On Nov. 22, 1963 I was a junior at Valley Forge High School in Parma Heights, Ohio. I was a member of the audio-visual team at the school and hence a member of “WVFH,” the school’s radio and public address system. When I walked into the WVFH room, I was immediately told to watch the television in the office, and when I sat down in front of the TV I heard that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was on his way to the hospital.
Ten minutes later, they announced that President Kennedy was now dead and that Lyndon Baines Johnson was now the President of the United States. Our teacher, Mr. Krogel told me to go into the sound room and get the microphone to announce to the school what had just happened in Dallas. That day is a day in etched in my mind today … “but.”
There’s a word in the English language that changes everything you said before it and that word is BUT.
In 1965 I graduated from Valley Forge and was 18 years old. The Romph family was a relatively lower income home and unless it was by scholarship none of the Romph kids was going to college. I was 1A draft status and every day the evening news would show what was happening in the South China Sea and the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam.
I’m only 5-feet-5-inches tall and half of the time on the evening news they would talk about American Army “tunnel rats” being killed going into a tunnel under a hooch in Vietnam. A tunnel rat was normally a small infantry troop, and as small as I am, I was a natural, draft-able tunnel rat, so I enlisted to be a “clerk typist” in the Army.
Two years after I enlisted, the order came down. I was to report to San Francisco on Sept. 20, 1967 for transport to the 1st Army Postal Unit, A.P.O. San Francisco 96238 which meant Qui Nhon, Democratic Republic of South Vietnam.
While in Vietnam, and especially during the Tet Offensive, you were aware that your purpose to the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam was to defend that nation.
We watched the black pajamas of the Vietcong walk through the Cha Rang Valley only 10 miles from Qui Nhon in January 1968 carrying their AK47s — BUT they weren’t shooting at anyone so we couldn’t shoot them.
We saw the North Vietnamese Army troops come through the A Shaw Valley just outside of Hahn Khe in the central Highlands, but it wasn’t until the evening of Feb. 1, 1968 when they shot their AK50s that the American Special Forces troops could return fire and made those black pajamas retreat from the valley.
We defended Hahn Khe and fought the NVA into retreat, BUT we did not defeat them. America defended the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam, but we never sent in the offense and hence America lost to the North Vietnamese and there is no Democratic Republic of South Vietnam today.
On Sept. 11, 2003, the offensive line of the jihad struck America at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia — BUT Saddam Hussein hadn’t thought about the Commander-in-Chief in America sending the offensive line onto the field after him — BUT 2004 was an election year and there would be a new Commander-in-Chief replacing him soon who would pull the offense off the field and jihad had a chance of controlling the world’s energy dependency on the middle east. Saddam and Isis could control the world since America or the rest of the free world didn’t send in the offense.
America has had jihad declared on it and all we do is send in the defense so that America won’t be labeled as the aggressor.
I was born in 1947, just two years after America pulled the offense off the field in Europe and Japan. America defeated Hitler and the Japanese because we sent the offense onto the field and won the game.
Years later after that war, the Chinese were attacking in the coastal nation of Korea and America sent in the defense. In 1953 America pulled the defense from the north side of the 38th parallel. North Korea was separated from South Korea by the declaration of a truce.
Make no mistake, BUT if it weren’t for the promise of America by treaty with the South using its offensive line against the North Koreans, Korea would be a single communist nation.
In Vietnam the American people spoke and we withdrew from that nation. We gave it up. We lost the free people of South Vietnam and the day after America left its embassy in Saigon, Saigon didn’t exist any longer. It was now Ho Chi Mihn City. America didn’t field its offensive team to win the game.
I was fortunate since I left the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam on a stretcher, BUT just weeks before that med-evac I had to report to the unit’s CO who told me that I was not to wear my uniform in any civilian airport in America because of how those in uniform were treated stateside.
Three months later, after learning how to walk again, I was discharged from Valley Forge Army Hospital, went back to Ohio and started back to work at Ford, Cleveland Engine Plant, and within hours of starting back on the assembly line a man looked at me from across the line and I quote, since I remember it vividly:
“So you were in Vietnam, huh?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Well, how many kids did you murder?”
Go to the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport today and watch what happens whenever you see someone wearing a uniform get off of an airplane. How many people go to that uniform to shake the hand of the person wearing it? It was the Vietnam veteran that changed how we feel about those uniforms today, BUT America needs to use its offense in order to win the war that has been declared against us “infidels” by jihad.
They declared war on us. We did not declare war on them … yet. They have their offense on the field, BUT it’s time for the highest ranking person in the Armed Forces, the Commander-in-Chief to step up and not fear using the offense. It’s time to back up the defense so they may win the game too.
John Romph
Fayetteville, Ga.
