Vietnam, Foor said. Three draftees who fled to Canada asked if he wanted to join them before they left, but he said he wanted to finish what he started.
“I said absolutely not. I signed up for this. I’m going to see it through,” Foor said.
He was assigned to an artillery unit which, along with its 105 mm howitzer canons, was taken into battle by helicopters.
“We supported the infantry. Our job was to cover them and kill any enemy around them,” Foor said.
Six men in his unit were killed during his year in the country, he said.
Lemmon said Vietnam War history is taught in 11th grade, but she thought it was important for her ninth grade students to know how people risked their lives for their country and were not welcomed when they returned home.
“I tell the kids to thank veterans for their service. That’s why we have the freedom we have today,” Lemmon said.
A full story appears in Friday's Butler Eagle.
