Oral Histories at Brigham Library: Jesse Palmer in Vietnam

The Brigham City Library is seeking veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If you were in one of these wars or were a family member of a veteran and would like to tell your story, please contact Kathy Bradford, 723-5777

Jesse Palmer of Brigham City was highly-decorated for his service in Vietnam. His medals include three Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars for Valor and two Army Accommodation medals. After his release from the military, he had a successful 30-year career with the Brigham City Police Department. He said about his Vietnam experience:

I don’t think one soldier is any different from another. They just do what they have to do at the time to get the job done. I don’t think any of them sit back and think about getting a medal. You see a need and you just do it.

When I got there, we were an infantry unit, and we worked mostly out of small fire bases. They tried to bring us in out of the jungle and rice paddies for one-night stand downs every 21 days. So we'd come into a fire base maybe the size of a city block with a berm around it where they’d put artillery pieces to lend us support. The other 21 days we’d be out doing different types of sweeps through the jungle.

They’d line us up a hundred people wide, five or six feet apart, and we’d sweep through this water and reed grass. The first guy that I ever killed jumped up in front of me. When he realized he couldn’t get away from this line of men advancing, he came up shooting. He shot, and I can still remember the bullet just whizzing past me. At the same time, I had come from port arms and shot him.

I’ll tell you about one of the scariest times. I weighed about 135 pounds so I was one of the skinniest guys. We didn’t have a lot of tunnels, but when we did find tunnels, I got elected several times to be the tunnel rat because I was skinny. They’d tie a heavy string to my foot and I’d go down into the tunnel to try and find the enemy. They would hide, then pop out to shoot you and go back down underground. I don’t know how far it was, but I crawled into one room and could hear somebody breathing. I knew I was getting close to somebody.

All of a sudden, someone grabbed the end of my rifle, and all I could remember was to give it the 18 rounds. Things were hitting me in the face, and the noise was so bad that I came out of there deaf for a couple of days. Things were hitting me in the face. I couldn’t even reach in to get another ammo magazine to put in and reload. It’s hard to crawl backwards in a tunnel, but I was trying to crawl backwards and felt for the string to see which way it went. I turned around and crawled out of there, and when I came out, I still had tissue, blood, and hair that was hanging on me.

I try not to think about it because I woke up for probably 10 years after that -- having dreams at night, and I’d wake up sweaty. All there were were red flashes, but I had no idea if it was man, woman, or child – somebody in there tried to grab my rifle away. There was no way of knowing, and only an idiot would turn on a light to look around in there and make himself a target. That caused me more problems emotionally than anything else.

I never went back into another tunnel. It was volunteer in our unit, and I didn’t go in tunnels. I don’t even go in caves today. I used to like to do spelunking, but I don’t do that anymore either. That was probably the scariest experience.

It was demoralizing when we got into San Francisco on the way home, and there were people jeering and saying, “You baby killer!” That is not the way any serviceman should be treated. Most of them didn’t volunteer to go over. It wasn’t our idea, but when your country calls you to serve, you serve your country. You don’t run off to Canada and hide like a few of them did. You have a duty to your country whether it’s right or wrong. If I got another letter from Uncle Sam saying they needed me, I’d be there.