The year-and-a-half Doug Batten of Enterprise spent in Viet Nam is a long time ago now, but it’s a period of time that he has never forgotten.

“I don’t really have a lot to say,” said Batten, when first asked if he’d be willing to talk about his service during war time and during peace. Most of his time in the war zone was spent on infrastructure improvement, driving truck for road construction and other projects. “All I did was build things and blow things up,” he said about his time in Viet Nam, which followed about two years in Thailand.

Almost 40 years later, Batten is now the Commander of Eagle Cap VFW Post #4307, an organization with 250 members who served in active military duty in a foreign war, about half them living outside of Wallowa County.

Batten, 61, grew up in Montana and enlisted in the Army not long after graduating from high school.

In all Batten served over 11 years in the U.S. Army. He married his wife Carol, also a Montana native, after returning from Viet Nam and went on to a civilian life that included a number of jobs in different places, and then as an employee of Pacific Power moved on to Wallowa County with his wife Carol. About six years ago, Batten became involved with the Veterans of Foreign War and has served as Commander of VFW Post # 4567 in Enterprise for three years.

Now retired and disabled because of physical problems that make it difficult for him to walk or stand for long, Batten is quietly proud of the VFW post, especial for such activities as conducting funeral services by request for any one who has ever been in active duty in the military. “It means a lot to the families,” he said.

For Veterans Day next Tuesday, Batten invites everyone – especially veterans and their families – to a traditional SOS breakfast at the VFW Hall in Enterprise, and then to a potluck dinner in the evening, hosted by the VFW post and auxiliary. The activities are planned to celebrate and honor local veterans.

Veterans Day is a time of year when many veterans have reason to remember their tour of duty during war.

For Batten, that time was a year and a half in 1969-1970 – he signed up for an extra six months after he finished the standard one-year tour in Vietnam.

Batten served with the A Company 93rd Engineer Battalion, most of the time at Dong Tam, a military base located 45 miles southwest of Saigon, west of the delta town of My Tho. Dong Tam served as a headquarters for the US Ninth Infantry Division while it operated in the Mekong delta and provided the US Navy with permanent repair facilities for river craft.

Though he was a builder of roads and not an infantryman, Batten said he always carried his M-15 rifle and a grenade launcher wherever he went. “Every minute,” he said when asked if he was ever afraid while in Vietnam. “When I came home and people asked what it was like, I would tell them it was pure boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.”

The sheer terror part usually came in the middle of the night, when enemy soldiers would regularly launch mortars into the base – sometimes five or six nights a week – causing everyone to run from their bunks to bunkers inside the compound until the attack was over. “It would get so dusty inside that you couldn’t breathe,” he recalled, estimating that sometimes 50 to 60 soldiers would be crowded into a bunker.

Batten speculated that his experiences in Viet Nam are why he doesn’t like crowds to this day. Things were usually tamer during the day. “They used to say, ‘The night belongs to Charlie’,” he recalled.

Road building through rice paddies was pretty challenging, he said.

One time in particular he remembered that they hauled gravel for a road all day, and when they went back in the morning it was all gone, completely sunk out of sight in the paddy.

Batten said after a lot of effort a portion of the road was finally completed and paved. The next morning the asphalt was completely gone.

In a nearby village so small it probably wasn’t even on the map, Batten said, they found smiling villagers who had chipped up the asphalt to make “nice little paved trails in the village and to their rice paddy dikes. … I’m not sure, but I think something was said to the villagers, because it never happened again.”

Batten said that he doesn’t have too many photos of his Viet Nam years anymore, but there are two faded black and white photos of him as a young soldier, probably 22, in formation at Dong Tam, hanging on his living room wall. In one he’s being presented with a meritorious service medal, and in the other the presenter is shaking his hand.

“I don’t know who anyone is anymore,” he said, looking at the photos. “That’s when I had a little more hair.”

He said that he didn’t really do anything heroic to receive the decoration, just did his duty in a war zone during war time.

After the war Batten came back home to the United States, and happily, didn’t personally experience any of the anti-war sentiment that was sometimes reported at the time. He left the military in 1978, and went on with the rest of his life.

A quiet man, Batten doesn’t quite know how to articulate why he has found a niche that fits him so well in the VFW. It’s obvious that he is proud of the organization and the role it plays in the community, from carrying American flag in local parades to sponsoring contests for local youth to honoring those that have served in wartime.

There’s a core of about a dozen members who are very active, plus the very supportive VFW auxiliary. However, with about 275 names on the rolls of those who have died, the post now has more deceased members than those still alive.

In some places, Batten said, VFW posts are closing because “people just don’t join things like they used to do.” He doesn’t see that happening in Wallowa County anytime soon. “The soldiers serving in war now will come home and want to keep it going,” he said. “We have a lot in active duty now.”