 John Laemmar
Evanston, Illinois
Manufacturing company executive - He joined Navy in 1967, landing in Saigon in May of 1968 to begin the first of three Vietnam tours in the Navy’s Mobile Riverine
Force
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"I know it took a tremendous toll, especially on my mother. I wrote a letter home after our first fire fight, and my dad asked me to never write a letter like that home again. He said, ‘If you want to write, write me at the office,’ because it just devastated my mother. We had some guys wounded severely in the boat in front of ours and by then it had become an everyday thing. You go out, you get shot at, you take some casualties. It was like getting up in the morning and going to work, and it was just extraordinarily difficult for her."
"I think for me, I can acknowledge that Vietnam was the most defining moment of my life and today I count it as the most valuable experience of my life. I wouldn’t trade it. I think it pushed me beyond anything I could ever have imagined that I could have done or accomplished. … I think even in Vietnam I felt, ‘You know, it’ll never be worse than this, and it’ll never be better than this.’ By better, I mean the interaction with each other, all my buddies. There was a great simplicity to life back then. You had very little to worry about other than staying alive and doing your job. I think because of the simplicity, you saw the extremes of what one person can do to another person."
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