His Pledge of Allegiance

Bill Ordway wasn't much to look at - a rather runty and pock-marked young man from a mill town trying to be the first in his family to obtain a college degree. Self-effacing, athletic, and popular, Bill easily adopted to our college's social and athletic environment. Rooming across the hall from one another, Bill and I became close friends during our freshmen year, pledging the same fraternity.

Things were less sanguine on the academic front. Bill lacked the academic discipline required to compensate for his relatively poor high school preparation. Nonetheless, he would have likely completed college excepting for his need to maintain the C+ average (when C was the average grade given) required to keep his scholarship. Failing to do so, Bill left school in February 1966.

Dropping out of college in 1966 held severe ramifications for a young man. The war in Vietnam was ramping up, and many would mirror Bill's decision to volunteer for the Army's Officer Candidate School in lieu of the certainty of being drafted. Ordway was not in favor of the war but, like many of his peers, respected the allegiance he felt towards the United States government.

Bill was the first fraternity brother to serve in Vietnam. As an Infantry lieutenant operating in a highly contested region, he was constantly in and out of combat. His letters, albeit infrequent, described his wartime experiences in a detailed, matter of fact manner. Fraternity brothers would pause by the bulletin board outside the kitchen to read about his exploits, learning for the first time about spider-holes, ambushes, and booby-traps. I remember clearly the letter he wrote to me describing being in combat for over one straight month just prior to Christmas 1967.

His death in the field -a bouncing-Betty mine severed his neck- during the furious combat that followed the Vietnamese Tet Offensive, seemed surreal to all of us. We attended the wake, the service, and the military burial in the small central-Massachusetts cemetery in a state of denial: none of us wanted to face up the harsh realities of this war which threatened to become intensely personal for many who would graduate in the coming spring.

Bill Ordway died in the worst kind of war. Unlike WWII that proceeded and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed, the war in Vietnam was fought by men who didn't want to be there on behalf of an American citizenry that resented them for their allegiance to the United States government. There would be no free tickets to sporting events nor singling out for praise by their neighbors and peers upon their return from Vietnam. Their desperate need for some sense of acknowledgement for their year of horror and sacrifice was often replaced by derision and scorn. In the best of circumstances they were simply ignored.

As a high school teacher I daily pledge my allegiance . During these moments I often think of Bill Ordway and the other Vietnam veterans who honored their school-day pledges regardless of their personal feelings. The Vietnam conflict may have ended some 35 years ago, but the sacrifices of men like Bill Ordway remain undiminished in the eyes of those who knew them.