Page 80 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2025 - Online Magazine

by Larry Williams

ike thousands of fellow enough of that. I complained to
Vietnam veterans, Wayne everyone that the Marines and
LGee is still dealing with the Seabees weren’t doing anything
aftereffects of that war 60 years but sitting around on the deck
later. The memory of things seen eating burgers and drinking Cokes.
and done can linger for a lifetime. I told them I wasn’t going to do
any more work details, so I got
Vernon Wayne Gee was born on put in the brig for the rest of the
April 10, 1946, to Cleo and Julia trip. At Okinawa, I was assigned to
Gee of Bovina, TX. His dad was the 173 Airborne Brigade known
rd
a lineman for Southwestern Bell as the ‘Sky Soldiers’ at Camp
Telephone Company. “He helped Kubasaki.
string all the telephone lines from
Farwell to Lubbock, so we moved “My weapons qualifications
to Lubbock not long after I was were good. I was awarded the
born. sharpshooter pin for being an
expert with the M-14 rifle and the
“I attended Atkins Jr. High School M-60 machine gun. So the Special
and Monterey High School but Forces took me in. They marched
dropped out after my junior year me to Camp Mitchell (part of
to join the Army. Most of my Kadena Air Base) where I was part
relatives were in the Marines or the of the MACV (Military Assistance
Air Force, but I picked the Army Command), a joint-service
and enlisted on October 15, 1963. I command, including Army, Navy,
was 17. After enlisting, I was sent Air Force, and Special Operations
to Fort Polk, LA for basic training, forces. We were a covert group
then to Fort Ord, CA for eight that conducted special operations
weeks of AIT (Advanced Infantry in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and
Training). I also attended jump Vietnam. We fought along the
school at Fort Benning, GA. Ho Chi Minh Trail; sometimes it

“After graduation, I was sent to was recon and sometimes specific
Oakland Army Terminal where targets. I went on six or seven
I was put on the USS General missions, and we never lost a
J.C. Breckinridge and set sail for man. Some of our missions were
Okinawa. Only 82 of us Army guys top secret. Our official stance was
were deployed with a battalion ‘places we never saw and things
of Marines and a battalion of we never did.’
Seabees onboard. We got all the “I was in country one year. My last
crappy duties such as cleaning, operation was the worst. We were
K.P. (Kitchen Police) duty, painting, dropped in by a Huey helicopter
swabbing the deck, and so on. It and ‘broke up a meeting’ at a
didn’t take long for me to have village in Cambodia in May 1965

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