 | | Vietnam veteran Kenneth Toler shows one of three Purple Hearts medal he received. (Staff photo by Russell Autrey)
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| The holidays brought with them a surprise Kenneth Toler of Rosenberg will never forget: the presentation of three Purple Hearts he earned in Vietnam 37 years ago.
Toler was presented with the medals at the Rosenberg VFW Post 3903 Hall in a ceremony made possible by his twin brother, Rod, of Ohio.
"I was so surprised," Toler said. "It was quite a shock. My brother told me about it on the phone a couple of days before the ceremony. I asked him, 'How long has this been in the works?' and he said, 'For quite some time.' He did all the work to make this happen by phone and by mail. When he told me, I started crying. I said, 'You didn't have to go through all that trouble.' He said, 'Yeah, I did.' "
Toler said VFW Post 3903 Commander Leon Brandt interviewed him twice prior to the presentation, asking about the incidents in which Toler was injured.
The first occurred during a mine sweep.
"We were headed back to the unit and got ambushed," Toler recalled. "I got shot in the back of the head."
As a member of the Marine Corps 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, his unit was known as "The Fighting Division."
"I joined the Marine Corps because I didn't want to get drafted into a branch of the service I didn't like," he explained. "I joined the Marine Corps to be the best I could be."
Toler was injured again during mortar attacks north of Hill 10 near a place American soldiers nicknamed "Dodge City," north of DaNang. It was there that shrapnel tore through his legs, knees and feet.
But the injury that left the biggest scars - perhaps emotionally as well as physically - was the third, which occurred during the infamous Tet Offensive in January of 1968, in fighting in Hue City and Dhu Bhi.
"I just about got my right arm amputated by a B40 rocket," he said, pulling up his shirt sleeve and revealing the remnants of the wound left behind by the 6-foot-long rocket.
"There was heavy fighting there," Toler said. "It took over a month to take (Hue City). We tore it all to pieces, but we took it. There were 21 of us out there, and we ended up with one dead and 20 wounded. They pretty well wiped us all out. A helicopter picked up all the wounded."
Toler was in that group. He has use of his arm, although some nerves are gone forever, and it's "still kind of sore."
"They did a pretty good job of reattaching the nerves," he said, moving his arm back and forth to demonstrate its mobility.
Toler said once a soldier was wounded three times, he was sent out of the country.
So following his third injury, he was shipped to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for a while before returning to Vietnam to finish out his time in the service.
A native of West Virginia, Toler was only 18 years old when he joined the Marine Corps. He was a sergeant by the time he was discharged and moved to Ohio to work for his brother in the manufacturing industry. When the plant shut down, Toler moved to Texas looking for work, and within two weeks, got a job as a pipeline construction worker. He retired a few years ago after becoming 100 percent disabled from the injuries he received in Vietnam.
Toler said he feels the military's method of introducing soldiers to Iraq is a good one, providing a few weeks of briefing in Kuwait before sending the troops into Iraq, and then debriefing them for a couple of months in Kuwait before sending them home.
"We didn't have that. We were just thrown back into society, with people protesting the war all over the place," he said. "It takes a lot to build yourself up to something like battle, and then to cut yourself right off and get right back and try to start acting like a person again instead of an animal.
"Post-traumatic syndrome is a very real thing. The sights and sounds of war - everybody's scared," he said with tears in his eyes. "I go to the VA Hospital in Houston quite often for treatment. There are a lot of World War II and Korean War veterans there, and there are starting to be more and more Iraq War veterans with limbs missing. Even lying in the hospital in Vietnam, you were continually under fire. Then you get out and go right back into the fire. So it never really crossed my mind about the Purple Hearts."
But it was always in his brother's mind. A Vietnam veteran himself, Toler's brother was a Navy corpsman with the 1st Marine Division, and took it upon himself to arrange for the Purple Hearts his brother earned, and local Post 3903 set up the ceremony.
While his brother has been a member of his local VFW Post in Ohio, Toler has been an at-large VFW member all these years. After last month's ceremony, however, he has moved his membership to Post 3903.
Toler and his wife of 27 years, Grace, welcomed their first grandchild, Morgan, in September. She was born to Toler's daughter, Rachel Horton, and her husband, Mike of Frisco, and all three drove to Rosenberg from there home near Dallas to see Toler receive his medals. Unfortunately, his brother was unable to attend the ceremony, but Toler said he knew his brother was there in spirit.
"We are inseparable. We'll get on the phone and talk for two or three hours," he said, adding there is definitely truth to the old adages about the closeness of twins. "About two or three months ago, we were talking about a story in the VFW magazine about a veteran who never got his Silver Star. I told him then, I think, that I never got my Purple Hearts. I didn't even realize he didn't know."
But as soon as Toler's brother did know, he set out on a mission to make sure his brother got the medals and recognition he deserved for his service to America: three Purple Hearts, 37 years later.
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