In the Press...
Neptune City Vietnam Vet finally collects Bronze StarBY DAN RADEL APP STAFF WRITER - When he returned from the Vietnam War in 1970, Richard A. Walker, Jr. did not want to receive his Bronze Star. “In the ’60s and ’70s being a military person you got spit on, called baby killers. It was better to be obscure than chastised,” said Walker, 66, of Neptune City. “And I never liked the way we ended it there by just walking out,” he added Born in Point Pleasant, his family moved to Wall Township where he dropped out of high school and volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1965. The United States Army sent him to Germany instead. So he re-enlisted for another three years. “I had some friends who went over and died and I thought I had to go. I had to get into the fight,” said Walker. In 1969, he got the deployment he wanted and touched down in Vietnam on Dec. 6, 1969, into what he said was the most intense experience in his life. It was “sheer panic all the time,” a blur, and Walker, who achieved the rank of sergeant, is still not absolutely sure what he did to earn the Bronze Star. “Your commanders are the ones who put you down for the awards and you don’t always know what you did,” said Walker. He knew in 1970 when he received his DD Form 214 — the Report of Separation — when his service was complete that someone had put him down for the honor. But he opted to put his military life behind him, marry and raise a family. “He never talked about it. He only recently started opening up about it, going through pictures,” said his son, Steven Walker, 34. Steven Walker, an Ocean Township police officer, encouraged his father to seek his long overdue medal and the recognition he never got. They wrote Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., in September, who got back to them in “record time,” said the younger Walker. “This was a slip up that needed to be made right,” said Smith, who chaired the Veterans Committee in the House of Representatives for four years. “I am glad his son prompted (him) to seek them because he served his country honorably.” Smith contacted the National Archives’ National Person Records Center and the Army approved Walker’s Bronze Star, and a half-dozen more medals. Smith presented them to Walker on Friday at a small ceremony at his second-floor Freehold Township office. “I’m very appreciative of it. I wish I could share it with everyone who didn’t come back,” said Walker. His son intends to keep the medals, with his father’s service photos, next his grandfather’s burial flag for his World War II service. Originally printed on Nov. 8, 2014 in the Asbury Pak Press and online at: |