The story that follows is based on the actual experiences of
Richard Zommer, a Corporal in the Marines. Richard Zommer served from March of 1966 to March of
1970. He worked on aircraft in
Vietnam, repairing the damages on them due to the war. Now, Mr. Zommer lives in Canton and is
currently a service manager at State-Line Oil in Granby.
Richard Zommer served in the Marines from March of
1966 to March of 1970. He is a
true patriot and entered the Marines voluntarily at the age of 18. Before Richard left for Vietnam, he
hung out with friends and family.
His parents weren’t fond of the whole enlistment idea since they
had a fear that he wouldn’t come back.
Before he went into the service, Richard worked for
Miner Lumber and went through a
lot schooling in states like Washington, Tennessee, and Arizona. Once he enlisted, the Marines trained
Richard in the field of repairing aircraft. The Marines prepared him for the worst, yet he still feels
that the government could have trained him better.
Richard
had a really good friend named Paul P. Smith, who went to Vietnam with
him. Right before Richard got on
the plane to go to Vietnam, Paul’s mother looked him right in the eye and
told him to take care of her son.
That made him feel like a big brother to his friend Paul. Richard entered Vietnam in February of
1968, and stayed until March of 1969, for a total of 13 months. He worked on the runway repairing
aircraft that had been punished by the war. When Richard looked at the villages
in Vietnam, he saw how much different they were from the homes in America. Huts were small and put together out of
whatever people could find. There
were wagons pulled by water buffalo, and people carried chickens on buses.
The main concerns on the runway were
rockets that could be launched from distances 12, even 14 miles away. Rockets would usually be fired at them
for three or four days straight and then there would be a week’s
rest. When a rocket would fly by, it
sounded almost like a train cruising by.
One day, a plane came back with a hole in
the wing, so Richard had to replace it.
After the new one was shipped in and folded in a canopy, Richard and the
crew went to a great deal of trouble putting that wing on just to have the
entire hanger, plane and all, blown up that night. Richard had been living in that hanger for three months, so
he knew it like he did his own house.
When it blew up, he climbed out of the truck and felt lost. It was dark all around, except for the
headlights of the truck, the dark blue sky, and a few remaining pieces of
debris, that were still slightly on fire.
When
he left the Marines as a Corporal, he came home to a party hosted by his
father. Richard was displeased
with the public’s behavior towards him and other Vietnam veterans. It was even more disheartening when he
wanted to work for Bradley Field, now Bradley International Airport; but they
said he’d have to go through schooling again and then still be on a
waiting list for a job, which might take as long as six years. This clearly felt wrong, since he had
gone through three years of schooling already and had worked on highly
classified aircraft in the war.
After all that schooling, and actual war experience fixing aircraft in
dire situations, Bradley International still said that he needed to complete
the same schooling all over again.
Richard changed in several ways after having gone to war. He now eats faster and can wake up from a sound sleep whenever he wants without an alarm clock. He no longer sleeps through thunderstorms at night. Only two weeks after he returned from Vietnam, he went to Ensign-Bickford, a company in Simsbury that makes and tests explosives. While he was there, they set off an explosive in the back; and Richard dove under the truck out of instinct. Everyone else just stood there chuckling, but none of them had been to war either. . Yet, he also feels like a much better person after coming home from war, too. Presently, Mr. Richard Zommer is a service manager at State-Line Oil in Granby.