Member Biographies

Floyd Alexander graduated from high school in Jerseyville, Illinois in June 1968 and went to work at a local steel company. By 1969 he decided to volunteer for the draft rather than wait to be called. He took Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and Artillery AIT at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The need for men in Vietnam was high and he went straight from Fort Sill through his thirty-day leave and into country, starting his tour on December 22, 1969.

His first assignment was with B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 319th Artillery on Firebase Jack — a low hill in the flatlands just east of the mountains and jungle, west of Camp Evans and Camp Eagle in I Corps. The base could be re-supplied by road when bad weather grounded the helicopters during the rainy season.

In April 1970, Firebase Ripcord was reopened and B 2/319 moved to the hill under Captain Rich, providing fire support for the infantry in the area. Shortly after arriving at Ripcord, Floyd was selected to replace Jim Hill as RTO for Forward Observer Lieutenant Tom Brennon, who was attached to Alpha Company, A/2-506, then under Captain Burkert. By the end of May, Captain Hawkins had replaced Burkert, and in June, Lieutenant Steve Olson had replaced Brennon — but Floyd remained as RTO. Olson and Alexander became fast friends, close as brothers. Floyd was invited to be Olson’s best man at his wedding planned for his return to Georgia in 1971.

Floyd describes his tour as mostly long days walking through the jungle with occasional encounters with the NVA and the occasional hot LZ. He was glad to be off the firebase, where sniper fire and unannounced mortar rounds were a constant threat.

Floyd was standing next to Lieutenant Olson as usual when the company prepared to move out. They were with the Captain’s command post, two platoons ahead of them and one behind. Then rifle fire and explosions erupted from the front. Everything happened fast. They got down under cover.

Lieutenant Olson stood up to assess where to direct fire. Floyd grabbed him and pulled, trying to keep him down. At that moment Olson was struck by an RPG and killed instantly. Nearby, Sergeant Wagnon — the secure radio operator — had a satchel charge explode in his face, blinding him. Floyd, standing between the two men, received only minor shrapnel wounds.

Floyd spotted five NVA soldiers by a nearby tree up the hill. He emptied his magazine at them and saw them all go down. Whether they were hit or taking cover he had no time to find out. During the battle he watched one of the medics — Fry — get killed while trying to treat a wounded soldier. He watched Sergeant Long, their Vietnamese interpreter, get shot in both legs and bleed to death before anyone could get adequate medical attention to him.

Floyd believed Wagnon was dead. He was about to leave the position when he heard him calling out. Knowing he could not drag Wagnon to safety alone, and unwilling to leave him behind, Floyd lay down next to him and covered Wagnon’s head with his arm and chest. The two of them lay still, pretending to be dead, as the battle raged around them for hours. Others later reported that NVA soldiers were moving among the American dead and wounded and shooting them again to make certain. NVA were reported to have come within a few yards of Alexander and Wagnon before being driven back by fire from American troops.

As the battle wound down, Floyd was able to crawl back toward the American lines. He called out “Currahee” and heard the same word back — but could not be certain at first it was his own men. Once he was sure, he got help and brought Wagnon in.

Through the long night that followed, Floyd helped call in artillery fire for Captain Hawkins, certain the NVA would return before dawn and that Alpha Company would be overrun. “I remember being scared, praying, and just wanting to go home,” he said.

On July 23rd, Delta 2/506 walked into the battle area and helped extract Alpha Company. Floyd was treated for his wounds. The numbness in his leg from his injuries lasted a long time — and even today, it comes and goes.

A week after July 22nd, Floyd had a new Forward Observer and was back walking the jungle hills with Alpha Company. He received an early out and left Vietnam in November 1970, finishing his enlistment at Fort Hood on the honor guard. When his service was over he returned to the steel company in Jerseyville, where he worked until it closed twenty-five years later. He then worked for the state highway department until retirement.

Three years after coming home, he married Diane Crotchett, who has loved and encouraged him ever since. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Jim Aanonsen — known to every man in Alpha Company as “Tiny” — was raised in West Brighton on Staten Island, New York, and graduated from Port Richmond High School in 1967. Drafted in April 1969, he trained at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and arrived in Vietnam in October 1969, assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. He served in 1st Platoon as a machine gunner.

