Jill Schramm/MDN At his home at Somerset Court in Minot Oct. 31, Gordie Thoreson holds a photo taken of himself in Vietnam in 1968.

Gordie Thoreson of Minot received a Purple Heart for injuries received within days of arriving in Vietnam in May 1968, but those injuries didn’t keep him from later going on to help others as an Army medic.

Thoreson graduated from Velva High School in 1960 and worked construction for a time before becoming employed at Central Power’s power plant. He was there a couple of years before getting a draft notice in 1966.

When he told the plant superintendent he had received his draft notice, the superintendent offered to help him get out of the obligation.

“I says, ‘No. I’d just as soon go,” Thoreson recalled. Coming from a long line of veterans in his family, he was prepared to follow in their footsteps.

“The superintendent said, ‘Oh, I’m glad you say that,'” Thoreson quoted. “He was a six-year Navy veteran. He says, ‘This country wasn’t made with cowards.’ So right or wrong, I went.”

He trained at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and San Antonio, Texas. While at Fort Bliss at El Paso, Texas, he and his friend, Timothy Dockter of Anamoose, now of Fargo, received initial orders that had them going to Thailand, but their enthusiasm was short-lived as those orders soon were replaced with new ones sending them to Vietnam.

Thoreson was initially assigned to the 101st Airborne. Within 10 days after arriving in Vietnam, he was in his barracks at Bein Hoa Air Base, preparing to board a flight to A Shau Valley, where he would join the 82nd Airborne. Shortly after 11 p.m., an air attack occurred. Thoreson was struck near his right ear by shrapnel and was medically flown to a hospital, where he spent the next 42 days. The shrapnel ruptured his eardrum, and his doctor was convinced Thoreson also had suffered a skull fracture, given the type of injury. A series of X-rays over the course of his hospitalization showed otherwise, and Thoreson was released to go on to A Shau Valley.

“It was a very deadly place. There’s a lot of people didn’t make it out of that place,” Thoreson said.

As a medic, he ran toward enemy fire to help wounded soldiers.

“I was not nuts about it. I just about hated it,” he said of the job.

Thoreson remembers the day a fighter chopper was shot down, and his commander sent him as part of a medic team through the jungle toward the enemy to provide rescue. They found one person with a broken leg and another unhurt and called in another helicopter to carry them out.

Meanwhile, another fighter chopper, called in to deal with the Vietnamese enemy, was drawn to a smoke grenade that likely was triggered inadvertently by a soldier. Smoke grenades were meant to be used by spotters to identify a target, and the fighter chopper began shooting at its own troops.

Thoreson said he was talking to the E5 medic in charge, who ordered him to get down just in time to avoid being hit. But the E5 medic was killed, blown into a tree by the power of the artillery. Thoreson and another medic retrieved the body under continued friendly fire from the chopper.

“He was going to come in again. If he would have, I would have been dead, and a few other guys,” said Thoreson, who was promoted to E5 following the incident.

The soldiers also faced dangers from the series of underground tunnels built by the Vietnamese military during previous generations of war. Thoreson recalled walking ahead of his platoon through the jungle to watch for and dodge holes indicating underground traps.

Thoreson was in A Shau Valley until the end of November 1968. Completing his two years of service, he was discharged on Dec. 5.

Thoreson recalled getting off the plane in San Francisco with Dockter, each carrying a captured enemy rifle as they strode through the airport terminal. The anti-war mood was prominent in California, and Thoreson experienced the backlash when an individual at the airport confronted him to ask how many babies he killed.

“Then, of course, we went home, and nobody wanted to hear about it, so I never said anything for 40 years,” he said. “We couldn’t. I mean, nobody listened. Some people thought it was a big joke.”

The attitude toward Vietnam veterans has softened to reflect a greater appreciation for their service, Thoreson said. Today, he said, “Everybody wants to hear it – where I’ve been, what I’ve done.”

Thoreson married his wife, Carol, and rejoined Central Power, working there another 25 years.

He is a life member of the VFW and a member of the Velva American Legion, Minot DAV and Forty & Eight.

Formally known in French as La Societe des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux (The Society of Forty Men and Eight Horses), Forty & Eight is an independent, by invitation, honor society of American veterans founded in 1920. The name refers to box cars that held 40 men or eight horses.

When Forty & Eight in Minot disbanded, members transferred to Bismarck. Thoreson belonged to the Karlsruhe VFW until the group transferred into the Minot post.

Thoreson is a past commander of the Karlsruhe VFW and the American Legion in Velva. He also served as treasurer for the Legion for 35 years.