History tells us that for some….war is easy to start, but to win the war..... one needs the “will to win”.

I was born in Ponca City in 1941, some 81 years ago, when life seemed so much simpler than it is today. My father was Jim Young and my mother was Marcella Young. I went through the Ponca City school system, graduating from high school in 1959. I was the captain of the baseball team and we went to the state finals that year, and lost a 19-inning ballgame to Tulsa Edison in the state finals.... that was the same day that the 1959 Junior/ Senior Prom was being held. And I was not worth a hoot to my date, because I was the catcher on the baseball team and was only interested in getting some rest after such a trying day.

My father was a drilling contractor and drilled wells for E.W.Marland and Lew Wentz all over Oklahoma and most of Texas, and in 1929, he and several other Ponca City businessmen built the six story, 106 room Jens-Marie hotel in downtown Ponca City, located at 2nd & Cleveland.

In 1949, after World War II, Ponca City was short of housing and returning soldiers from World War II were coming back to Ponca City, so my father developed the housing addition directly west of the Ponca City Hospital which includes the streets of Mary, John, Jane, and Joe (my brothers and sisters), Young Street, Marcella Avenue (my mother), and Williams Avenue which was the farmer whom my dad bought the land from for the houses. There were 306 houses built in that addition for service men and women who were returning from serving in World War II.

After graduating from high school in 1959, I attended OSU for four years and received a Business Degree from OSU in Stillwater in 1963. At that time, the military draft in America was still mandatory for all young men 18 years and older, and I was scheduled to be drafted for a three year mandatory military service in the Army/Navy/Air Force/ Marines/ or Coast Guard..... so I decided to join the Navy to serve my country for the three year required term. I took several tests which the Navy gave me, and in 1964, they sent me to the Naval Officers Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island. I spent several months there getting officer’s training, and then in late 1964, I received a Naval Officer’s Commission in the Navy. They told me that my next three years would be on a naval warship home-ported in San Diego, California, and that I would be the communication officer, but would also be required to code and decode secret and top secret messages for the ship from Naval Intelligence all over the world. So they sent me to crypto school and the FBI did a top secret background investigation on me so that I would have a top secret/crypto certification to handle all of the classified communications which would come through our ship.

In the spring of 1965, I received my orders to report to my ship in California, which I did. The ship I was assigned to was a 1944 World War II ship named the Fort Marion (LPD) that had served in both in the Atlantic and Pacific at the end of World War II. It had also been a major ship during the Korean War in the 1950s. The ship was 450 feet long, 95 feet wide, with two double boiler main engine stacks 60 feet in the air. The ship had 300 enlisted men and 20 Naval officers assigned to it, with the ship also being able to carry 2,300 Army and Marine troops and their equipment to their destination. The ship had a well deck 30 feet deep, which was used to carry Army and Marine tanks, jeeps, artillery, SEABE(CB) runway equipment, and several million dollars of canned food for our troops in the battlefield areas.

With all that weight, the ship drafted 16-20 feet deep for the full length of the ship and would cruise about 17 knots (20 MPH).

When I reported for duty on the Fort Marion, I had never been on a Naval ship before and knew nothing about how to maneuver a craft so large, but my commanding officer assured that I would learn quickly along with the other 20 officers. I was the communications officer and had 30 men and $60 million of communication equipment under my command, plus my department was adjacent to the radar, combat equipment and the large guns which were also on the ship...... of which I had never been trained to use.

A few days after I reported for duty on the ship, we got underway and headed on a one year assignment in the South Pacific. We would first go to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which would take seven to eight days to get there. We would refuel, and head for Subic Bay in the Philippines, which would take us another 17 days to get there. This would happen in late 1965. After being in Pearl Harbor for a few days, several of the ship’s officers had gone to the Officer’s Club one Saturday evening for dinner and an evening off the ship......when all of a sudden the base’s alarm system sounded a major alarm all over the base, and a major announcement was given that all leave was cancelled by everyone, and that all officers and enlisted men of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were to immediately report back to their duty stations, on the double...... which we did.

When we returned to the ship, we were told that the president of a nation called South Vietnam had been shot and murdered and all of his staff killed, that the government had been taken over by a communist group, and that President Lyndon Johnson had issued immediate orders that America would come to the assistance and aid of the prior government. Army, Navy, and Marine soldiers of America would be sent to South Vietnam to assist the people of that nation with keeping democracy and freedom there.

That evening, Army and Marine soldiers started reporting to the ship I was on, and hundreds of jeeps, tanks, and artillery equipment were delivered to the ship to be loaded on the ship the following morning.

The next morning, millions of dollars of food was delivered to the ship and was loaded for us to take. Several hundred soldiers were loaded on the ship, and we got underway for a place I had never heard of: Vietnam. We had no maps, no charts, no radar plates, no navigational equipment for the area, nothing about Vietnam. We were told to get underway and go to Subic Bay in the Philippines where maps, charts and necessary navigation equipment would be waiting for us there.

