[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 19, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2552-H2554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HONORING THE SERVICE OF JOHN EADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as our Nation approaches Memorial Day 
2021, I am deeply privileged to enter into the Congressional Record the 
true story of a great soldier and an agonizing battle during the War in 
Vietnam.
  The story recounts the superhuman valor of a great army soldier named 
John Eade, heroic son of my hometown of Toledo, Ohio. John is held in 
the highest esteem by all who know him. He is a faithful friend and a 
true patriot, a superlatively strong soldier, yet a humble decorated 
warrior for liberty. Yes, he is a Purple Heart and more. He has been 
tested beyond human limits his entire life. He has triumphed against 
overwhelming odds, including lifelong war wounds, time and time again.
  In November 1965, Sergeant John Eade, then 21, was deployed in 
Vietnam, a fire team leader in the 1st Calvary division and its ill-
fated 2nd Platoon, Alpha Company. On November 14, 1965, Sergeant Eade 
and his team were sent to reinforce their sister battalion that was 
engaged in very heavy fighting at Landing Zone X-Ray in La Drang 
Valley. Two days later, believing the enemy was destroyed and the worst 
fighting seemingly over, the 1st and 2nd Platoons Bravo were all 
choppered out. But John Eade and his team left Landing Zone X-ray the 
morning of November 17, marching 10 kilometers to nearby Landing Zone 
Albany. They were the first to arrive.
  They established the command post and defense perimeter, and other 
companies were still coming up the trail. Sergeant Eade, with Alpha's 
2nd Platoon, was sent into the trees to the left while the 1st Platoon 
went right. That is when the two much larger North Vietnamese regiments 
encamped nearby attacked.
  Sergeant Eade's platoon was immediately pinned down in ferocious 
hand-to-hand combat as the North Vietnamese swarmed down on them 
through the trees. Sergeant Eade reflected, ``it was like a gang fight. 
It was small groups of us versus small groups of them. It got down to 
knives. It got down to choking people.''
  Sergeant Eade and his team, Wilbert Johnson, Barry Burnite, and Oscar 
Barker, Jr., tried to outflank the attacking Vietnamese but were badly 
outnumbered. Eade recounts: ``Burnite, a machine gunner, was hit in the 
chest by shrapnel and his gun was disabled. Johnson, his crewman, 
dragged Burnite 30 meters back to a position of cover in an effort to 
save him.'' Eade recounted, ``It was the greatest feat of human 
strength I have ever witnessed. I don't know if Burnite was still 
alive.''
  Johnson and Barker holed up amongst some trees and continued to 
fight. Johnson was killed and Eade was shot in the gut and the right 
shoulder, forcing him to fire his M-16 left-handed. Under RPC fire, 
Eade said his legs and boots were sprayed with shrapnel that left a 
large piece stuck in his foot, leaving him unable to walk.
  Barker tended to Eade's wounds. Everyone else was dead. Eade urged 
Barker to flee 50 meters beyond the woods where the command element was 
situated. Barker refused. Shortly thereafter, Barker was shot and Eade 
attended him as he slowly died. Eade later reflected: ``I don't think 
anyone who studies war doesn't get stuck on the Battle of Thermopylae. 
It is that thing of standing our ground to the last man. If you had 
your chance to cut out or stay, you would have stayed.''
  Despite some misgivings, according to official records, the U.S. 
Command Post called in a napalm strike on Sergeant Eade's position. As 
a result, Sergeant Eade was set on fire and severely burned because of 
the air strike. He was further weakened but still alive. He managed to 
roll in the dirt to put out the flames.
  Sergeant Eade recalled that, among his problems, the napalm proved 
inconsequential. In fact, he said, ``the napalm served a purpose by 
flushing the enemy out and gave me an opportunity to reduce the 
Vietcong numbers.''

