Posted on May 10, 2022
Veteran Spotlight during national military appreciation month: John Shoemaker
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An absolute honor to interview John Shoemaker for this week’s Veterans Spotlight. Born in Fitchburg, MA he attended UMASS and graduated with a BBS in Management before enlisting in the Army in 1968. He would go onto serve his country for (4) years as a Combat Platoon Leader and Company Commander in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade of the “Americal” Division in Chu Lai. He completed his basic training at Fort Dix, NJ, Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk, LA and Airborne & Officer Candidate School Training at Fort Benning, GA before going to advanced jungle training in the Panama Canal Zone.
Lt. Shoemaker left for Vietnam with his first-born son only (3) months old. He arrived in Vietnam and immediately went through two weeks of in-country training and was assigned to a Firebase on Hawk Hill then to Hill 251 just west of Chu Lai. His first day on patrol, provided him with a memorable experience. “My commanding office told me ‘you’re just an observing officer’…..we were marching through a rice paddy, I was 5th in line…..radio guy was in front of me….I was mesmerized as I waded through this dark brown, putrid, god-awful-smelling water filled with water buffalo and human excrement and leeches….I thought, I’m not watching Walter Cronkite anymore….then, it seemed like the whole world blew up…..a huge explosion…..the guy in front of the radio man stepped on a booby trap…blew off his feet……almost split the Lieutenant in front of him in two….I was now in charge…..all our guys had zero combat experience…..one of the soldiers came up to me and said, ‘ok Lieutenant, what do we do now?’ I was on patrol for just two hours and thought ‘how am I gonna’ last a year?’ He continued. “My only thought was I had to keep my soldiers alive and kill as many NVA soldiers before they killed me….thought there’s no way in hell I’m getting out of here alive…..was scared every day and I said (expletive) it, I’m taking the battle to the enemy….I was in the jungle 3-4 weeks at a time…..was always afraid of losing a limb or being captured……resigned myself that the latter was never going to happen” he said.
I asked Lt. Shoemaker about the holidays and how it might have affected him. “There were no holidays for me….did have a chance to see Bob Hope….it was a life experience…..got to meet him years later….took a bunch of my guys from Hawk Hill…..had to drive a long ways….all I could think about on the way is to hell with Hope, what happens if we got ambushed? We couldn’t carry guns, only the MP’s escorting us could…..would have been the perfect time” he remembered.
I asked Lt. Shoemaker, the feeling of losing a soldier under your command. He replied with this; “It’s simply devastating….you constantly think ‘what could I have done, what should I have done’? It eats at you….I lost (5) guys…..two gunshot and three from booby traps….I wanted to kill (10) NVA for every one I lost….I was just so pissed….when a soldier is lost, it stays with the family forever….the pain never goes away….nobody knows how they suffer” he recalled. He continued, “I had a soldier that had two parents that were doctors...this kid was in med-school studying to be a doctor….great kid….he enlisted to go to Vietnam because his parents told him he should do something for his country that would have purpose….he took a bullet to one of his major organs in a firefight….he died in shock in the helicopter….an asset of humanity that was tragically lost” he said somberly.
Lt. Shoemaker offered this when I asked him his thoughts on the protesters of the Vietnam War. “I rejected it at the time, because it showed our country in a bad light and divided. It destroyed our country’s morale, unity and patriotism.”
Thoughts on service? “I thought I needed to serve…..my dad was in the Navy in WWII….I was inspired by my dad….being a Combat Platoon Leader in Vietnam proved to be who I am, it changed who I was….and it created who I would be….I would do everything over the exact same way.” He was awarded (3) Bronze Stars, (2) for Valor, the Air Medal, (2) Army Commendation Medals, (1) for Valor and the Purple Heart. Lt. John Shoemaker, thank you for your service to our great country.
