Wild Bill
I’m on a nickname basis with William Hickock. He’s one of those retired folks that you see greeting people at Walmart. He’s the kind of employee Walmart wished all their people were like. He takes his job seriously.
I’ve known him superficially for about two years now, but we act like we’re old friends. He calls me slick, and I call him Wild Bill.
I don’t know many octogenarians, but he’s the friendliest 80-year-old I’ve ever met. He always has a smile on his face, and he acts like he’s glad to see everyone who walks into the store.
His outer physique looks well-used, like an old baseball glove that’s in great shape for its age. Among the fortunate few who looks and acts younger than they are, you can just tell if you ever meet him that he’s someone you can trust, a trust that surpasses honesty and spikes to honorable.
One Saturday, Wild Bill and I saw each other as we walked into the Walmart MacDonalds at the same time. We got in line together and we started talking. I told him that I was at the store to buy a DVD. I was looking for the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now.
When I said that his eyes changed, and his jaw flexed.
He calmly asked, “Did I serve in the military?”
I said, “yes, for a very short time.”
Returning the question, I came to find out that he was in the military for 30 years before retiring as a Command Sergeant Major. We found a booth and sat down. I was interested in his military experience.
He said he was a Vietnam veteran, and that though he liked the movie, he said it perpetuated a myth about the way the war in Vietnam was fought and made the veteran of that war look like an unbalanced killer and drug user.
My curiosity mounted; I wanted a war story. I mustered the courage and asked him what it was like. He told me his life in the military had been good, and that he’d do it all over again. But, he said, it hadn’t been all good. Then, he recounted a story.
In April 1969, Wild Bill was a buck Sergeant in an aerial rifle platoon with the 2nd Squadron of the 17th Cavalry Regiment, when his platoon was inserted into a hot landing zone by rope ladder from a CH-47 Chinook helicopter onto a ridge in the A Shau valley below the peak of Dong Ngai, a small mountain in central Vietnam, several kilometers south of the Demilitarized Zone in Thua Thien province.
He was on the rope ladder about 15 feet in the air when the helicopter was shot down, killing the helicopter crew and 7 soldiers of Wild Bill’s platoon.
Breaking his foot in the fall, he organized a small perimeter with the remaining soldiers of the platoon who had managed to climb down before the helicopter was shot down. They repelled repeated attacks from a platoon sized element of the North Vietnamese Army before reinforcements arrived on a hot landing zone a couple hundred meters away.
He survived the battle, telling me he had been in many battles, but that this one still made the hair on his arms stand and his heart beat a little faster whenever he remembered it, and he said he remembered it almost every day. I had gotten my war story. Then he said, “Hey, at least I didn’t have to fight at Hamburger Hill.” Explaining that his broken foot kept him out of the field.
As an amateur Vietnam War historian, I was somewhat academically familiar with the battle for hill 937, called Hamburger Hill by the soldiers who were there. There was no need for me to educate him on a battle, he could educate me. I didn’t push for another story.
We sat in silence for a moment. I felt privileged that he shared that story with me. I whispered, “wow” and looked down at my coffee. I had many more questions for him but refrained from asking them. Wild Bill’s combat service was very personal to him, and I didn’t want to pry. I felt embarrassed that I’d claimed military service to this man.
Wild Bill looked different to me now. Meeting his gaze, I could see the young soldier in his eyes, focused on something a thousand yards away. The war memories are with him for life. His outward, grandfatherly appearance belies the hardcore soldier he once was. Wild Bill is certainly more than meets the eye. This old leather glove had a lot of life left in him, he was tough.
Then with a pat on the side of the arm, he said, “Well, I’d better get moving, it’s almost time for me to clock back in. See you later, slick.”
“See you later, Wild Bill.”