Page 93 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2021- Online Magazine

Marine corps
VieTnaM War

“almost making yourself sacrificed. Most of them
a target, so they’d start had lost friends, many had
shooting, and you’d know been injured physically,
where they were.” many more emotionally.
Nearly 60,000 never made
Dr. Ordóñez documented it home. When the Marine
his experiences in a book deplaned at LAX, a young
titled When I Was a Boy: woman approached him
One Year in Vietnam. and called him a “baby
(See the book review in killer”. The anti-war
this issue.) His account protests and alienation
of his tour is both easy from friends and family
and hard to read. He made his homecoming
originally wrote the bittersweet.
book as a legacy for his
family, but a review by There is one thing
E.R. Zumwalt, Admiral, Vietnam did for Robert
US Navy, Ret. (Chief Ordóñez – his brushes
of Naval Operations, with death convinced
1970-1974) describes the him that he was not ready
“mixture of drama, fear for eternity. He knew
and mundane events … his good deeds were not
The tragedy, humor, and nearly enough to make
revealing insights about up for his bad choices.
the war's impact … make A few years after his
it a worthwhile as well as discharge, he discovered
a most enjoyable read.” The book was used for years that there was a solution for dealing with sins. On a
in the history curriculum of a North Carolina high sabbatical to Mexico, he met a family of Christians
school and as a textbook in a South Dakota junior “who exhibited a joy and peace that I had never
college. experienced.” After studying the Bible for two years,
he decided to embrace it as truth and “from that
Dr. Ordóñez became good friends with Admiral moment forward, my life changed, and continues to
Zumwalt and even served as his personal
physician. About the admiral, he said, “He was
a fantastic person. He loved the enlisted man.
He was very beloved. He was a champion for
forcing the government to recognize (the hazards
of exposure to) Agent Orange,” because his own
son, a Marine, had been a victim of the deadly
herbicide.

After his year was up, Robert, by then a hardened
corpsman, returned home to a country that did
not appreciate what he and his comrades had

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