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When Johnny Lemons of Martinsville was 17 he joined the National Guard, at least in part to carry on a family tradition of serving in the military.
Lemons is the 10th of 12 children of the late Charles and Mary Turner Lemons, and the seventh son in the family to join the service.
The tradition, he said, was started by his oldest brother, Charles Jr., as well as two of his mother’s brothers who served during World War II.
And just has his brothers did, Lemons eventually signed up for full-time active duty, deciding on the Army. In the early 1960s, he was sent to South Korea as an artillery crewman for his first overseas tour of duty. He was stationed near the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea).
“Our guns were laid (aimed) directly on North Korea,” he said, a scenario that had been consistent since the Korean War ended in 1953.
His plan, he said, was to get out of the military after that tour and head back home for good.
But in October 1962 a little incident in Cuba that put the world on the brink of a nuclear war changed those plans.
“The Cuban Missile Crisis happened then and my tour was extended,” Lemons said, referring to the historic event when President John F. Kennedy ordered Russia to stop the process of putting nuclear weapons in Cuba.
During that time, Russian ships were on their way to Cuba to deliver the nuclear warheads to installations there, and the U.S. Navy was ordered to stop them.
The Russian ships turned back, the installations were dismantled and a showdown was avoided.
But after that, Lemons decided to stay in the military and eventually was stationed in Germany.
While there, another much more innocuous event helped shape his future by further extending his military career, he said.
One of the officers there decided that the troops should see the Audie Murphy movie, “To Hell and Back,” which chronicled Murphy’s heroics during World War II. Murphy was the most decorated combat soldier of that war and had a successful movie career based on that military fame.
“After seeing that movie, I thought, ‘I want to be just like Audie Murphy,’” Lemons said. “I wanted every medal that can be mentioned.”
But, he said, that was before he actually had ever been in a combat situation. In less than a year, he would experience the reality of war firsthand in Vietnam, and the idealism of an Audie Murphy movie wouldn’t mean much anymore.
“All you could see was fire tracers (bullets that leave a colored trial at night to indicate direction and target),” Lemons said, describing the view off the coast of South Vietnam from the USS Barrett.
A sergeant by this time, Lemons and his men were part of the 1st Field Force, a support group for airborne units.
It took a couple of weeks to get all the equipment on shore and the unit mobilized, heading south of Saigon, and it didn’t take long to see action. He said his unit was sent to support an airport used by supply aircraft, but another unit nearby was being ambushed by the Viet Cong just when they arrived. Army choppers, he said, were shuttling reinforcements in and the dead and wounded out.
He saw one soldier whose legs and about half of his head had been blown off.
“I was sick,” he said. “I got so sick.”
Lemons wanted to tell his men to provide support fire, but his superior officers said the choppers were too close.
“I knew I was going to have to do something, though,” Lemons said, and he ordered mortar fire and “bouncing Betties” (explosives that detonate in the air, sending millions of tiny projectiles on an incoming assault force) in a direction well away from the choppers.
Although his superiors were not happy with the action, he said he felt better knowing at least something was being done.
At that time in Vietnam, “you couldn’t fire unless an officer was standing behind you giving the clearance to fire, even if you saw the enemy,” Lemons said. It was a policy that, he said, was a political response to reported killings of civilians.
“But you didn’t know who your enemy was,” he said, telling a story of a Vietnamese “shoeshine boy” who was searched before entering the Army compound and ran away right before his shoeshine box exploded, injuring a tent full of soldiers.
“They figured the box had a hidden compartment,” Lemons said.
In the summer of 1967, Lemons’ combat in Vietnam ended in a rather bizarre fashion, he said.
During the Junction City offensive, which was the biggest military operation to that date in Vietnam and involved massive forces trying to destroy several Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army installations, Lemons’ unit was involved in a fire fight supporting the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s Charlie Company.
The fighting was so close, he said, his unit fired mortars almost straight up in the air. “The fighting started at 3:15 in the afternoon and at 4:30 in the morning we ran out of ammo,” said Lemons, who at this time was only about two months away from ending his tour of duty there.
Fortunately, a cease fire was ordered about that time and Lemons climbed up on a small water tower to survey the damage.
That’s when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his foot and he knew he had been hit.
Four days later, Lemons woke up in a field hospital and the first question on his lips was, “How are my men?”
“The nurse said, ‘They’re okay,’” Lemons said, “and I asked her what hit me.
“She said I was hit by a scorpion,” he said. “But I had never heard of that weapon and I asked her what it was.”
To his surprise, Lemons learned that it was a real scorpion, the poisonous kind, the kind that can kill. And, he said, he had no idea he had been that close to death.
Lemons’ brother, Jack, also came close to death while serving, but by a form of friendly fire.
Jack Lemons also joined the military, the Navy, when he was 17. That was in 1952 during the Korean War.
A gunner’s mate third class, Lemons was assigned to a destroyer, the USS Harwood.
“That (destroyer) was my home for almost four years,” he said, adding that he never saw any war action but was nearly killed while on board.
Lemons, who got out of the military after a four-year stint, said he was sitting near his station while another seaman was showing a shipmate how to handle a .30-caliber carbine. The rifle, he said, went off accidentally, hitting him in the shoulder and head.
“There was no doctor on board, just a corpsman (medic),” he said, adding that the corpsman removed as much of the shrapnel from the bullet as possible.
“They stuck a stick in my mouth to bite down on (for the pain),” he said. “I thought that was the end for me. I didn’t think I’d make it, lying there on the floor of that boat with blood everywhere.”
Eventually, he was airlifted to a hospital and pulled through, although he still feels the effects of the damage to his right eye and right ear.
Both he and his brother also say they still feel the damage from being in situations where they could face a battle, and death, at any time.
“You’re never the same,” Johnny Lemons said. “You see your buddies get killed and blown apart. It changes your whole aspect on life. I was lost (when he retired from the military after 23 years). I was a gloomy person standing out in a crowd. You don’t think you exist — not part of the crowd. Those memories will be there for eternity.”
Lemons, 65, still has difficulty talking about his experiences and said staying busy helps keep his mind off what happened. “Being idle can kill you,” he said, adding that at one time in his life he turned to alcohol.
“I’m a recovering alcoholic,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink in six years.”
Jack Lemons said he has heard it described as being “half-dead. You feel like you’re half in this world, half out.”
Both brothers say even small, everyday things such as sudden loud noises startle them, invoking memories of wartime explosions.
Also, both say they are haunted by the fact they survived and so many others didn’t, and they always will wonder why.
Jack Lemons, 71, said he remembers during World War II when a board was set up in front of the courthouse in Martinsville, and the names of those killed in combat were written on that board.
“I’d go down and check,” he said, since his older brother and two uncles were in the war.
No family member’s name ever was written on the board, but Lemons said he thought his name may be up there if he ever served.
Even with the traumatic effects of war as real today as they were when they occurred, both say they are proud to have served in the military.
And the family tradition is continuing. A nephew, Joseph Lemons, is leaving soon for his third tour of duty in Iraq.
Both Johnny and Jack Lemons say they wish today’s soldiers received as much respect and support they did.
“People (strangers) would actually hug me, offer me money and thank me,” Jack Lemons said, referring to the times he traveled in uniform.
“Anyone who hasn’t been through the experiences (of war) just doesn’t understand (how tough it is),” Johnny Lemons said.
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