Christmas no holiday in Vietnam for former state senator
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> Roy J. McDonald was near the Cambodian border, in South Vietnam, on Christmas Eve 1970.
There was supposed to be a truce, but the Viet Cong had other ideas and shot down a U.S. helicopter, which hung from the dense jungle’s canopy, with three soldiers aboard.
McDonald’s job, as a 1st Cavalry Division forward observer, was to help secure the perimeter so the enemy couldn’t penetrate the crash site.
“We were on the ground for about eight hours,” said McDonald, a Troy native, former Wilton town supervisor and state senator. “Finally they were able to take out the one guy who survived.
“Two bodies, of those who didn’t, came second.”
When the chopper crashed, ammunition including phosphorous grenades, which one of the deceased soldiers had been wearing, caught fire and the men couldn’t escape.
As one of the dead soldiers was lifted up to a medevac helicopter, the body bag melted and the soldier’s remains fell to the jungle floor.
“You’ve got to pick up the pieces, and I knew the guy,” McDonald said. “I never thought I’d be doing that. I did, but …”
The experience, like many he endured during a year-long tour in Vietnam, is too difficult to fully explain.
But the public can gain a better understanding of the hardships American soldiers suffered through a permanent new exhibit at the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs.
Entitled “Hot Spots in the Cold War: Korean War and Vietnam War,” it covers the entire era from 1950-75.
Depending on the need, McDonald, a sergeant, saw duty in the air aboard helicopters, in jeeps or out on foot patrol.
“You did what they told you to do,” he said.
The goal, in each situation, was to locate the enemy.
“I would hang out of a helicopter, looking for somebody,” he said. “Then they give you smoke grenades — red, blue, green. You throw one down, then I would call in artillery fire or they would send in helicopters to attack the
enemy.”
“I had no idea I’d be in an air mobile infantry unit. I don’t like heights. If I go up two steps I’m scared,” McDonald joked. “But you can’t say no. That’s just the way it was.”
The 1st Cavalry lost more people — 5,444 killed in action, 26,592 wounded — than any other division serving in Vietnam.
“That’s the division I hoped I wasn’t going to,” he said. “Then I realized the reason they were assigning so many people to the 1st Cavalry is that they were replacing people.”
As horrific as his 1970 Christmas Eve duty was, McDonald had a much closer brush with death one day while riding in the back of a jeep, leading a truck convoy.
“We were tired, it’s really hot and bushes were hitting us in the face,” McDonald said. “I’m thinking, ‘Boy I can’t wait to get to this fire base. We’re only an hour or two away from it.’”
The jeep he was in stopped, to keep from getting too far ahead of the trucks.
It was so hot that McDonald put his flak vest and helmet on the floor.
“I looked over and this guy, a Viet Cong soldier, popped out of the bushes,” McDonald said. “He’s holding a rifle, looks right at me and shoots. Boom! He missed. The driver, this good old boy from Alabama, just stepped on the gas and got us out of there.
“Boy, in that two seconds you think about all kinds of stuff.”
Currently living in the town of Saratoga, McDonald grew up in Lansingburg and was a newspaper boy, delivering The Troy Record, so he always enjoyed reading the sports section.
“When I went to Vietnam my mother and father sent me the Troy paper,” he said. “I would get them in groups of five or six at a time. I loved reading the paper. My favorite story is, on Thanksgiving we had about three or four Huey helicopters full of soldiers and we were about two miles inside Cambodia on a dirt road where they landed.”
“We’re tired, hungry, and slept on the ground next to the helicopters in case we had to get out of there quick,” McDonald said. “I’m reading my newspapers, which we got every other week or so. In this one article, the Secretary of Defense said there were no troops in Cambodia.
“So I told the guys, ‘We’re not here!’ They passed that paper around. I’ll never forget it.”