Lee Reyes served for 13 months in Vietnam as an M60 Machine Gunner. He recalls his time in the service and how it shaped him as a person. Photo by Megan Kelley.

By Megan Kelley
Editor
mkelley@mihomepaper.com
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — Lee Reyes has a long history of caring for others in a way that one can only describe is completely selfless.
Perhaps one of the most selfless things he has done in his life was enlist in the United States Marines in 1968 right after he finished high school in order to try and help his older brother who had been drafted.
“At that point in time, I knew that two brothers couldn’t be in the war. My brother was engaged to get married so I thought, ‘if I go over there, they have to ship him back home.’ I was kind of a wreck anyway,” Reyes said.
He says it was an easy decision, that he would do it again and that he believed his brother would do the same for him.
Reyes had boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina and Jungle Training in California. In a short period of time, he had received his training, gotten his shots, and was shipped off to northern Vietnam where he spent the next 13 months serving as an M60 Machine Gunner.
His brother, who served in the Army, did not leave the military though. So, the two brothers, despite being on opposite ends of the country, served at the same time in Vietnam but in different positions.
“He had a nice job. He was a Supply Sergeant who was at the rear who had the Korean Marines next door. There were no boundaries for them (Korean Marines) there was nothing they couldn’t do. So, when one of their guys got hurt on patrol, they could wipe out the whole village and there were no repercussion for it,” Reyes said. “The NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and the Vietcong learned very quickly not to mess with the North Korean Marines. My brother’s compound was right next to them. So, when there were bombs going off all over the place, they would always miss those two.”
Reyes remembers visiting his brother during his week of Rest and Recuperation (R&R) rather than do what most elected to do, which was leave the country for a bit.
“Everybody thought I was crazy, but I said, ‘if I leave this country, I’m not coming back, I’m going to go AWOL (Absent Without Leave). I don’t want to come back to this Hell.’ So, what I did, I was up north, my brother was down south, I’d get on a plane and stayed with him for the week,” he said. “He had tons of liquor bottles in his room and I hadn’t had ice cream in a while. He asked me what I wanted and I said ice cream. He called in a supply and next thing I know we went to the Chow Hall, the cafeteria, and sure enough, they had ice cream. It was a blast visiting him.”
As a Marine, Reyes maintained the character he had when he enlisted in an attempt to help his brother.
“Marines have different philosophies than most of the other branches. We never looked at each other as white, black, Hispanic, nothing, it was all green. We were all green,” Reyes said. “From day one we all took care of each other. It was just one of those things we did.”
Reyes recalls the first of two times they were overrun, when his friend froze and couldn’t move.
“I said, ‘we’re going to do this and then this,’ and I threw the grenade out, shot and ran out. I’m looking for him and it was at night, and he was still back where we started from. So, I went back there and grabbed him. He was just frozen. But that’s what we do. We take care of each other,” he said.
Reyes and his friend ended up in a minefield in the pitch dark and Reyes took the reins, crawling on the ground to feel for mines while his friend held onto his feet.
“I could see them and I could hear them because they had illumination coming up. I could see them out there looking for us and they knew that was a minefield so they weren’t coming in there for us. They took a couple shots but didn’t hit any mines or shoot either one of us,” Reyes said. “We stayed there for about six, seven hours and I didn’t come out until I heard Americans talk, until somebody knew who I was.”
Making friends was something they were told not to do out of fear that troops would attempt to save their friends and end up putting themselves in dangerous situations.
“That’s what the Core was telling you. Be wise. They’re your brothers but you have to be smart, you can’t be stupid,” he said. “Be smart. If you want to help them, look where the shot is coming from, try to figure out where the sniper is, try to figure out where the firing is coming from. You’re not going to help them by going out there.”
Reyes was a Sergeant when he was eventually discharged, something he says was kind of a fluke.
“They had inspections every so often and what they would do is go to your barracks and look at your hat to see if it was clean, they look at your uniform to see if it’s pressed and folded correctly,” Reyes said. “I was basically squared away every time but I cheated though. What I did was I bought extra shirts, extra underwear, extra socks, extra boots, extra uniform. You’d open my locker and it looked impeccable, but my real locker was somewhere else.”
Reyes credits his faith in God for getting both him and his brother back home safely.
“I always look at it as ‘the Lord has a way of doing things,’ it’s His call, not mine, and we both came back,” Reyes said. “I said prayers every day.”
When he returned, Reyes took a job with the Pontiac Police Department where he continued to serve, making connections with those who lived in the area and challenging his fellow officers when conflicts arose.
After serving and being in the line of fire, Reyes thinks what most people don’t understand is service is done in different ways and no service makes you less of a veteran than another.
“Once you join the service or get drafted, you’re going where they tell you to go. It’s not your choice. They may send you to Germany, in fact, a buddy of mine that I went to school with, he ended up in Germany. He didn’t go to Vietnam. I ended up in Vietnam and he ended up in Germany. That didn’t make him any less of a veteran than me,” Reyes said.
Editor’s note: Read more stories from local veterans in the special Salute to Veterans publication included in our Nov. 6 edition.