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Iser still uncomfortable reliving his injury day

Chuck Iser, of Huntington, holds the Purple Heart medal he received during the Vietnam War.
Chuck Iser, of Huntington, holds the Purple Heart medal he received during the Vietnam War. Photo by Rebecca Sandlin.

Chuck Iser is understandably uncomfortable about reliving the day he received combat injuries in the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam, even though it has been many years since he was “in country.”

“I’ve never talked about this before,” he says.

A Markle native, Iser spent two years in the Marines, choosing to enlist rather than be drafted.

“I was going to get drafted into the Army, and I didn’t want to go there,” he explains. “My best friend was a year older than me and he joined the Marines, so I followed him.”

He says that was “a mistake” — but the twinkle in his eye is obvious. It’s also obvious that Iser is proud of his service, his baseball cap festooned with a pin depicting the Huntington Purple Heart Memorial that has been erected in the new Veterans Park section of Memorial Park.

Iser was sent to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA, for a time, but said the “spit and polish” life there wasn’t for him. He volunteered to be deployed to Vietnam, where he was soon manning artillery.

“That’s why I’m pretty much deaf,” he adds.

Iser took part in battles at Con Tien (1967) and Khe Sanh (1968), among others — right in the thick of the fighting.

“We had just replaced another unit that got like 70 percent casualties,” he recalls. “They were still taking bodies out when we were moving in.”

At Khe Sanh, Iser’s unit was pinned down for 82 days. But it was at Con Tien where he was injured.

“We got hit almost every night by rockets or mortar,” he says. “A rocket got me, with shrapnel.”

He still carries some of the pieces of that rocket in his hands and arm. He was awarded the Purple Heart medal for his wounds.

Iser was exposed to Agent Orange while on the battlefield, along with fellow soldiers, many of whom were shirtless in the extreme jungle heat of Vietnam. Doctors told him the heart attack he suffered last year was the result of his exposure to the chemical.

When he finished his deployment, Iser had to jump onto a moving plane to catch his ride out of the country, as his unit was still under fire.

“You could see bullet holes running through the plane as we were taking off,” he says.

After he left the Marines, Iser returned to the factory job he had before he enlisted, going on to work 32 years at the Delco-Remy plant in Anderson. He is also a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6671, in Markle.

“If we had won the war, I would have felt a lot better,” Iser says, “but as far as I’m concerned, we didn’t do nothing. Now they’re having trouble with them again, just like Korea.”