Just months out of high school in 1968, Harold Laird was drafted into the Army, experienced his first airplane ride, went to basic training and then went to Vietnam. It was a major experience for the country boy from rural northwest Arkansas.
"I really felt like I was going to go to Vietnam and die," Laird said recently, recalling that a guy he'd gone to high school with had gone to Vietnam and been killed. "I knew that was going to be my fate."
"We'd captured some guys and got information from them... so went back to another village where we'd been before," he recalled. They walked all night to reach their destination, then were hit by mortars and automatic weapons. "I was asleep on my back and the mortar went off someplace between my feet." He had shrapnel through his legs and some that came out around his tailbone.
"The good Lord was looking out for me," he said.
Now, 50 years later, Laird is alive to tell about it. Injured in February of 1969 when a mortar exploded between his feet, Laird spent three weeks in a hospital before being sent home. After his discharge, he got a job, got married and started raising a family.
Laird met his future wife, Rita Trentham, at Pel-Freez rabbit plant not too long after he got out of the Army. He said they dated about a month and then got married and have been married for 48 years.
The couple has three children, Tammy Bloxham, Jeremy Chad Laird and Kimberly Karen Wallace; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
About 40 years ago, the house in which he and his family were living on Watie Street in Pea Ridge burned, destroying all his medals and family belongings.
Saturday, Laird was presented with those medals by U.S. Senator John Boozman in a ceremony in Fort Smith.
"This is really a humbling thing," he said.
"I'm really humbled by it. I'm not one for attention. I felt like I done what my country called me to do. I don't deserve any more."
"We'd come back home. I was one of the fortunate. Most Vietnam vets came back and weren't welcomed all all. We were called baby killers. There were all the protests. I've even had friends of mine who were vets who said they were spit on."
"I came home to a family that cared about me," he said. "They didn't pay attention to what everybody else said. They knew I went over there because I cared about my country, for no other reason."
"When I'd get homesick, I'd look at the stars and realize they look the same here as there," Laird said. He said when he was traipsing through the mountains in Vietnam, he would look at the rocks and remember going coon hunting with his dad in the Ozark mountains and think it looked just like home.
"Every place you went, you went in helicopter. Every place I went, I had to sit by the door," he said. He said moving through the jungle was much different than portrayed in the movies and it took much longer than anticipated. "You don't run through that stuff."
"I've noticed my memories are different than some of the people who were right there beside me," he said.
"My family is tickled to death about this," he said of the medal presentation. "I'm happy for them."
"When you serve your country like that, you understand."
Community on 11/08/2017