News : Vietnam vets share memories with VSHS students

Don Roepke, left, & Ron Geiger told the students of the friendly rivalry between military branches.

Vietnam veteran Otto Bush discusses the danger of mortar explosions with VSHS students.

Vietnam, said Dave Goodell, was 10 times more beautiful than any other place he has seen.

Dale Henry told VSHS students that soldiers in Vietnam were "closer than brothers."

Dave Goodell told some Vinton-Shellsburg High School students about a place he has visited that is "ten times more beautiful than Texas and Colorado."

He told them about the beautiful green landscape, and the way that even the wild animals interacted with humans. He recalled sharing a can of peanut butter with a group of monkeys and laughed as he told the students how the monkeys would fight over the peanut butter until the smallest monkey grabbed the can and climbed high into a tree to eat it himself before tossing the can back to the humans below.

Goodell was talking about Vietnam. The peanut butter that he and other soldiers shared with the monkeys was from their C-rations.

He and four other veterans of that war -- Otto Bush, Dale Henry, Don Roepke and Ron Geiger -- spent an hour with the students of Kelly Steffen, sharing their experiences and answering questions from the students.

Goodell went on to also talk about the weather in Vietnam, and the monsoon season, when it rained virtually non-stop for months.

"They told us it was important for us to keep our socks dry," he told the students sitting around a table in the media center. "But nothing was ever dry."

Bush told the students about facing the dangers of mortars. He also told the students that while some people were respectful when the soldiers returned home, others threw rotten eggs or other things at them and called them "baby killers."

Geiger had a similar experience. He had to return home for a funeral and a man who looked "like a hippy" saw him in his uniform at the airport in Seattle and spit in his face.

"I tell that story to my students, but you tell it better," Steffen told Geiger before the veterans began speaking to the students.

Geiger and Roepke also spoke about the friendly rivalry between different branches of the military, and how Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines like to tease and call each other names.

Yet, said Geiger, when it was time to fight, they all stood together.

"We were closer than brothers," Henry told another group of students. "We had to look out for each other."

Steffen often invites area veterans to her classroom to speak about specific wars from their personal experience.