A Soldier's Story: Memories from Vietnam

Sitting across a dining room table, Tony Schutty pulls a cigarette from a pack. “You don’t mind if I smoke do you?” he says as he cracks open a window. The unlit cigarette slides through his fingers and hits the table repeatedly as he talks about life as a soldier. The 60-something Newton native hasn’t talked publicly about Vietnam, where he spent a year of his life serving his country during one of the nation’s most tumultuous times. But a recent reunion between himself and a fellow soldier — Alan Rhoades (see story below) — who was in a helicopter crash with Schutty has brought him to a place where he can discuss his service. “I just don’t talk about it much. I guess the reunion means I’m supposed to talk about it,” the veteran said while drinking a cup of coffee and thumbing through photos. The veteran is proud of his service but humble about the Purple Heart and Bronze Star he received during 365 days in country. “It’s not about me,” he said during hours of talking. “It’s about the guys I served with. The guys who didn’t come back. The guys who served, I can’t emphasize enough the caliber of these men.” The Vietnam war took young guys like Schutty, who was drafted at the age of 19 into the U.S. Army, and turned them into soldiers and the caliber of men and women he refers to. Schutty received his training in the states at Ft. Benning, Ga., before being shipped over seas for a tour of duty in Vietnam. “I received NCO training, and I studied everything because I knew it could some day save my life and others when I was over there,” he remembers. The training he received helped Schutty complete his missions with the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol of Company E of 52nd Infantry. The LRRPs (pronounced “lerps”) were six men teams who went deep into enemy territory to gain information that could assist fellow soldiers in staying alive and defeating the Viet Cong. “We were pretty much subjected to combat 24/7,” he said. “We were in combat or subjected to those situations 300 of 365 days. Practically the whole tour.” Schutty was one of the lucky ones, leaving with only minor physical injuries. The constant exposure to war took its toll on the military with more than 58,000 U.S. service men and women killed and more than 305,000 wounded in action between 1959 and 1975. Although Schutty makes it clear he lost friends and fellow soldiers and saw horrible things, he doesn’t go into detail about his tour time in Quangtri, the northern most provence in South Vietnam. Instead, he talks about generalities. “Some of the things you experience over there,” Schutty stops and collects his thoughts. “If I really reflect on them, they’re really despicable. It’s kind of like Pandora’s box.” Reflecting on his time, the veteran said the whole set up in Vietnam was unreal. “They were fighters,” he said of his enemy as he fidgets with the unlit cigarette he still has in his hand. “They had stone wheel carts with water buffalos and we had F4 fighter jets dropping napalm. It’s kind of crazy.” After a year of combat, Schutty left Vietnam and the war behind him and returned home to Newton, raising a family and working 36 years at Maytag before retiring. With 40 years between him and his service, he said despite the losses and his own personal physical and emotional scars, he believes in his mission and what the U.S. was trying to do. “Socialism and communism theoretically looks real good but in reality it’s poverty, disease and pestilence,” he said of the conditions the Vietnamese were living in. “Looking back, I see how necessary it was and still is but it has haunted me. I was a young man. When the killing starts it’s kind of hard to tell the good from the bad. You’re just trying to stay alive.” He pauses again, lights his cigarette and looks at the photos on his dining room table. “There are guys who paid the most precious price,” he said. “I have aged and I have some wisdom now and I’d still do it again.”