Vietnam Diaries Winning the Lottery By Ken Anderberg Ken Bradley calls himself the "veterans representative" at Georgia Power Company. In 1995, he helped organize the company's first formal recognition of employees who were veterans. Nearly 3,500 employees were honored then with certificates of appreciation signed by the company president. "Some of those said it was the best thing that anyone had ever done for them since they got back from Vietnam or their service in the military," he says from his cubicle on the 15th floor of Georgia Power's office son Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. "It was extremely rewarding for me to do that. In 1997, we did the same thing for Gulf War vets." For Bradley, such efforts to recognize U.S. war veterans is something of a catharsis, one of the ways he deals with memories of his service in Vietnam. "It took me years and years to look back at the war and say it was a good thing or a bad thing," the Acworth resident adds. "Some of the things that were happening in Vietnam were absolutely horrible. "It makes you see that life today is so easy. What I compare it (living through the war) to is winning the lottery, thinking about how close I was to death and how lucky I am to be here today. I don't want to make light of anything, but I think it was a terrible waste of human life and resources for generations of people that continues today, not only for Americans but for the Vietnamese. You always think of the enemy as being alien creatures or something, but they're just like we are." Vietnam was not the first difficult time in Connecticut native Bradley's life. His parents both worked in the factories in the industrial town of Bridgeport, raising two boys and two girls. He remembers his father as both a violent man and an alcoholic. "Coming back and dealing with my dad was almost as bad as Vietnam," he admits. "It was like a battle." His father, who died in 1982, apparently fought his own battles, including the memories of being at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941. Like his siblings, Bradley did not go to college after high school, first getting a job as an apprentice at a newspaper, before joining the Army in April of 1968. For a young man from a declining factory town, the military offered a second chance. The Dear John Newly married, he was first sent to Fort Dix, N.J., and then to Fort Polk, La., nicknamed Tigerland for its jungle warfare training and climatic similarities to Vietnam. From there, it was straight to Vietnam and the 173rd Airborne division in An Khe in the Central Highlands of II Corp. It didn't take long for life to throw him another curve. "It didn't take long before I got a 'Dear John' letter," he recalls. "A lot of guys did. When I came home, I tried to straighten out my marriage, get my life together, but it went downhill from there." In Vietnam, Bradley joined a mechanized unit, driving an armored personnel carrier and guarding Highway 19 and its bridges. Often, he was helicoptered into the bush with his unit to seek out North Vietnamese regulars on foot. A slight 130-pounder at the time, he occasionally was asked to "pull point," like most of the GIs patrolling the front lines. Units in the field usually advanced single file, with the man on point expected to look for signs of the enemy. In the jungles, patrols rarely used established trails, since they were usually booby-trapped. Instead, they would clear their own paths, with the point man responsible for slashing through dense vegetation with a machete. "I couldn't go anywhere," Bradley says, "because I had a rucksack on that weighed about 80 pounds, carrying mortar rounds and all kinds of junk (grenades, water, food, rifle ammunition, etc.). I'm a small guy and all I could do was lean back into the brush and try to make a path through there. So they said, 'get that guy out of there and put a big guy up there.'" Given the high casualty rate of point men, Bradley's size might have contributed to his life-saving lottery win. While never wounded, Bradley saw his share of fire fights. Often, he says, after those fire fights, the dead enemy soldiers would be taken to a nearby schoolyard for eventual disposal. One day, a friend suggested they go for a look. "He was so enraged with the war," Bradley recalls. "Some people kept it inside, didn't show any emotion, but he was incredibly enraged. "There was a pile of 20 or 30 bodies, all blown to pieces in all shapes and forms. He went in there and he started kicking this guy's head, just a shell of a skull. I told him he was creating a big problem because these villagers were all standing around this pile of bodies trying to identify their relatives Ð their children, fathers, cousins and sons. He took out his frustrations on this one body, kicking this head and making this horrible sound. I finally dragged him out of there. That experience stayed with me quite a while." Soon a civilian Bradley went to Vietnam as a private and came back in 1969 as a sergeant, an accomplishment he points to with pride today. Like many returning veterans, however, it was not enough to keep him in the Army. After six months at Fort Dix as an assistant drill sergeant, he reentered civilian life. At Fort Dix, the recruits would ask him what to expect if they were sent to Vietnam. "I said, 'A lot of you guys are going to get killed. You'd better pay attention to what the hell we're teaching here.'" Finally giving up on the rough economy of Connecticut in the 1970s, Bradley moved to Atlanta and its booming job market in 1979, where he put his printing industry skills to use at several commercial printers. Looking for a larger company with better security and benefits, he campaigned for a position at Georgia Power for six months before finally landing a job. From that beginning, he was eventually made foreman of the company's press room in 1985, put in charge of the Georgia Power sign shop in 1989 and, in 1991, placed in the customer service area to redesign that aspect of the print shop. Today, he is a pre-production planner, providing print estimates, planning all print production for Southern Co. and Georgia Power, buying paper, planning press schedules and meeting with vendors. Remarried with two sons, Bradley today proudly displays several U.S. flags, and Vietnam photos and memorabilia in his office. On one wall hangs a plaque with the inscription: "For those that fight for it, life has a flavor the protected never know." "For anyone who was in the war, that really sums it up," he says. For Bradley, however, personal success as a civilian, and the conquering of his own personal and war-time demons, has not buried Vietnam. In addition to his work as Georgia Power's veteran representative, he is active in several Vietnam veterans groups, and currently is trying to locate several of the people he fought with 30 years ago. "One of my friends was killed in 1969," he offers. "Walked right into a booby trap that blew him all to pieces. I've been trying to track his family down for 30 years. I've always wanted to tell his family what kind of a guy he was; how he always made us laugh; how his spirit was always higher than the rest of us." For the most part, the Vietnam "experience" has been a positive one for the mustachioed Bradley. "Vietnam brought out the leadership qualities in me," he says. "If I look back to when I started (at Georgia Power) 17 years ago, I've been able to move up, with no college, no formal training, to where I am now. I feel I hold a great position here now and Vietnam had a lot to do with that." As to his ongoing efforts to have veterans like himself recognized, he concludes, "I think a lot of veterans just want to be told, 'We appreciate what you did. Thank you.'" Return to Vietnam Diaries Contents Page