For the next seven days on the ship, soldiers were everywhere. Exercising, shooting their guns, cleaning equipment, sharpening bayonets, getting ready for action that we knew nothing about, in a place we knew nothing of, for people we had never met, and an enemy that was ready to kill us because we were going to help the people of that nation have peace, honor, democracy and freedom.

Once we got to Subic Bay, we refueled and loaded thousands of rounds of ammo for the guns on our ship; we received maps and charts for the Vietnam area, and got under way for a land 8,000 miles away from Ponca City, America. All officers were given a steel helmet and bullet- proof vest to wear, machine guns to carry and orders to return fire upon anyone who fired on us. Eight days later, we entered the southern part of South Vietnam in an area known as Cam Rhon Bay and headed north up for six hours on the Saigon River to off load our troops and equipment in Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City). President Lyndon Johnson was telling the world that any and all troops we were sending to Vietnam were being used as “Military Advisors Only” and wouldn’t see any action as we helped the government of South Vietnam with keeping their democracy and freedom. That would quickly change when thousands of American “Military Advisors” soon arriving in that nation. Our ship unloaded everything we had and returned back to Subic Bay several times and reloaded troops and military equipment where we oftentimes would unload at Da Nang and Chu Lai on the eastern coast of South Vietnam.

The ship I was on was also oftentimes used to patrol and pick up any Air Force pilots when their planes were shot down over North or South Vietnam and could limp their aircraft toward the waters of the ocean and bail out. We would pick them up and return them either to a Navy hospital ship for medical treatment or to their Air Force base where they would prepare for another sortie over hostile areas. Our ship spent most of three years in that area of the world, and I had men in my department who had three year old children they had never seen before we returned to the states.

The ship I was on delivered thousands of soldiers in the Army and Marine Corps to the battlefield areas of South Vietnam for combat duty. I was very fortunate that the good Lord kept me alive and returned me home, because I was oftentimes in very hostile and dangerous areas where many of our troops lost their lives.

In 1967, I had completed my three year assignment and was scheduled to be honorably discharged from the Navy. At that time, the buildup in Vietnam was greatly expanding and the Navy was needing officers to stay in the service for another three year tour. My detailer in Washington contacted me and reviewed my performance evaluations. He asked that I commit to the Navy another three years of service. If I did, I would be promoted to Lieutenant Commander and I would have a preference of where I would be assigned for the next three years. I told him I would do that if I could be assigned as an instructor to the University of Oklahoma as an ROTC Naval Instructor to Navy cadets who were finishing their college education at the university.

He told me that was impossible, that nothing like that was available, and he couldn’t help me at all. I said “thank you” to my detailer and continued to be discharged with honor from my ship.

Two days before I was scheduled to be discharged, I received a call from my detailer in Washington and he told me that they had created a place for me in Norman, Oklahoma, at the University of Oklahoma, as a Navy ROTC Instructor, teaching college juniors who were in the Navy ROTC program, teaching Naval Operations and Celestial Navigation for three years; that I was being promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and that I was to report to Norman, Oklahoma immediately for training of the job.

I packed my bags, thanked my commanding officer for the great man he was and for helping keep me alive while I was under his command. I spent the next three years at OU teaching cadets the necessary requirements for being good Naval Officers.

Then, in 1970, my detailer told me my assignment in Norman was expiring and that my next assignment would be for three years on a Navy Destroyer in the South China Seas supporting the Vietnam effort. At that time, I was in the process of getting married to my wonderful wife, Gayle, and I was also scheduled to receive my Master’s degree from the OU school of Business. I had had enough of the war effort in Vietnam and I decided to be discharged from the military and try to make a living in the business world.

I am proud to be a veteran. I am proud of having served America in the Armed Forces of our country. I am proud that America is a democracy believing in free enterprise based on hard work, reasonable taxes, and being able to leave the fruits of our labor to the ones we love. But we need to remember that war is hell and so is the will to win.

In World War I, where we lost 180,000 lives, we were winners with our allies. In World War II, where we lost 385,000 lives, we were winners. In 1947, Douglas MacArther told the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Truman, and the Congress of the United States that “A ground war in Asia can never be won” and in June 1950-1953, we were in Korea where we lost 38,000 lives and we didn’t win for the people in South Korea; and still have 25,000 soldiers in South Korea trying to keep peace and freedom.

Then in 1964, we were involved in the Vietnam War for ten years, and lost over 60,000 lives, spent over $1 trillion of American taxpayer money in a country where the people have been fighting each other for several hundred years and haven’t had the will to win for themselves.

And since Vietnam, we have fought wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East of Asia, and have lost over 3,000 lives there, and have been driven out of that area by a dedicated force called the Taliban, who have had the WILL TO WIN..... and now we are threatened again by the governments of North Korea, by the Chinese, by Russia, and Iran.

Let us not forget what the veterans of our past have been willing to do for us in this great America and that they have been willing to sacrifice so much so that we can have the freedom we have in this great country.

Thank you, America!