NPC Post 20 hosts Vietnam Vet author

"We left an Ozzie and Harriet country and came back to Clockwork Orange," Vietnam veteran Bill Lord told a Jan. 30 meeting of NPC American Legion Post 20 in talking about the book he thought he would never write.

The retired general manager of WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., said he did all he could to put behind him his 1967-'68 hitch as a 19-year-old Army infantry sergeant.

"I never planned to do a book," he said. "I never kept in touch with my buddies. I just looked forward."

But a stack of letters written to his mother during his tour and returned to him by a sister nearly 50 years after the war made him look back at how his life and his country were changed by the war. The result is "50 Years After Vietnam: Lessons and Letters from the War I Hated Fighting."

Like many of the Vietnam-era veterans listening to his account, Lord found the U.S. transformed during his absence. The generally pro-war sentiment turned strongly and sometimes violently anti-war. Those sent to fight it were seen as patriots when they left and baby killers when they returned. But Lord said the war quickly taught him leadership and decision-making skills that served him well as reporter, foreign correspondent and news manager.

Lord said he is reminded of Vietnam every day by things such as the sound of a helicopter and the smell of diesel fuel. He is not bitter about how military leaders conducted the war but recognized the gulf between enlisted men and officers. "Our primary goal was to survive. Theirs was to kill the enemy," he said.

That divide lead to one now-it-can-be-told incident Lord recounted, involving the military's obsession with enemy dead body counts. He admitted falsely reporting that three Vietcong where killed when in fact his men had avoided action. His superior officer was disappointed, so Lord said more could have been killed but not found. They agreed to report 12 enemy casualties. Shortly thereafter, Lord read in Stars & Stripes about a raging battle his unit had fought in which 120 of the enemy were killed.

Speaker portions of Post 20 meetings are open to all Club members. The Post, which will mark its 100th anniversary in November, is one of the oldest in the nation and was founded at the urging of Club associate member Gen. John J. Pershing, leader of U.S. forces in World War I.