On March 12, 1970, under Captain Burkhardt and Lieutenant Dudley Davis, Jim was part of Alpha Company’s assault to open Firebase Ripcord. It was a bad day — Lieutenant Davis and his RTO Dan Heater were killed, and numerous others were wounded on that first hot LZ.

After Ripcord was secured in April, Alpha Company saw little contact until May 13, when they combat-assaulted onto another hot LZ southeast of Ripcord under Lieutenant Wilcox. The next morning, May 14, Captain Burkhardt had 1st Platoon lead the column southwest down a jungle trail. Jim’s friend Bob Lowe of Ohio — a man he had known since the flight over to Vietnam, who had ended up in the same company and platoon — was walking point. Jim followed behind the slack man. They had gone fewer than 200 yards when an enemy sniper in a bunker shot and killed Lowe.

In the firefight that followed, Tiny brought his machine gun to bear on the enemy position, mowing down trees and brush to suppress the fire while his comrades moved behind him. He kept firing continuously as Sergeant Koger crawled forward through the firefight to retrieve Lowe’s body. During the battle, shrapnel wounded Jim in the arm, shoulder, and leg. He was medevac’d to Camp Evans, then to the USS Sanctuary hospital ship, then to a hospital in Japan, and finally to St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, New York. His courage and sustained fire under fire — wounded, keeping the gun going while his sergeant went forward for a fallen friend — earned him the Silver Star.

After a lengthy recovery, Jim spent his final eight months of service on the honor guard at Fort Totten in Queens.

Jim joined the New York City Police Department, serving 12 years at the Midtown North Precinct and another 11 years in the Manhattan Emergency Service Unit — the elite unit that handles rescues, hostage situations, jumpers, and bomb squad support. After 23 years on the force, he retired in 1996.

When he first reported for duty at the NYPD, a woman named Irene Hyde spotted him and decided he was worth knowing. Since she also worked for the department, she had little trouble checking him out — and after that, as Jim tells it, he was hers even if he didn’t quite know it yet. They have been married for over 25 years, still live on Staten Island, and have two grown daughters.

Anthony — known to everyone as Chris — arrived on Firebase Ripcord sometime between April 4 and 7, 1970, along with three other cooks. Their mission was to set up a field kitchen on the firebase and keep the men fed.

The first location they tried was a hole right on the helicopter pad. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t going to work — helicopters were coming in and out all day long. They moved to another position just below the pad and the South Vietnamese 155mm artillery sites. The cooks dug the hole out larger, built up the walls, and put a PSP roof on it. It was just big enough for a kitchen and a serving line. The men would walk in, get their food, and carry it back to their fighting positions to eat.

Chris and his crew served three meals a day. Breakfast was cooked fresh in the morning. Lunch was C rations handed out from the line. Supper was sent out to them from the rear to serve. At night they kept coffee, soup, and Kool-Aid on the serving line so the men on watch could come get something warm. The hole in the ground was too small to store much fresh food, so they made do with what they had.

Chris left Ripcord on July 6 to make a PX run back in the rear. He missed the last chopper back to the firebase that evening. The next morning, sitting on the pad waiting to catch a ride back, he was told that their bunker had been hit — the moment when SP4 DeFore was wounded leaving the kitchen. Chris went back one more time to collect his duffle bag and personal belongings. All the cooks he had served with had returned to Camp Evans and been replaced by a new crew. His time was up. He started the process of clearing to go home.

Leigh Freeman arrived at Firebase Ripcord on May 7, 1970, flying in from Camp Evans with his friend Rick Thomas — two men who had met at the Omaha induction center in November 1969 and trained together at Fort Ord all the way through to Charlie Company. On the firebase, they were assigned to 1st Platoon and Sergeant Burl Ives’ squad. Rick became M-60 gunner; Leigh his assistant gunner.

Their first weeks on Ripcord were spent stringing concertina wire along the perimeter fence, laying tanglefoot, and helping build a bunker and fighting position next to the TOC. Each day they could watch the hilltop 105 artillery fire its cannons and Cobra gunships rake the slopes of Hill 902 with mini-guns and rockets.

On May 13, Charlie Company lifted off Ripcord by helicopter. The LZ they landed on was so brutally hot that five men were medevac’d for heat exhaustion within the first 100 yards. Over the next three weeks, led by Captain Isabelino Vasquez, Charlie humped through the triple-canopy mountain jungles — dense bamboo, wait-a-minute vines with thorns that wrapped around your neck, and elephant grass seven to eight feet tall with razor-sharp leaves that cut exposed skin and shredded clothing.

