Vietnam loomed for ‘68 Brookville boys

By Darrell Laurant

Published: June 28, 2008

Early in 1968, Jason Rutledge, Eddie Martin and two other Brookville High School seniors drove up to Arlington National Cemetery to attend the military funeral of a former football teammate, Russell Blatz.

“What I remember most,” Rutledge recalled, “is that it was sort of dehumanizing. It was a closed casket, and the ceremony was kind of generic. A young, vibrant person had been reduced to a box.”

In July 1967, Blatz was credited with saving the lives of several members of his platoon after they were badly injured by a booby trap hidden in thick elephant grass. His Bronze Star citation said in part:

“He braved the booby trapped areas repeatedly in treating his casualties, and when the platoon medical corpsman arrived, Private Blatz led him through the dangerous vegetation ... Private Blatz’s courage and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service …”

Blatz, who had dropped out of Brookville in 1966 and was drafted, was promoted in November. Two months later, he was dead.

Vietnam loomed like a thundercloud in 1968 for the seniors at Brookville High School, as it did young men everywhere approaching their 18th birthday. While the school’s yearbook that year made no reference of the war, most everyone was touched by it in one way or another. The boys, by law, entered the draft pool, although the draft lottery would not start until late 1969, for the Class of 1970. Still, most of the boys knew their likelihood of being drafted was high unless they had a student deferment.

Just about everyone knew someone heading to Southeast Asia — or like, Blatz, already there.

“I remembered Russell mostly from playing football,” said Rutledge, who now directs the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation on 75 heavily wooded acres of Floyd County. “He was sort of country, and he wasn’t a natural athlete, but he was strong, and he was a hustler. He always put out on the field, and the coaches liked that.”

Rutledge had no desire to emulate his friend, however, so he enlisted in the Navy.

“It actually worked out well for me,” he said, “because I did most of my service in London.”

Classmate Larry Lewis took the same route.

“I entered the Great Lakes, Illinois, boot camp in October of 1968,” he said, “knowing I couldn’t swim. But it was either the Navy or the Army, and if you went into the Army, you knew where you were going.”

The problem was, Lewis remained defiantly non-buoyant.

“One of the first things we had to do,” he said, “was jump off a platform 20 feet above the water. I was fighting for my life, knowing I couldn’t float. After a few frantic moments, a young Marine offered me a pole to grab. Unfortunately, it was only to be pushed back in.”

He passed everything else in boot camp, even gas chamber training. He just couldn’t swim.

Eventually, he said, “they told me that if they could not put me on a ship they could not use me, and if I couldn’t swim, they couldn’t put me on a ship.”

He finally got an honorable discharge. (“I was lost, confused, and mostly embarrassed.”) In March 1969, he went to work at Babcock & Wilcox, and is now employed at Areva. He married another Brookville graduate, from the Class of 1969.

Tom Grubbs put his name on the National Guard waiting list, No. 130.

“I’m convinced to this day that my Dad pulled some strings for me,” he said, “because I shot up that list, and was called to join. He knew the guy in charge of the local Guard at the time.

“I had my swearing in at the Army-Navy store, in a back room. On my way home, I stopped to get my mail, and there was my induction notice. It was a close call.”

Today, Grubbs, Rutledge and Lewis have different opinions on the war in Iraq.

“Vietnam didn’t make any sense to me, just like Iraq doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Rutledge, a self-described “rebel” who now teaches environmentally conscious foresters how to use draught horses for “low-impact” logging.

“I can see how they (Vietnam and Iraq) are similar,” said Lewis, “but the war on terrorism is the bigger picture, the threat of global terrorism. The younger generations don’t seem to comprehend that the USA could cease to exist as we know it if we let our guard down.”

Women couldn’t be drafted in 1968, but that didn’t mean they weren’t affected by the war. Eleanor Floyd Messina had two brothers serving in Vietnam at the time of her graduation.

“At the end of that summer,” she said, “I left for Washington, D.C., to attend college. It was a time when I saw our military men and women booed, spit at and cursed; where our nation’s flag was burned.

“I cried then and am crying now, thinking about those memories.”

She spent much of her free time as a volunteer at the USO, often organizing trips to the area’s attractions — “and of course dances.”

One soldier, she recalled, “asked me to help him write home to his Mom and Dad to let them know of the extent of his injuries. He had lost his sight and was unable to write for himself. He had been telling his family that he was fine in order for them not to worry, but he was going home soon and felt they should know about his blindness. I wrote the letter for him.”

She emerged from the Vietnam years more patriotic than ever. Others in her class became disenchanted, embittered and cynical.

So while Brookville was mostly quiet in 1968, the 111 “Bees” who graduated ended up mirroring the divisions of the country at large.