  Later in the afternoon, still conscious but bleeding, he said he was 
surprised by the sudden appearance of three enemy soldiers behind him. 
``There were three North Vietnamese looking at me, one with a pistol.'' 
Eade said he shot and killed two, but was shot in the face by the one 
with the pistol.
  The small caliber bullet destroyed his right eye socket and shattered 
parts of the sinus, making it difficult to breathe. He was knocked 
unconscious. When he came to, the third Vietnamese was gone.
  Small groups of North Vietnamese continued moving through the area 
until about midnight, Eade said. And he stopped using his rifle after 
dark so he wouldn't give away his position. He said he managed to crawl 
around and throw grenades at some parties he assumed were removing 
their dead after midnight. The enemy activity ended. He recalls it was 
a struggle to stay awake. He was on his third night without sleep and 
believed if he fell asleep, he would be found and killed.
  Dawn came. He was still alive, though horribly wounded. Around 9 or 
10 in the morning, Infantryman Eade

[[Page H2553]]

said he heard someone moving toward him. He prepared to shoot but held 
his fire and then saw the shape of an American helmet.
  ``I yelled at them, `Give me some water.' I was really thirsty. He 
looked at me and said, `You're shot in the stomach. I can't give you 
water.' I told him I had been drinking water all night. But the soldier 
said `no.' So I asked him for some morphine. I told him I used mine up 
on the other wounded. It really hurts. The soldier said: `You are shot 
in the head. I can't give you morphine.' So I said, `Well, give me a 
cigarette.' They gave me that. And he said he never stopped smoking 
after that.''
  John Eade was awarded the Purple Heart.
  Madam Speaker, I include in the Record the entire story of John Eade, 
a great American soldier.

                 John Eade: ``I Am Going To Die Well''

                [From the Boston Herald, Nov. 15, 2010]

                         (By Jules Crittenden)