On June 6 or 8, during a standdown at Camp Evans — showers, steaks, and beer — an Alpha soldier told Leigh the fate of Willie Norris, a close friend who had trained with Rick and Leigh all the way from Basic at Fort Ord. On June 3, Willie had volunteered to walk point for Alpha at the foot of Hill 1000 and was killed almost immediately by NVA rifle fire. “Five minutes later, I found Rick and told him. We were devastated.”

On July 4, Leigh was hospitalized again for cellulitis — a recurring jungle infection that had swollen his right leg to twice its size, the kind of thing a medic in the field simply told you to “drive on” through. By the time he reached FSB O’Reilly on July 11, Charlie Company was receiving wave after wave of replacements for all the men killed and wounded on Hills 902 and 1000. A fellow grunt told him, “Freeman, I’m going to start standing next to you because whenever we hit the shit, you’re never around.” His platoon leader, Lt. Leibecke, said he had a good guardian angel.

The first year home in Omaha, and for the next fifty years, Leigh struggled with panic attacks, depression, and anxiety — conditions he self-medicated through alcohol and drugs. A VA doctor told him the nightmares, panic attacks, and flashbacks would eventually go away. He was wrong.

Leigh went to college off and on for eight years and earned a BA in English. He drove laundry trucks, sand and gravel trucks, UPS trucks, and school buses. He worked retail at a bookstore and a lumber yard, sold chemicals to auto body shops, and eventually earned a teaching certificate at Kansas State University and an MA at the University of Kansas. He taught high school and college English in Kansas City. Over forty years, he worked more than twenty jobs. He married Vicki and had two children, Erica and David.

He retired from teaching with a pension, moved back to Omaha in 2010, and was granted 100% VA disability. Today he keeps busy performing funeral honors with the VFW Honor Guard, giving back to fellow veterans the dignity of a proper farewell.

Frank was drafted on January 14, 1969, receiving Basic Training at Fort Bragg and Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Dix. He arrived in Vietnam in October 1969, assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.

On March 12, 1970, his company led the assault to open Firebase Ripcord, 20 miles above Hue. It was a hot LZ — helicopters taking fire as they landed, casualties from the moment they touched down. On June 8, Frank was wounded by shrapnel in his back during an ambush. After several days at the hospital in Da Nang, he returned to his company.

By July 22, Alpha Company had been reduced to 76 men. That day they were attacked by over 100 NVA soldiers on the hill, with more at the base — odds of six to one. In a single six-hour battle, Frank was wounded three separate times: shrapnel to the arm, shrapnel to the leg, and burns to his face. He spent six weeks in the hospital and Convalescent Center before returning to his company. He was discharged from the Army on October 10, 1970.

Frank grew up in North Philadelphia — a corner kid, part of a close neighborhood that drew 500 people to a reunion in 1985. He wasn’t a fighter, he was more interested in dances, girls, and driving his ‘65 GTO down the Jersey Shore. When his draft notice came, he didn’t protest. He just said “OK” and went.

In Vietnam, Frank never thought of himself as a hero — he was just there, trying to do his time and come home. But the bonds he formed with his squad — Koger, Webster, Evans, Janezic, and the others — became the deepest friendships of his life. “You have no choice but to bond,” he says. “These were my friends then and today they are still my friends, no matter what.”

Frank devoted decades to veteran advocacy in Philadelphia. He was a founding force behind the Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial “Last Patrol” fundraising effort, organized the Great American Duck Race for the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service Center, and chaired the Philadelphia Veterans Fair. He produced major fundraising concerts featuring Gary U.S. Bonds, The Drifters, The Marvelettes, The Coasters, and Country Joe McDonald. He served as Newsletter Editor for VVA Chapter #266 and the Philadelphia United Veterans Council.

His service awards include the 1986 Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial Distinguished Service Award, the Chapel of Four Chaplains Legion of Honor Award, and the 1993 National VVA Appreciation Award, among many others. In 2013, he received the Distinguished Member of the Regiment (DMOR) honor from the 506th Infantry at Fort Campbell.

