by Lisa Loomis

Republished in observation of Veterans’ Day with permission from the November 9 Valley Reporter, the weekly newspaper for the Mad River Valley

Arthur Dages of Waitsfield was 19 and living and working in Totowa, New Jersey, when he got drafted into the U.S. Army, Infantry. He deployed to Vietnam in November 1969, after completing basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey. His service was from June 1969 to March 1971.

He went to infantry training in Alabama for eight to 10 weeks and said infantry training was much tougher than basic training.

After infantry training and a brief leave, he found in himself in San Francisco with thousands of others, in an overseas placement station where he and others waited for their name to be called to be shipped overseas.

After a long flight, he landed in Bien Hoa Air Base in a depot, again, with thousands of other soldiers. After another process of sortation and assignments, he ended up in the Alpha Co, 2nd Battalion, 47th infantry, 9 Infantry Division in the middle of the Mekong Delta. He was a light weapons infantry machine gunner.

“It wasn’t the most desirable job to have. The day I got to base, my company was coming back and they’d taken a number of casualties. In my squad, the machine gunner got killed that day and the guys were all pissed off. The platoon sergeant picked up his gun and threw it at me. It was nothing against me,” he said.

He and his fellow platoon members spent long weeks during the rainy season trying to interdict enemy troops throughout the Mekong Delta, conducting sweeps during the day and night.

“On a good night, nothing happened. On a bad night, s–t hit the fan,” he recalled.

Beyond the obvious dangers and difficulties of war, the weather and the rain made their lives hell.

“It was 110-115 degrees every day, with stifling humidity. We sweated round the clock and it was pointless to take a shower – not that showers were available. We’d go a week or two without one. We’d come in from operations and take off our jungle fatigues and throw them in a pile and burn them,” he said.

And as sweaty and dirty as their fatigues and bodies were, their feet were an even worse problem. Their feet were always wet from crossing rivers or the rain. When they could, they’d take their boots off to try and let their feet dry. They wore special Mekong boots with vents on the sides and did what they could with a white powder that was supposed to help their feet, but burned badly.

Dages left Vietnam with five months left to pull, and he was sent to Fort Benning in Georgia to complete his service.

He ended up back in Totowa, and eventually became a New Jersey state trooper where he served for 30 years, retiring in 2003. He and Cathy, his wife, a registered nurse, retired to Waitsfield, but both found new careers. He worked for U.S. Air at the Burlington Airport, delivering lost luggage mainly to Canada. Cathy began working in a specialized nursing field in epidemiology.

Both are really retired this time and they spend time with their grown kids in Waitsfield and Jericho as well as their three grandchildren, two girls who are 16 and 13 and a boy who is 15.