Chip Hanson - USMC 1967-69
Chip Hanson - USMC 1967-69, Vietnam
Chip Hanson grew up in Joliet, Illinois and enlisted into the military after father died of leukemia.Although Chip wanted to join the Air Force his two older brothers were Marines. “I said, I’m going in the Air Force. You would have thought I told them I was going into the Communist Party”. His brothers convinced him to join the Marine Corps. “The only thing was I told him (the recruiter) I wanted the shortest term that they had. And they had a two-year term at that time. But if you go two years, you're going to become a grunt and you're going to go over to Vietnam. And it's a flip of a coin if you're coming back. I said, I'm coming back. The guy was right. I ended up in Vietnam as in the infantry.”
The morning after arriving in Da Nang Chip was put aboard a C-130 and send to Khe Sanh. “We're all jumping off and there's bam, bam, bam all over the place. The guy who was right in front of me went down and when I went back to grab him, some guy came running up he grabbed me by the neck and threw me down. He says, there's nothing we can do for that guy. That was the first day of the siege of Khe Sanh." A few months later Chip would be involved with the taking of Hill 881. “We lost probably 15 people, let alone how many got wounded in that one.”
Like many Vietnam Veterans Chip never spoke of his experiences in the war. “It took me 40 years to even accept the fact that I was a Vietnam Veteran. By that time, I'd already developed leukemia, and I'd lost one kidney all from Agent Orange.”
Today Chip volunteers as a Chaplain and Service Officer in Florida where he helps both Veterans and Veterans families get the benefits the earned. “If a veteran dies, there's not a lot you can do for that individual but there's a lot you can do to comfort the families.”
Thank you to Brevard Veterans Memorial Center in Merritt Island, FL for inviting USA Warrior Stories to record this interview.
