Gary Volkening

MAHOMET — In Vietnam, a sniper bullet passed through Gary Volkening’s wallet while he was sleeping in a hooch.

“This is what a 7.62- millimeter bullet hole looks like going though your Social Security card,” he says, showing a souvenir from the night before 1968’s Tet offensive.

The bullet also passed through his hip.

“I felt the adrenaline rush and got to a foxhole. I was the only one hit,” he says.

Then came the waiting.

“We were out in the boonies until we got medevac-ed,” he says.

Medical staff were overwhelmed by the enormous casualties of the Tet offensive.

He earned the Purple Heart, along with a handful of other medals.

“Didn’t they tell you to keep your head down and your butt down?” friends asked.

Growing up near Aurora, Volkening, 72, tried to enlist in the Air Force after he graduated from Northern Illinois University, where he’d taken a history course on Southeast Asia “that was completely out of date.”

Hearing damage kept him out of the Air Force.

“They had us in the room for a hearing test, and people started to walk out,” he says. “I asked when the test was, and they said it was already over.”

So he was drafted, which meant the Army, and in his case, the cavalry, where horses had been replaced by helicopters.

On the Hueys, they called him “Big V,” but he thinks a better nickname would be “Big Target.”

“I never came face to face with the enemy, so I’m relieved I never had to kill anybody,” he says.

“I became more religious. I can recite Psalm 23 — ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ — forwards and backwards.”

Trouble seemed to follow him. On July 4, 1968, his fellow soldiers decided to celebrate Independence Day with a wiener roast, beverages and, unwisely, bonfires.

The enemy zeroed in on the bonfire with mortars.

In Khe Sanh, where his unit supported Marines, rockets were fired at his unit from Laos.

The Viet Cong were quick and quiet, he says, recalling an instance where soldiers captured an enemy combatant and climbed up a hill to retrieve a weapon — only to find that the Viet Cong had stolen a U.S. Claymore anti-personnel mine.

Soldiers often threw their rations to hungry Vietnamese children from a Jeep, and made themselves vulnerable to young terrorists.

“You get to feel safe, and you’re not,” he says. “Thank the good Lord I got out of there alive.”

Finally, Volkening was moved to a safe job at a headquarters base in the rear, as a mail clerk.

The Army figured that, as a college grad, he could handle the job. It also involved serving as a courier, delivering pouches and never knowing what was in them.

He was sent home, but only after being held back from one flight, almost missing Christmas.

Upon his return, “everything had changed.” The anti-war movement had grown strong.

He left the Army after another six months.

Student teaching had convinced him that that occupation was not for him. Volkening spent his career working for Osco Drugs all over the country, eventually landing in Champaign.

He has been married for 46 years to wife June. They live in Mahomet and have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Do you know a veteran who could share a story about their military service? Contact staff writer Paul Wood at pwood@news-gazette.com.