Drafted in 1969, Loren Monsess served as a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam

Loren Monsess was only 19 years old when he was drafted in 1969.

A few months later, the Waterman resident was a door gunner on UH-1H, one of the more than 7,000 such multipurpose utility helicopters that were used by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

“A friend of mine had a little private plane, so I had flown before, so I had a little bit of experience,” he said. “But I’d never been on a helicopter. Riding that high with no doors on it and all the open air was something. But I felt I had it easy. I got to ride, and [fellow soldiers] had to walk and spent half the time sleeping in mud.”

While we take time this Veterans Day to honor veterans such as Monsess for their willingness to serve and sacrifice their lives for their country, we should accept that only they really know what it felt like to be drafted as a teen and suddenly sent to a foreign land with no experience.

“It was different and sudden, but I was one of the lucky ones,” he said. “Everyone else had to walk and sleep in the mud while I went back to a hot meal and a dry bed.”

Monsess became a door gunner while in base camp. Although there only a few months, he quickly learned that the Army was in need of men to volunteer to become door gunners. He pounced on the opportunity.

“The pay for door gunner was $50 a month, which in 1970 was a pretty good chunk of change,” he said. “That’s how I became a door gunner and spent my tour on one of the helicopters.”

Helicopters played a prominent role throughout the Vietnam War. They were used for a variety of purposes, and the UH-1H, best known by its nickname “the Huey,” became symbolic of the war.

“I spent about 11 months in Vietnam, but it was supposed to be a year,” Monsess said. “It was the late fall in 1970 and one of those times where they were trying to get down to an X number of people in the country, so I was given an easy out. I came home about the first of November, got married and had a little time before I went to Fort Hood [since renamed Fort Cavazos] and was assigned the same unit as a high school buddy who had been there a year already. He found me a place, so it was nice to know somebody, especially somebody from home.”

He had stayed in touch with the love of his life, Lucinda, the old-fashioned way despite being about 8,400 miles apart.

“We wrote letters, and back then I could write a letter to her and get a reply back in a week,” he said. “Now it takes a week to send a letter from Waterman to DeKalb.”

When he found out that he was coming home, he called her.

“My fianceé didn’t know when I was coming home, so I called her two weeks ahead of time and planned the wedding in less than a month,” he said.

When Monsess returned home for good, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began a career in construction.

“I went to work for this construction company as a laborer,” he said. “My dad was a heavy equipment operator for the same company, and he got me lined up with the union. I joined the operators union in 1974 and was working with heavy equipment for 30 years. It was an interesting job building all these subdivisions.”

Subdivisions that are filled with thousands of people enjoy freedoms protected by the courageous acts of veterans such as Monsess.

“We were all over northern Illinois,” he said. “The Northern Illinois Gas Co. is who we contracted for, and they had a big territory. We went from the Wisconsin line to Bloomington.”

These days, Monsess is retired, and for many years he made visits to Lisbon in Kendall County to visit his son and grandchildren. He enjoys spending his time woodworking and celebrating his own blessings. He’s now been married for more than 50 years and has six grandchildren to dote on thanks to his two children.