To hell and back

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By RICK STROUD

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

TAMPA -- It was a football team you would love to return from war with.

The players deliberately made their entrance onto the field late, forming a line as straight as a ruler as they passed the opposing bench. They were 22- and 23-year-old officers and enlisted men, some combat-wounded heroes who had been welcomed home by flag burnings and chants of "murderer."

It was 1970, and many of the younger college players they faced on fall Saturdays had hair dangling to their shoulder pads. Some opponents twirled in anti-war defiance during the playing of the national anthem while the Marines from Quantico stood at attention.

"These guys would be staring at us," said Les Steckel, the team's starting fullback. "They'd say, "Those guys were killing people a month ago.' Oh, man, we intimidated them."

On the opening kickoff against Eastern Michigan, Steckel caught the ball awkwardly between the ring finger and pinkie of his right hand and didn't notice that the laces had sliced him like a razor. When he was pushed out of bounds, his finger was dangling near his wrist and blood squirted with each heartbeat. He taped the fingers together and went in for the next series.

"We were crazy. We were sickies," said Steckel of his Marine teammates. "I got a separated shoulder and played. I broke my ankle; I didn't get it fixed. We were all sickies. But nothing like that was going to stop us after what we'd experienced.

"It was such a neat bond of people who still today are my best friends, those people I played on that football team with for two years.

"It was just the commonality. We'd all been through training. We'd all been through hell. We'd all been to Vietnam."

To understand Steckel, who is preparing for the opening next Sunday of his first training camp as the Bucs offensive coordinator, it helps to examine his life and the lives of the extraordinary men he served with in the Marines.

Two of his closet friends, Pete Kimener and Terry Murray, were offensive teammates on the Marine football team. Another, Thom Park, was the offensive coordinator.

In the late '60s, when it was counter cultural to enlist for America's most controversial and costly war, they were drawn to serve their country like moths to flame.

By the time they reunited as football teammates at Quantico, Va., where Marine officers train and graduate as second lieutenants, they had survived nearly two years of combat as platoon leaders, company commanders or tank officers.

Their sacrifices were no less heroic than those of any American conflict, except they did not return to joyous celebrations. Still, they rebuilt their lives: married, had families and began in some cases wildly successful careers.

Kimener left graduate school at Xavier (Ohio) to join the Marines and become a platoon and rifle company commander, a duty that earned him a Bronze Star as he achieved the rank of first lieutenant. He returned to his native Ohio to work for the McCormick Equipment Company, which he serves as owner and president.

Park, who played nose guard at Brown and Westchester College, was a tank commander on an infantry battalion and landing team. He enjoyed a 15-year coaching career as an assistant at Maryland under Jerry Claiborne and The Citadel under Bobby Ross. It was a career forged at Quantico, where he was offensive coordinator. He is the vice president of a Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter office in Tallahassee.

Murray, a running back at the Naval Academy, made a career out of the Marine Corps and is now a major general. His combat valor is recognized by a silver and bronze star.

Steckel, who retired a year ago from the Marine reserves as a colonel, has been to Super Bowls as assistant coach with the New England Patriots and offensive coordinator with the Tennessee Titans.

"You look at what guys did, I'm not saying we were the best and the brightest and all that kind of stuff," Kimener said. "They were just a bunch of guys whom I think had a sense for leadership and sometimes that initiative for hard work. In America, it's hard for that not to be successful somehow, somewhere."

Steckel grew up in the shadow of the steel mills near Allentown, Pa., the son of a tough school teacher. On Friday nights, between boilermakers, some mill workers would offer Les and his buddies chump change to fight one another. Les wound up becoming a Golden Gloves light-heavyweight boxing champion.

At the University of Kansas, he befriended Mike Sweatman, an All-America linebacker and currently special teams coach for the New York Jets. The day before graduation, they were studying for finals outside the Pi Kappa Si fraternity house when Sweatman proudly announced he had joined the Marines. The next day, Steckel received a call from the Marine recruiter.

"He was the OSO, or Officer Selection Officer, and his name was General Custer," said Steckel, 54. "I'll never forget. He called me on the pay phone at the fraternity house one day and introduced himself. He sold me by saying, "How would you like to play college football again?' He said you've got to go through OCS (Officer Candidate School) and the basic school -- I had no idea what it was -- but when you graduate, you can play football for the Quantico Marines."

Not once did he mention Vietnam.

Kimener shipped out for Vietnam in October and Steckel, then 21, followed a few weeks later. Kimener served two tours as a platoon and company commander 30 miles southwest of Da Nang. It meant 60-90 straight days in the tropical jungles of southeast Asia, stepping around booby traps in the lowlands, dodging sniper rounds from the tree lines, wading through paddy dikes, standing inside dirt holes at night on ambush, waiting to kill or be killed.

The only relief came when a unit was allowed to return to a resupply compound for maybe 36 hours.

