Vietnam veteran combat engineer recalls service on demolitions team

ROSE HILL, Kan. (KSNW) – On Valentine’s Day of 1968, Steve Coach was deployed to Camp Evans in Vietnam—an space only a few miles south from the DMZ.

“We have been the furthest most base that you could possibly fly, fly plane out of,” Coach stated.

As a fight engineer, Coach and his demolitions workforce served as mine sweepers trying to find bombs that had landed however didn’t go off.

“Nearly all of the munitions that we have been assigned to handle have been 250 and 500 bombs that have been normally dropped by B-52s,” Coach stated.

Coach says lots of the bombs he helped detonate safely have been issued through the Korean Conflict.

“Our job was to go in and with out transferring them (since you by no means knew how delicate these fuses have been as soon as they have been clicked into the on place) set some explosive on ’em, and put it on a timer, and get out of the way in which,” Coach stated.

Greater than 50 years later, Coach remembers the deafening roar of TNT & C4 destroying bombs prefer it was yesterday.

“Oh, it’ll blow your ears out. It’s onerous to explain when your chest simply heaves and takes the wind out of you,” Coach stated. “The stress of an explosion: you may have a sine wave, if you’ll, of stress that goes out in an arc, and it blows the bark off the timber and does all types of loopy issues, however, you already know, it’s highly effective.”

Coach and his workforce clearing roads and hills throughout the harmful A Shau Valley—oftentimes working whereas getting shot at.

“All people talks about Hamburger Hill and, and people notorious locations that have been out in A Shau Valley, and we have been on a few of these hills, and we went in,” Coach stated.

The A Shau Valley was an space additionally closely deforested with Agent Orange.

“So, you couldn’t get away from it, you couldn’t drink the water within the streams, and also you couldn’t get away from it. It’d, it might rain, it might wash off the timber and get on ya,” Coach stated.

Coach’s firm additionally labored to uncover booby traps, landmines, and different weapon paraphernalia. Within the course of, the corporate suffered heavy losses.

“It was the D Firm, 14th Engineer Battalion…156 or so in our firm…we went into the A Shau Valley at firm power and got here out fairly a bit lower than that,” Coach stated.

Coach says working towards inconceivable odds to maintain his cool, and sheer luck bought him out alive.

“Effectively, you don’t have a selection,” Coach stated. “If you happen to lose your cool, one thing could occur that you don’t have any management over, however if you happen to maintain your cool, as you set it, numerous instances you’ll be able to management the atmosphere round you and make the very best out of a scenario, in order that’s what we tried to do.”

Coach would stay in Vietnam till February 1970. He would go on to serve with the WPD for 23 years earlier than working at Boeing for 17 years. He and his spouse reside a peaceable life elevating alpacas in Rose Hill.