Looking for lost respect: Stan Lucke recalls coming home from the Vietnam War

Former Scottsbluff police officer Stan Lucke always knew he wanted to go into the military. What he didn’t know was that he would fight in one of the most controversial conflicts the United States had ever participated in.

“I always wanted to be in the military. I knew from the time I watched my first John Wayne movie,” he said, jokingly, but a commitment to service also ran in his family.

His grandfather was drafted into the Marines to fight in World War I just two years after he arrived in the United States from Denmark, and his dad fought in the Army Air Corps in World War II. Even his three older brothers signed up for the military as soon as they could. It just made sense for him to follow suit.

His two oldest brothers, Wesley and Ed, joined the Navy, and his third oldest brother, Duane, joined the Army to fly helicopters. Stan wanted to do the same.

“I thought that’s what I want. Because I love to fly,” he said. “So, a week after graduation from high school, I was at Fort Bliss, Texas, in basic training.”

From there he went to Fort Rucker in Alabama for helicopter airframe school and just a few short months later, he was checking into the 25th Infantry in Vietnam. It was Dec. 5, 1968. He was 19 years old.

He began with doing a lot of bunker guard, but it wasn’t long until he worked his way up ladder, volunteering for any job that needed to be done.

“Well, I always volunteered. I never did learn that lesson that one thing you never want to do in the Army is volunteer,” he said.

He eventually became a door gunner, and then finally a crew chief of his own aircraft. His crew’s job was to do everything from transport troops to haul “chow.” He loved it.

“There wasn’t a job too big or too small … if it came along, we did it,” he said. “If the regular aviation companies that had 20-30 aircraft, if they didn’t have time to do it or didn’t want to do it, we did it.”

Stan said one job they did often because other companies didn’t want to was collect deceased soldiers and take them back to a South Vietnamese village called Long Dien to be prepared to go back home.

Not all of their missions were somber, though. Stan said that his crew would sometimes go “grocery shopping” for troops by collecting ration cards and picking up food for them. They also would do this whenever they were going to celebrate something, since each soldier was only allotted one bottle of whiskey a month.

One time, a crew member was informed that his wife had a child, and to celebrate, Stan gathered up ration cards to get a bunch of champagne.

“We learned real quick you didn’t pop these things,” he said, with a laugh. “Here we are a bunch of 19- to 20-year-old kids. None of us have ever drank champagne.”

It's stories like those that are much easier to tell when a soldier returns home. Jeannie, Stan’s wife of 32 years, said there are still things from his time in Vietnam that he’ll never tell her about, and she understands that, especially as a nurse who spent most of her career in the emergency department.

“The longer we were married, the more I think he felt comfortable telling me more things about Vietnam, but I know that there are still things he will never tell me,” she said. “In a way I can understand that from the job I’ve done as a nurse because I’ve seen some horrible things in my line of work…

“So, I never pressed Stan for stories because he’ll tell me what he feels he’s comfortable with, and the rest — it just has to stay inside. So I have to respect that.”

Stan said the military did its best to support soldiers who needed it, but it’s hard to help someone through something when they haven’t been through it themselves.

“It’s kind of like, to teach a person how to get off of drugs, you need someone who has gotten off of drugs,” he said. “They know the true aspect (of what they) have gone through.”

He added that the animosity toward the conflict in Vietnam and the soldiers who fought in it didn’t help.

“I was taken aback quite a bit when I got home, when I got back to the states …You walked through the airport in your uniform and…” he paused. “They would try to spit at you and stuff, and call you baby killers.”

Stan had stayed at Fort Carson for about 10 months before finally going home, but the hostility toward the military at that time was so bad, that his superiors at the fort encouraged the soldiers not to wear their uniforms in public to avoid conflict. That was a major disappointment for Stan, who felt that this just played into the disrespect that soldiers were experiencing.

“Soldiers had always been honored, whether they were in war time or anything else, because of what was expected of them,” he said. “And then all of a sudden … they turned against us, the soldier.”

From there, Stan decided to give up his idea of a military career. He said it just didn’t fit. When he retired from the military, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. After welding for a few years, he found that he was able to repurpose his interest in the military for his 33-year police career.

“It wasn’t fly him but it was driving around,” he said. “It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with being a police officer.”

Still, adapting to civilian life after being in the thick of wartime horrors wasn’t something that he or any other veteran could do over night. Jeannie recalled Stan’s occasional night terror flashbacks when a helicopter service was put in near their home.

“He had some flashbacks of Vietnam, that was not a good, good time for him,” she said.

“It was mainly when I was sleeping,” Stan said. “They would crank up and throw me into dreams.”

The difference, Stan believed, was the amount of time soldiers today have to make the transition. In wars like World War I and II, soldiers came back home by boat, giving them time to process the transition to civilian life. In more recent wars, soldiers can be fighting to survive under gunfire one day and sitting at the dinner table eating with their family the next.

“How do you express the fact that, ‘Ah crap, today’s a day I gotta die. I don’t want to die here. This isn’t a way to die.’ Or other feelings and stuff. You can’t do that,” he said.

It definitely didn’t help that he, along with other Vietnam vets, felt unwanted and disrespected when they came back from the conflict. It wasn’t until June 2015, when Stan and his brother Duane went on an honor flight, that the disconnect between his time as a soldier and his life as a civilian finally were able to start bridging the gap.

The flight was called the Vietnam Combat Veterans Flight, and it took veterans to the nation’s capital for a tour of the different monuments and conversations with Nebraska congressmen. The sendoff and reception both included large crowds of people honoring and thanking the veterans for all they had done.

Jeannie said she thinks it might have helped heal that wound a little bit that has stayed with Vietnam vets all these years.

“We could tell when these guys came back that that was the thank you and the respect that they were looking for when they came back from Vietnam,” she said. “I think both Duane and Stan just felt so much better about themselves … So, this trip they went on was just the medicine they needed to help heal that particular wound from their service.”

“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “It was nice.”

*Originally published in the Star-Herald on Nov. 11, 2020.