It’s been almost six decades since Jim Seibert served in Vietnam, but he can still recall his harrowing experience with vivid detail and emotion. It’s not exactly an easy thing to forget.
Spending a year in the rigorous Central Highlands, surviving booby traps, gunshot wounds, and the threat of attack on an almost daily basis, Seibert became the most decorated veteran to graduate from Webster Groves High School near St. Louis, Missouri, earning two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and three Bronze Stars.
If dodging bullets from the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong wasn’t enough, the thick, triple-canopy jungle presented its own nightmare.
“The only thing you cut your way through the jungle with was machetes, very sharp machetes. Everybody carried one. I remember one day we didn’t get more than 100 yards,” Seibert told KSDK News in St. Louis. “Usually you went 2 clicks, 2,000 yards. We went 100 yards. This is about as far as we could go. You had to deal with it.”
During the dreaded monsoon season in Southeast Asia, Seibert, serving in the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, recalls almost non-stop rain for weeks.
“You woke up wet. You went to bed wet. Then you had to deal with snakes. I had a couple of bad issues with snakes, and if you got bit by a bamboo viper, it was over,” he said.
Like that deadly viper, malaria also slithered through Seibert’s platoon, and the young soldier was not immune. After he contracted a fever that skyrocketed to 105 degrees, Siebert finally got received medical attention.
“There were times when I said to myself, there is no way I can make it like this. There is no way,” he recalls. “There is no way I am going to possibly keep up this tempo for a whole year, but you do.”
An Act of Heroism
Seibert’s year in Vietnam was nearly cut short in 1968 when his platoon was attacked by North Vietnamese soldiers. Shot in the leg, shrapnel sliced through flesh on his other leg, flying up to hit his face and neck. Still, Seibert fought on, pulling a wounded sergeant and lieutenant out of harm’s way.
“You dragged those men with two tourniquets wrapped around your legs, right? I didn’t know that then. (But) I knew as I was moving,” he said. “I couldn’t feel anything, but you put the tourniquets on yourself. I put tourniquets on myself, yeah, because I didn’t want to bleed out. I knew I was bleeding badly. But when you’re facing positive death, it’s amazing what the human body can do.
“That’s what was going through my mind at that time. I didn’t feel anything. All I wanted to do was get out of there, and I didn’t want to leave these two men lying there.”
His lieutenant pulled through and recommended Seibert for a commendation medal for valor. Seibert was given a month to rest and recover before being sent right back to infantry duty.
Battles After the War
When he returned home, things weren’t the same. He had changed.
Seibert struggled with “deep post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) for years before seeking help. Nightmares and flashbacks became an almost nightly occurrence.
“At least four nights a week, I had nightmares, and you know, you just lived with it,” he said. “I drank a lot. I tried to cover it up by drinking. I don’t think I was an alcoholic, but I was close.”
And he did not talk about Vietnam. At least not until recent years. He’s become more reflective with age and is willing to open up about his experiences. Some topics, however, are still off limits.
“Well, how many of the enemy did you actually kill? I never wanted to answer that, never would, because taking a man’s life, I don’t care, unless you’re a sick individual, is a horrible thing and it affects you. It does affect you for the rest of your life, and I took a lot of lives, and I’m lucky they didn't take mine.”
In jungle warfare, the rules weren’t too complex.
“It’s either they take yours, or you take theirs. It’s as simple as that,” Seibert said. “That’s what it boils down to, and that’s how we were trained.”
Now 80, Seibert lives in Kirkwood, Missouri. Nightmares return occasionally when he’s forced to battle his Vietnam demons all over again, but he’s learned to cope with PTSD in healthier ways. His two adult sons aren’t far away, and he leans on them for support.
Seibert said being an athlete in high school, and later at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, provided the toughness, discipline and dedication to survive Vietnam.
