ARMY GREEN HIS FAVORITE COLOR
Dick Perkins has three sons, but that doesn’t come close to the number of boys he calls his own. PERKINS, 79, was born during the Great Depression, Nov. 1, 1934, on a dirt-poor farm north of Pleasanton. AFTER boot camp, Perkins shipped out for Korea in 1955, after the truce had been signed but when “there still was some shooting going on.” The muscular Perkins was assigned a bodyguard for I.D. White, a four-star general. IMMEDIATELY after separation, Perkins was hired to provide security for Montgomery Wards in Phoenix, and then 10 months as head of security for the company in Alaska. “I HAVE A lot of memories, some bad, some good,” Perkins said of his Army days, and of the literally hundreds of young men whose lives he affected.
He grew close to many during two tours in Vietnam, and he grimaces when thoughts of battles flood back, to when he often felt like the young soldiers’ “father, brother, even confessor.”
A flashback to Feb. 14, 1967:
Perkins, an imposing figure at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, is leading a patrol in the Mekong Delta.
“It was terrible,” Perkins said, when the Viet Cong unleashed a furious attack accentuated by machine gun fire and grenade explosions. His men — average age slightly more than 18 — were being cut to pieces. One stepped on a Claymore mine and died instantly; others cried in anguish from their wounds.
“To this day I don’t know how I did it,” Perkins said, of the sudden burst of strength he had to pick up a wounded soldier in his arms and head for an evacuation helicopter.
The way was over a 10-foot-long log, with stakes driven on either side that would have impaled him and the wounded soldier had he slipped. Then, he dashed across 100 yards of open ground where Claymore mines were buried.
“I told him we might not make it,” Perkins recalled of a brief conversation before the rescue. “He said, ‘Go for it.’”
That evening a grenade detonated near enough to Perkins that shrapnel ripped into his body and the concussion affected his hearing. His wounds resulted in Perkins being reassigned to the rear, “in charge of the beer and pop depot.”
Another recollection of the horrors of war.
A rambunctious Ranger got busted from sergeant to private and was assigned to Perkins, “to straighten him out.”
“He was from upstate New York and had a real chip on his shoulder,” Perkins recalled. “I got him turned around,” and told an officer the soldier soon would reclaim his sergeant stripes.
During a patrol Perkins’ detachment was pinned down by mortar fire and machine blasts coming from enemy bunkers.
“The kid crawled out and wiped out two bunkers and was working on the third when he was killed,” Perkins said, with his voice noticeably breaking. “I recommended him for the Medal of Honor. I found out not too long ago it was awarded to him.”
Once he arrived in Iola, Perkins took an active role with the American Legion and its boys of summer, players on the Post 15 baseball team.
He played and coached baseball for years and always is eager to help however he can to make a young players better. They have reciprocated.
“When I was in the hospital several of the Legion players came by to see me,” he said. “That meant a lot to me.”
Four years later his father, Ed Perkins, bowed to the torturous economy. His parents moved to Kansas City, thinking there might be opportunities, and young Perkins moved in with his grandparents, Dola and Dayton Brown, on a farm southeast of Mound City
A year later he joined his parents, but Perkins didn’t find big city life to his liking.
“I kept trying to run away, back to the farm,” he said.
After World War II, the Perkins family did return to farming, southeast of Kansas City, and then moved to LaCygne, where young Dick spent his senior year of high school and graduated in 1953.
Out of school, Perkins couldn’t find a job.
“Three buddies and I took out for western Kansas, planning to work the wheat harvest,” he said, but found combines still were churning through fields in Texas. They headed on to California, but faired no better.
That brought them back to Kansas and after shoveling oats got tiresome, Perkins decided his best chance for a job was the Army.
For the next 20 years — he retired Oct. 1, 1973 — Perkins found exactly what he wanted, to the point that today he says that wearing Army green is the best job around.
“I admire everyone who has served our country,” he said. “I wish I could do it all again, and if there was a war I would volunteer in a heartbeat — although I know at my age they wouldn’t take me.”
Perkins’ story doesn’t begin and end quite so simply.
“I went everywhere the general went,” he recalled.
Back in the states, he was made a drill instructor at Fort Leonard, Mo.
He might have been there longer, but wife Susan — “the perfect mother and military wife” — came down with lung problems and he was reassigned to Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., which had a conducive climate.
As it is with career military, Perkins didn’t settle into Arizona, and later was deployed to Germany, first as an M.P. and then with the 51st Infantry. Three years later, the Perkinses were back in the U.S. at Ft. Ord, Calif., where he again was a drill instructor.
His wife’s health took another turn for the worse. They returned to Arizona, where Perkins was commandant of a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at Union High School in Phoenix.
In 1966, with the Tonkin Gulf Incident having escalated hostilities in Vietnam, he was ordered to Ft. Riley, Kan., to train with the 9th Infantry for deployment to Southeast Asia.
“That was terrible,” Perkins said, not of the assignment, but of the carnage he saw in running battles in Vietnam.
When the tour ended, it was back to Ft. Huachuca in Arizona. When an infantry company failed consecutive inspections Perkins was called on to straighten things out. A short time later, “we passed the inspection with flying colors,” he said. He was promoted to first sergeant.
Perkins was back in Vietnam in October 1969.
“I was doing air observation from a helicopter when it got hit a couple of times,” he said. “The pilot, Capt. Nichols, said if he took one through the head, we’d all be dead,” and proposed Perkins learn to fly the chopper.
He did, and an aside was two air medals.
After Vietnam, Perkins was back at Ft. Huachuca, as an operations and training officer in the electronic warfare school, and was on the cusp of a third deployment to Vietnam before his orders were changed to Ft. Richardson, Alaska. He retired in 1973.
He had learned not to put down roots too deeply in the Army, and within a year Perkins was working as a mechanic on the Alaska pipeline at Prudhoe Bay. He later was a general project foreman.
A back injury ended that adventure in 1977, and the Perkins decided home was where his heart first was, on a farm north of Mound City to raise cattle and hay. He finished his work-a-day life — or so he thought — when he retired after 16 years on Nov. 1, 1995, as city superintendent at Mound City.
Wife Susan died in January 1996.
Later that year his daughter introduced him to Iolan Bonnie Stout, which precipitated a move to Iola and their marriage in July 1997.
Before long he was working a Cedarbrook Golf Course, eventually as manager.
“I don’t know how not to work,” he chuckled.
He joined the local American Legion and accepted the role of adjutant and director of baseball.
Perkins has a brood of his own — daughters Denise East, Iola, and Debora David, Blue Mound; sons James and Joseph, both of Blue Mound, and Tim, Moran; as well we seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
“My men always came first,” he added.
He lives by a simple adage: “If you give respect, you get respect.”
Bob Johnson may be contacted at bob@iolaregister.com
