Gliding behind the counter at the San Martin Post Office, Robert
Johnston does not have restricted movement, does not have visible
scars
– in short, there are no signs he carries 27 shards of shrapnel
in his body.
Gliding behind the counter at the San Martin Post Office, Robert Johnston does not have restricted movement, does not have visible scars – in short, there are no signs he carries 27 shards of shrapnel in his body.
Yet the Vietnam veteran feels them every day – in the tingling of his left leg, in the small bump on his chest where a piece has risen to the surface – and he does not want to forget them. To the 27-year Gilroy resident, every day should be Veterans Day.
“It’s very important to have the single day of recognition,” said the gravely voiced 57-year-old with shaved head, wrap-around white beard and the calm focus of a father giving advice. “But that single day of recognition – the spirit of it should be felt 365 days a year.”
The post office made a contribution toward year-round recognition Thursday when it surprised Johnston – as well as more than a dozen Bay Area employees who are Purple Heart recipients – with a shirt honoring his 21 years of military service and 32 years with the post office. The shirts accompanied the reissue of a Purple Heart stamp, which features a close-up of the medal on a white background.
“I’m just honored to have a Purple Heart recipient in my place of employment,” Postmaster Tracey Fry DeBell said. “All military people are doing a great service whether they’re recognized or not because they’re upholding the basis of what the United States was built upon.”
Johnston served two nine-month tours in the Army from 1968 to 1970. He was injured in 1969, during his first tour, while he was defending a position at night. Viet Cong fired a rocket-propelled grenade that landed just feet behind him and sprayed shrapnel into and through 28 different places on his body. He was treated for his wounds, but 27 of the pieces of shrapnel remain – enough that he sometimes sets off metal detectors.
While his wartime experiences were sometimes traumatic, Johnston uses them to enrich the office, Fry Debell said.
“Bob has a way of putting what the majority of us think are crises into the correct perspective by humbly asking if the situation is a life or death matter,” she said.
Johnston and his wife – a fellow Vietnam veteran who he met in the reserves – are doing their part to make certain that other veterans and their families are recognized and taken care of during and after their service. Whether just helping lift boxes or lending a sympathetic ear, the “little things” make a difference, said San Martin resident Rick Badillo, who was deployed in the Middle East for a year starting August 2005.
“Him being able to step up and help out, it takes a little bit of a weight off,” he said.
When military personnel come back, the Johnstons help them readjust to civilian life.
“Combat brings about an appreciation for life because it can be gone that quick,” Johnston said. “When you go from these kind of hyper feelings” – he squeezed his fists as though gripping the yoke of a plane in a tailspin – “to quiet, peaceful life – there’s a void there. There’s an imbalance.”
In addition, Johnston brings families closure by exchanging items – such as uniforms, gear or memorabilia taken in combat – with Vietnamese officials. He traveled to Vietnam twice, also exchanging information regarding the possible whereabouts of prisoners of war and people missing in action.
Though Johnston was initially nervous looking out the window of his plane, about to touch down in Hanoi – “the lion’s den, the capital city of the enemy” – meeting with former Viet Cong changed his thinking.
“I held no animosity, no hostility toward them,” he said. “They were doing the very same thing I had been doing. They were serving their country, trying to stop an enemy. We were both doing a job.”
Though he might claim it was just a job, he still put his life on the line for his country and he continues to contribute to its security, wife Barbara Johnston said.
“He’s not recognized often enough for what he does and what he participates in,” she said.
