More than 40 years of pain, anger, fear and sadness released at once.
George Allen wasn’t expecting it. After serving 13 months in Vietnam in the late 1960s, the U.S. Marine Corps veteran had locked his emotions away.
But while waiting in line at a pharmacy on Christmas Eve, a woman approached him. She had noticed his gold Marine Corps emblem on the chain he wore around his neck, and explained that her son was about to be deployed to the Middle East.
During the Vietnam War, she had been an anti-war protester. Now, seeing the dedication her son put into the military, she felt the need to atone. Allen just happened to be there.
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“It was the first time I had ever met someone who had been a really vehement protester,” Allen said. “After almost 40 years, to have that encounter, I had to deal with my own issues right then and there. She was in agony herself, and we cried together.”
For the first time, Allen could start talking about his time in Vietnam. The Greenwood resident, now 72, has slowly written down stories and anecdotes from his military service, and spoken to groups about what he went through, not only during the war, but when he returned to the U.S.
His experience is his own; he doesn’t want to use his life as a stand-in for all Vietnam veterans or to live in the past. But his hope is that young people heading into the military, and those who have never been close to military service, can learn from what he went through.
“If young men or young women have an interest in the military, I’ll share my experiences and give them some advice if they want it,” he said. “If I’m asked or given the opportunity, I want to be a truth teller. But I don’t want to be known for telling war stories all the time.”
Allen’s only injury during his tour of duty was when he broke his ankles jumping from a helicopter. He realizes he was lucky to escape with little physical damage.
But the experience in combat had a profound impact on his psyche.
He couldn’t cry. Shortly after returning to his home in New Jersey, his grandmother, who he was very close with, died. As he was walking into the funeral home for the viewing, he started making mirthful jokes, laughing about it.
“My wife looked at me like, ‘What is wrong with you?'” he said. “I didn’t have the slightest inkling of compassion.”
Allen can pinpoint where he started to develop the coping mechanisms that allowed him to function in extreme danger. Intense combat forced him to bury any fear or sadness, which was important for a leader to show during battle, but led to emotional problems after he returned from Vietnam.
“After that first battle I was in, picking up pieces of bodies and stuff, I was crying like crazy. My men looked at me like, ‘Oh crap, the lieutenant is losing it.’ I realized that everything was on me,” he said. “Mentally, I flipped. I just laughed and made a joke, and that calmed everyone down. That horrible situation, laughing at death, was the acceptable behavior. That’s how I dealt with it.”
Allen was an athlete and active student growing up in New Jersey, and enrolled at Eastern Baptist College, a Christian school in Pennsylvania, with the idea to be a pastor. But as a college student, he was still looking for another opportunity to use his physical and mental gifts.
“I wasn’t ready to hang it up yet. I thought, what’s the most challenging mental, physical and spiritual thing I could do with my life,” he said. “I had admired the Marines, so after I got through my first semester, I’d sign up.”
He joined the Platoon Leaders Course, the Marine Corps’ pathway for college students to become military officers. Once he graduated from college and started full-time in the military in the late 1960s, his initial goal was to be in the infantry. But now married to wife Carolyn and with a child, his perspective changed.
Instead, Allen requested to be a combat engineer. Upon arrival in Vietnam in April 1968, he was a platoon commander, and the soldiers under his leadership were in charge of keeping the roads open between Dong Ha, where he was stationed, and the Que Son Valley, which was under heavy attack. They’d sweep for mines and build helicopter landing pads.
Engineers also built towers out of heavy timbers that could be lifted by helicopters, which were used by artillery observers to see where the enemy was shooting from.
The worst job was clearing out tunnels and underground areas where North Vietnamese soldiers would hide.
“It was a tight fit. They were known to booby trap those tunnels very often. They’d take a scorpion and tie a thread around its neck. It couldn’t go anywhere, and whenever we’d come by, it’d take its tail and smack us,” he said.
The second half of his service in Vietnam saw Allen overseeing a new job. He served as a company commander in charge of leading “shore parties,” groups of soldiers who organized helicopter landing areas so heavy equipment and supplies could move in an orderly fashion.
Initially used by the Marines during amphibious landings in World War II, the job was reconfigured for the jungles and mountains of Vietnam. They would meticulously plan how helicopters could move the large Howitzer and other artillery to the front lines, then deploy to an area and implement that plan.
“We were living from day to day and week to week in relative quiet, doing some kind of work or finishing a job. Then, you’d have every bit of 15 or 30 minutes, sometimes a few hours, of pure hell breaking loose around you: guys dying beside you, having to kill someone,” he said. “After that’s over, it’s quiet again. That was my experience.”
Allen returned from his tour of duty in May 1969 and anticipated a relatively normal life back at home. But he never expected the hostile response he received when he got home. After his flight landed in Philadelphia, he and his wife wanted to go out to dinner together. They were refused service in a hotel restaurant in Radnor, Pennsylvania, because he was wearing his Marine uniform.
“That was a wake-up call,” he said.
The hostile reaction, as well as the traumatic experiences in combat, wore Allen down emotionally. Professionally, he found great success. His three-year tour in the Marines ended in 1970, but he re-enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, retiring finally in 1992.
Outside the military, he was hired to be a supervisor in a lumber yard loading housing components. When the company started a new housing factory in Franklin, he was transferred to work in Indiana. He and his family stayed even after the project ended.
In 1980, he founded his own business, GFA Management, which he still owns. He works as a consultant, authors business manuals on how to manage different properties, and writes subscriber-supported newsletters.
Using his background in publishing, Allen has started writing about his experiences in Vietnam and afterwards. The Christmas Eve encounter at the drug store in 2005 stirred something in him.
Allen admits that he’s a big cry-baby these days. Books or movies with even a hint of emotional resonance cause him to tear up. But he cannot show appropriate emotions when it involves his immediate family. He has to be the strong one, he said.
“I still can’t cry when it deals with my wife and kids,” he said.
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George Allen
Home: Greenwood
Age: 72
Wife: Carolyn
Military service: U.S. Marine Corps, 1967 to 1970; U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve, 1971 to 1992
Rank: Lieutenant colonel
Occupation: Owner of GFA Management
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