Sjogren and his fellow artillery men would rain down high explosives on the enemy any time they got a call for help.

The Otho man spent a year in South Vietnam ramming shells and bags of gun powder into big cannons.

“We never saw the target,” he said. “We would just shoot to where they gave us coordinates to shoot.”

Sjogren’s Army service began when he was drafted in April 1966, a year after he graduated from high school in Louisville, Nebraska.

He completed basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Then he was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to train as an artillery man.

In September 1966, he was sent to South Vietnam, arriving in Pleiku. His first night there was kind of unnerving.

“We could hear shooting all night,” he said. “Later we learned there was a firing range over the hill from us, and that’s where all the shooting was. But we didn’t know that at the time.”

He was assigned to the 6th Battalion, 14th Field Artillery, which was part of the 52nd Artillery Group. The unit had 8-inch self-propelled howitzers, which were big cannons mounted on treads like a tank. Sjogren said the guns had barrels that were eight inches in diameter. He said they could fire a shell 40 miles. He added that they were capable of firing atomic war heads.

His unit was based near Pleiku and fired off shells in response to requests from other units. He said the unit supported the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and the Green Berets.

Those shells were fired into the air to come arcing down on their targets.

Once, the base was struck by what he called a “human wave attack.” He said as the surge of enemy troops came closer, the crews lowered the gun barrels to be parallel to the ground and began firing beehive rounds. He said those shells came apart and released hundreds of little darts which tore into the oncoming attackers, stopping the onslaught.

Enemy snipers frequently took shots at the cannon crews, he recalled. Sometimes there were ambushes when he was in a truck convoy transporting artillery shells. After one ambush, he said, the soldiers counted 70 bullet holes in a truck cab. Miraculously, the truck driver was not hit.

The enemy wasn’t the only danger in South Vietnam. The jungle was home to several venomous snakes, the most dangerous of which was the bamboo viper. Sjogren saw first hand how potent that snake’s venom was. He saw a bamboo viper on top of some sandbags and as he watched, a king cobra slithered up and grabbed it with its jaws. He said the viper turned and bit the cobra which “dropped like a rag.”

When he wasn’t loading and firing cannons, Sjogren had other duties. Sometimes he was in charge of the soldiers guarding the gates to the base. One of his tasks there was checking in Vietnamese civilians who worked at the base. He said the soldiers never knew if the civilians were Viet Cong spies.

He was also part of an honor guard on occasion. Once, he said, that duty landed him briefly on stage with comedian Bob Hope and the reigning Miss America.

Very near the end of his scheduled tour of duty in South Vietnam, he was given leave to attend the funeral of his grandfather. After that leave, he was assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas. There he managed the gymnasium at the fort’s Main Post until he was discharged.

In civilian life, he worked at a cement plant. Then he became an inspector for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. He came to Fort Dodge in 1989 to work as a mine inspector. He worked in that capacity for eight and a half years before retiring.