'TO HEAR SILENCE'

Ronald Hoffman knows the entire population of northeast Wisconsin does not even come close to the number of people who died during the Vietnam War. Anywhere from 1.5 million to 5 million people were killed during the war, he said. It was a war Hoffman, a retired U.S. Marine living in Green Bay, knows all too well. It is also the main focus of his new book, “To Hear Silence.” Hoffman spoke of his time in Vietnam during a visit Wednesday to the College of Menominee Nation Library. The book chronicles his experience as part of Charlie Battery, 1st Battalion from July 1, 1966, to Oct. 5, 1967. He described it as “a first look into hell” and “a loss of innocence.” Hoffman said he heard that most presentations should start with a joke. “I could not think of a single joke about war and about people being killed,” Hoffman said. “We’re just going to have to skip that.” By the end of 1965, more than 200,000 American troops were deployed in Vietnam. On Jan. 27, 1966, Hoffman was drafted, which he found ironic because he had been rejected because of bad eyesight when he tried to join the military two years earlier. That changed when Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Vietnam. “It was the year we started questioning everything,” Hoffman said. “Some were good things. Some were bad. After ‘64, everything changed. Before then, nobody even knew where Vietnam was.” Hoffman remembers all too well the night when he and his fellow Marines were attacked when he was a part of Operation Chinook, which started on Dec. 10, 1967. Reading an excerpt from his book Wednesday, Hoffman recounted seeing fellow soldiers killed and maimed, and he questioned whether he would make it out alive. “I slipped into my fighting hole, and it is only then I discovered the rain has washed away my poncho,” Hoffman read. “Now the rain and the mud have started to join me in my hole. It is at this same time that all hell breaks loose. The North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong both start pounding us with mortars and rockets. “As I lay there with the ground shaking as each mortar hits, I start to think about people I hadn’t seen in years, and I start to wonder, is this the way it is before you die? I start to think, will the next round hit on top of me? God, don’t make me suffer.” Military strategy and people’s reactions differentiated Vietnam from World War II, Hoffman said. In World War II, soldiers were in the war for the duration, he said, while soldiers in Vietnam were rotated every 12 to 13 months. “By the time you got the lay of the land and how to do things over there, your time was up, and you got new people in there,” Hoffman said. Anti-war protests at home also hurt the soldiers, according to Hoffman. “It was great fodder for the enemy. ‘Look, even your own people back home hate you,’” he said. Hoffman urged people to remember that a lot of young Americans give up a lot to protect the freedom that the United States enjoy. “Wars are not fought by old men; they’re remembered by old men like me,” Hoffman said.