Chris Boyum gave the following speech at the Peterson American Legion Memorial Day program held at the Peterson City Park Historic Bandstand on May 28, 2018. This speech is printed with the permission of Chris Boyum and the Stevens family.
Good morning, and thank you to everyone joining us here today in remembrance and recognition of our fallen servicemen and women on this Memorial Day. I especially want to thank the Rushford-Peterson Middle School band and Director Jake Olson for sharing your talents with us on this special day. Thank you as well to Commander James Loven and the Gilbertson-Rude American Legion Post 526 for inviting me to speak with you today. It is truly my privilege and honor to once again stand here with you on Memorial Day. As Commander Loven mentioned, I entered the U.S. Army after graduation from high school and served for 24 years until retirement in 2012. I then had the opportunity to move back home, buying a family farm and living here for the past six years. I am a son of this community, a son who willingly left to serve his country, a son who had the good fortune to return home again.
Today we set aside time in our busy lives to honor, to reflect, to pass on memories, to remember those who served in our nation’s wars and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Three years ago, I spoke to you about two of Peterson’s sons who paid this price with the US Army in Italy during World War II. Their names are Stanford Gilbertson and James Rude, the namesakes of our Peterson Legion Post. Now I would like to remember another Peterson son who willingly left home to serve his country in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, another son who lost his life in service to our Nation. This project really began at that time. I wanted to complete a biography for him as had been done for Stanford and James, to be hung with his picture to honor him in the American Legion. They are on display here today.
The Peterson son I am speaking of is Wesley Stevens. I want to re-introduce him to you here today, this Memorial Day, so he will not be forgotten, so you will remember his name, the young man that he was, know about his military experience, how he died, and how the family coped with the loss of their son and brother. Many of you here today may have known Wes, went to school with him, knew him as a neighbor or acquaintance, or remember hearing the tragic news of his death. But there is probably much about Wes that you do not know, some of which I want to share with you here today. So when you leave here today, I hope that you will remember his name, know that he was your neighbor that lived down the road from you, not unlike many others who came before and after him in this community, a young man who eagerly joined the Army and went to war at our country’s calling, a Peterson son that died for America 49 years ago.
I personally want to thank everyone I spoke with who shared their memories of Wes. I especially want to thank his brother Doug and sister Karen for sharing family stories, photographs and mementos, Wes’ letters home from Vietnam, and his personal belongings returned to the family after his death. I also want to thank sisters Jean, Chris and Sonja for providing their memories of Wes. This tribute to Wes would be vastly incomplete had it not been for their willingness to share their brother and their family with me. And for that, I am truly grateful.
Wesley Warren Stevens was born October 28th, 1950 in Mason City, Iowa, the third oldest of eight children of Mr. and Mrs. Adell “Steve” and Frances Stevens. Wes had two brothers, Doug and Russell, and five sisters, Jean, Christine, Janet, Sonja and Karen. Their family moved from Iowa to Minnesota in 1955, where he grew up on a dairy farm west of Peterson on North Prairie. Wes had a typical rural childhood, playing with his siblings and learning to work on the farm at a young age. Wes was the mischievous type. Jean remembers Wes and younger brother Russ creating a diversion to lure her outside the house so they could “liberate” the pie she had just baked from the kitchen for a light snack. But he was also often described as patient and caring, especially to his younger siblings. Wes’ father was a strict and hard-working man, and was especially firm with his sons when it came to responsibility and discipline. Wes was a rebellious youth, some would say he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, and this attitude did not coincide well with his father’s stern ways. You see, the Stevens kids did not participate in school sports or extracurricular activities because all this running back and forth to town was a waste of gas, and there were chores at home to do. Classmates described Wes as a very intelligent and witty kid, but one prone to getting into trouble and underachieving in school. His closest friend was the late Merlin Hermanson, and by the time they were teenagers they were pushing the boundaries of their conservative rural Minnesota environment of the mid-1960s.
With ongoing conflict between him and his father, Wes lived and worked with Allen and Donna Aarsvold during much of his senior year in high school. Wes was a good worker, helping with the milking chores and other general farm work on the Aarsvold farm. He was caring and helpful with their young daughters, and overall he was a pleasant young man to have in their home. When he was finished working at the Aarsvold’s, Wes went to live with his sister Jean and her husband Marv, who were now living on the home farm on North Prairie. Dad wasn’t ready to have him home, and Wes probably felt about the same.
