Stealth and deception.

Those were two of Sam Luter's tools of survival as a Marine during the Vietnam War.

Stealth he employed in the hills and jungles of northern Vietnam as he and other members of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, dug in at each new position near the demilitarized zone.

Deception is what he used when he came back home.

"I changed from my military uniform to civilian clothes at the airport," he says.

In a time when soldiers were as unpopular as the war they were fighting, men came home and resumed their lives, never speaking of their experiences of war. Now, 35 years after camouflaging his war-hardened mind and body with the trappings of normalcy, he's come home from another war, this time wearing the uniform of a conqueror and the smile of a man welcomed not only by family and friends but a grateful community and nation.

And he's ready to talk about Vietnam—somewhat. Missing are details of the sights and smells that assaulted him the day he and 49 other replacement troops were delivered to a hilltop in the Quang Tri Province, a place still littered with the mangled bodies of the Marines that went before them.

The Makings of a Marine

Sam as a young Marine.

Sam came up hard in McLemoresville, the same as every farm family along Clay Farm Road where he still lives, next door to the estate where his parents raised eight children. Andrew and Onie Luter, now deceased, had four daughters and four sons, including Johnetta, Linda, Mary, Agnes, Fred, Billy, and Paul, in addition to Sam.

"Everybody worked," says the Colin Powell look-alike. Speaking from the den of the sprawling brick home he shares with his high school sweetheart, Bulah, and their youngest son, Kevin, it's clear that hard work and good choices have been the mainstay of his life.

"We always had to work," he continues, smiling. "Everybody grew up picking cotton, hauling hay...everybody had something to do."

From Dunbar School as a first grader, he went to MTA (McLemoresville, Trezevant, Atwood) Junior High School through the ninth grade. He spent a year at Webb High School in McKenzie before integration took him to Trezevant. The differences between the two schools, while not drastic, surprised Luter.

"The discipline was stricter at Webb," he says. "At Trezevant you could smoke outside; it was a lot more lenient. This guy named Warford (Webb principal Mr. T.A. Warford)—when the bell rang you'd better not be in the hall. You walked the chalk."

Graduation in 1968 presented young Sam with a dilemma: his parents couldn't afford to send him to college, and a draft status of 1A made it hard to find a job.

"That was the kicker," he says, explaining that employers knew most young men were drafted shortly after their 19th birthday, unless they were in college.

Not long after turning 18 in June, his friend, Charles Adkisson, dropped by his house accompanied a Marine recruiter. With little contemplation, the pair decided to join on the Marines' "two-try-two" buddy plan. They were separated as soon as they arrived at boot camp, however, and—except at a distance—didn't see each other until both were safely home at the end of their enlistment.

Too late, Sam realized that his options were limited by his choice of a two-year tour of duty. Four-year enlistees had several military occupation specialties from which to choose: Sam began training for the infantry.

With his fighting and survival skills well-honed, he was allowed a month at home before shipping out to Vietnam. No fanfare accompanied his departure. In the fourth year of the war, Sam says, concerning the public as a whole, "Nobody even seemed to acknowledge that the war was going on."

Vietnam

It was in February 1969 when, after spending three weeks in Dong Ha, Luter boarded the helicopter to Quang Tri. The Marines had lost no time in sending replacements to the company that had just been decimated, the dead and wounded making an indelible impression on the fresh, as yet unproven fighters.

"The old ones weren't real friendly," says Sam of the soldiers they had joined. "We didn't know what it was, but they didn't get too attached to new people too often. A large number of troops got killed in their first three months: if you could make it three months, your chances got better."

Nevertheless, the old guard trained the new, teaching them to pay attention and not make costly errors in judgment.

"We couldn't make those mistakes," Sam says. "It's not that much different now as far as being alert."

The unit operated out of a small bay, flown by Chinook helicopter to missions near the DMZ, where they embarked upon 30-to-90-day missions.

"Everything you owned you carried in your pack," says Sam, mentally pilfering through the pack's contents. "No extra clothes, only three or four pairs of socks..."

One set of fatigues, one pair of boots, had to last the mission. A torn pair of pants meant a soldier could go three months with his body exposed to the elements. Baths were hard to come by—it could be a month or more before the chance came to wash up in a creek—but every soldier knew his feet were his most important asset. Keeping several pairs of dry socks helped guard against "foot rot", one of the leading causes of injury among infantrymen.

The list goes on... "Maybe a T-shirt and a few toiletry items; a pad of paper and pen for writing home. Some people carried a small camera..."

Also in the pack were a poncho and liner and perhaps a shelter half, which could variously be used, snapped together, as a tent and to provide ground cover for sleeping. As for sleeping bags, Sam says, "We didn't carry nothing like that. You didn't need it."

"Critters" were incidental to the environment: mosquitoes, flies, leeches, and centipedes as long as small snakes were among the nuisances of living in the jungle.

Sam continues the list. "Food would be the rest, maybe enough food to last a week or two."

"Food" was old-fashioned C-rations: heavy, canned meals for use in the field, usually a meat-based course, canned fruit, dessert, powdered cocoa, sugar, powdered cream, coffee, cigarettes, a couple of pieces of chewing gum, and toilet paper. But each "meal" had to be stretched over several days, and sparse battlefield meals typically consisted of one can selected from among those carried.

"If they said make it last a week, you'd better make it last two weeks," says Sam. "We went hungry a lot of time."

Then six-feet tall and a sinewy 150 pounds, he knew that even when a food drop was made—by helicopters under fire from enemy artillery—the packages could be out of reach.

Water was similarly scarce, a few sips had to suffice regardless of the degree of thirst. Sam, eyes glazed and searching, recalls longing for just one glass of water.

"And we carried our weapon and a lot of ammunition and grenades; you were loaded," he says. "Conditions were harsh. It was real harsh."

