MORRIS – Thomas A. McMillen, a Morris resident who completed two tours in the Vietnam War, was inducted into the New York State Veteran's Hall of Fame this year in recognition of his meritorious service to the United States.
McMillen served in the United States Army on active duty from 1967 to 1973, completing two tours in Vietnam, ascending to the rank of Captain, and becoming all too acquainted with the country's landscape: triple canopy jungles, rice paddy fields, and rubber trees.
During his first tour Cpt. McMillen was an infantry platoon commander. He later became a Chinook helicopter pilot during his second tour, logging 973 combat hours in one year without serious incident.
"The problem was when I arrived in August of '67, we had no training about Vietnam, we had no training about riding in a helicopter, the training was just how to behave as a soldier in uniform," said Cpt. McMillen. "The only thing we knew about Vietnam was what Walter Cronkite presented on the CBS Evening News. And so it was all destruction and fire and injuries––it really wasn't like that."
Cpt. McMillen's first tour in Vietnam was from August 1967 to August 1968. Over that year, he was commander of 25 men in the 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Infantry Division at just 22 years old. All 25 members Cpt. McMillen commanded survived the war.
"I don't think anybody was injured but that wasn't to my credit," said Cpt. McMillen. "25 people make a certain amount of noise going through the jungle and if there's five Viet Cong, they're not going to stick around and engage us, they're going to leave. So our primary mission was to search for evidence of them being around."
Cpt. McMillen said he and his 25 men often went on three-day long walking tours in search of evidence indicating the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong were near. During those missions, Cpt. McMillen said he and his men were constantly wiping spider webs from their faces, constructed by spiders as big as his hands. They were continuously battle ground leeches and on the lookout for punji stake booby-traps. "Our bed at night was Mother Earth," said Cpt. McMillen.
On one occasion in November or December of '67, Cpt. McMillen said he and his men were successful in uncovering an underground enemy base camp, disguised by woven trees laid over the entrance.
"We came into – my platoon only – a huge facility underground," said Cpt. McMillen. "It was a way station for the North Vietnamese coming south: their underground mess halls, first aid stations, all completely dug out underground. And we basically tripped into it, reported it, and backed way off, and B52 bombers destroyed it."
To the untrained eye, the scene would have seemed relatively normal––old trees had been apparently cut down long ago and had since been weathered, with mud covering the stumps.
"I had a guy who came to me and said, 'I think we're coming into a base camp.' I couldn't see it, but he had been there maybe six months more than me and spotted [mud covering the tree stumps]. That's just an experienced guy teaching a young guy something he had never seen before," said Cpt. McMillen. "And eventually I taught somebody the same thing. You just learn from exposure and working together."
Before returning for his second tour from August 1970 to August 1971, Cpt. McMillen attended flight school to pilot a Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter––a helicopter 100 feet long from blade tip to blade tip.
"I really couldn't wait to get there because I had already had a tour, I knew what it was about," said Cpt. McMillen, though adding he was apprehensive about becoming a pilot because of the complexity of it.
