Thanks for serving, but don’t tell anybody you’re a veteran.
That’s a message that folks returning from Vietnam heard far too often.
For Patrick Lyons, a Bradford native now living in Muldoon, Texas, with a Silver Star and Purple Heart from his time in-country from 1967 to ’68, it wasn’t something that really bothered him.
The U.S. Army veteran said, “Those situations didn’t bother me because the world was different.”
He was in the incredibly dangerous long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP), an elite and specially trained force that patrolled deep behind enemy lines. He’d been badly wounded in Vietnam in a firefight where others lost their lives, and was rescued by the 196th Infantry Brigade.
When he returned from Vietnam, Lyons worked as an instructor at Fort Hood for a year.
“They offered me $10,000 and a Corvette to stay in, because of my experience and what I could do,” Lyons said. “I passed on it, and said ‘You’re crazy, I’m not staying in this Army.’”
Instead, he went back to Bradford and back to work for Dresser, where he had worked before he was drafted.
“They did not know I was going to go to school in three months,” he said, adding that he didn’t talk about his military experiences either. “Nobody there knew anything about me, they didn’t know what I did. I never said anything to anybody.”
He married his wife, Anita, and didn’t tell her anything either. She knew he’d been injured, because he still suffered from problems from war injuries.
What about now, years later? “It doesn’t really bother me even today,” he said.
A few years back, Lyons went on a fishing trip with other Purple Heart recipients through the Wounded Warriors in Action Foundation. He was the only Vietnam veteran; the others were from action in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. He asked them about the public’s reaction when they came home.
“I asked how they handled it. They said, ‘We didn’t expect anything because of the way you guys were treated,’” Lyons said. He added, “We definitely fought two different wars.”
Back then, Lyons went to Penn State when he started school.
“Penn State asked me to go to the Behrend Campus up in Erie,” he recounted. “They said ‘we’re trying to limit the number of veterans on the main campus.’ I didn’t realize that was about the time that (riots at) Kent State happened.”
And he was told, “When you are on campus, don’t tell anyone you are a veteran.”
His father had given him a similar message: “’Keep your mouth shut and you’ll be fine,’ because he knew what training I had and if I were to get in a fight it would not be good for someone.”
Now, Lyons belongs to all kinds of veterans and volunteer organizations, and shared why he decided to talk about his Vietnam experience when he had gone so long without doing so.
A few years ago, Lyons and his wife planned a trip that coincided with a veterans reunion, so he decided to go. When they went to check in, he was told as a long-range reconnaissance patrolman, there was a special room for him.
“As I step in the door, there are probably 10 or 15 guys in there, the guy at the door said, ‘Wow you are Pat Lyons,’ and he announced us to the group. He said, ‘Pat, you survived, I can’t believe that.’”
At another meeting, he met someone from the 196th. The two started talking and the other man realized he was the man on the other end of the radio when Lyons was calling in reinforcements back in Vietnam. “The man said, ‘I can’t believe you lived.’”
Others at the meeting heard parts of the story, and wanted to hear it all. Lyons decided to tell it to them on Memorial Day — and was surprised to find he was the keynote speaker in front of a crowd of 200. At the end of his speech, he told those in attendance that not only should they thank veterans, but they should welcome them home, because not all of them were welcomed back.
After the speech, several people approached him, including a couple that had been together 50 years. Until that day, the wife had never heard a story of her husband’s service. Lyons opening up with his story prompted her husband to do the same.
Now Lyons is continuing to do what he can for veterans, including finding neglected cemeteries and cleaning them up. One, in Fayette County near where he lives, is behind a cow pasture and hadn’t been visited in 25 years. There are 168 graves in the cemetery that nature was working to reclaim.
One of the graves is for a man killed in the battle that the film “We Are Soldiers” is based on.
“These are all Black soldiers, the whole cemetery,” Lyons said. The veterans groups are working to restore it, and other cemeteries found in need of care.
