Vet reflects on military career

Command Sgt. Maj. James Slade, 60, has retired from the active military with a career going back to his Ranger days in Vietnam where he ran 42 missions, and, although several members of his teams were wounded, he never was seriously wounded.

Slade, a native of Stuart, Iowa, grew up in Colorado and moved to Salt Lake City in 1964 after a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to England. He joined the Army after receiving a draft notice in 1968. "Basically I was drafted, but the lady in the draft office in Murray said I could get a Regular Army number and not have to wait two weeks for the draft notice. I went home, told my parents and the next morning was on the bus to Fort Ord, Calif."

After basic training at Fort Ord, Slade went to advanced infantry training at Fort Gordon, Ga., and then to jump school at Fort Benning, Ga. "An old-timer told me to go to all the schools I could, because the war might be over by the time I finished." Slade's high scores in military aptitude tests were in language and communication, so in its wisdom, the Army put him in the infantry.

He joined an Army Ranger unit in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, in March 1969 and was sent to the Tiger Mountains in II Corps in the north where heavy fighting was going on in the A Shau Valley and around Bong Song, south of Kontum. "We worked the whole II Corps area, and once my team captured a Russian anti-aircraft gun that was used to shoot down helicopters in the A Shau Valley," he said.

At that time he was in N Co. of the 75th Ranger Battalion attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Pure luck could be used to describe Slade's 42 missions deep into enemy territory and his lack of wounds, although he had some close calls, including the time he threw a grenade at two fleeing enemy soldiers. The grenade killed them, but shrapnel from a grenade they threw back hit him, and he had to wade in a river for two hours until he reached safety.

The five-man Ranger teams were sent out into the jungle to gather intelligence and avoid direct combat, although sometimes they had no choice if they were discovered. The also were used to snatch known members of the enemy infrastructure and bring them back for questioning. "I ran 42 missions. They were supposed to be five- to six-day missions, because that was all the food and water you could carry. We were not supposed to be contact, just be ghosts and gather intelligence, but if you got contact, they were supposed to come and get you out. I was in firefights on 36 patrols. We snatched a boy out of a cave and a North Vietnamese Army lieutenant colonel from over the border in Cambodia."