       There are people who have the ability to surprise you with 
     the evidence, against long odds, that it is possible to 
     retain a sense of wonder, some ideals and even wistful 
     dreams, when cynicism, demons and nightmares should have won 
     out a long time ago.
       John Eade is like that, the kind of person you're always 
     glad to see. You know you'll walk away with a little of that 
     energy he barely manages to conceal behind a quiet facade, 
     still retaining in his 60s--despite severe war wounds--an 
     infantryman's ability to walk 25 miles on short notice.
       And you know Eade will always leave you with something to 
     think about--like what he had say about the Spartans at 
     Thermopylae, when the movie ``300'' came out a few years 
     back.
       It came up in one of our late-night phone conversations. 
     Eade said he had been captivated by the story when he was in 
     high school in Toledo, Ohio. Forty-odd years later, he was 
     still.
       ``I don't think anyone who studies war doesn't get stuck on 
     Thermopylae. It's that thing of standing your ground to the 
     last man,'' Eade said. ``Three days of fighting set up the 
     Persians for their ultimate defeat. It changed history. It 
     has taken on mythic proportions. You want to be one of the 
     300. If you had your chance to cut out or stay, you'd have 
     stayed.''
       Eade said it almost casually, like any of us would do that. 
     Most people can only wonder if they would. But Eade knows 
     what he is talking about. He's an authority on the subject.
       In November 1965, Sgt. John Eade, then 21, was in Vietnam, 
     among the first American regulars there, a fire-team leader 
     in 2nd Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion of the 
     historically ill-fated 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry 
     Division. They had already seen some combat, and as former 
     paratroopers turned Air Cav, were a confident, well-trained 
     and cohesive unit.
       Over Nov. 14, 15, and 16, elements of 2/7 Cav were sent in 
     to reinforce its sister battalion, 1/7 Cav, in the heavy 
     fight at Landing Zone X-ray in the la Orang valley, where a 
     reconnaissance in force had encountered a large force of 
     North Vietnamese regulars. On the 16th, with the enemy at X-
     ray destroyed and the worst seemingly over, 1/7 was choppered 
     out, along with 2/7's Bravo. The rest of 2/7, with a company 
     of 1/5 Cav, left X-ray the morning of Nov. 17, marching 10 
     kilometers to Landing Zone Albany. Just short of Albany, the 
     lead elements captured a couple of North Vietnamese soldiers. 
     There was debate about whether they were deserters or an 
     outpost.
       Still mulling the implications, they moved on, the 
     battalion CO calling his company commanders ahead for a 
     conference. In Albany's clearing of grassland and anthills, 
     surrounded by forest, 2/7's Alpha Company began establishing 
     a command post and a defensive perimeter within which the 
     helicopters could land and take them home. The battalion's 
     Delta, Charlie and Headquarters companies were still coming 
     up the trail behind them, with 1/5's Alpha company bringing 
     up the rear. Eade, with Alpha's 2nd Platoon, was sent into 
     the trees to the left, while 1st Platoon went right. That's 
     when the two North Vietnamese regiments encamped nearby 
     attacked, along the length of the column.
       Eade discussed his experience with me five years ago for a 
     Boston Herald article. It was the first time he had done so 
     in a public venue. He recalled that his platoon was 
     immediately pinned down in ferocious fighting as the North 
     Vietnamese swarmed on them through the trees.
       ``For the first hour and a half, it was intense hand-to-
     hand,'' Eade said. ``It was like a gang fight. It was small 
     groups of us versus small groups of them. It got down to 
     knives. It got down to choking people.''
       First and 2nd platoons were taking the brunt of the attack 
     on the landing zone's perimeter. Delta, Charlie, HQ and 1/5 
     Alpha companies, strung out along the trail, were also under 
     heavy attack, with similar scenes of desperate combat playing 
     out as hundreds of men, American and Vietnamese, engaged 
     among the trees. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese who had cut off 
     the column were directly assaulting the Alpha's command post 
     among some anthills in the middle of the clearing.
       Eade said he and his fire team, Wilbert Johnson, Barry 
     Burnite and Oscar Barker Jr., had some freedom of movement 
     along a line of brush and tried to flank the attacking 
     Vietnamese.
       ``We wanted to hunt them down and give the platoon a 
     chance,'' Eade said. ``We bit off more than we could chew.''
       Burnite, a machine gunner, was hit in the chest by shrapnel 
     and his gun was disabled. Johnson, his crewman, dragged 
     Burnite 30 meters back to a position of cover in an effort to 
     save him.
       ``It was the greatest feat of human strength I have ever 
