By JOHN EBY

Niles Daily Star

DOWAGIAC — Niles Marine Denton Kime has a lot to be proud of and a lot to feel guilty about when it comes to his service in Vietnam in 1966.

Proud at surviving Marine boot camp and jungle conflict yet guilty that he was sent home with “life-altering” injuries, including to his vision, just two months into his 13-month mission and guilty that he lived when so many comrades perished.

Kime, a 1960 Niles Senior High School graduate who taught school for 29 years after returning to Albion College, led off The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College fall lecture series Wednesday with a two-hour program before a crowd so large it had to be moved into the Dale A. Lyons Building.

“I never did get my dress blue uniform,” Kime lamented dressed in his fatigues pinned with medals and wearing shiny black combat boots.

“I was still chasing ghosts” from his Vietnam experience when he returned to Southeast Asia for 20 days last spring, Kime admitted. When he was finally blinded it came at 5:05 p.m. on May 5 on Hill 55. “Is five my lucky number?”

When he got back stateside, he was treated to a Washington Redskins game he couldn’t see, but met quarterback Sonny Jurgenson and linebacker Sam Huff. He can’t tell you what they looked like, but the NFL greats had firm handshakes.

Of course, he arrived almost on his 24th birthday, expecting to die young before 25 in Vietnam like his rebel actor idol, James Dean.

Kime has been to Washington to see the Vietnam wall and met SMC Museum Director Steve Arseneau in 2002 when its smaller replica visited campus. The rifleman gave his “grunt’s perspective.”

“He’s a foot soldier. The term is an Army term, but it came to mean any infantry person. In the Marine Corps, grunts were anyone who had MOS — Military Occupational Specialty, like your job description. In the Marine Corps, MOS 0311 meant rifleman, grunt, ground pounder. You walk most places. You get in mud when there’s mud. I’m not one to put a lot of stock in numerology, but my date of birth is March 11, the third month, 11th day.

“Women still are not officially part of combat units. They drive trucks and helicopters in support of combat units, but they’re not technically supposed to be out on the ground with the infantry people. Bless them if they want to do that.”

Grunts are “the point of the spear,” Kime said.

“In a military situation, you have to keep in mind that the purpose of armed warfare is to shut down the other guy’s armed warfare capability. Military ethos is a combination of physical fitness, the unquestioned response to orders — rank has its privilege. They’re not interested if the order seems doable. The leaders want the job to get done. Mission accomplishment is critical. Chain of command rules. If I have higher rank than you, so long as it’s a lawful order, I can tell you what to do.

“Also, to be a grunt, you have to get over fear. It’s not like playing cowboys and Indians. Some folks do it by invoking their faith and draw strength from religion and believe someone has a plan and things will work out okay. Fatalism — events are preordained and there’s not much you can do to change them. If it’s my time, it’s my time.

“If we can convert fear to anger, we have eliminated fear and generated aggression as a motivator. You demonize the other people. You don’t call the Viet Cong the liberation force, you call them Victor Charlie and worse, made them out as bad people and blame them for every bad thing that goes on in your life: I’m over here in this stinking country because of those SOBs. Or, I could have gone on R&R this weekend except Victor Charlie blew up the truck I was going to ride in. I’m going to do some damage when I get out on patrol.

“The other thing you can do is stop feeling and shut it off. The downside is that you don’t easily turn it back on again. Grunts in the military are busy managing the fear to carry out the duties. When their tour is over and they’re back in the civilian world, where we feel, leads to a lot of problems — divorces, suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and isolationism. It’s hard to find the switch to turn feeling back on,” Kime said.