Morenci veteran travels to Washington, D.C., with Honor Flight
Late Tuesday night at Toledo Express Airport, Ernie Cardinal and about 80 other Vietnam War veterans received a welcome home far different from the one they got a half-century ago.
As the veterans and their “guardians” who accompanied them on the Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., exited the Allegiant Air jetliner, doors to a hangar opened and cheering family and friends were waiting to welcome them.
"They went above and beyond anything that I even expected,” Cardinal, 76, said Thursday at his home in Morenci. “…I about collapsed when they opened up the (hangar) when we came back. My eyes, it was like Niagara Falls, I think.”
Among those waiting for Cardinal were his daughters Leah Bergman, who came from Oneida, New York, and Nancy Moomaw of Westland, his grandson Noah, and his friends Doug and Kathye Herrera of Morenci.
“Then when I seen my kids and my friends and people I knew, it got even worse. I couldn’t even talk. I had a hard time talking to Dan Cummins,” he said of being interviewed by the WTOL reporter at the airport. “It was just a great experience. I can’t thank them people enough.”
The veterans — two women and the rest men — had spent a long day that started early to catch the 5:30 a.m. flight from Toledo to Baltimore.
Traveling by bus in the Washington area, they made stops at the World War II, Korea and Vietnam memorials on the National Mall and the Air Force Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery just across the Potomac River where they saw the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“That was the first time I’d ever seen it,” he said. “…People don’t get that opportunity. I just feel really honored to see it. That was something.”
They also saw the Marine Corps War Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the Pentagon, the White House and Capitol, and several Smithsonian Institution buildings.
The weather was sunny and in the low 70s, so they didn’t need the jackets they were given along with a T-shirt and cap.
Each veteran was paired with a guardian — Cardinal’s was David Burke of Deerfield — who could help them if they needed assistance. Cardinal said he needed to use a wheelchair sometimes to get around.
This was the third and final trip of 2022 coordinated by Flag City Honor Flight in Findlay, Ohio, the nonprofit organization’s website said. These were the first trips in two years after the excursions were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic. The veterans’ travel is paid for by donations to the Honor Flight program. The guardians each make a $400 tax-deductible donation to cover their expenses.
Cardinal had waited six years to take the trip. When he signed up for it, priority was being given to World War II veterans.
While the Vietnam Veterans Memorial — the Wall — was meaningful to him, Cardinal said he was most moved by the Korean War and WWII memorials. The Korean War memorial depicts infantry on patrol. Its 19 sculptures of soldiers become 38 when reflected in a nearby polished, granite wall, depicting the 38th parallel that separates North and South Korea.
The Wall includes the names of every U.S. serviceman and woman who died in Vietnam. Cardinal made rubbings for his neighbors of two of the names — Richard A. Jones and Gary A. Teeter — from Morenci. Both were serving with the Marines when they were killed, Teeter on Jan. 8, 1968, and Jones on June 24, 1968.
He also found the names of two guys he went to high school with: Earl Smith, who served in the Army and was killed June 30, 1966, and Franklyn Germany, who also was in the Army. He died July 18, 1968.
Cardinal was 20 years old in 1966 when he enlisted in the Army rather than wait to be drafted. He thought by enlisting, even though it was a three-year commitment compared to two years when drafted, he could at least choose what he wanted to do. He signed up to be a medic.
“I always did like the medical field. I might have been trying to stay out of the infantry maybe, I don’t know,” he said. “I just felt like I wanted to help somebody. I did, but I ended up in the infantry.”
He was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. He was there from September 1967 to September 1968.
An advantage to being a medic is he could overrule officers in order to get wounded or sick soldiers treatment. He recalled a time when a captain didn’t want to call in a medevac helicopter for a soldier who had contracted malaria and had a 105-degree temperature. The captain didn’t want to have to wait for the helicopter to arrive.
“Finally, medevac came in and took him away and he was OK,” Cardinal said. “But he could’ve died from a mosquito, not a bullet.”