By nature quiet and observant, Sam was fortunate to be assigned to a seasoned squad leader. "He'd been there a long time and he knew his stuff," he says. "Everything he did, we were right on his heels. He taught me everything, how to walk point and what to look for. We humped every day just about."

Sam had gone into war thinking he would fight battles every day, but sometimes a month or more would pass without engaging in direct combat. During daily patrols, if the enemy was sighted from a distance, the troops could avoid combat by calling in air strikes. At other times, however, they would run into the Vietcong on a trail, or be ambushed. On days when they thought attacks were imminent, they might be on watch all day and all night but, more often than not, strikes took place when they were least suspected.

Placed in the jungle with few personal provisions, they nevertheless were equipped with sufficient firepower, training, knowledge and sheer guts to get the job done. It wasn't long, however, before they realized they were pawns in a political game.

"We'd go on patrol and take a place, and you'd lose people and pull back," Sam says, confounded. Soon, the village they had conquered and abandoned would have to be taken again as new enemy troops moved in. "We'd sweep to the DMZ on a mission but we couldn't go across; it'd be pretty and green," he says wistfully, staring back in time. "I feel like we could've won it at any point in time."

Once the realization of their politically imposed limitations set in, Sam says, "From that point we were mainly looking out for each other and we fought for the ones that we lost; we were protecting each other and avenging them."

Curiously, the extreme conditions worked to create a veneer of self-confidence in troops who had been in the field for some time. Only when a soldier became "short"—when his tour of duty was nearing its end—did he once more become fearful.

"You don't think about dying; it don't faze you no more 'til you get close to coming home, then you think, 'I might not make it,'" Sam says.

Fast forward to 2005.

In Iraq as a staff sergeant with many years under his belt in McKenzie's Army National Guard unit—Alpha Company, 230th Engineering Battalion—Luter worked in the armory and supply section at the unit's headquarters in Tallil.

"I made sure all the weapons were functioning, checked all the ammo, set up classes for training on weapons," he begins. "We transported whatever they needed—beans, bullets and water."

Sgt. Willie Harris (left) and Luter display posters of well-wishes from their colleagues at Milan Tower the morning of their deployment.

The supplies went to northern Iraq where Company A soldiers, some as young as Luter when he was in Vietnam, scoured the streets, looking for improvised explosive devices. Other supplies went to Abu Ghraib, where Alpha Company soldiers worked to improve the prison. Other soldiers worked as carpenters or cleared roadways to eliminate structures on which terrorists might plant IEDs.

"Wherever they were at, we supplied them," says Sam, adding that, as combat engineers, he wasn't surprised to discover part of the unit's mission was the dangerous work of disarming IEDs. Acknowledging some members of the unit were faced with life and death obligations, he notes, "I think everybody realized they had a job to do and that they really had to perform it well; as a soldier, if you want to protect yourself and your fellow soldiers, you have to do your job well."

He stops and leans forward, adopting a contemplative mood, as he recalls how, decades ago, he had joined the National Guard despite the fact that "it was a no-no for a Marine to even think about joining a National Guard unit."

Describing an era in which the unit, though ill-supplied, nevertheless put heart and soul into their mission, he says, "That's one reason I stayed in McKenzie. The guys did the best they could, but they didn't have nothing to work with. They were really doing the best they could with what they had. But they had the dedication to make it and that's why I stayed."

The unit's commitment to team and mission survived over the years and paid off in Iraq. "These young kids, they did a fine job," Sam declares proudly. "After they realized what they had to do, I think they did a fine job."

In addition to better living conditions, better food, and better equipment, Sam cites technological advances in communications as major improvements in wartime service since the Vietnam era.

"We had good communications in Iraq—phones, Internet—you could pretty well keep up with everything back home."

In Vietnam, he contrasts, letters could take two months to reach a soldier; in the field, radios were good only for a relatively short distance.

Sam and family, Bulah and Kevin, on the day of his return home from Iraq.

Devoted to each other as well as their mission, Sam says the troops worked to maintain morale. "In the Marine Corps one thing I've always said is that they're going to have a positive attitude. In the McKenzie National Guard unit it's the same way."

That commitment carried over to a community intent on letting the soldiers and their families know it appreciated their sacrifices. From a football game organized between McKenzie and Milan, where Alpha Company's detachment is based, to cards, letters, and packages, the support did not go unappreciated.

"I'm amazed at the great support that people gave the us while we were in Iraq—the packages, the football game, everything—it's unbelievable to me, being a Vietnam veteran, to see how much difference there is from then to now. I was overwhelmed; it just amazed me," says Sam.

Nevertheless, he remains haunted by the ironies of Vietnam, shaking his head at the futility of a war that cost so many youthful lives.

"When soldiers know they could have won..." he says, confounded. "What did they die for? They lost their lives for nothing, what did we gain from it?"

As for the war in Iraq, he's withholding judgment as political factions battle for control.

"I feel a whoooole lot better about this war than I did Vietnam," he says, noting, "If we hadn't went there, a lot more would be going on here than there is now. But we'll have to see; this is not over yet."

He adds hopefully. "When I think about the little kids... The people are oppressed over there, it's the haves and have nots. They don't have opportunities, they don't have anything. We're fighting to help these people have democracy. We're going to have to stay over there as long as we have to; if not it will fall back to the way it was."

A member of New Reedy Creek Baptist Church in McLemoresville, Sam's future plans—with Milan Tower closing its business—are to make the most of the construction equipment he owns and "maybe do a little farming or something.

"I'm looking forward to retirement at age 60," he says, regarding his National Guard service. Thinking back on how seasoned soldiers in Vietnam helped ensure his survival, he adds, "As long as I'm around I'll try to be influential and try to help the young soldiers."

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