Zumwalt: What Tim Walz Could Learn About Heroism and Sacrifice from My Brother's Vietnam Service

As I read about the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and his military record, I could not help but think about my late brother’s service during the Vietnam war.

It has been noted that Walz, as his National Guard unit was slated to serve in Iraq, had retired from his senior enlisted position to run for political office. This triggered an open letter from over four dozen veterans serving in the House and Senate advising Walz that, in doing so, he “turned his back on (his) troops.”

Walz’s decision is concerning. One of the key principles of military leadership is to lead by example whether enlisted or officer. It is especially true for a unit preparing to serve in combat for the first time. It is a punch to the collective gut of a deploying unit to learn someone with whom they have trained and learned to trust has voluntarily opted to retire or resign their position and not go – unless there is some critical justification for doing so. And, just as bad, despite being a “virgin” combatant, Walz later claimed otherwise.

During the Vietnam War, my brother Elmo volunteered in 1969 to serve there in command of a Swift Boat. This was at a time such service was proving deadly. While these boats were fast, they were operating in relatively small waterways where the river banks were heavily foliated. This enabled the enemy to hide very close to the waterways and set up ambushes. It resulted in a terribly high casualty rate for our sailors. Statistically, a sailor serving a 12-month tour on the boats stood a 72-percent chance of being killed or wounded.

After serving six months on the boats, other opportunities opened up for some “Swiftees,” as these sailors were known, that were much less risky.

Elmo was offered a desk job, also in Vietnam, but rejected it. As most of his crew – both older members who had already been baptized by fire under his command and new members yet to be baptized – he wanted to serve his remaining six months with them. In my discussions with those crewmembers years after the war, all acknowledged the comfort level it gave them that he would remain in command as he had ensured their safety through numerous hostile actions, reflected by the dozens of bullet holes their craft bore.

That decision sealed my brother’s fate. While he survived those following six months, he was exposed to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange that successfully stripped the river banks of their vegetation, forcing the enemy much further back into the jungle, denying them their close range ambushes. The proof that Agent Orange saved many lives was proven by the fact that the US casualty rate dropped from 72 percent to six percent.

Sadly, what we did not know at the time was that Agent Orange was carcinogenic and that many of those exposed to it were returning home with a cancer timebomb ticking away inside them. One of those was Elmo who, upon his return in 1970, married, went to law school, joined a law firm and had two children before dying of the cancers that wracked his body.

The bitter irony for our family was that the man who researched Agent Orange usage and then decided to use it – only after being assured by its manufacturers that it was not harmful to humans – was our father, then Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., who commanded all the U.S. naval forces in Vietnam. After three years of treatment, in 1988, Elmo took his last breath, at age 42, with my father and me by his side. Even though the war had ended 13 years earlier, the shock of losing him was as if we had just learned he had died on the battlefield.

We will never know if Elmo’s fate was sealed during the first six or last six months of his Vietnam service, although a full year of exposure was in no way helpful. While his death obviously hit my father hard, Elmo assured him the Agent Orange decision blessed him with an 18 additional years of life he probably would have been denied due to the 72 percent casualty rate that existed.

Those who died as a result of their Vietnam service – whether there or of their wounds later back in the U.S. – their names now appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial “Wall” in Washington, DC. Technically, those who returned home and died of their Agent Orange related cancers should qualify, but do not. It is said doing so would mandate building a wall at least four times its current size.

In 2004, we were able to get a commemorative plaque placed there so as not to forget these victims which reads, “In Memory of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice.”

Those wearing the uniform are sometimes faced with making difficult career decisions. Sometimes the decision can have an impact beyond one’s own life, impacting our brothers in arms. Elmo tossed aside the personal impact on his life in making his decision, opting not to turn his back on his men despite the high risk environment.

Facing a greatly reduced risk environment, Walz did the contrary.

Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama, and the first Gulf war. He is the author of Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields, Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty and Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking. He is a senior analyst for Ravenna Associates, a corporate strategic communications company, who frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.