"They'd fly you back to the fire support base for a day and a half. You'd get new boots, recalibrate your weapons and go back out again," said Kimener, 54. "That's what you were trained for, so that's what you did."

In the bush, the image of the spit and polish, crewcut Marine took a beating. There were no showers. No tents, no clean clothes, bathrooms or hot food. They lived in their own filth, walked everywhere, developed open sores, watched the meat disappear from their bones.

"Then we had malnutrition; we had diarrhea. I mean, you could smell us before you could see us," Kimener said. "Malaria, all that good stuff. We fought at night and slept during the day, normally. So you became pretty good night fighters. There was ambushing, patrolling with small units from rifle companies to squads to fire teams."

"You live like an animal," Steckel said. "You think it's hot out here? Try Vietnam. I mean, the jungle? I mean, when I came back, I remember going to the shower and thinking, "Oh, God, these guys are going to think I'm weird.

"I had ticks. And you know, your canteen belt is tight around you and everything you own is strapped to that. As the ticks got into your body, because of the tightness, they couldn't move. When I was in the shower, it looked like I had a belt on. Just solid brown all the way around to the back. It was all dead ticks and stuff inside my body and took about six months to go away."

That was what soldiers dealt with, if they managed to survive. The Vietnam war produced more than 100,000 American casualties, including 50,000 dead. During the height of the fighting in the mid- to late-'60s, an infantry soldier had about an 80-percent chance of being wounded.

They saw friends die, some dismembered, just to be replaced in a few days by another face fresh off the chopper.

"I've seen people just disappear, nothing left," Kimener said. "A boot in a tree. The rest of them? Gone.

"I don't think the life of a foot soldier in Vietnam was a whole lot different than any other war America has fought. It sucks. What was different was that no one gave a s---, or either was opposed to it. So that made it different. So the trick for the unit commander was to fight their units and motivate them. The motivation, for me, was to get these men home in one piece. But you had to convince them that the only way to do that was by winning every day."

Kimener was in graduate school at Xavier when he enlisted with the Marines. His father, a career Navy man who moved his family frequently before settling in Toledo, Ohio, would have swabbed the deck with him had he learned of his son's plan beforehand.

"It was too late when he found out about it, but he wasn't too excited," Kimener said.

Kimener and Steckel met at Officer Candidate School at Quantico but did not see each other during their two years in Vietnam, although they were supposed to go on R&R together once.

"So I came to Da Nang, which is where they pull the flights out of. We were going to go to Sydney, Australia, together," Kimener said. "We were all set to go and the place Steckel was living got ransacked, and they took all his money and his orders. I think he had to have orders, and they stole those. They wouldn't let him on the airplane, so that was the end of that. When I was up there waiting on a flight, he did take me through Da Nang and I remember going through an Air Force Base and getting an ice cream. That was a real treat."

Steckel was in charge of rifle platoons in six Military Advisory Command-Vietnam, or MAC-V, compounds and responsible for security.

"If somebody knew somebody important was coming, the (enemy) was going to blow them away," Steckel said. "So now, you're responsible for their security. Something was happening all the time."

Although Steckel survived the firefights, he said his closest near-death experience came when his helicopter almost collided with another over the Red Sea during a monsoon.

Two months ago, Steckel was reunited with Kimener at a gathering honoring Bill McBride, the managing partner of Holland and Knight law firm in Tampa and a decorated Marine combat veteran who graduated OCS from Quantico.

"I said, "It was really something, wasn't it?' " Steckel said. "(Kimener) said, "You know what really turned the corner for me? The day I said to myself, "Here's the deal. You're going to get killed. Just accept the fact, you're going to get killed. But while I'm here, I'm going to save these other guys' lives.' You can say that, but when you get it from head to toe, you can finally do your job.'

"The sucker didn't even get wounded," Steckel said of Kimener. "That's what blows me away. The grace of God was on him."

The traffic from Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico is thick and the visitor who was expected at 1400 (2 p.m. to civilians) is mashing the accelerator and realizing that -- of all the military cliches you don't want to defy -- he is indeed keeping the General waiting.

Maj. Gen. Terrence Murray, 55, Vietnam war hero and one of the most decorated American servicemen, extends his hand warmly and leads you down a long corridor to his office on the third floor of the James Wesley Marsh Center.

He is a tall man, but parts of his uniform fit loosely, the result of more than a year of chemotherapy he completed in September at Walter Reed Hospital for treatment of skin cancer. A large portion of his lower lip is missing, the result of surgery to remove a tumor.

Two stars gleam from each shoulder and your eyes are drawn to the chest plate of ribbons, earned during a 32-year military career, many while saving lives during firefights in Vietnam as a platoon and rifle company commander in '69 and '70. At Quantico, Murray is back where he started as a Naval Academy graduate at OCS. Murray did not meet Steckel until he returned to Quantico to train officers after two hellish years in Vietnam.

