DAVID BERGMAN – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

After graduating from Oregon State University in 1965, nothing could have prepared David Bergman for what was ahead. He was about to start his new career as a quality control lab manager at Hunt’s, but during his interview he was told he would not be entered into the draft because the business provided several million dollars in military meals to those overseas, essentially insulating him from the Vietnam War.

That changed when he started. Bergman received a note from his boss and was put on a list for the draft.

“I went to the Army recruiting station and took written tests, a normal physical, the draft physical, and passed all of them,” he said. Afterward, he discovered there were two candidate programs available: infantry and armor. “I told him I would rather ride than walk, so that’s what I did.”

He shipped to Fort Worth, Kentucky, for basic and advanced armor training in Officer Candidate School. “It is where you learn to drive a tank, load the main gun, load the machine guns, shoot the main gun and shoot the machine guns and command the tank,” he said. “I learned how to operate a tank in basically eight weeks.” After 23 weeks of OCS, he graduated in early February 1967. “I was discharged from being an enlistee and started a new two-year hitch as an officer and then given a dream sheet.

“You tell them three locations in the United States and overseas, wherever they decided to send you, so I chose.” In the United States, he chose Fort Lewis, Washington; Fort Bliss, Texas; and then back in Fort Worth. “Overseas my first choice was Germany, the second choice was Korea, and my third choice was maybe Okinawa,” he said. “I just knew I didn’t want to go to Vietnam where all the action was.”

Ultimately he was sent to Korea to be a second lieutenant platoon leader. “I got there, and they sent me to the infantry division which was in this little camp below the DMZ (demilitarized zone),” he said. “There wasn’t much going on in Korea, so instead there was one captain as a company commander and three platoon leaders, and I was one of the platoon leaders.” At the time he was stationed, there were all kinds of little things happening across the DMZ, but nothing big. Things then started to take a turn.

“When the leader of North Korea realized that South Korea sent their best men over to Vietnam, he then decides to send his men over to attempt to assassinate its president,” Bergman said. “They were dressed up in South Korean military uniforms but were carrying different rifles so if someone saw them, they knew they were North Korean.” Bergman’s division had set up a way of defense in the north and turned them south to try and catch them. They were successful in capturing 31 men.

There was one moment during this time Bergman won’t ever forget.

“Two of my guys were walking down the road to get to their destination, but they weren’t armed and carrying grease guns,” he said. “A Korean woman hadn’t seen these guns before and thought they were North Koreans.” Wearing only their “bunny hats” and not their helmets, the two men were not prepared for what was to come. “The guys had gotten to the top of the hill and all of a sudden they see her shooting,” he said. “One of the guys, a young one from Los Angeles, stands up, and he’s shot right there. My sergeant’s calling me and he says ‘sir, we got a man hit.”

“They got him on a stretcher into an ambulance and he had a little bit of a pulse, but he was dead before they got to work on him,” he said. “It was hard because the first thing this kid’s parents get is me writing them a letter telling them their kid was killed.”

After his 13-month tour, Bergman returned to Fort Knox and got married to the woman he met during his training, and they have been together since.

David Bergman underwent a lot during his time in the military. From not knowing that he was going to be drafted to then fighting North Koreans as a platoon leader, memories of fighting alongside his men will always remain in the back of his mind.