My grandfather had to flee China after Communists took over in 1949, but his misfortune didn’t embitter him.
He had fought against the invading Japanese in World War II. He should have been honored as a hero in his homeland.
But the Communists wanted to kill him. He was a Nationalist army officer, a former teacher and a landowner. He stood for everything they hated.
Having fulfilled his duties in Vietnam, Cary “Rhody” Rhodomoyer returns to America in the first part of his story. War, however, has changed him …
SCOTT TWP. — When his sister Sheri died in 2004, a grieving Cary Rhodomoyer began having nightmares about the day he was wounded during the Vietnam War.
In his dreams, shrapnel hit him in the left knee again. Terror overwhelmed Rhodomoyer, once a young soldier who felt invincible.
Waking up in a cold sweat, he wondered where he was.
SCOTT TWP. — During the Vietnam War, Cary “Rhody” Rhodomoyer watched in disbelief from his helicopter gunship as enemies engulfed in flames kept fighting.
The “drugged-up” Vietnamese dropped shells into their mortar tubes until fire burned them up, he recalled.
The incident made him wonder if he could’ve stayed and fought while someone fired 6,000 rounds per minute at him.
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