Steckel arrived shortly after Murray, and they became roommates and starters on the 1970 Marine Corps football team.

"I remember standing on the field catching punts kind of checking each other out, not saying much," Steckel said. "He knew I'd played at Kansas, I knew he had played at Navy. We hit it off and ended up getting an apartment."

Murray was a receiver, having switched from running back after a knee injury his senior season at Annapolis. He played only one season at Quantico, returning as a coach the next season -- the last for the Quantico Marine football team -- because of a motorcycle accident that ripped most of the calf muscle off his right leg.

After two years of fighting and being wounded in the jungles of Vietnam, Murray and his Marine teammates could not have dreamed of a better assignment than to return to Quantico, to train officers and play football.

"I knew almost from the time I got there I wanted to be a Marine," Murray said. "I didn't know whether I would be on deck, whether I would fly or lead on the ground. But ultimately, I went to the infantry. While I didn't think a lot about it at school, the fact was, Vietnam was there.

"You had people from the various classes that preceded you, some of whom were casualties, a number of whom were killed. So it was easier for us as officers, I think, to prepare and even more easy for West Point guys, and Naval Academy guys, to prepare to go off to that war.

"My biggest regrets were for the enlisted guys," said Murray, his voice trailing off.

Murray hid his face with his left arm, and two minutes passed in silence. He removed his arm, wiped his eyes, took several drinks from a water bottle and resumed in shaky and hoarse tones.

"In many cases, these guys were 17, 18 and 19 years old, they raised their hand and said, "Sure, I'll go off and fight,' " Murray said. "Whereas the rest of us who were officers, we had time to think about it, to rationalize it and prepare for it. And frankly, our training surpassed the training of the enlisted men.

"It was very hard for them to place value on what they were doing in Vietnam, and I think to how it fit in with the way the country looked at this war. There was tremendous dissension about it. So for young Marines in Vietnam, young servicemen, particularly for the young Marines and soldiers who were humping around, chasing Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army, engaging in firefights, stepping on booby traps, they were just doing what they were told.

"But I will say, despite our problems, it was a rare day to have a Marine not do what you told him to. But the fact is, it was very hard for them to see the value once you got there. And particularly when you see your contemporaries either be seriously wounded, amputees or dying on a battlefield when you're not supported at home, it was pretty tough on young guys."

As a young boy, Thom Park became a student of military history and devoured books on World Wars I and II and the Korean War. He idolized the young Marine who lived upstairs and marched by in his dress blues.

"When you have an orientation to patriotism, you're drawn to that kind of thing," said Park, 55.

After his two-year tour as a tank commander, he returned to Quantico as the offensive coordinator for the football team.

Park worked his troops hard during three-a-days, in true Marine Corps fashion, and the weary combat veterans didn't find their legs until about the third week of the season. After a slow start, his team ripped off nine victories in their last 10 games in 1970 to finish 9-3.

"The talent we had was superior, but you had to start from scratch," Park said. "That's why coaching military football is very challenging. What becomes important is the leaders on the football team."

As a coach, Park was ahead of his time. Unable to move the ball on the ground against Eastern Michigan, he went to the shotgun formation with four receivers and Steckel as the lone running back. "We lost the game, but found our offense," Park said. "Our passing game was about 20 years ahead of its time."

It is easy to romanticize the days that Park, Steckel and their fellow Marines spent at Quantico, playing football as the war in Vietnam was ending. But the fact of the matter is that the healing was slow.

"Viewed externally, from a country that almost had a revolution, from a historical perspective, the people that dealt with that challenge are very special people," said Park, who became an assistant coach at Maryland upon leaving the Marines while Steckel joined the staff at Colorado. "I can remember being angry that so many people made such fine sacrifices and were mistreated. It was very disheartening to have those kinds of emotions and not get treated like the guys in World War II. Nobody did that for the pensions. We believed it was the right thing to do."

Kimener has a more cynical view of the lessons of Vietnam, a view shared by many combat veterans.

"What we learned from Vietnam is that you can avoid the draft," Kimener said. "If you don't agree with what the nation has committed itself to, what we learned is you can run from it and you'll be a hero for doing it and you'll be exonerated for doing it, and that scares the s--- out of me. You can violate the nation's laws and get away with it. If it's not popular, you don't have to do it. It's anarchy.

"I think all of us went over there with some apprehension. But once we were put in command of a unit, we were prepared to do what the Marine Corps wanted us to do. And you have that young man's anticipation about wanting to go to combat and to go through that test."

Steckel said meeting that test instilled leadership skills that have carried on throughout his career.

"Where are we ever going to face a challenge like we faced over there?" Steckel said. "Pete said that in his business, he feels he's had success because the roots came from his training. I agree. I think the work ethic, the discipline, the sacrifice -- all those things you also learn in sports and it carries over to our society. And I really believe those qualities are long gone."

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