ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – “I don’t want the interview today to be about me. I was a combat engineer, but I was not in the infantry,” explained Wayne Kern, a retired special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who now volunteers at a military retiree office, co-located with the 85th U.S. Army Reserve Support Command. “There’s a difference. I give more credit to the guys that were at the tip of the spear. We were behind them. I’d like to give you the names of some other people I thought were worth knowing in Vietnam.”

The year was 1968. It was the year of the Tet Offensive, a series of attacks by the Vietnamese Communist and North Vietnamese forces against U.S. and South Vietnamese military bases during the Vietnamese new year. It led to a decline in public support for the war.

At the time, a young Wayne Kern had just graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio.

“After I got out of college, I started looking for a job, but I couldn’t get one,” said Kern. “One company told me they would not invest the time in training me for a position with the threat of being drafted into the military looming overhead.”

Entering Service

His next stop was the Selective Service board to discuss his dilemma.

“They told me we are not asking you to enlist. We have a program where you could volunteer for the draft. I was out of college in June 1968 and in the Army by September,” said Kern. “My dad said you have a college degree, and you believed those people at the Selective Service board? He thought I was very naïve, but I felt a strong obligation to the United States to express my gratitude for my family being able to live here.”

After attending basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and the U.S. Army Engineer School at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he earned the 12A10, combat engineer military occupational specialty.

“It was interesting training. We learned how to build a timber bridge and a bailey bridge,” said Kern.

Life in a War Zone

Then it was on to Vietnam. He arrived in country on May 20, 1969.

“It was hot. Just beastly hot. I couldn’t drink enough water. It took a while to adjust to how hot it was,” said Kern.

He went to in-country training for a couple of days and was issued an M-14 rifle. He was afforded the opportunity to fire three shots.

“I wanted to shoot some more but they said ‘no’ that was enough,” Kern said.

He recalled standing in formation with other Soldiers brushing their teeth with fluoride. Kern was assigned to the 86th Engineering Battalion at Camp Viking firebase in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam.

“We were at a firebase. Home of the 2nd/47th Infantry. They also had an artillery unit there and our company. We had three platoons with each platoon only the size of a squad back in the states. When we left the base, we headed down TL 21, a mud road constructed earlier by French forces,” said Kern.

The unit’s mission was to keep the road open, and the bridge protected.

“The bailey bridge had been blown up, presumably by the Viet Cong, and we replaced it with another larger bailey bridge. There was a regular rotation. One platoon would spend a week at the end of the road protecting the bridge,” said Kern. “Another platoon would sweep for mines from the base to the end of the road. The other platoon would do whatever they wanted you to do that day.”

With a constant rotation, Kern said it was difficult to get to know other Soldiers.

One of the Soldiers he admired greatly was Staff Sgt. Eaves.

“He was an African American Soldier. I had more respect for him than any of the officers. But the guys didn’t like him because he was very strict. He wanted things done a certain way. If Staff Sergeant Eaves said we were going to do something, that’s the way we did it which was fine with me,” said Kern.

Serving with Eaves caused one of Kern’s greatest regrets during his time in Vietnam. Namely, he did not get Eave’s address.

“You didn’t really get to know the people you served with. You knew names or nicknames, but you didn’t have addresses,” said Kern. “When our colors were sent back home, to our surprise we did not go with them. I remember we were scattered to the winds and shipped off to other posts. Shortly after I reported to my second post, Lai Khe, an old French rubber plantation, I was transferred one more time to Pleiku.”

Combat Engagement

One of Kern’s most memorable events during the war took place in the Mekong Delta, he recalled the night his unit was attacked upon the sight of a destroyed bridge, after he had been in country less than a month.

“We were on our shift at the end of the road. We had built a small outpost where we lived for the week. We used small metal culvert halves and sandbags on the ground which provided some protection from the rain and (attacks),” said Kern. “One night they placed me on a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod looking over the perimeter.”

With limited equipment training, Kern used a starlight scope, a type of night vision device, with the machine gun.

“I remember looking through the scope and seeing what looked like a human wearing a straw hat. As the sergeant was talking with me, everything was illuminated. There was (rocket-propelled grenade) and small arms fire,” said Kern. “When I pressed the butterfly trigger on the 50 nothing happened. Then I racked it and fired. You do what you must do and shoot back. I saw one of our guys shooting the M-60. I knew he was on some target and followed his tracer rounds. When I asked later what he was shooting at, he said there wasn’t a target. Eventually things quieted down.”

But then a Soldier nicknamed ‘Short Round’ could be heard moaning, which resulted in requesting a dust-off (medevac) helicopter.

“We had a Soldier from West Virginia nicknamed ‘Pappy’ because he was older. He got on the radio and called for a medevac to come in to pick up Short Round. Pappy had to (lay flat) on his back, beyond the perimeter, not knowing what was out there, with nothing to guide the helicopter in, aside from his flashlight. Short Round was taken by the medevac and nobody ever told us what happened to him; however, somebody else decided to pass along his plastic food bowl to me.”

Kern recalled having a physical bodily reaction after the attack.

“I was sitting on this berm, and I had this tremor attack. My whole body was shaking from head to feet. Thinking back on it, it’s your brain processing how close you came to getting killed. After that, it never happened again,” he said.

During the process of cleaning up the destroyed bridge, a different platoon in Kern’s company lost a Soldier.

“I came to learn that Specialist Four James Jay Hochstetter had been killed by a booby trap in the bridge. Nobody told me about this. I never knew he had been killed until we had (a formation to honor his memory),” said Kern.

The mission for Kern’s unit went on seven days a week with no time off except for one trip into Tan Son Nhut airbase, a large U.S. base near Saigon.

“I remember we had a day trip into Tan Son Knut airbase,” said Kern. We went back there, and they had Vietnamese gardeners clipping the grass by hand wearing their straw hats. Some buildings had lawns. They had air conditioning and toilets that flushed. I thought to myself I’m in the wrong MOS”

Returning Home

After returning home from Vietnam, Kern applied for a job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1970 and became a special agent in 1971.

“When I came back to Rockville, Maryland a neighbor of mine, who was a Navy officer, suggested we go down to D.C. and look for jobs. My buddy got me to go into the Department of Justice building. I had no intention of going in there. It happened to be a time of crisis in the United States. Back then there was a lot of anti-war protests,” said Kern. “There were people interrupting traffic going into the D.C. area. There was even a machine gun posted on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and the FBI was looking for people. They discovered I had a physics degree, and I was hired by exception into the science program. They had the FBI laboratory. Initially, I was assigned to the Milwaukee division of the FBI but was sent to work at a two-man resident agency office in Wausau, Wisconsin.”

One morning Kern received a phone call from FBI headquarters.

“I got a call from headquarters telling me it was time to pay the debt I owed the bureau, and I was transferred to FBI headquarters to work in the lab. I spent five years there. After that I was sent back to Chicago where I spent the rest of my career. I retired in 2002 just short of 32 years of service,” said Kern. “Near the end of my career, due to my German language ability, I was sent to Germany as part of a joint international task force following the 9-11 attacks. I was assigned to run a small FBI unit in Germany to make sure the communications were processed from both sides. It was a real honor to do that.”