     witnessed,'' Eade said. ``I don't know if Burnite was still 
     alive.''
       Eade said he, Johnson and Barker holed up among some trees 
     and continued to fight. Johnson was killed, and Eade was shot 
     in the gut and the right shoulder, forcing him to fire his M-
     16 left-handed. Under RPG and mortar fire, Eade said his legs 
     and boots were sprayed with shrapnel that left a large piece 
     stuck into his foot, so he couldn't walk.
       By about 3 p.m., much of the fighting had subsided around 
     the fire team's two survivors, Barker and Eade. Barker tended 
     to Eade's wounds in the lull, stuffing one of Eade's dirty 
     socks into his shoulder wound to stop the bleeding because 
     they were out of bandages.
       ``I knew and he knew that everyone else was dead,'' Eade 
     said. He said he urged Barker to try to save himself and run 
     for the command post, which Eade estimates was located about 
     50 meters of open ground beyond the woods, where the command 
     element and mortars still held a perimeter.
       ``He refused to go,'' Eade said. Shortly after that, Barker 
     was shot, and Eade had to watch him die. It was a sucking 
     chest wound, and it took a long time, Eade said.
       After Barker died, Eade was alone.
       ``My whole life, I've missed the people I was with,'' Eade 
     said at that point in the conversation. ``I just miss them a 
     lot.''
       I asked him what his thoughts and emotions were at this 
     time, as the last surviving man in his position with every 
     expectation that he would be killed as the Vietnamese moved 
     through the trees finishing off the wounded. I was under the 
     impression that Eade had played dead to survive, but he said 
     that wasn't the case.
       ``Playing dead was a way to die. It made no sense to me. 
     Our job was to hold that position and kill the enemy,'' Eade 
     said. ``I had this thing in my mind, part of the U.S. Army's 
     General Orders and the soldier's code you learn in boot camp: 
     `I will never forget I am an American fighting man. I will 
     never surrender of my own free will. I will continue to 
     resist to the utmost of my ability. I will not leave my post 
     until properly relieved.' ''
       Eade said he kept repeating it himself.
       ``I don't think it was unique to me,'' Eade said, citing 
     the actions of men like Barker and Johnson. He said his 
     seemingly hopeless position was made easier by his belief, 
     established weeks earlier after several men in the unit were 
     killed in other actions, that he would not leave Vietnam 
     alive. What Eade says about that may sound familiar to other 
     veterans of heavy combat:
       ``It wasn't a matter of living or dying. It was taking care 
     of each other and doing your duty. The anticipation of a 
     future is what you give up. The question was not, `Am I going 
     to die?' We all know the answer to that. The question was, 
     'How am I going to die? I am going to die well.' ''
       In the command post, Alpha Company's executive officer, Lt. 
     Larry Gwin, reports they saw large groups of the enemy moving 
     through 2nd Platoon's area. The command post remained under 
     assault by waves of Vietnamese, still cut off from what was 
     left of the rest of the battalion.
       A couple of 2nd Platoon soldiers who had made it out of the 
     woods and across the open grassland to the command post said 
     they didn't think any Americans were alive in there. Despite 
     some misgivings on the part of some officers, the decision 
     was made to thwart a Vietnamese attack on the command post by 
     calling in a napalm strike on 2nd Platoon's position.
       ``I think they made the right decision,'' Eade said. He was 
     on the edge of the A-1 Skyraiders' napalm strike.
       ``It set me on fire, but I managed to roll in the dirt and 
     put it out,'' Eade said, adding that among his problems, the 
     napalm proved inconsequential. In fact, he said, the napalm 
     served a purpose. ``It flushed them out and gave me an 
     opportunity to reduce the numbers.''
       Later in the afternoon, Eade said he was surprised by the 
     sudden appearance of three enemy soldiers behind him.
       ``There were three North Vietnamese looking at me, one with 
     a pistol.'' Eade said he shot and killed two, but was shot in 
     the face by the one with the pistol. The small-caliber bullet 
     destroyed his right eye socket and shattered parts of his 
     sinuses, making it difficult to breathe. He was knocked 
     unconscious, and when he came to, the third Vietnamese was 
     gone.
       ``I was angry at myself for being shot in the head. I was 
     angry at myself for being careless. I was really pissed off 
     at the North Vietnamese. It was probably the most maniacal 
     moment of my life,'' Eade said. He declined to elaborate.
       Small groups of North Vietnamese continued moving through 
     the area until about midnight, Eade said. He said he stopped 
     using his rifle after dark so he wouldn't give away his 
     position. He said he managed to crawl around and throw 
     grenades at some

