VIETNAM VALOR … Ted Mathes was awarded many medals for his time over in Vietnam, including a purple heart and bronze star.
By: Anna Wozniak
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
anna@thevillagereporter.com
“We sat down to eat our rations, and heard a plane go by. All of a sudden, everything was just soaked in oil,” shared Vietnam War veteran Ted Mathes.
“We didn’t know what it was, so we just wiped off what we could and continued eating. That was my first day.”
What Mathes didn’t know as a wide-eyed, 19-year-old recruit fresh out of bootcamp, was that oily substance was agent orange, and his exposure throughout his year in Vietnam would forever change the course of his life.
Coming in at the tail end of an almost 40-year conflict, Mathes found himself in Vietnam at the peak of what President Nixon coined as “vietnamization,” which was the process of turning the war over to the South Vietnamese, and “de-Americanizing” the war.
This period also saw the most troops set foot in Vietnam, with about 543,400 troops deployed by April of 1969.
Shortly after that, troop withdrawals started, due in part because of how unpopular the war was on the home front.
American troops couldn’t leave Vietnam cold turkey, however, and were given the task of helping to secure South Vietnam from Vietcong (North Vietnamese) forces. A large part of this was securing rural populations and hindering Vietcong activities in the countryside.
This saw Mathes and his fellow men out in the jungle for two weeks at a time, with him personally walking point for the first three months he was there.
The way that troops went to fight Vietcong forces was to search through the dense jungles that surrounded Vietnamese villages, where enemy forces would set boobytraps or lie in wait for American troops.
Walking point, as Mathes did, was one of the most dangerous things a man could be assigned to do.
“You see, they were the first up. That’s the first to fall into a trap, the first to get shot, the first to get whatever is coming.”
For this dangerous job, they used new recruits. They didn’t want the loss to be someone of experience, and so they put the most expendable men into that position. It’s a miracle that Mathes was not one of the 11,780 servicemen that died that year.
“I jokingly say I took my senior trip to Vietnam,” Mathes laughed, thinking back on the boy that didn’t know what it was to look at war, “after all, I was only 18 years old, and had no idea what war would be like.”
In the Army, Mathes did his best to be the best, and held himself to the highest of standards, making sure his tests and performance levels were a matter of envy for other recruits.
After bootcamp, Mathes found himself between two of his fellow Ohioans on the long ride to Vietnam, where he would touch down and soon be greeted by his first exposure to agent orange, which got its name from the orange ring around the barrels it was stored in.
Mathes shared that “statistics show that out of every 365 days of tour, 244 on average are spent in active combat.”
Those days, in what can only be described as hell for some, left their mark on Mathes, which is why he is so passionate about the life-long effects of PTSD on service people.
“For some, it’s true, the war never really ends. You carry it with you always, and never forget.” Some of these memories still come to Mathes, reminding him of the times his life was spared.
“I remember my first major battle,” Mathes shared, detailing how a chu hoe (captured enemy) gave the location of enemy NVA (North Vietnamese) forces.
This resulted in a firefight that saw all 16 in his troop pinned down for six days, with deliverance coming in the form of B-52s that destroyed the attacking forces.
Mathes hadn’t been raised in a Christian home, but as he lay hearing the screams of his wounded and dying comrades and watched his lieutenant get shot through the skull, he threw up a prayer in desperation to a God he knew nothing about.
At the time, he still had 11 months left to serve, and would see much, much more. During an “L” shaped ambush, his troop again got pinned down by enemy forces.
As he felt the wood chips of the tree, he was hiding behind hit his face as sniper bullets hit it, he knew it would be a risk to leave cover, but he and a comrade risked it all to re-up on ammo that was airdropped to his desperate troop. Somehow, the two recovered it uninjured.
On a shotgun operation with 4 men, Mathes served as the assistant machine gunner, clutching his M-79 close.
The enemy came out just as night fell across the jungle war scape, and thankfully this was not the first conflict the site had seen.
It was pure luck that a foxhole was already dug out, just hardly big enough for Mathes to fit into, and that is why he is alive today.
After the firefight, which lasted minutes that seemed to stretch towards eternity, Mathes had a moment to take in the smell of gun smoke and peanut butter from his rucksack on his back, which was now riddled with holes.
Somehow, none of the explosives that were in the pack exploded, a miracle that Mathes took note of as he realized his sleeve was welling up with blood.
“I was shot through the arm, leaving two holes with bullets exiting beside my head and over my shoulder,” Mathes shared of the wound.
“If it hadn’t been for that little six-inch foxhole, my body would have been at the height of my bullet-riddled rucksack.”
Many of the war’s 58,209 casualties were young men, just like Mathes, including some of his own friends -like Tom Merriman, who passed away on Mothers’ Day 1970.
In August of 1970, Mathes took the 23-hour journey back into “the world,” as home was coined by those in Vietnam.
“Did you know that, apparently, I’m a baby killer?” Mathes said with a sad smile, recounting how he was greeted by protestors when he landed in Detroit.
“What people seem to forget is that none of us who fought in Vietnam had anything to do with starting this war. Our purpose was merely to do what our country asked of us, and I think we did it pretty well.”
Later that year, Mathes got a call from Tom Merriman’s mother, and has since been an extension of their family after their initial conversation where tears were shed in memory of the young life cut short by war.
It was upon returning home that Ted met Anita, and three years later, Anita became Mrs. Ted Mathes.
They had two children, who both stayed local to the area with Ted and Anita’s six grandchildren. Throughout raising his family, Ted noticed the war never left him.
He was getting flashbacks and had a lot of the signature side effects from PTSD. It was after returning home that he realized that he was saved for a reason, and he shared this reason was to do God’s work.
After raising a prayer to a God, he didn’t know and being spared from death all the same, Mathes has made it his mission in life to not only help those with PTSD, but to do so in the name of God, spreading His love with every chance he gets.
Having found purpose in life, things were looking up for Mathes as he adjusted to life after the war while raising his family.
That is, until he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2008, a direct result of his exposure to agent orange.
The treatment (tumor removal and radiation) saved his life, but also robbed him of his sense of smell, taste, and saliva.
Still, Mathes took this as an opportunity to appreciate the love he found for his family- both blood and chosen- until he was diagnosed with throat and tongue cancer in January of 2023.
This was again a direct result of his exposure to agent orange while in Vietnam, and it is a miracle that he is still here today.
“We didn’t know what it was, and they certainly didn’t care where we were when they were putting it down.” It’s hard to believe that in today’s world of safety regulations, and Vietnam veterans like Ted Mathes are living with the repercussions still today.
“The thing I think most people should know is that Vietnam veterans only want one thing: for the American people to love them as much as they love America.”
