Sacrifice honored: annual Purple Heart banquet Friday, three veterans tell their stories
By Kirsten Ballard
Published in News on August 5, 2015 1:46 PM
A storm is coming.
Sam Dixon feels it in his knee.
But the former Marine's "gift" is not one he covets.
If anything, it serves as a painful reminder of the day in 1968 an AK-47 round went through his leg.
During his tour in Vietnam, Dixon received the Purple Heart three times for wounds he sustained while at war.
There is shrapnel adhering to his bones still today from B-40 rockets.
"You still feel them," he said. "More so today, you find that your legs hurt and the shrapnel is still there. They didn't take it out and the bone molded around it. You grow attached to it. You go about each day and you try not to think about the bad things, but the good things."
The injuries and subsequent medals do not distinguish his time in the military. In fact, for many years, he was ashamed of them.
"When you do good things in life and you see the Purple Heart, you look at it like a negative. I'm not proud I got wounded. I think that's the term you use. You're not proud you got wounded, you're sad you let your troops down.
"There was guilt in it. I don't know what it was, we felt like we didn't achieve the goals we should have achieved, that everyone else achieved, and we got wounded. It took us a lot of years to realize that it was something very important."
Even now, all three of the Purple Hearts blur together in his 71-year-old mind. The dates, times and injuries mix and become one.
The memories he holds dear are not marked with accolades.
It does not matter to him.
At 18 years old, Sam joined the Marine Corps in July of 1962.
"I wanted to be a Marine all my life, I don't remember much more than that," he said.
It provided him travel and adventure outside of the area.
He served for 21 years; he says it is the best 20-something years of his life.
"I would do it again tomorrow morning," he said. "I don't remember all of the things. There are good memories, there are bad memories."
He remembers being in the honor guard and serving as a basketball referee. He was a Sgt. E-5 while in Vietnam.
He remembers a mother writing him. She was mourning her dead son and wanted to know the details.
He wrote her back. But he did not give her the gory details of his death that she was looking for. He gave her closure.
He told her what an outstanding young man her son was. He told her that serving with her son was a privilege.
He remembers coming home.
There was no jubilant homecoming for Vietnam veterans.
"People came up and spit on me. It belittled anything you thought about America," he said.
He believes history will show the Vietnam War was not necessary. There were no rewards or gain.
But he never questioned his mission.
"I was assigned a job, I was assigned order. We took an Oath of Enlistment that said I will support and defend this country."
The Purple Heart Foundation Banquet and Honor Ceremony on Friday night at 7 p.m. at the First Church is his homecoming. He says the ceremony is of the greatest things that has ever happened to the veterans in the area.
Coming back to the States was difficult for him. As a Marine, he felt he had no right to be depressed. He considered himself a step above the rest.
"I think it took us years to understand the depth of what (war) had done to us," he said.
Even now, he warns people against judging veterans.
"Until you've spent a night, and dreamed a night, and had those nightmares. There are a lot of nightmares and you go back and think about the bad things that happen. There's no way to forget them. So please do not judge until you know the story."
Even with the nightmares and pain in his body, he regrets nothing. To Sam, freedom is everything, America is everything.
He did not serve for medals. In fact, he did not know what the Purple Heart was until he was presented with one while recovering in the hospital.
Now, as he meets other local Purple Heart recipients, he has come to take pride in his service. He has accepted the three awards bestowed upon him for his sacrifice.
"I'm proud to be an American," he said. "I'm proud to have shed the blood that I shed."
Sylvania Wilkerson was not going to die in Vietnam.
As his helicopter spiraled toward the ground, he prepared to fight.
It was 1966 and he was 31 years old.
It was not his first war. Wilkerson enlisted in 1953 at the age of 17.
He saw a man parachuting on the side of the post office in Illinois and he walked in and said he wanted to join the military. With the signature of his parents, he enlisted in the Airborne Infantry in 1953 and went to war.
He stayed in Korea for a year.
He got out, but said he was too young to handle being a civilian. At 21 years old, he went back in and went back to war.
He was riding through Vietnam as the right door gunner of a helicopter, when they started getting mortar and small arms fire.
"I remember, emotionally, my thing was 'I'm not going to die in Vietnam.'"
His extensive training prepared him. He gathered his ammo and a weapon.
"I started getting my stuff together," he said.
When the bird hit the ground, he was out with his machine gun, firing.
"It was hot," he said, both from the flaming helicopter and the enemy fire.
Eventually the heat and wounds got to him, and he was medevaced out.
"It was a bad day for us that day," he said
He pauses when talking about it.
"I think we lost about three people."
He was awarded the Purple Heart and went back to work.
At the time, he didn't know what it was. Now he is very well versed in the significance of the oldest military award. George Washington created the award for those who were wounded in combat with an enemy of the country.
Sylvania was shot down a total of three times in Vietnam.
"It was everyday stuff for us," he said. "They were easy to shoot down."
After a crash in 1968, he was medevaced back to the United States.
He continued to serve.
He worked as an instructor in the Army Ranger school and Special Forces school.
He is very proud of his time with the Special Forces; an elite group of highly trained individuals.
