Ask Not What I Have Done for My Country, Ask What My Country Has Done for Me
Tour of Duty
Julio Rodarte
Copyright © 2020 Julio Rodarte
All rights reserved
First Edition
NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING
320 Broad Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020
ISBN 978-1-64801-014-9 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64801-015-6 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Early Colonization into Northern New Mexico
The Recolonization and Settlements North of Santa Cruz de la Cañada Española, New Mexico
First capital of New Mexico, San Juan Pueblo in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
Early Childhood and Adolescence in Northern New Mexico
Enlistment in the United States Marine Corps
West Pac: Southeast Asia, Vietnam
Survival—Fighting the Enemy and the Elements
Restructuring My Thoughts—Dropping All Inner Resistance
Going Back to An Hoa Combat Base and Regrouping
Reassigned as Clerk in the Company Office
Leaving on a Jet Plane, Don’t Know When I Will Be Back Again!
Rejection and Betrayal by My Government
Seeking Help After a Decade of Hostility
Preface
To my family and friends, warriors of the Vietnam War. To all those who have suffered the aftermath of war, we live by courage, strength, hope and the sacred code of honor. No one left behind. I have your back, and you have my back.
Each and every one of us combat Marines left behind the comforts and safety of our country to experience the horrors of war, and yet within it, we found the true meaning of trust, honor, friendship, and loss among ourselves. My country and government did not. My life was a succession of moments every day that I woke up.
We truly want to feel normal. We want to be like we were, but that is impossible. We have changed forever. Help us help ourselves to understand what we have gone through. Help us understand the horrors we have experience and how we long only to be loved and accepted for who we have become. For the bureaucratic and politician, the brass of the Marine Corps, the company commander who stole my honor and valor from right under my nose—injustice due to discrimination for being Hispanic and coming from Northern New Mexico.
El Camino Real
The Oldest Road Still Traveled in the United States from Mexico to Taos, New Mexico
It all started in the winter of 1950. A winterstorm had been pounding on the village of Rodarte, New Mexico, located in the heart of the Sangra de Christo Mountains in Northern New Mexico. A severe storm had dropped several inches of powder snow in the valley, and traveling was at a standstill. The roads were primitive, and the only way of getting around was on foot, horse, or horse-driven wagons.
The days were cold, and even wet snow too soon became gray and dirty, making the whole world look leaden. The roads were full of potholes and slimy mud that would freeze at night, making the whole business of transportation practically impossible.
It was February 6, 1950, a cold winter night in the village of Rodarte, that Maria Sanchez Rodarte, the wife of Julio Rodarte II, came into labor with the seventh child. The wind was blowing, and the snow was accumulating on the village. It had been snowing on and off for several days, not unusual for a small town in Northern New Mexico by the name of Rodarte, with an elevation of 7,600 feet. It is a small village at the base of one of the tallest mountains in New Mexico called La Jicarita on the Sangra de Christo Mountains. According to my parents the blizzard was so severe that it was impossible to transport my mother to the nearest hospital in Embudo, New Mexico, where most of my sublimes had been born, about fifteen miles southwest of Rodarte. My father had no other choice but to call the midwife (la partera) who delivered most of the newborn babies during the winter months.
During this era, highways were a thing of the future. In order to travel within the community in the winter months, people had to install chains on two-wheel-drive pickup trucks to get
