Joseph Louwagie was the third of six siblings born to Marie and Gerard Louwagie, who farmed south of Green Valley. Girard wanted Joe to take over the farm after college, but Joe longed to be an attorney.

Joe married his fiancé, Jo Schmitz, in June 1968 after college. The local Draft Board changed the newlyweds’ plans when they did not give Joe an educational deferment for law school. When Joe learned he would be drafted that August, he enlisted in the Army for three years and Officer Candidate School (OCS) training.

Joe’s officer training ended when a detailed physical revealed he had a spinal fracture. No longer assured of an officer’s commission, he dropped from OCS to avoid the extra year of service. The Army reduced him to Private First Class and deployed him to Vietnam after a short home leave.

Joe arrived in Vietnam in late June of 1969. The Army assigned him to the 1st Infantry Division and he was patrolling with his infantry company within a week.

“You’d take choppers out (airmobile operations) and they’d drop you in an area and set ambushes. A lot of missions were search and destroy, but I did not see a lot of (enemy) contact with the 1st Division.”

Joe’s farm background, age, and OCS training set him apart.

“Because of my farm background, doing lots of hunting, they realized I was older and had more experience in the field. So, they put me on the point squad. I was usually second or third for the first two weeks. Then they promoted me (to Sergeant) and put me in charge of the point squad. I started walking point.”

Joe described his infantry company’s combat patrolling rhythm.

“We’d go out for four to seven days; come back and have one or two days down; and then go back out. We’d do “shotgun operations” where they’d fly six or seven into the field and drop us off. Our job was to put mechanical ambushes on trails to watch for NVA movement. We’d be in that position for days. If you were lucky you brought paperbacks to read. Your whole life was in that 12 by 12 foot area for five to seven days. We’d seldom see anything. We had a few firefights, but we had gunships come in when you suspected something. They worked over the area before you went in.”

Joe described the combat load he carried on all patrols, beyond the three or four days of food he carried.

“I would carry seven bandoleers, which had five or six clips apiece for the M-16. Everybody carried three hundred rounds for the machine gun. I carried three to five smoke grenades and at least four hand grenades. You carried about seven quarts of water. I carried two or three sticks of C4 explosive. We heated food with it. We also carried mechanical ambushes; a string of Claymore mines linked by wires you set up with a wire across the trail to a battery one hundred 50 to 200 yards away from your ambush position. If somebody walked into that wire at night, it’d pull off the battery and set off those Claymores.”

Joe received an Air Medal for doing twenty-five or more of those combat airmobile operations with the 1st Infantry Division. He also formed a special bond with a Vietnamese soldier.

“I became friends with a former NVA officer who Chieu Hoi’d, which means he went over to fight for the Americans. When we’d get into Di An we’d get care packages from home with cookies, candy, and treats. You also got military packages with cigarettes and stuff. Most wanted their care package and didn’t want anything military. I was told to clean up the mess and had a pile of the stuff GIs didn’t want. Our Chieu Hoi Scout was Ngyen Van Cou. I said, ‘Cou, got any use for that?’ He said, ‘Oh, yes. Cigarettes black market.’ It was like $4 a pack. I said, ‘Take it.’ He was married; had a kid; and was making $30 a month.”

Joe benefited from sharing what he otherwise would have thrown out.

“The rest of the time I was in the 1st Division, (Joe chuckled) Cou walked next to me. When I walked point, he was right behind me and informed me if there was a booby trap or mechanical device set up by the NVA or Viet Cong. He showed me how to read signs. If there was a bamboo stick in the grass, you knew it was out of place. That bamboo stick meant there was a tripwire or some booby trap five yards ahead or across from where it pointed.”

One day Cou showed Joe the cost of his helping the American forces.

“We were walking through a village and Cou said, ‘Joe, ladae.’ I walked up to him and there’s an elderly couple with their faces down like this. (Joe looked down at the floor) He said, ‘This is my mom and dad. They won’t recognize me. They can’t say a word because if they do, they’d be dead tomorrow.’ That’s the control the NVA had in that village. You feel sorry for the local population because they’re caught up in that. The vast majority are there because they have no choice.”

Joe learned to manage the uncertainty of combat patrolling, but it was a dirty business in an ugly war.

Please visit our new exhibit, The Vietnam War and Lyon County, at the Lyon County Museum to learn more about the experiences of our area Vietnam veterans.