When it was over he was awarded the Purple Heart twice. But that is a decoration no American soldier wants to receive because it is only given to troops who are killed or wounded in action.

The Army veteran was left with a limp as a result of wounds he suffered during an intense battle on Jan. 31, 1968, the day that the Viet Cong launched their Tet Offensive.

Today, he is one of the three Humboldt County Veterans Affairs commissioners. He also volunteers to take veterans to their medical appointments.

Long before Paeper ever thought about Vietnam or veterans affairs issues, he was growing up on a farm near Newell. He described the farm as a “quarter section” where his family raised corn, soybeans, cattle and hogs. He was a member of 4-H and FFA.

He graduated from Newell High School in 1964.

Along the way, he became the lead guitar player for a band called The Beachniks. The band recorded two albums. In 1965, it opened for Sonny and Cher at the Civic Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska. Paeper recalled that his band was the opening act, and then accompanied Sonny and Cher while they performed.

The Beachniks were enshrined in the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

But Paeper’s performing days ended around July 11, 1967. That was the day he was drafted into the Army.

He was sent to Fort Benning in Georgia for basic training.

“I did enough push-ups in Georgia that I think I lowered the sea level,” he said.

He was then sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for what was called armor intelligence training.

On Dec. 5, 1967, he arrived in Long Binh, South Vietnam, with a group of other soldiers.

“We were replacing someone who got killed, got wounded or had their year in Vietnam done and went home,” he said.

The newly arrived soldiers were loaded into trucks and taken to Bearcat Base. There, he was assigned to A Troop of the 3/5 Cavalry.

Despite its name, this cavalry unit did not have horses. It had armored personnel carriers, which were tracked vehicles like a tank. But instead of a big cannon like a tank, the carriers had a large .50-caliber machine gun and two smaller M-60 machine guns. Paeper’s job was to man an M-60 machine gun on a back corner of his carrier.

The carrier became a kind of home for him and the other crew members because they would take turns sleeping in it while doing perimeter guard duty at artillery bases.

Paeper was wounded the first time before his first month in South Vietnam was over. He recalled that his unit was escorting a convoy down Highway 1 on the night of Dec. 20, 1967, when it was attacked.

His carrier was hit on the side by a rocket-propelled grenade and the explosion threw him out of the machine. He landed in a roadside ditch with shrapnel wounds in both legs. He hunkered down in the ditch while a firefight erupted all around him. When it was over after about 10 or 15 minutes, he got in another armored personnel carrier.

A little over a month later, the Viet Cong launched their Tet Offensive.

On Jan. 31, 1968, Paeper’s unit was at Fire Base Apple. At 3 a.m. that day the unit was ordered to go to Bien Hoa because the air base there was being overrun.

The cavalry soldiers set off down the road to Bien Hoa. Paeper recalled that Viet Cong had blown up a bridge along that road, and a tank crashed, killing the driver.

He said his carrier avoided a crash, went down the embankment, crossed the creek and went up the embankment on the other side to continue to Bien Hoa.

“It was a continual firefight then, back and forth,” he said.

Before it was over, he was suffering from both gunshot and shrapnel wounds. He recalled thinking that one of his legs was going to come off as a fellow soldier he knew only as Weasel pulled him to safety.

He was put in an armored personnel carrier with a bunch of other wounded soldiers that he said were placed “on top of each other like cord wood.”

He was taken first to a “MASH tent” and then to a hospital in Saigon. From his bed in that hospital, he could hear fighting from the Tet Offensive.

Transfers to hospitals in Japan and finally, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, followed.

He said he had to have his sciatic nerve sewed back together. His recovery involved being encased in a body cast with his leg bent at an odd angle.

He was medically discharged from the Army on Set. 6, 1968.

Today, Paeper wears a brace on one ankle and has very little feeling in his lower right leg.

.He returned to Iowa and got a job with Custom Farm Service in Bode. He later moved to that company’s facility in Pioneer and stayed there after Van Diest Supply Co. acquired the site. He is now retired.