NEW WINDSOR – Vietnam veteran and Rhinebeck resident Steven Cole received several honors and recognitions during his service in the US Army. The medals, including the Purple Heart, were misplaced in the years since he returned from Vietnam, and Congressman Pat Ryan (D, NY-18) and his staff worked diligently to replace them, according to Cole.
At the Purple Heart Hall of Honor in New Windsor, Cole gathered with his family and friends as the congressman presented replacement medals and honors to the soldier who was injured in a Vietnam booby trap.
Cole served in the US Army 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division attached to the intelligence section in Southeast Asia. He was part of a small patrol reconnaissance and ambush team that operated in Vietnam’s Central Highlands near the Cambodian border and the La Drang Valley. During a reconnaissance patrol, Sergeant Cole suffered wounds when his team took fire and he hit the deck – only to fall into a punji stick pit where one of the sharpened bamboo sticks impaled his leg. “My injury was not life-threatening. It was painful; it hurt,” Cole told the attendees.
Congressman Ryan also presented Cole with a copy of the resolution he read on the floor of Congress in honor of Cole.
The retired IBM Regional Public Affairs and Communications manager also recalled his return from the war, getting off a plane in Washington in December 1970. “I was immediately called a baby killer and a scumbag and spit on.” The heroic veteran and his wife attended the Vietnam War Memorial dedication in 1982 and said it was the first time since returning that anyone had thanked him for his service. “Fifty-four years later, here I am being recognized and thanked.”
Ryan, a West Point graduate who went to war in the Middle East, said it is his opinion that “We failed when our Vietnam veterans came home, by not properly honoring and acknowledging their sacrifices.”
He also talked about the current state of affairs in the country. “This is an incredibly tough, divisive, and difficult time in our country. If every person was willing to put country ahead of self and ahead of political party, we’d be in a very different place.”
