Richard Renkas: The Object of the Game is to Go Home

By Charlie Souhrada, Honor Flight Chicago Veteran Interview Volunteer

A knack for language helped propel Richard “Rich” Renkas through more than four years of service in the U.S. Air Force and 354 combat missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. As a Vietnam veteran, he will be honored with a flight to Washington, D.C. on July 20, 2022 courtesy of Honor Flight Chicago. 

Rich was born September 5, 1946. His father, Edward, worked in the stockyards, while his mother, Bernice, kept the home and later went to work as a cleaning lady in the Prudential Building downtown. 

As an only child growing up in a Polish household in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, Rich didn’t learn to speak English until he was six years old. “My grandmother and mother were both from Poland and that’s all they spoke,” he says. “Kids used to laugh at me because I couldn’t speak to them. My ma said I learned how to speak English after that!”  

Rich’s childhood was rather typical, filled with lots of activity and centered around two southside schools. During his early years he attended St. Basil’s Catholic School at West Garfield Boulevard and South Wood Street. Later he attended St. Ignatius College Prep on West Roosevelt Road, where he graduated in 1964. 

After high school, Rich worked in the mailroom at Price Waterhouse and took basic classes at Loyola University. “I wasn’t geared too well for that. It lasted until 1967 when I went into the service.”  

On December 5, 1967, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. Three days later, on December 8, his draft notice came in the mail. “I was already in!” he laughs. “I didn’t want to go into the Army and wanted to decide what I was going to do. You don’t get much choice when you’re drafted.” 

He took Basic Military Training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. After Basic Training, Rich was sent to The Presidio of Monterey, in Monterey, California, an active U.S. Army installation to attend the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).

Rich explains that before he enlisted, he took a battery of tests. Based on the test results, the Air Force decided to send him to language school to learn North Vietnamese. “First, I had to wait to get clearance,” he says. “I needed top-secret crypto clearance and that was a problem because they couldn’t find papers on my mother coming into the states. That held up my clearance for a couple of weeks.”

Once the paperwork got straightened out, Rich’s knack for languages gave him a keen appreciation for the nuances between North and South Vietnamese dialects during the 36 weeks of instruction that followed. “There’s a big difference between the two languages,” he says. “When the North Vietnamese speak, they are distinct and talk with precision. South Vietnamese are more guttural and have an accent. When we listened to them on the radio, you knew right away who was speaking.” 

His next stop was Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas for radio training. Once his radio training was complete, he went to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington for three weeks of survival school. He then went to Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, California, for M16 training. Now a highly trained airman, Rich boarded a plane for Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. 

“When we completed our training in San Angelo, the assignments came out. There were 13 guys in my class; 12 were going to Okinawa, one was going to Vietnam. I was supposed to go to Okinawa. The guy who was supposed to go to Vietnam was married and had kids. So, I talked to the sergeant and swapped spots with him.” 

At Clark AFB, he took jungle survival training, learned how to perform evacuations from helicopters and how to escape and evade enemy combatants.  

“We were sent out in the jungle and had to evade the local people all night. We carried two sets of dog tags: one was red, which meant you were injured; the other was silver. If you got caught, you would give a silver dog tag to the local who would take you back to the instructors and they would pay the finder an incentive for capturing us. To evade capture, I found the biggest, ugliest thorn bush I could find, crawled in and stayed there all night! I wasn’t going to get caught!”   

Finally, Rich was sent to Tan Son Nhut Air Base, near Saigon in Southern Vietnam where he put his newly minted skills to work. His first night there, he arrived late at night, found an empty bunk and sirens started going off. “I woke a guy near me and said ‘Sorry, I just got here, what are the sirens all about?’ He said ‘There’s a rocket attack and you’ve got two choices. Out behind the barracks there is a bunker. You can hide there, but it’s filled with rats. Or you can go up on your bunk and get some sleep.’ I asked him how long the attacks usually take. ‘It doesn’t matter. If the rocket hits the barracks, you have nothing to worry about!’ So I crawled to the upper bunk and went to sleep.”