Wes graduated from Peterson High School on May 24, 1968. Actually, his classmates are celebrating their 50th class reunion this year, next weekend in fact. Wes was eager to leave home and get out from under his father’s rule. I think he saw the military as his opportunity to escape. His older brother Doug was already in the Army, and with the Vietnam war at it’s height and the likelihood of being drafted a real possibility, Wes was eager to enlist in the Army. He was only 17 years old and would not be 18 until October, and would need his parents’ approval to join. But signing Wes’ enlistment papers was already causing conflict at home. His father wouldn’t agree to it. But his mom did sign for him, probably reasoning that in a couple months he would be old enough to join on his own and would go anyway, so why hold him up. This would cause further tension between Steve and Fran after their son came home from Vietnam in a coffin.
Of course I never personally knew Wes, he died a year before I was born. But the more I have learned about him, I find it striking how much we have in common. I also grew up on a farm not far from where he did. I don’t remember how I first learned of him, but I remember riding the same school bus when Karen was still in school, and knowing that her brother had been killed in Vietnam. I remember watching her walk down that long driveway, thinking she must be sad, walking to a farm that to me, in my 8-year-old mind seemed idle, unkempt, and filled with sorrow. I saw a picture of Wes standing on the Peterson football field by the goal post, with the high school in the background. Just a simple snapshot, one that could easily have been of me, or any number of Peterson kids who have walked those school grounds. Not unlike Wes, I too found my way into plenty of trouble as a teenager, and by the time I was getting ready to graduate high school, exactly 20 years after Wes graduated, I was also looking for a way to escape my current course. The cost of car insurance alone was going to kill me. I too joined the Army when I was 17, and my parents had to sign the papers for me. I’m sure they had some of the same feelings and reservations that Fran and Steve had. But for me there was no war going on, besides a Cold War.
Wes was inducted into the U.S. Army on September 26, 1968. By this time, he also had a girlfriend, a girl from Lewiston named Cheryl Rinn, and they kept in contact while he was away. He met her through his friend Merlin, who was also dating a girl from Lewiston who had introduced Cheryl to Wes. He attended basic training at Fort Campbell, Ky., and advanced individual training at Fort Sill, Okla., as an Artilleryman. Wes rode a bus home from Oklahoma for Christmas leave. Actually, he rode the bus to Albert Lea, where the bus route ended unbeknownst to him. Now sitting in a truck stop after midnight, he was none too happy and started talking to a truck driver heading to Madison on Highway 16, and he hitched a ride. The truck driver dropped him off right in Peterson, and Mom and Dad were certainly surprised when Wes walked in the door at 3:30 in the morning. By this time the family was living in Peterson in a house on Church Street, now the Liss home, and the last photographs were taken of him there. These pictures included Cheryl, and they were now engaged and planned to marry after he got out of the Army. Toward the end of Artillery school Wes learned that he would receive orders to Vietnam, along with most of his other fellow classmates.
Wes deployed to the Republic of South Vietnam on March 7, 1969. Wes told his brother Doug in a letter, who was stationed in Germany at the time, that when saying goodbye, Dad had cried before he left for Vietnam. Could you believe it?!, the old man cried! Wes was making light of the incident to his older brother, as probably neither one of them had ever seen such show of emotion from their father before. But the “Old Man” loved his son, although he probably never said this to him, and he was fully aware that many sons were dying in Vietnam.
Wes arrived in Vietnam at Bien Hoa Air Base outside Saigon. He was assigned to Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Artillery, 196th Light Infantry Brigade with the 23rd Infantry Division, also known as the “Americal Division,” located at Chu Lai south of Da Nang. This is in the northern part of South Vietnam, not far from the Demilitarized Zone with North Vietnam. On March 8, 1969, the day after his arrival in Vietnam, Wes was promoted to Private First Class, but he did not learn about this until a month later. He spent a couple weeks at Chu Lai for training before being further attached to A Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment as the RTO (Radio Telephone Operator) for the Forward Observer.
