Jerry Warren: Protecting Building Engineers By Day, Providing Fire Support By Night

By Wendy Ellis, Honor Flight Chicago Veteran Interview Volunteer

Attitude is everything. Despite constant bomb drops, unexpected confrontations with Viet Cong soldiers, and shrapnel in his shoulder, Jerry Warren passed up an opportunity to return to the states in 1968 and stuck it out in the Central Highlands of Vietnam until his tour of duty was over. It’s not that he wanted to be there. In fact, he’d tried everything not to get sent over.

Jerry moved to Chicago after graduating from high school in Mississippi in 1966. When he got his first draft notice, a friend told him if he was married and his wife was pregnant, he wouldn’t have to go into the military.  “So, I got married,” says Jerry. “I went to the local draft board just as happy thinking I wasn’t going into the military.” Guess what…he was wrong. When he told the recruitment officer he was married, the officer said, “So?” Then he told him she was pregnant (which she was) and he said, “So? This morning I swore in a man who had 8 kids.” The next day Jerry Warren was on a plane headed for Fort Jackson, South Carolina. “It was the first time I was ever on a plane and I was crying. I was 20 years old.” 

Warren extended his Basic Training 8 more weeks for leadership school, and came out a PFC. But Vietnam could only be put off so long. Upon his arrival in Vietnam in December of ’67, Jerry was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 19th Artillery. He was given the command of two tracks and all the personnel assigned to them. It was a first for a young black man from Mississippi. Not a single one of the soldiers under his command was black.  Three months in, he was made a Sergeant E-5. 

“Vietnam was rough,” says Jerry. “There were some days we got hit with rockets and mortars all day. During monsoon season it rained every day. It rained, but in the central highlands it would rain all day and an hour later you could go outside and kick up dust. It was just that hot and dry.  Did I like Vietnam? No. But I decided to make the best of it while I was there. So I became gung-ho. I was gonna kill everything that got in my way if it wasn’t an American. I never expected to come back home.”

That gung-ho attitude made him do some crazy things but earned him the respect of his command. One day his men were putting a new battery on their track, fully loaded with 40 mm rounds, but using the wrong cable.  The battery began to bubble, like it was going to explode. As his men ran and hit the ground, Jerry Warren jumped onto the heavily armored track, grabbed the cable and unhooked it.  “I looked over at ‘em and said you guys ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of woosies!”  It took him a while to realize what he’d done and how it could have ended much differently. “If I’d had time to think about it, I might not have done it!” says Warren.  But he believes that from that day on it raised the expectations of his men and they looked to him to keep them alive.

His unit’s primary task was to protect bridge building engineers during the day and fire support at night. In March of ’68, his unit got word that engineers had come under attack near Dak To, and one Lt. Colonel had been wounded. “I took my two dusters in and we leveled the place.  Then I went in and got a tourniquet on his leg and helped him out.” Afterwards the officer asked for his name, rank and serial number and said he was going to put Warren in for the Congressional Medal of Honor. “But then he told me, ‘You’re not going to get it.’  “When I asked why, he said, because of the color of your skin.” Warren doesn’t know if he ever put in for it or not, but he never heard any more about it. “It doesn’t bother me. He was a pretty upright guy. He was just being honest with me.”

One day later, Warren earned his Purple Heart.  He and his men were up at Dak To fire base, getting hit round after round by mortar fire from the enemy.  Warren thought one of his PFC’s was loading ammunition too slowly, so he pulled him out and took his place on the track. “I’d loaded about 4 clips of ammo and I felt something punch me and I suddenly didn’t have any feeling in my right arm. I looked down and saw the shoulder of my fatigue jacket was all messed up and I had a hole in my shoulder muscles.”  Warren had been hit by shrapnel from an enemy mortar that he never heard nor saw. 

Taken to the 71st evac hospital, he overheard an order to get him ready for amputation. Not if he could help it! “I carried a big knife on my side every day in Vietnam along with my weapons. I called it my Bowie knife. When the doctor said they’d cut off my arm, I jumped up, grabbed my Bowie knife and backed into a corner saying, “No, No, No! I came over with two arms and I’m going home with two arms!” After an x-ray of his shoulder the nurses said, “Guess what Sarge. You’re lucky. We don’t need to amputate.” And Warren replied, “No, you’re lucky cause I was going to cut off your heads!” Six weeks later his arm was healed and the doctors offered him a chance to go home to the states, but he refused. He wanted to go back to his unit and finish his tour of duty. 

His unit used to go on mine sweeps with the Engineers every morning and one morning they found themselves face to face with a group of Viet Cong soldiers. “We had our weapons on each other, and I’m praying, please don’t shoot. I guess they were doing the same thing because they went carefully on past and when they got far enough away they took off running.” 

Another day he was writing letters to his family in the bunker when he overheard his all-white unit asking if he would be welcome at their homes, if they were back in the states. While most said yes, there were a couple who said no, and this angered Warren so much that he grabbed his M16 and was ready to shoot them all, but he says he heard a voice telling him not to do that. “I looked around and didn’t see anybody. It was about 130 degrees, no breeze, but the weeds were moving.” Divine intervention? Maybe. Life changing moments for sure.

Even his return to the states was eye opening. He returned via Seattle, and was told to change out of his uniform ASAP. “I had to go into the washroom and change into my civvies, because here they were demonstrating and calling us baby killers.” When he went home to Mississippi he was refused service in a café because he was black. It didn’t matter that he’d served his country in Vietnam, not in 1969. 

Warren did return to Chicago where he worked at a toy factory, for Schwinn bicycles and as a disc jockey before being hired at the Main Post Office as a supervisor. “It was because of the time I did in the military,” says Warren. ”If I hadn’t been a veteran I never would have gotten the job in the first place.” It was a job he held for thirty years until retiring a few years ago.  Jerry and his wife Earnestine, the same wife who was supposed to keep him out of Vietnam, raised three children, and have been married for 54 years.  

Warren spends his days working as president of the Austin Veterans Community Organization (AVCO) and enjoying the Austin Veteran’s Peace Garden on Madison Street with his fellow Vietnam veterans. Warren says the vets will be hosting lunch at the garden for front line Covid-19 workers later this month, as a way to say thank you for their service.  Warren came home with a Purple Heart, two Bronze Stars and Meritorious Service Medals, but sometimes medals aren’t enough.

Honor Flight Chicago says THANK YOU, Sergeant Jerry Warren, for your service!