Lt. Shoemaker left for Vietnam with his first-born son only (3) months old. He arrived in Vietnam and immediately went through two weeks of in-country training and was assigned to a Firebase on Hawk Hill then to Hill 251 just west of Chu Lai. His first day on patrol, provided him with a memorable experience. “My commanding office told me ‘you’re just an observing officer’…..we were marching through a rice paddy, I was 5th in line…..radio guy was in front of me….I was mesmerized as I waded through this dark brown, putrid, god-awful-smelling water filled with water buffalo and human excrement and leeches….I thought, I’m not watching Walter Cronkite anymore….then, it seemed like the whole world blew up…..a huge explosion…..the guy in front of the radio man stepped on a booby trap…blew off his feet……almost split the Lieutenant in front of him in two….I was now in charge…..all our guys had zero combat experience…..one of the soldiers came up to me and said, ‘ok Lieutenant, what do we do now?’ I was on patrol for just two hours and thought ‘how am I gonna’ last a year?’ He continued. “My only thought was I had to keep my soldiers alive and kill as many NVA soldiers before they killed me….thought there’s no way in hell I’m getting out of here alive…..was scared every day and I said (expletive) it, I’m taking the battle to the enemy….I was in the jungle 3-4 weeks at a time…..was always afraid of losing a limb or being captured……resigned myself that the latter was never going to happen” he said.
I asked Lt. Shoemaker about the holidays and how it might have affected him. “There were no holidays for me….did have a chance to see Bob Hope….it was a life experience…..got to meet him years later….took a bunch of my guys from Hawk Hill…..had to drive a long ways….all I could think about on the way is to hell with Hope, what happens if we got ambushed? We couldn’t carry guns, only the MP’s escorting us could…..would have been the perfect time” he remembered.
I asked Lt. Shoemaker, the feeling of losing a soldier under your command. He replied with this; “It’s simply devastating….you constantly think ‘what could I have done, what should I have done’? It eats at you….I lost (5) guys…..two gunshot and three from booby traps….I wanted to kill (10) NVA for every one I lost….I was just so pissed….when a soldier is lost, it stays with the family forever….the pain never goes away….nobody knows how they suffer” he recalled. He continued, “I had a soldier that had two parents that were doctors...this kid was in med-school studying to be a doctor….great kid….he enlisted to go to Vietnam because his parents told him he should do something for his country that would have purpose….he took a bullet to one of his major organs in a firefight….he died in shock in the helicopter….an asset of humanity that was tragically lost” he said somberly.
Lt. Shoemaker offered this when I asked him his thoughts on the protesters of the Vietnam War. “I rejected it at the time, because it showed our country in a bad light and divided. It destroyed our country’s morale, unity and patriotism.”
Thoughts on service? “I thought I needed to serve…..my dad was in the Navy in WWII….I was inspired by my dad….being a Combat Platoon Leader in Vietnam proved to be who I am, it changed who I was….and it created who I would be….I would do everything over the exact same way.” He was awarded (3) Bronze Stars, (2) for Valor, the Air Medal, (2) Army Commendation Medals, (1) for Valor and the Purple Heart. Lt. John Shoemaker, thank you for your service to our great country.
Military History
Appreciation
Heroes
Purple Heart
Fort Moore
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Lt. shoemaker was one of the good guys, a natural leader. I served as an Army grunt in Quang tri around the same time and can relate to this post. God Bless all of those who served. I have a special place in my heart for infantrymen both Army and Marine.
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Thank you sincerely, Lt. John Shoemaker for your service to the country we love so much.