As an artilleryman assigned to an artillery unit, Wes expected to be forward deployed to a firebase where the big artillery guns were set up to provide fire support to infantry elements in the field. Or better still, be assigned to a base camp such as Chu Lai providing Brigade-level artillery support from a rear area. But neither of these assignments were in store for Wes. As the RTO to the Forward Observer, he became part of the infantry with the responsibility to call in artillery support for his infantry unit. Wes was under no illusions of what this meant for him: six months humping and fighting in the bush with the infantry, and after that he could opt to stay with the Infantry as a Recon NCO or go back to his artillery unit in a rear area. If he made it that long. He wrote to Doug that only one of the last four RTOs in his current position had survived long enough to return to their artillery unit.
By late March, Wes was going out on missions with his infantry company. Wes’ attitude about the Army and his perspective about the war changed dramatically from the time he arrived in Vietnam to only a few weeks later serving with his infantry unit. He first felt sympathy for the Vietnamese people and questioned the Army’s sometimes brutal tactics to root out the enemy. But he was quickly dehumanizing the Vietnamese, and shocked by the abject poverty and primitive conditions in which most rural Vietnamese families lived. He was transitioning into survival mode of the combat infantryman, kill or be killed. Too much sympathy often led to the latter.
Wes’ first combat injury, however, came not from the enemy but from would-be killer bees. The soldiers had disturbed a bee hive while out on patrol, and Wes and eight others became bee sting casualties. Wes lost consciousness and recalled coming to once on the MedEvac helicopter. His eyes were swollen shut for two days and he spent a week in recovery. It did give him some time to catch up on his letter writing. Wes was looking forward to “stand down” coming up in mid-May, where the Battalion would be pulled out of combat operations and send to the rear area for three days of R&R (Rest and Recuperation). The soldiers planned to drink for three days straight.
R&R not withstanding, on May 5, units of the 1st Cavalry Division were ordered to clear enemy elements from the Tam Ky (Tom Key) area, where a few days earlier VC (Viet Cong) and NVA (North Vietnamese Army) elements had overrun a South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) outpost on Nui Yon Hill. After the initial assault to retake the hill failed, the 3-21st Infantry Regiment, including Wes’ A Co, was air-assaulted by helicopter to reinforce the 1st Cavalry units on the morning of 13 May 1969. At 1130 hours that morning, Wes was mortally wounded when an enemy RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) detonated near his position.
Western Union Telegram, Washington, DC.
16 May 69, 9:37 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time
Mr. and Mrs. Adel Stevens, Peterson, Minnesota
The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your son, Private First Class Wesley W. Stevens, was killed in action in Vietnam on 13 May 1969 while on a combat operation when the area came under mortar attack by a hostile force. Please accept my deepest sympathy. This confirms personal notification made by a representative of the Secretary of the Army. Kenneth G, Wickham, Major General, The Adjutant General, Department of the Army, Washington, DC.
In those few short words, in a very impersonal and matter of fact military manner, a parent’s worst fears became their reality.
The green sedan bearing a white star arrived at the Stevens house in Peterson to deliver the message just before Noon on the 17th of May. Sonja and Karen were walking home together for lunch that day from school and saw the military car parked in front of their house. Sonja remembers her mother telling her several days earlier not to come home if she saw a military car at their house, rather to go directly to their neighbor’s house instead. You see, Fran knew Wes had been killed before she received the telegram, she had felt him die within her when it happened. It was a mother’s intuition. She knew the military car was coming to their home soon. But rather than doing what her mother had told her, Sonja went inside and saw her mother slumped over in her chair crying, two military men in uniform consoling her. Dad was at work and not home yet. The girls did not go back to school that day. Cheryl later joined the family, and Fran had asked her to take the girls for a walk. Sonja remembers walking past the elementary school while the other kids were outside playing for recess. When the kids saw the Stevens girls, they all stopped playing and just silently watched them walk by. The word of their brother’s death had traveled quickly, even among the school children.
Jean received a phone call at the farm shortly after. Her Dad simply said “we lost Wes,” and he hung up the phone.
Allen Aarsvold was out in the field planting corn that afternoon. The late Dick Hatlevig was Allen’s current teenage farmhand, and he came out to the farm after school and told him the news. Wes had been out to the Aarsvold’s for supper one evening before deploying and had sent them letters from Vietnam. Wes’ death was like loosing their own son, the son they never had.
