This story was originally published by Daily Montanan:
URL: https://dailymontanan.com
This story has not been altered or edited.
(C) Daily Montanan. Licensed for re-distribution through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
------------



Forgotten veterans overshadowed by history – Daily Montanan

['More From Author', 'February', 'Darrell Ehrlick']

Date: 2022-02-26 00:00:00

Richard Schiltz was a victim of historical circumstance as much as he was a Vietnam veteran.

He was a Billings boy who fought in Vietnam and died late in 2021. I had interviewed him while I was at The Billings Gazette as part of the “Vietnam Voices” project.

Like a handful of veterans that were part of the project, which took place in 2015 and 2016, Schlitz has died, but thankfully his memories of Vietnam are preserved on YouTube, and in some cases, the Library of Congress, thanks to efforts by Sen. Steve Daines.

But Schlitz was one of the veterans whom I admired precisely because an accident of history robbed him and his comrades from likely getting greater recognition for the valor they displayed during a particularly harrowing battle in that wretched year of 1968.

Schlitz and his fellow soldiers should have been more documented, more praised as they were able to ward off North Vietnamese Army regulars in the Battle of Dai Do.

You’ve never heard?

It was a battle that claimed nearly half as many Americans as the bloody battle of Hue, usually among the most noted conflicts of the war, also during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Eighty-one Americans were killed in the Battle of Dai Do and more than 600 were wounded. And yet, it’s not a household historical name.

Instead, it just happened that the battle took place on April 4, 1968 – overshadowed by the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which overpowered any other news in most local newspapers and broadcasts. Even as American correspondents were filing reports back home of the ferocious and hellacious battle in Dai Do, the news of riots and unrest often relegated the Vietnam news to smaller blurbs buried deep inside the pages or later in the waning minutes of nightly newscasts.

Schiltz told me that in a group of 30 who began fighting in an area not much larger than Daylis Stadium in Billings, he was one of just two who was able to walk out when the fighting ended. By various estimates, American forces were outnumbered by a factor of five-to-one, maybe more. When enemy fire disabled his gun, he used one from one of his dead comrades, searching the lifeless soldier to find another weapon to keep the enemy at bay.

Now, Schiltz has finally rejoined those who fell around him, more than 50 years later. We were lucky enough to capture part of that history so that he wouldn’t be victimized a second time by historical oversight.

There are those soldiers who because of the atrocities or inhumanity of war are forgotten, the so-called unknown soldiers. And yet I cannot help but think of Schiltz who came back and lived with those haunting memories of a vicious fight, one well documented in histories of Vietnam yet almost completely unknown by the American public.

Schlitz’s story still stands out in my mind not because he experienced horrors or intense fighting – many of the Vietnam veterans witnessed their own misery or confronted death. Instead, I am reminded that there are another class of unknown soldiers for whom there are names and records and even wounds, and yet precious little memory of their sacrifice by an American public that doesn’t remember them because they were distracted by news closer to home.

The irony might be rich if not so tragic: Schiltz could never forget what he saw, and the people he came back to couldn’t remember.

[END]

[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/02/26/forgotten-veterans-overshadowed-by-history/

Content is licensed through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/