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SPC Benjamin Hartog
Jesus,
Thank you for your salutation. I am immeasurably grateful for your positive acknowledgement of my rather tendentious comments but my nascent cynicism was implanted by my brutalization in the military. The only redeeming factor in my tour in Vietnam was the crucial and indispensable comradeship of the soldiers in my platoon. Like most of the young men in my unit I lacked any ideological comprehension of the Vietnam war until I grew acquainted later as a college student with the origins of American Foreign policy that was promulgated after WWII by Dean Acheson, President Truman and George Kennan all of whom were instrumental in devising the policy of "Containment" which was successfully executed in Korea but ended miserably in Vietnam. This policy was based on by "Wilsonianism" which promoted American intervention in international geopolitical affairs. This superannuated policy was historically disastrous and only ended by the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. In retrospect, the policy of "Isolation" should have been revised after the Korean war and the advice heeded of President Eisenhower who opposed American intervention in French colonial wars after WWII and that culminated in the French defeat in the Battle of Denbienpheu. France diplomatically petitioned Eisenhower to provide a fleet of B-29s to bomb the Vietnim artillery positions surrounding Denbienpheu but he refused to embroil US military forces c(Operation Vulture) to bail out the French colonial system in Indochina. It was unfortunate Eisenhower was not president in the early 1960s instead of JFK and LBJ who mindlessly escalated the war in Vietnam with a misguided notion of Vietnamese nationalism and a overreaching idea of American foreign policy that was based on the spread of international communism. The "Best and the Brightest" were not so perspicacious as they were held to be by the Johnson administration's apparatchiks. The deaths of 58,000 Americans in Vietnam belied the twisted visions of McNamara and Kissinger. I was a tool like millions of other American soldiers used to implement Johnson's misguided conception of America's role in the world. I am still plagued by intrusive memories of Vietnam especially the decimation in an ambush of A/4/47 on June 19, 1967 which resulted in 53 Americas KIAs. SPC Benjamin
Thank you for your salutation. I am immeasurably grateful for your positive acknowledgement of my rather tendentious comments but my nascent cynicism was implanted by my brutalization in the military. The only redeeming factor in my tour in Vietnam was the crucial and indispensable comradeship of the soldiers in my platoon. Like most of the young men in my unit I lacked any ideological comprehension of the Vietnam war until I grew acquainted later as a college student with the origins of American Foreign policy that was promulgated after WWII by Dean Acheson, President Truman and George Kennan all of whom were instrumental in devising the policy of "Containment" which was successfully executed in Korea but ended miserably in Vietnam. This policy was based on by "Wilsonianism" which promoted American intervention in international geopolitical affairs. This superannuated policy was historically disastrous and only ended by the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. In retrospect, the policy of "Isolation" should have been revised after the Korean war and the advice heeded of President Eisenhower who opposed American intervention in French colonial wars after WWII and that culminated in the French defeat in the Battle of Denbienpheu. France diplomatically petitioned Eisenhower to provide a fleet of B-29s to bomb the Vietnim artillery positions surrounding Denbienpheu but he refused to embroil US military forces c(Operation Vulture) to bail out the French colonial system in Indochina. It was unfortunate Eisenhower was not president in the early 1960s instead of JFK and LBJ who mindlessly escalated the war in Vietnam with a misguided notion of Vietnamese nationalism and a overreaching idea of American foreign policy that was based on the spread of international communism. The "Best and the Brightest" were not so perspicacious as they were held to be by the Johnson administration's apparatchiks. The deaths of 58,000 Americans in Vietnam belied the twisted visions of McNamara and Kissinger. I was a tool like millions of other American soldiers used to implement Johnson's misguided conception of America's role in the world. I am still plagued by intrusive memories of Vietnam especially the decimation in an ambush of A/4/47 on June 19, 1967 which resulted in 53 Americas KIAs. SPC Benjamin
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SPC Benjamin Hartog
Loreen,
Thank you for your salutation and compliment of my rather turgid and uncompromising comments concerning the war crimes perpetrated by American soldiers in Vietnam. The unspeakable depredations of a minority of American soldiers paralleled the crimes of the Waffen SS including the annihilation of the village of Lidici following the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrick the so called butcher of Prague. His killers were on a suicide mission but they accepted their fate with Christlike dedication and died like heroes and should have been canonized by the Catholic Church. The diabolical leadership of the Third Reich exemplified all that is repellent and evil about the human condition. The treacherous and genocidal actions by Hitler's lieutenants were unprecedented in the annals of historical memory and conclusively demonstrates the depths of evil the Nazis descended into. Ideological sociopaths like Heydrick were not simply caricatures of the demonic but living incarnations of the condemned in Dante's Inferno. The deformed nature of the Nazi mentality still exists