His battalion commander later wrote to Fran and Steve following his death. I quote: “On the morning of May 13th, 1969, Wesley was serving as a forward observer with an infantry unit which was on a combat sweep near the village of Khan Tan, approximately 4 miles southwest of Tam Ky (‘Tom Key’) City in Quang Tin Province, Republic of South Vietnam. At 11:30 am, Wesley was mortally wounded when an enemy rocket propelled grenade detonated near his position. I hope you gain some consolation in knowing that your son was not subjected to any prolonged suffering. I sincerely hope that knowing Wesley was an exemplary soldier who gave his life assisting his fellow man and in the service of his country will comfort you in this hour of great sorrow.”
Wes’s remains returned home on the 21st of May. Fran was determined to open the casket to see her son one last time before the funeral, but Doug was home now from Germany and convinced his Mom that what she might see inside may not be the image of Wes that she would want to remember. She relented. His funeral was held with military honors on Saturday, the 24th of May at North Prairie Lutheran Church, exactly one year to the day from his high school graduation. Fran and Steve really didn’t want military honors at Wes’ funeral, they weren’t in the mood to see anything military. Doug again convinced them Wes deserved military honors. Honorary pallbearers were his high school classmates Raymond Agrimson, Craig Anderson, Bruce Benson, Raymond Halverson, Darrell Hatlevig, Merlin Hermanson, Murray McKinley, and Robert “Bobby” Pederson.
Wes was interred at the North Prairie Lutheran Church Cemetery. At his grave, a young girl named Cheryl was on the ground crying, her teenage fiancé was gone.
The Stevens family dealt with Wes’ death the best they knew how. Mostly, it was just too painful an experience to revisit, and it was best to keep memories of Wes tucked away. Steve mostly kept his memories and feelings for Wes inside, not showing emotion, the typical “show no weakness” man of his generation. He avoided events such as Memorial Day programs where he may have to accept people’s sympathy or condolences, where he would get uncomfortable and may not be able to maintain his stoic façade. Fran eventually began to participate in Memorial Day events, being honored as a Gold Star Mother, and honoring her son’s sacrifice. As devastating as Wes’ loss was to the entire family, it probably had the most impact on his sister Chris. She was only two years younger than Wes, they were inseparable as kids growing up, he was her best friend.
Wes was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, and the Vietnam Campaign Ribbon. The Republic of South Vietnam also posthumously awarded the Military Merit Medal and the Gallantry Cross with Palm. There was a picture that appeared in the local paper of an Army Officer presenting these awards to Fran and Steve at their home, and the look on their faces said it all: there was no joy, no reason to smile, no award that could give them any peace or bring back their son.
In a letter from his Division Commander in Vietnam, MAJ GEN Gettys also sent his condolences. He wrote, “I realize how pitifully inadequate words are at such times of immeasurable sorrow, but I feel impelled to write a few lines in any event…” he concluded “When this vast and most cruel of wars is over and we have established a more generous and just world than this, perhaps we will all take comfort in the thought that your son was one of the men who made that world possible.” But Fran and Steve, and the rest of the Stevens family, were never able to take much comfort from the cause for which Wes died for in Vietnam.
Among Wes’ letters, pictures, and personal items was a poem entitled “End of Vietnam War.” The poem reads:
“The peace has come, why do I cry, the tears keep falling, though I try so hard to stop and grateful be, For all the young men who now will live to be all the things my son will never see.
I cry for all the ones who have been prisoners for so long, and the joy their loved ones must feel to know the long vigil will soon be done, The peace is too late for so many, and yet if it will save just one young life, I’ll have no regret.
If one mother’s son can live to grow in peace, that knowledge will bring me relief in my grief, Every day the news is full of war and Vietnam, now maybe I can start to forget, when I don’t have to listen to the dead and wounded listed every day.
Ring the bells, let the world know, how grateful we should all be that at last, the peace has come. Ring the bells for Wes on Saturday.”
Written and signed by Fran Stevens on January 24, 1973.
The Vietnam Cease Fire was signed that Saturday, January 27, 1973.
Ring the bells for Wes. Ring the bells indeed.
Thank You.