< --------- Happy 70th Birthday Vietnam Veteran Bert Crum
http://www.omaha.com/columnists/kelly/kelly-veteran-who-defied-death-in-vietnam-..." Kelly: Veteran who defied death in Vietnam will get birthday salute in Norfolk "
By Michael Kelly
" Friends will celebrate Bert Crum’s 70th birthday Saturday, a half-century after his life nearly ended in Vietnam.
That he made it this far is remarkable. He is 100 percent disabled.
“Doctors didn’t think he would survive his injuries all these years,” said brother Fred Crum of Omaha. “They didn’t expect him to walk or talk ever again.”
Bert, honorably discharged as a lance corporal, has made the best of the bad hand he was dealt. He is a popular figure at the veterans home in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he moves around in his wheelchair.
“Part of his daily ritual,” said social worker RoseAnn Ross, “is to go around and tell everybody good morning. He is very well-liked, and we are privileged to have him.”
After he graduated from the old Omaha Tech High in 1966, the handsome Bert enlisted in the Marines. His reason for doing so was simple.
“Because of my dad,” he said this week. “He was a Marine during the Second World War over in the Pacific.”
His father, after a divorce, had raised Bert and Fred, who also lived for a time at the Omaha Home for Boys.
After boot camp, Bert married in Omaha before shipping out to Vietnam. Fred recalls his big brother saying it was always hot and rainy, but he has no memory of what happened Sept. 25, 1967.
He was 19, crouched in a foxhole, when a mortar made a direct hit. Two Marines next to him were killed, and Bert suffered a severe brain injury.
He was evacuated and returned to the United States, where a metal plate was inserted in his skull. He eventually spent seven years in a Topeka, Kansas, hospital.
“It was hard to see him that way,” said Fred, now retired as a Union Pacific electrician. “He couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk and was paralyzed on the left side.”
In a 1975 World-Herald interview, as the U.S. departed Vietnam, Bert said from his Kansas hospital bed that he didn’t regret volunteering for the Marines and would do it again if he could.
“It was worth it,” he said. “It was better than having them (the Communists) come over here.”
Fred admires his brother for his military service, his hard work at rehabilitation and his persistence through the years.
Seeing young photos of Bert, Fred said, “reminds me of the good times we always had — and the times he could have had.”
Bert’s marriage had quickly ended, and he didn’t get a chance to raise a family or enjoy a career — he had worked at an auto-body repair shop, and his brother says he might have become a mechanic.
About 58,000 Americans died in the war, their names inscribed on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
But of the 2.59 million who served, another 303,000 were wounded — and half of those required hospitalization.
Some fully recovered. Others have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Still others, like Bert C. Crum, have endured lifelong physical disabilities.
Omaha attorney David Koukol, Bert’s guardian-conservator, has requested information from the Marine Corps, as well as any medals or decorations he deserves.
Bert doesn’t have a Purple Heart. It’s unclear exactly where in Vietnam he was injured.
His 70th birthday is Tuesday, but people will honor him at the veterans home Saturday. In a talk prepared for delivery then, Koukol notes that Bert still carries the scars of his service, but retains a ready smile and a quick wit.
Regardless of one’s political position on the Vietnam War, Koukol says, “warriors like Bert deserve our utmost respect.”