Thankful reunion

Vets happy to get together 53 years later

For more than five decades after he came home from the Vietnam War, John Henschel never met with any of the veterans he’d served with.

At first it was because it was hard for him to talk about his war experiences, and more recently because he didn’t know where any of his fellow vets were.

But recently Henschel of District Township finally joined a Facebook group designed to connect Vietnam veterans.

And within an hour of logging on he received a message from fellow Air Force veteran Rick Weitzel of Muhlenberg Township that both surprised and thrilled him.

“I was in Bien Hoa (a U.S. Air Force base in southern Vietnam where both men served),” Weitzel told Henschel. “I remember you.”

“I screamed to my wife, Charlotte, ‘Look at this!,” Henschel said.

When both men realized they lived so close to each other, they quickly made plans to meet.

And that reunion — which was 53 years in the making — happened at Mission BBQ restaurant in Wyomissing.

Weitzel didn’t have a camera in Vietnam, and wasn’t one to keep souvenirs from his wartime experience.

“I just wanted to do my duty and get home safe,” he said.

But Henschel did take pictures and well-documented their time there, and brought to lunch his photo album and scrapbook that told much of their Vietnam story.

High-priority target

In 1968, when Henschel was 19 and Weitzel 20, the two were among the K-9 handlers at the base, meaning the two walked the base perimeter with sentry attack German shepherds by their side.

With the base containing a squadron of F-100 fighter planes as well as fighting helicopters, Bien Hoa was a high priority target for the enemy, especially around the Tet Offensive, a particularly deadly time of the war. The men’s assignments therefore put them at high risk for both ground and rocket attacks, and several other handlers were killed while they were there.

“They definitely wanted our base, and we were the first line of defense,” Weit

READING EAGLE Vietnam Veterans Rick Weitzel, left, and John Henschel look at photos Henschel has from their time serving together in the Air Force. At Mission Barbeque in Wyomissing where they met and spent time catching up.