Hometown Heroes

Coal City Public Library, VFW Post 1336 to present the Veteran’s Experience

 The Coal City Public Library District and St. Juvin Post 1336 Veterans of Foreign Wars will present a series of stories and displays featuring local service men and women.
Veteran presentations will be part of the library’s monthly Coffee at the Library series and include veteran presentations every few months and rotating displays at the front entrance featuring military uniforms and memorabilia.
The purpose of the program is to share the veteran experience and to help the public understand their sacrifices made on behalf of our country.  The largest pool of  living combat veterans is those who served during the Vietnam War.   
One purpose of these events is to dispel the many myths that persist regarding service during this war that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans, altered the lives of millions more and changed America's cultural and social values for better or worse.
It is commonly thought that every person who served in Vietnam was drafted and that everyone in the U.S.  military during the war years went to Vietnam.  
Draftees comprised only 25 percent of those who actually served in country the other 75 percent volunteered for the military.  Of those drafted between 1965 and 1973, 38 percent served in Vietnam the balance served in other locations.  While most draftees during this period served in the Army, the Marine Corps actually drafted just over 42,000 men.
 In some quarters the Vietnam War is referred to as the “white man's war fought by black men.”  
During the period 1965 to 1975, draft age African-American males represented about 13.5 percent of the pool of inductees, 10.6 percent served in Vietnam.  86.3 percent of those who died in Vietnam of all causes were Caucasian, 12.5 percent were black and 1.2 percent other races.
Conscription, commonly called the draft in this country, has been used during the Civil War, World War I, during World War II, starting in 1940 before the U.S. was actually at war, and post-WWII from 1947 until it was eliminated shortly after December 1972 when the last group of men born in 1952 were inducted.   
The idea of an all volunteer professional military is not something produced by the war in Vietnam. It has been this country's policy between every war from the Revolution until today.
Close to 9 million served in the armed forces during the Vietnam War with 3.4 million  deployed to Southeast Asia and about 2.7 million were actually in country.
 Where were the other 5.3 million members of the armed forces?
The U.S. had military commitments all over the world and during the Vietnam War those commitments included facing off the Warsaw Pact in Germany, and North Korea/People's Republic of China in South Korea, and the worldwide deployment of the Navy and Air Force.
Another common misconception is that everyone who went to Vietnam was an infantryman wading through rice paddies.
The U.S. Armed Forces then, as now, is a highly technically advanced combat force with a relativity low “teeth to tail” ratio. The “teeth” are the direct combat arms, the “tail” is the forces required to keep them in the field. Approximately 40 percent of the total forces in country were “teeth.”
Kicking off the new series of veterans stories were Post 1336 members Keith Roseland and James “Hoppy” Phillips. The Vietnam veterans shared their experiences during at Coffee at the Library on March 20.
The first display of uniforms and memorabilia at the library's front entrance will be Phillips’. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Phillips was a 19-year-old Mazon farm kid when he got his draft notice in December 1967.
Having four uncles who served in the Marine Corps, he jokes, “I didn't think that I would be able to attend family reunions if I went in the Army.”
At the time, being drafted entailed a two-year active duty commitment while the Marine Corps was a four-year stint. However, enlisting in the Marine Corps or any other service offered a chance to attend technical schools that might be useful after service.  So Phillips took some tests and qualified for training in the aviation electrical/electronic field.   
Every Marine is a rifleman, so notwithstanding the guarantee of technical training, in April, 1968 he reported to the Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot in San Diego, CA. for boot camp, followed by advanced infantry training at Camp Pendleton.
After Pendleton he was surprised with an offer to attend Officer's Candidate School but this required an additional two-year commitment. Declining the offer, he reported to Jacksonville Naval Air Station  in Florida for 20 weeks of aviation electronics training.
After successfully completing the training he was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, NC and Marine Refueling Transport Squadron VMGR252.  VMGR 252 operated KC130F Hercules aircraft for air-to- air refueling and cargo/personnel transport.  
Phillips worked on the C130 aircraft instrument and navigation systems. After about six months he requested transfer to Vietnam. The request was eventually granted and he reported to Da Nang, Vietnam in January 1970 where he was assigned to Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 17 as a flight line mechanic working on C-117, C-54 and US 2B aircraft.  
After about a month or so he volunteered for flight crew status which involved flying in C-117 aircraft on combat missions dropping illuminating flares over forward positions of Marine ground forces.  These missions were flown at night about twice a week.
 Other combat missions were flown on the same twice a week schedule in US 2B aircraft monitoring Pave Spike sensors placed along the Ho Chi Min Trail by specially equipped F4 Phantom II aircraft. The sensors picked up the noise level of anything passing and some versions could identify the unshielded ignition noise from gasoline engines.  
Information from the sensors was relayed to an operations center which provided real time tactical air strike information for attacks to interrupt the flow of supplies to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.
These missions earned Phillips the Marine Corps Combat Aircrew Badge
In July 1970, Phillips and his unit boarded the USS Durham for Iwakuni, Japan where he completed his overseas commitment.
 In January 1971 he returned to the U.S. and was stationed back at Cherry Point, NC and was assigned to  Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 27. There he finished his active duty enlistment being released in April 1972 as a sergeant.  
Phillips joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1971 and is presently a life member and the junior vice commander of St. Juvin Post 1336.
After his discharge  Phillips worked for his uncle Melvin Phillips, one of the four uncle Marines, in his hardware store in Minooka.         He later put his Marine technical training to good use working for Reichold Chemical as an instrument technician then transferred to Commonwealth Edison for a 25-year career, mostly in the instrument maintenance arena.  
He married Lois Wooden in 1974 and moved to Coal City where they raised their two children. The couple has been married for  43 years.