[[Page H2554]]

     parties he assumes were removing their dead.
       ``There was no shortage of grenades lying around,'' Eade 
     said.
       After midnight, the enemy activity ended. He recalls that 
     it was a struggle to stay awake. He was on his third night 
     without sleep, and believed that if he fell asleep, he would 
     be found and killed.
       Dawn came. He was alive, though severely wounded. Around 9 
     or 10 in the morning, Eade said he heard someone moving 
     toward him. He prepared to shoot, but held his fire. Then he 
     saw the shape of an American helmet.
       ``I yelled at them, `Give me some water!' '' Eade said. ``I 
     was really thirsty. He looked at me and said, `You're shot in 
     the stomach. I can't give you water.' I told him I had been 
     drinking water all night, but he said no. So I asked him for 
     some morphine. I told him I had used mine up on the other 
     wounded. `It really hurts,' I said. He said, `You're shot in 
     the head. I can't give you morphine.' So I said, `Well, then 
     give me a cigarette.' They gave me that.''
       He said he had never smoked before, but hasn't stopped 
     since.
       Eade's experience was similar to what hundreds of men up 
     and down the column experienced over the prior afternoon and 
     night, though many did not survive the first few hours after 
     the Vietnamese broke through and enveloped them shortly after 
     1 p.m. on the 17th.
       Gwin, who remembers firing at the oncoming Vietnamese, and 
     firing again to keep them down, has said he is haunted by the 
     memory of the American dead that he saw strewn across the 
     grassland and throughout the trees on the morning of the 
     18th. He reports that the discovery of Eade alive where 2nd 
     Platoon had been destroyed was a tremendous morale booster 
     for the survivors. When the battle was over, Gwin said, the 
     battalion that had marched to LZ Albany could fit into four 
     deuce and a half trucks. Nearly three-quarters of them had 
     been killed or wounded in a matter of hours. But he said that 
     despite the trauma, morale was high and remained so in 
     following weeks as replacements rotated into nearly empty 
     platoon tents and the battalion prepared to return to the 
     field.
       ``The survivors rallied and cheered the fact that we had 
     held the ground. We knew that we had killed a lot of them. We 
     had given as good as we had gotten,'' said Gwin. ``The morale 
     was very high in a perverse sort of way, because we had 
     survived it.''
       Eade objects to the notion that his platoon, while largely 
     destroyed, was overrun. He argues that he stayed alive, kept 
     fighting, and remained in position. His platoon held.
       Gwin, noting that 2/7 Cav held its ground in one of the 
     bloodiest days any battalion has experienced in U.S. military 
     history, said, ``John's platoon held. If they hadn't done 
     what they did, we would have been overrun.''
       Eade was medevac'd, and none of his comrades saw him again 
     for decades. Gwin said that years later after they were 
     reunited, he and other la Orang vets tried to get a combat 
     award for Eade. Gwin, who earned a Silver Star for his 
     actions at LZ Albany and completed 45 combat assaults in his 
     year in Vietnam, said he believes Eade's actions merit a 
     Distinguished Service Cross. But because there were no living 
     American witnesses to Eade's actions, Gwin said, the effort 
     was unsuccessful. Eade himself has said, regarding 
     decorations, he is satisfied with the Combat Infantryman's 
     Badge.
       Eade spent 1966, the year after the la Drang, in the U.S. 
     Army hospital at Valley Forge. That's where the mother of his 
     fire team's machine gunner, Barry Burnite, came to see him.
       ``I don't know how she found me,'' Eade said. ``She asked 
     me, how did her son die? I kind of told her the truth and I 
     kind of didn't. I cleaned it up a bit. The uncontrollable 
     grief of that woman has stayed with me my whole life. Her 
     pain and her grief was more than I could bear to look at. I 
     can never think about it without wanting to cry.''
       Eade, though battered and disfigured, recovered and went to 
     university in the late 1960s. He became an architect. He 
     pursued a career through what he called ``serial jobs,'' 
     staying only until he became restless or angry, and moving 
     on. He was largely solitary, and to this day closely guards 
     his privacy. Eade became chief of inspectional services for 
     the City of Boston in the 1990s, which is where I first met 
     him. A lightly built, soft-spoken man with an eyepatch, an 
     unexpected character in City Hall, a little odd and engaging. 
     Serious about his work, he had a reputation for toughness and 
     honesty. I only learned about his history several years 
     later, and then it was by odd coincidence, through Gwin, our 
     mutual friend, by then the informal head of a small informal 
     group of combat veterans, some Boston lawyers and investment 
     bankers who form a sort of movable VFW down in the businesss 
     district.
       Gwin had seen Eade's name in a local newspaper article and 
     sought him out. Eade had been out of touch with his fellow la 
     Drang vets for nearly 40 years, having made no effort to get 
     in touch.
       ``You have to understand. All my friends were dead,'' Eade 
     explained.
       It was one of those typical silver-bullet Eade statements. 
     He has a gift, or maybe the curse for it. Unsentimentally, 
     matter-of-factly plumbing a terrible depth of human 
     experience in a few words.
       These days, Eade seems to have friends everywhere he goes. 
     There is always someone who walks up, glad to see him, when 
     we walk through the city. They say little things about him in 
     brief asides, something he did one time or another. I don't 
     know how many of them know that this quiet, gentle man is 
     still a soldier, prouder of nothing more than to have been an 
     American combat infantryman who held his ground.

     

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