“Who knows why some of us are here today and why some of us had our name on the Vietnam Wall” — Bob Holmes, Vietnam veteran
by Elka Worner
In the quiet, predawn hours of Memorial Day, Vietnam veteran Bob Holmes stood solemn guard at The Moving Wall, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, stationed that weekend at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Holmes, 78, had volunteered for the overnight shift, an act of remembrance that brought him peace beneath the moonlight and the weight of more than 58,000 names etched into the black granite-like panels stretching the length of a football field.
“It’s a peaceful, contemplative time,” Holmes said. “For me, it’s a matter of respect and remembrance.”
The former three-term Manhattan Beach mayor and three-term city councilman said the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War was especially meaningful for those who in their teens and early 20s faced a stark choice: serve, flee to Canada, or go to jail.
A UCLA graduate and political science major, Holmes had planned to attend law school. But in 1968, amid the deadliest year of the war and the national trauma of the Tet Offensive, he chose to serve.
“I was healthy. I believed in what we were doing,” he said. “Basically, it offered the people of South Vietnam the best chance for a peaceful, happy life.”
Holmes reasoned that if drafted, he’d go in as a private, “everyone in the Army gets to yell at me.” But if he volunteered and was commissioned as an officer, “fewer people could yell at me, and I’d gain leadership experience.”
After four years in the ROTC, Holmes was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and trained as a combat engineer at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. He never served in that role, however.
For two years, he was stationed at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, managing Army facilities across California, Nevada, and Arizona. He also attended jungle warfare training in Panama, a preview of what lay ahead.
Before deploying overseas, Holmes served a different kind of duty. During the Tet Offensive, he escorted the bodies of fallen soldiers from the Oakland Army Base to grieving families in Southern California.
“We lost 900 soldiers in one week,” he said. “You’re 22 or 23. No training. You’re winging it. You sit alone in uniform above the cargo hold, flying with a body you never knew.”
In 1970, Holmes was deployed to Vietnam. He was assigned to the Army Security Agency under the cover name 509th Radio Research Group, a clandestine intelligence outfit that officially “didn’t exist” in country. The unit intercepted, translated, and decoded enemy radio transmissions among other high-tech duties.
“We knew what Ho Chi Minh had for breakfast,” Holmes said.
He concluded his tour as the Intelligence Operations Officer for the 1st Brigade 5th Infantry Division (Mech). With a top-secret security clearance, including access to cryptographic and special intelligence, Holmes’ job was to analyze intercepted enemy communications, prisoner interrogations, and captured documents. His unit tracked troop movements, identified threats, and pieced together the intentions of the North Vietnamese Army.
His work took him across the country, from the Mekong Delta to the Central Highlands, through rubber plantations and along the Demilitarized Zone. Just days before the end of his tour, Holmes volunteered to fly in the front seat of a Huey Cobra gunship on the DMZ.
“I didn’t have to go on that mission,” he said, “but stupidly, I did.” He manned the rockets and mini guns, targeting enemy forces that had crossed south.
Six days later, Holmes was back on American soil. There was no debriefing, no reintegration program, just a flight to LAX and a return to his surf buddies at the Manhattan Beach Pier.
“It wasn’t a big celebration,” he said. “Some people thought, ‘You’re a sucker for going.’”
Today, Holmes reflects on his service with a mix of pride, perspective, and quiet humility.
“The Army teaches you toughness, discipline, and a perspective on life,” he said. “You can come home, take a hot shower, have a cocktail, and nobody is firing live rounds at you.”
Fellow Vietnam veteran Steve Crecy, of Hermosa Beach, has stood guard at the Green Hills Cemetery many times. This year he helped assemble the panels along with fellow members of the Vietnam Veterans of America, South Bay Chapter 53.
“It feels respectful,” Crecy said. “It feels good to do it.”
He knew 10 men on the Wall; half of his basic training platoon was killed in action, many within the first two months of arriving in Vietnam. “You carry those names with you,” he said. “That never stops.”
Crecy grew up in Leimert Park, the youngest of three boys. “My brothers were both in the service,” he said. “And I thought, ‘Well, I gotta be in the service.’ It’s just something you do.”
Though unsure whether the war was right or wrong, he volunteered for the draft, thinking, “I’ll find out for myself.”
At 21, he was working full time running the liquor department at a local market. He tried accounting at L.A. City College but did not continue after the first semester. Then came basic training at Fort Ord near Monterey, eight intense weeks.
“They teach you how to march, throw grenades, clean your barracks, first aid, how to follow orders.” In the seventh week, they did a low crawl under live machine-gun fire. “You could see the tracers go right over your head. It was serious. In eight weeks, they change your life.”
Unlike many who were sent straight to the infantry, he was selected for radio school at Fort Benning, Georgia. “They tested you, basic stuff. I passed.”
Crecy flew to Vietnam on a commercial jet contracted by the military. When they stopped to refuel in the Philippines, he spotted rows of B-52s lined up on the tarmac. “That’s when I thought, ‘they’re not joking. This is real.’”
He was stationed with an engineering unit, maintaining radios and a base phone system, even manning a ham radio setup that allowed soldiers to call home through Red Cross scheduled connections. “You’d get a guy on the line with his mom back home. It meant everything.”
Crecy said he never spoke to his family back home but wrote often.
“I was issued an M-16 and must carry it everywhere I go including mess hall, latrine, shower, PX, etc. Everywhere, even to bed,” he wrote in one letter.
He helped build bridges, cleared jungle, and set up a base near Saigon and then the Mekong Delta. His camp endured mortar and rocket fire a half a dozen times. “You’d grab your rifle and hit the bunker. It wasn’t that bad,” he said. Nights were spent on guard duty, armed and alert with an early-model night vision scope.
One of his proudest projects was helping construct a Vietnamese school as part of the “hearts and minds” campaign. Of the war, he said, “We thought it was noble. Democracy, freedom, that was the goal.”
Still coming home was complicated. “You put that uniform in the closet and don’t talk about it much. We were all called baby killers.”
After settling back into civilian life, Crecy applied to the Peace Corps.
“We were already doing that kind of stuff. I rebuilt a school. I’ve been in places where you have to run off generators. I see what good can be done for poor people.
“I never heard from them. I don’t know why.”
He decided to stay local, attending El Camino College before transferring to Cal State Dominguez Hills. He graduated with a degree in sociology and behavioral science.
It took him 20 years to connect with fellow Vietnam Veterans.
“We’re finding that with a lot of veterans,” Crecy said. “Once we meet, we realize that we have a lot in common.”
Military service stayed in the family. His son, Kevin, was an officer and pilot with the U.S. Coast Guard. He rescued 134 Hurricane Katrina victims.
Crecy, 79, marched with fellow Vietnam veterans at this year’s Memorial Day Remembrance at Green Hills. Many cried when they heard the Billy Joel song “Goodnight Saigon,” about those who served in the war and the camaraderie and tragedy they shared.
“Every Vietnam veteran reflects back and thinks that someone had it better than he or she did, and others had it worse. Yet all of us were at varying degrees of risk,” Holmes said. “Who knows why some of us are here today and why some of us had our name on the Vietnam Wall.” Pen
