He had just turned 19 in July of that year.

By September, he was on active duty in Vietnam.

“I was the youngest guy in my platoon,” he said. “Most of them were college students that had dropped out and got drafted.”

Harklau served with the 5th Air Cavalry. The unit went into combat aboard Huey helicopters, dropping in where they were needed, sometimes in the middle of battles already raging.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
U.S. Army veteran Larry Harklau poses with some of this old uniforms, photographs and medals he earned during his tour of duty in Vietnam.

The unit and that type of combat was made famous in the film “We Were Soldiers.”

Harklau earned the Air Assault Medal quickly — 26 missions earned it for a soldier.

“You jumped on the Huey, they dropped you right in,” he said. “I had that medal in a few weeks.”

Once in an area, members of his unit would stay on to help support the troops already in the area. He was a replacement for a several lost soldiers.

“They had been caught in an ambush by the Cambodian border,” he said. “The ones that survived were pretty bitter.”

He spent most of his time in the Central Highlands.

“That was our main area of operations,” he said.

The unit had a reputation. They would drop fliers in the area before going in. Enemy units would sometimes leave without engaging them.

Combat was often mixed with times where Harklau and his fellow soldiers would try to relax as best they could and rest. They improvised and made the best of things.

“We swam in bomb holes,” he said. “If you had the chance to relax, you relaxed.”

Even something as simple as potable water was a problem in the jungles. Harklau preferred mountain stream water to the heavily chlorinated water the military supplied.

“We would drink the mountain stream water,” he said. “Although I can count the number of times you’d go upstream and find a body in the water.”

The troops in Vietnam had to fight nature too. There was a long list of things that could hurt, kill and maim that ranged from microbial to tigers.

“They had terrible leeches,” he said.

That was the least of it.

“I was on patrol one night and a critter came out of a stream.” he said. “That was the closest thing I’d seen to an alligator. I was always afraid I’d fall in and get eaten.”

Then there were snakes.

“I saw every snake they had,” he said. “We came across a cobra on one patrol. You’d just walk around him. I never saw anyone get bit though. We had bamboo vipers, pit vipers. I saw one guy once come across a bamboo viper, he pulled his knife out and cut that thing in about six pieces.”

Living conditions were not luxurious.

“We lived in the jungle,” he said. “You made a tent out of your poncho.”

Patrols ranged in length.

“The longest we were out was 35 days,” he said.

Even a long day might not end for awhile.

“You could be out walking jungle all day,” he said. “You’d come back, try to relax, get your clothes to dry out a bit, then they’d come pick you up.”

The terrain in Vietnam could change completely in a short distance. After one large battle, Harklau’s unit was assigned to follow the enemy to see where they had gone. He said they followed a trail through the jungle, only to find a surprise.

“We were following the trail,” he said. “Then it was like we walked into a door in the jungle. It opened into a valley. There was bunker after bunker after bunker in there. It was one of their big camps.”

As they explored the camp, they came to a narrowing of the valley and saw something moving in a tree ahead. They high-tailed it out, thinking it might have been a sniper.”

It wasn’t.

“The moving tree,” he said. “It was a snake. When it moved, it moved the whole tree. They ended up shooting two snakes in there that were 26 and 28 feet long when they staked them out.”

The members of the unit did not let them go to waste.

“They were cooking them,” Harklau said.

The war in Vietnam was a surrealistic caldron where the political found its way into combat.

“It was a political war,” Harklau said. “You were supposed to yell a warning before you started shooting. We had a new officer. He got up and yelled. The five we thought we were dealing with? There were 500 behind the five.”

That officer was quickly replaced. He threw a grenade that hit a tree, bouncing back before exploding. His injury could be a line from the movie Forest Gump where the main character is showing President Nixon his scar.

“I was injured in the buttocks.” Gump said in the film.

Congress got involved, which got Harklau his most unpleasant job of the war.

“Congress did not believe how many we killed,” he said. “It became such an issue that General Westmoreland ordered us to dig up the graves to see how many were in there.”

“They usually tried to take their dead with them,” he said. “Sometimes they would dig a grave and bury them. We had to dig them out and count them.”

Amidst the horror of that, there was still time for the occasional moment of lightness.

“The biggest toughest guy in our unit was down in a hole digging with a trenching tool,” he said. “He ended up getting so sick he couldn’t get out of the hole. We laughed at him.”

Harklau earned his Purple Heart as he was nearing the end of his tour of duty in Vietnam.

He was on rest and recreation on an air base.

“There was a rocket attack,” he said. “The guy I was with said we had better get to the bunker. He had just found out his girlfriend was pregnant. He just found out he was going to be a dad. We got to the bunker when it hit. It blew him to pieces and blew me into the bunker.

“I’m glad I’m loud,” he said. “The guys could hear me screaming. My mouth and nose was filled with sand when they got me out. I woke up in a hospital.”

Of the 13 soldiers in the bunker. Only Harklau and two others survived.

The blast blew his dog tags and glasses off — the dog tags caused a bit of a problem.

“One of the nurses asked me if I was Sgt. Harklau,” he said. “She told me I better get over to the Red Cross, they’ve got your tags and ID on another body.”

Harklau was stunned when he saw himself in a mirror.

“My head was the size of a pumpkin,” he said. “All my facial bones were cracked.”

He still bears a witness to the damage.

“I have a twisted nerve,” he said, pointing to his temple. “My glasses have to bow out so they don’t touch it.”

Soldiers served a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam.

Survival, said Harklau, depended on which part of that year you were in.

“You’re going to get killed either in your first 30 days, because you’re dumb and stupid,” he said. “In the middle, you’re got to do what you have to do to survive and you’ll do anything. During the last 30, you’re thinking of home and you get careless.”

“It’s either the first 30 or the last 30,” he said.

Before he went to Vietnam, Harklau had a conversation with a World War II veteran named Jack Gadbury.

“He told me,” Harklau said, “you’ll have good times and bad times. You’ll have a lot more good. Never dwell on the bad times.”

Harklau has remembered that conversation.

“I never dwelled on the bad times,” he said.

Harklau has spoken several times to his children’s and grandchildren’s classes in school.

It’s shown him that over the last few decades, more of the reality of war has gotten back into people’s homes.

“The first times the questions were often stupid,” he said, “That was before Afghanistan. Things like ‘did you kill anyone?’ It was war.”

“Now,” he said, “they’ve had parents that served. They ask logical questions. Those kinds kind of believe you.”

Harklau was discharged in September of 1968 after spending time at Fort Lewis teaching courses about booby traps and medical evacuation.

He came home without much fanfare. There were no parades for the troops.

“Nobody spit on me,” he said. “Nobody really acknowledged what you’d done either.”

He got married to his wife Ardee after the war.

“That’s probably what straightened me out,” he said, smiling at her.

The couple have three daughters and 10 grandchildren.

He worked at New Idea as well as Pepsi and Geo. A. Hormel. Many remember him from his time working for a local cable TV provider.

“I was Larry the Cable Guy,” he said.

He’s also been on one of the Honor Flights to Washington, D.C., and he was recently given a Quilt of Valor by the Fort Dodge Area Quilters.

He’s proud of his service. He said that while he might have been drafted, he would gladly serve his country again.

He tries to keep the war as something from the past.

“I never dwell on it,” he said.

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