and is embodied by the dangerous deranged fanatics who would sell their mothers to establish a neo-Nazi regime in America. An egalitarian society like America is always threatened by the intrusions of extremist misanthropes who are pathologically intolerant of a heterogeneous polity where peace and harmony is predominant rather than an ecosystem that is based on polarization, tyranny and despotism. There is a Nero alive in these inhumane monsters who would delightfully revel in the implosion of the democratic system of a Constitutionally regulated polity of the United States. The grotesque and primeval behavior of homicidal American soldiers at My Lai remains an indelible blotch on America's honor. The vast majority of American soldiers did not succumb to the brutalization of combat in a unwinnable war that was based on nationalism rather than the ideological tenets of Communism. The audacious assertions of white supremacist can never be considered a fringe movement but must be seen as a worldview shared by a large segment of the silent majority in America. The invocations of liberal Americans are dismissed as immaterial in the Trumpian exhortations to "Make American Great Again." The American soldiers who were KIA in Vietnam cannot articulate their perspective on the abysmal condition of the current condition of America and their voices will forever be silenced. Falsities and Truisms abound in America and the efforts to distinguish between the two has been mostly unsuccessful and condemns the average American to a life of unrelieved ambiguity that is only mitigated by the interpersonal love of devoted family members although child abuse and domestic violence remain a persistent reality in America's homes. The sense of disorientating bewilderment among American adolescents is evinced by the high suicide rates of these youthful members of American society. There seems to be a prevalent sense of malaise in America that reflects the disillusionment of a lot of America citizens who feel estranged and forgotten and find themselves victims of not only economic sluggishness but also a constants sense of existential uncertainty that is buttressed by the intrusions of the debilitating forces of unpredictability like the mass shootings of elementary school pupils. SPC Benjamin
Thank you for your salutation and compliment of my rather turgid and uncompromising comments concerning the war crimes perpetrated by American soldiers in Vietnam. The unspeakable depredations of a minority of American soldiers paralleled the crimes of the Waffen SS including the annihilation of the village of Lidici following the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrick the so called butcher of Prague. His killers were on a suicide mission but they accepted their fate with Christlike dedication and died like heroes and should have been canonized by the Catholic Church. The diabolical leadership of the Third Reich exemplified all that is repellent and evil about the human condition. The treacherous and genocidal actions by Hitler's lieutenants were unprecedented in the annals of historical memory and conclusively demonstrates the depths of evil the Nazis descended into. Ideological sociopaths like Heydrick were not simply caricatures of the demonic but living incarnations of the condemned in Dante's Inferno. The deformed nature of the Nazi mentality still exists and is embodied by the dangerous deranged fanatics who would sell their mothers to establish a neo-Nazi regime in America. An egalitarian society like America is always threatened by the intrusions of extremist misanthropes who are pathologically intolerant of a heterogeneous polity where peace and harmony is predominant rather than an ecosystem that is based on polarization, tyranny and despotism. There is a Nero alive in these inhumane monsters who would delightfully revel in the implosion of the democratic system of a Constitutionally regulated polity of the United States. The grotesque and primeval behavior of homicidal American soldiers at My Lai remains an indelible blotch on America's honor. The vast majority of American soldiers did not succumb to the brutalization of combat in a unwinnable war that was based on nationalism rather than the ideological tenets of Communism. The audacious assertions of white supremacist can never be considered a fringe movement but must be seen as a worldview shared by a large segment of the silent majority in America. The invocations of liberal Americans are dismissed as immaterial in the Trumpian exhortations to "Make American Great Again." The American soldiers who were KIA in Vietnam cannot articulate their perspective on the abysmal condition of the current condition of America and their voices will forever be silenced. Falsities and Truisms abound in America and the efforts to distinguish between the two has been mostly unsuccessful and condemns the average American to a life of unrelieved ambiguity that is only mitigated by the interpersonal love of devoted family members although child abuse and domestic violence remain a persistent reality in America's homes. The sense of disorientating bewilderment among American adolescents is evinced by the high suicide rates of these youthful members of American society. There seems to be a prevalent sense of malaise in America that reflects the disillusionment of a lot of America citizens who feel estranged and forgotten and find themselves victims of not only economic sluggishness but also a constants sense of existential uncertainty that is buttressed by the intrusions of the debilitating forces of unpredictability like the mass shootings of elementary school pupils. SPC Benjamin
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Thank you for your Service! What an asset you were to your men, they must’ve been very proud to serve under you!
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