Despite signing up for service only a year apart, Ray Hargroves and Benny Gibson had different experiences and reasons for being in Vietnam.
Ray Hargroves wanted to see the world. He was 18 when he volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps in 1968.
Instead, he saw his world spin after the concussion from a booby-trapped mortar shell he stepped on sent him hurtling through the air outside of his base in An Hoa, Vietnam. He lost most of both legs in the blast. The shrapnel killed five other Marines. He had been a Marine for just over a year.
When he volunteered with his step-brother, Robert Dale Kitchens,
the draft hadn’t reached his small “bubble” of a world. He hadn’t heard of Vietnam and didn’t pay much attention to politics or the world outside his teenage life in Lakeland.
“You’re out there partying as a teenager, you’re not worrying about the outside world,” Hargroves said. “We were on the edge and I knew our luck was going to run out. We didn’t think about college. We wanted to get out of Dodge and see the world.”
Hargroves and Kitchens hadn’t been in trouble before, he said, not even a speeding ticket. But their world was shrinking and boredom can be dangerous. Both their fathers had served in the U.S. Navy and it was all they heard about growing up. Ready for the next adventure, Hargroves and Kitchens headed to their local Navy recruiter. They wouldn’t be able to leave for six months. They didn’t want to wait. Hargroves said the recruiter told them the Marines might take them sooner, so they headed to a new recruiter. Two days later, he said, they were off to serve.
We wanted to get out of Dodge and see the world.”
— Ray Hargroves
“We thought, then, that we’d actually see the world,” Hargroves said. “Then we found out about Vietnam. We knew most of us weren’t coming back.”
By the time Benny Gibson was getting ready to graduate high school in 1969, U.S. troop involvement in Vietnam had swelled and the draft made its way to Lakeland. In February of 1969, he decided to join the Navy. He knew the draft would call him into the Army as soon as he graduated that June and wanted to have some control.
“You knew you were going to go somewhere,” Gibson said. “ Why not choose?”
Gibson’s service, like Hargroves’s, was influenced by his father. Gibson’s father worked in construction, so he wanted to serve as a Seabee in the Navy’s construction battalion. He wound up working in communications, serving from 1969 until 1975, when he left the service to spend time with his family.
During Vietnam, Gibson spent some time in the Philippines where he intercepted and collected communications, gathering intelligence for forces in Vietnam.
“They kept us safe,” Hargroves said.
While serving, Hargroves was focused on one thing in Vietnam: protecting his fellow Marines. He said he wasn’t concerned with escalating anti-war sentiments back home. When not in battle, much of his time was spent writing home to his mother or his girlfriend, Debra Jo. After his injury, he spent more than a year in a hospital, by the time he came home, he said, much of the fervor had died down.
After losing his legs, he said, he had one thought, what would Debra Jo think?
“She never changed her opinion of me one bit,” he said. “She’s the reason I was able to make it.”
Hargroves married Debra Jo when he got home. They were married for 35 years, until her death in 2005. And if you ask him now, he’ll tell you he’s still married. ‘Till death do you part doesn’t count for soulmates, he said.
For Gibson, service was different. He enlisted in February with a 180-day delay. June 4 he graduated from high school, June 7 he got married and June 24 he left for the Navy.
People didn’t understand why the Vietnam war was being fought,
You knew you were going to go somewhere. Why not choose?”
— Benny Gibson
he said. That, combined with negative media coverage, led to mass protests and civil unrest throughout the United States. Many young men skipped out on the draft, burning their draft cards or escaping to Canada. Veterans returning from service were spat on in airports.
“(Before I left) All I wanted to do was race hot rods and play baseball,” Gibson said. “When I came back, everybody was protesting. It became politically incorrect to serve. If you were in the service you were a baby killer. When I left it was one thing. When I came home on leave, it was like night and day.”
The friends Gibson lost weren’t just battle field casualties. Of all the hurt he felt from being labeled a baby killer, it was the best man from his wedding who did the most damage. Gibson returned to Florida during the winter between 1970 and 1971 to find his best man got married and left for Canada to avoid the draft. Skipping out on the draft had never been a consideration for Gibson, even if it was frustrating to learn the draft lottery instituted after he joined meant he wouldn’t have had to serve.
Both men agreed the idea of service was different during Vietnam than it had been during World War II and even the post-September 11 era. There was no defining moment, no battle cry. There wasn’t something people could get behind, Gibson said.
There will always be basic reasons to serve, both men agreed. You want to get out of trouble, you want to get out of town, you want to get away from someone, you want a better life or, as was the case in the draft-era, you have to. With major events like Pearl Harbor and September 11, there can come a surge in patriotism and the idea of fighting for God and country, but that fades.
Going in to serve, they said, there was no idea of God and country first. That was instilled during training and shipped out with you. That changed, though, once you had to pull a friend’s dead body from a rice paddy. Though God has become a major part of both men’s lives — they worship together at Victory Baptist Church — they served for something more immediate.
“It wasn’t for God and it wasn’t for country,” Hargroves said. “ It was for making sure your friends got out safe.”
Both men have their frustrations with Vietnam. Working in intelligence, Gibson saw information he felt could’ve been used to save more lives. Hargroves thinks a lot of it was for nothing. The war didn’t change anything. Still, though, neither man has a single regret for the risks and sacrifices they made for their country.
“I loved my job,” Gibson said.
“I served and I enjoyed it. I had a good time,” Hargroves said. “Except for that last day.”