"If I had to do it all over again, I would do it and I would do it the same way. Having been in Special Forces was one of the greatest parts of my life."
He retired in 1975.
He was inspired by the driven, dedicated military professionals that he worked with.
"We didn't have zero to 100, we all had to be 100," he said.
Mistakes were not an option.
He says he still has to pinch himself to make sure it was all real, that he really did the things he did. He retired as a Sgt. 1st Class.
After 22 years of military service, he is still serving.
"I consider myself a real patriot, I love the country and what it's supposed to be," he said. "We are closer to being free than any other country in the world."
He keeps a copy of the Constitution on his desk at home, where he can look at it all the time.
"People us the word freedom, they throw it out there, you hear the old cliché, 'Freedom isn't free,' it's not. Somebody is paying the price for everything we get."
Sylvania is the Commander of the local Order of The Purple Heart Chapter. He works to help veterans and their dependents get what is owed to them, whether it is funeral expenses or medical attention.
"I'm not knocking the VA," he said. "There are so many veterans that they just cannot take care of people with the amount of time they have to do it. I'm not knocking the VA, I'm knocking the procedure of the country."
The largest percent of the nation's homeless are veterans. Sylvania wants recognition and help for his fellow service members.
"People don't understand what PTSD is," he said.
Though he never turned to alcohol or drugs after war, Slyvania realized he had PTSD 30 years after getting out of Vietnam. He was never treated for it.
"I can say with regret that it cost me a family. My first family, we were married for 18 years and had eight children and just walked away from each other," he said. "People were forced to cope with it in the past because they didn't understand it. They were talking about shell shock...it was a way of life and nobody was talking about it.
"You see people on the street. They have real problems. They walk away from their families and people wonder why they do that. I'm concerned about these veterans and I think we should have something that would give them a better life. They can't get a job. Nobody is going to hire them. They need psychiatric help."
He hopes to raise awareness about the growing problems, using the Order of the Purple Heart to start a dialogue.
Having been there, been wounded, he can approach other veterans with a common ground.
He considers the banquet on Friday to be the start of a conversation about what is being done for the veterans of this country.
"This was a long time coming," he said.
The last thing he remembers is the smell of sulfur.
It was 1969.
Charles Thomas was driving a tank in Vietnam.
It was a day like any other. His unit was running maneuvers like they did all over the country.
"That's the last thing I remember," he said. "The smell of sulfur, like a firecracker."
Word was sent to his parents that he was Missing in Action.
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Charlie was drafted for the army right out of high school. He had never considered the career for himself. He grew up on a farm, he thought farming was his future.
Instead he went to basic training in Ft. Bragg in 1968.
A year later, he was in the hospital.
In his living room in Mount Olive, in a comfy blue-green recliner he calls "The Throne" he still cries when he remembers how he got his first Purple Heart. He does not talk about his two Purple Hearts in great detail. He uses simple, direct sentences.
"Just give me a minute," he said.
A muscle ticks in his jaw and he draws a ragged breath before simply explaining the horrific accident that hurt his back, broke his collar bone and his nose and almost ended his life.
"I got blew up on a tank," he said. "In Vietnam, you never know what is underground," he said. "It's not an IED in Kuwait, Iraq or Afghanistan. That's the last thing I remember. Sulfur."
When he opened his eyes 45 days later, he stared at the bright white lights. He did not know where he was.
"A nurse came over and said, 'You're alive,' and I said 'Yes.' She told me I was in a hospital and I said 'I have to go to the bathroom.'"
He stubbornly demanded to go. The medics removed the catheter and helped him to the bathroom.
After a month and a half of inactivity, his muscles had grown weak.
It took him weeks to build up the energy. He took physical therapy and recovered for weeks.
But he wasn't done.
He wanted back in to the fight.
"After I got back to my unit, I was ready to go back to the field again, but the company commander said no. I kept begging him until I made it one more trip out there. I got back in there, that's when I got shot. When I came back, that was it, he said 'Your life is too short.'"
When he came home, he brought parts of the war back with him.
The first meal he sat down to with his parents, he scarfed down the food and bolted.
"I was in a hurry doing everything because it was always hurry up. You have a mission to do. Something else to do," he said.
He did not know how to relax.
"If you slept at all, it was a good thing... We just knew we were fighting. For what, we didn't know," he said.
Even now, he has to sit with his back facing a wall in a restaurant. He doesn't want people behind him and he wants to see what is going on.
But he has learned to relax.
"I'm enjoying life," he said.
He helps with the Wounded Warriors and Veterans of Foreign Wars fishing house.
"It's just something that Vietnam vets never received when we came home," he said.
The banquet on Friday serves as a chance to get the recognition Charlie and his fellow soldiers earned.
When he came back from Vietnam, he stayed in the military. He served as an ROTC instructor in Kentucky.
He was tough to his cadets. He got in their face and treated them like he was treated.
"It's never going to be easier, it's going to be tougher and harder, we're trying to see what you're made of," he said. "(Being in the Army) taught me to be a better person, a stronger person. It just changed my life."
He retired in 2001 as a Staff Sgt.
He is proud of his time in the service.
"Freedom to me is just a joy," he said. "I can get out and do what I want to do."