Lee Widjeskog grew up near the small town of Rosenhayn in southern New Jersey and graduated from Bridgeton High School before attending Colorado State University, where he majored in Wildlife Biology and enrolled in Army ROTC. Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in March 1969, he completed Infantry Officer Basic Course and airborne training at Fort Benning, then was assigned to Fort Polk, Louisiana. In a moment of Army logic that Lee never forgot, the colonel assigned him to Tiger Ridge — the most remote and least desirable post on the installation — specifically because his wildlife biology degree meant he would be comfortable around wildlife. To his surprise, he liked it.

After Jungle Survival Training in the Canal Zone, Lee arrived in Vietnam in late April 1970, assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. He replaced Lt. Kelly as leader of 2nd Platoon and quickly came to rely on his platoon sergeant, Leverett. His first exposure to combat came when Robert Lowe of 1st Platoon was killed and Jim “Tiny” Aanonsen was wounded. Lee moved up to the front to locate the NVA bunker and hit it with a LAW. They found it and hit it — but it was empty. “That is why I didn’t get killed or wounded,” he wrote later. “That was the first of a number of times I found myself frightened but doing what I was trained to do in spite of the fear.”

Through May, June, and into July, Lee led his platoon through the jungle around Ripcord — hunting NVA on Hill 1000, securing FSB O’Reilly, watching the Chinook take .51 caliber rounds and crash onto Ripcord’s ammo depot on July 18th, hearing the shrapnel hit the trees two kilometers away. On July 20th, 1st Platoon tapped into an NVA communications line in a valley southeast of Ripcord. ARVN Staff Sergeant Long — the interpreter who would die alongside Alpha Company two days later — listened in and identified it as a line between the NVA mortar unit and regimental headquarters. The ambushes that followed left blood trails throughout the jungle.

Lee’s firsthand account of July 22nd — his 24th birthday — is one of the most detailed records of that day’s fighting that exists. He had 16 men with him when 2nd Platoon led the company column toward a new LZ to the north. They had moved 150 to 200 meters from the NDP when the point man spotted NVA soldiers with mortars on the trail and — fearing they might be Americans — held his fire and pulled back to report. Lee took the squad forward to make contact. The NVA opened fire with RPGs and automatic weapons, mortars dropped tear gas onto the company behind them, and 2nd Platoon was cut off.

At the front of the column, Lee and his men dragged the wounded radioman to safety under fire. At the rear, Sergeant Brown was shot through both cheeks, losing part of his tongue and jaw, fighting to stay conscious and not choke on his own blood. His RTO Mulvey was hit by shrapnel. SSgt. Gary Foster — who had only joined them in the jungle four days earlier on July 18th — stood his ground alone, dropping NVA soldiers as they came down the trail, switching to grenades when they began sniping at him from behind trees. Foster took wounds from NVA grenades, had his shirt torn to shreds by a satchel charge, suffered a second-degree burn, and had both eardrums burst. He kept fighting until no more fire came, then herded his two wounded men back into the perimeter.

Tom Schultz of Pittsburgh was killed maneuvering to a new position. Sparky Journell was killed by grenade shrapnel on the north end of the perimeter during the NVA’s mass assault. Tony Galindo was hit in the cheek, eventually losing sight in one eye. Lee himself took minor flesh wounds from the same grenade, and later caught a piece of shrapnel in the mouth from one of Foster’s grenades, shattering a tooth and lodging in his gum. “Luckily I had kept my mouth shut,” he wrote, “or the piece might have gone into the back of my throat or skull. With a wound no worse than a visit to the dentist, I kept on fighting.”

When the fighting ended at around 1800 hours, Alpha Company had 14 killed and 55 wounded. Six men made it through the day unscratched. Lee led 2nd Platoon through all of it.

Lee returned to the field with a new platoon in August 1970, then served as Supply Officer for Brigade Headquarters Company until leaving Vietnam in March 1971. Six months after leaving the Army, he was working for the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife as a wildlife biologist — the same field he had studied at Colorado State, the same knowledge that had gotten him assigned to Tiger Ridge years before. He stayed with that organization for the rest of his career.

He had a grown daughter and son, and — as he put it with characteristic dry humor — “managed to stay married to the same woman who selected me back in 1968.” Lee Widjeskog passed away suddenly in 2022. He is deeply missed by all who knew him.

Lee was one of the Association’s most dedicated members and was working on day-by-day battle reports of the Ripcord campaign at the time of his passing. That work remains part of his legacy.