Cardinal caught malaria himself — he described it as the flu times 100 — but managed to avoid being wounded, though there were close calls. He described being able to hear enemy bullets flying past him as he treated wounded soldiers and another time when an American AC-47 Spooky gunship accidentally strafed his unit’s position. It was nighttime, and he and five other guys were just chatting. He saw in the distance the gunship shooting its Gatling gun. The tracer bullets looked like a red line going from the plane to the ground. He saw that it was coming their way and they took cover.
The radioman with them started screaming — a bullet had scraped him going straight down his spine, but he was not seriously wounded. It was mostly a burn.
Another man, though, had been shot through the ankle. He didn’t make a sound, perhaps from the shock of being hit. Cardinal treated both of them.
He said the gunship shot on the wrong side of the strobe lights they had set up to indicate where friendly troops were.
Despite the close calls, Vietnam was his favorite part of being in the Army.
“I never regretted going,” Cardinal said. “That was actually the only place I used my training.”
When he came back to the States, he was assigned to the motor pool at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was in charge of the medical vehicles. He disliked that so much he almost went back to Vietnam, but he was discharged in 1969 after serving three years.
Some of Cardinal’s experiences during and after his military service will sound familiar. For example, his daughter, Lisa, was born while he was in Vietnam. He was at the Dak To base camp when she was born, and a Red Cross nurse called him to tell him mother and daughter were OK. The guys he was with helped come up with her name, and his father sent him some cigars to hand out to celebrate.
While in Vietnam he was exposed to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, which the Air Force sprayed on the jungle to kill the leaves so bomber pilots could see targets within the trees more easily. An ingredient in Agent Orange was found to cause cancers and other health problems. Cardinal said he eventually was deemed by the Veterans Administration to have a 100% disability from the effects of Agent Orange.
When he returned home to Dearborn, the welcome was far different from what he experienced Tuesday night.
“Vietnam was one of the ugly parts, I think, of our country,” he said. “I think I did good while over there, but the part I really think about is when we did come home and we were treated like crap. You know, people spitting at you and they called us baby killers and all this negative stuff. It disgusted me. I wasn’t really happy about it when I came home. Even family members and everything, they didn’t really know how to treat you. They were glad you came home, but there was never any kind of a party or welcoming or nothing.”
When he enlisted, he was working for a package delivery service, working out of the Michigan Central Depot train station in Detroit. When he came home after being discharged, he was supposed to get his old job back. He had to make a phone call to someone who reminded the company about the law that required employers to rehire returning servicemen. The company rehired him — for a week before laying him off.
He ended up working for General Motors. He was laid off, put in for a transfer and accepted a position at a plant in Syracuse, New York. He eventually moved in 1993 to the GM plant in Adrian and retired from there after it switched to GM’s subsidiary, Delphi. He was a truck driver and loaded trailers when he called it a career in 2002.
He said he came home a different person and had what he called a “10-year dip, a bump in the road” that he attributes to post-traumatic stress disorder. He started drinking, which led to the end of his first marriage. They remarried, but it didn’t last.
“One day, I just told myself this isn’t right,” he said. “I need to do something.”
He quit drinking, and he started feeling better.
“I met a really nice woman,” he said. “That was my third wife.”
He and Sharon were married for 32 years before her death three years ago. She managed the York Hill Apartments in Morenci, just down the street from their home.
“My whole life turned around,” he said. “… You meet the right people, it changes your life.”
Along with the effects of Agent Orange, he’s had heart problems, including some heart attacks, but other than the loss of his wife, he said for the past few years he’s “been on top of the planet.”
“I’ve had a decent life,” he said. “… You meet the right people and it changes your life.”
He’s tried to give back to other veterans. He’s a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, though he’s not very active now, and Vietnam Veterans of America. Now, for example, if he sees a WWII veteran at a restaurant, he’ll pay their bill. He said others have done that for him, too. He said people will thank him for his service, and he taught his kids to thank WWII veterans whenever they saw them.
He holds veterans from earlier wars in particular reverence.
“I think of all the veterans that came before me, World War II and World War I, I think they were a lot greater, did more — I think they’re more representative for Veterans Day,” he said.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Morenci veteran travels to Washington, D.C., with Honor Flight
