USMC Ho-Chunk Warrior Fought in Vietnam’s Battle of Foxtrot Ridge
“I have been in the bush for more than six months” writes Ho-Chunk US Marine Alan B. Walker of Rapid City who fought in the vicious Battle of Foxtrot Ridge, two miles from the Khe Sanh Combat Base, during the Vietnam War. He will talk on Saturday March 11 at Ellsworth Air Force Base’s South Dakota Air and Space Museum, starting at 9 a.m, a free family event sponsored by the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group.
Walker was born and brought up on the Winnebago Indian Reservation in Winnebago, Nebraska. His father was an Omaha Indian. His mother was a great granddaughter of “one of the original seventy-five braves who volunteered to scout for the U.S. Army in 1863,” as he describes in his autobiography Every Warrior Has His Own Song (with picture of grandfather on cover).
From book: ”I hit the plunger on the claymore, and nothing happens. I do it again and still nothing. I start to pull the wire in, and I find it has been cut. My heart falls out of my chest. I know we will all die tonight. Death is just a few feet from our mortar pit. I pray to God to let us live until morning. That’s when help will be here. I pray again and again.”
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Janet Bosley
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Bob Ellis
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