Posted on 11/11/2006 7:25:38 AM PST by WestTexasWend
Clarence Lee of Shallowater, a veteran with four tours in Vietnam to his credit, completed 15 years in the Marine Corps the hard way.
"The last tour was 14 months long, because that's when I got captured," he said.
Lee can stand with a crutch, and moves about with a wheelchair or motorized scooter because of permanent injuries inflicted when he was a prisoner of war. He attributes his survival of nine months of torture to help from God.
Lee, now in his 60s, was a helicopter pilot during the war and received five Purple Heart medals while fighting the North Vietnamese.
Despite severe abuse by the North Vietnamese, Lee was angriest during the war when his best friend, Bill McCoy, was killed in an attack.
Ray Westbrook / Staff Marine Corps Warrant Officer Clarence Lee always keeps a history of the service on a coffee table where it is easily accessible. He is proud to have served in the corps during the Vietnam War.
Becoming friends, though, wasn't easy. McCoy was the son of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and he occupied the bunk right above Lee during boot camp. The use of the "n" word was inevitable.
"The way we met, me and Bill, every night I was on the bottom rack, Bill was on the top. Every night when we came in, he spit on my pillow. Two nights he had done this. And I told him, I said, 'Let me tell you white boy, if you do it again I'm going to have to come up there and get you.'
"Next evening, there it was. I reached up there and got him. And I wished a thousand times I could have put him back - he was just as mean as I was!"
They were both hospitalized from the fight.
When they got out of the hospital, the drill instructor forced them to spend all their time together, and they became close friends.
"From that day forward in the Marine Corps, every place we were stationed, we were together," Lee said.
They were, however, separated by war.
"Bill was killed in 1966 at Danang. He was a helicopter pilot, also. We had come in that day, had just got back off two missions on Hill 10 and Anwar. This place they called Anwar, it got overrun, and three people were left living. Our job was to go in and just clear the place...
"We had come into Danang - we were there at the division - and we sat down on the pad and they were loading us. We walked over to just outside the bunker and were standing there talking and shooting the breeze like guys would do, and all of a sudden we went under attack.
"It was two rocket-propelled grenade rounds that hit. One hit on the side of the hill, and one hit directly on Bill. His body parts got thrown all over me. I think at that point, my whole heart came out of me."
Lee was allowed to escort McCoy's body home to Selma, Ala.
"That was my worst year. I escorted him back home to tell them what happened, and how it happened. They gave me five months off to stay with his family, because at that time I was a part of the family. I saw to the burial being done, and everything. But we couldn't open the casket."
Referring to McCoy's father and his background with the Klan, Lee said, "I was the first black person who ever went through his front door as a guest. Now, Mr. McCoy is 98, and occasionally I talk to him; he's still there."
Following Selma, Lee was sent again to Vietnam.
"After Bill died, I was so ... how would you say it ... so bundled up inside and had so much hate. I wanted every fire-fight mission I could get. It was just to get even."
Lee remembers he was flying a fire-fight mission when he was taken prisoner.
"Our troops were being overrun by the North Vietnamese coming south. They had like 200 or 300 men, and we had 13 guys. ... When I would go in, all I would do is come in at a low level and just rotate 360 degrees. All I did was fire, and it would clear everything around me. I hover right over the troops while I'm doing this.
"My ammo was getting low, so I knew I had to get out of there. Our guys were pinned down, so I just went on down, and all 13 of them jumped on. I was getting up and they caught me in the turbines with a 30-caliber machine gun.
"It brought us back down. There were 10 of us left living, and they took us as prisoners."
He said he ended up at Hanoi Hilton, which wasn't that bad. But first he endured months of torture at a concentration camp across the DMZ - demilitarized zone.
According to Lee, the torture was intended to make him talk.
"When I went into the Marine Corps I took an oath. And I would give my life before I gave up any of my friends.
"They shot me through both of my hips for torture, and now both of my hip joints have been replaced. And my left knee joint has been replaced."
He remembers the interrogators came in one day after nine months and told him he'd be set free if he told them what they wanted to know. But he had a defiant answer:
"You have shot me through my hips, you have cut my finger off one joint at a time, you have beat my foot up, and now you have busted my knee, and are you going to let me go? Duh! You think I'm really dumb?"
Holding up his left hand to reveal a stump of a finger, he told the interrogators, "Can you cut this part off here, it's in my way."
He said the next day they began torturing him by beating him in the face.
"They beat me until I passed out, and all of this lower part was just turned to mush. See, this whole lower jaw is mold. My left eye is in plastic, and my nose is plastic.
"You know, it got to where it didn't hurt. You knew it was coming, and it just didn't hurt anymore. I used to be afraid of dying, but I had made my peace with God, and I wasn't afraid to die - I knew he was taking care of me."
Lee said the interrogator came in one day and pointed a 9 mm German lugar at him to make him talk. Lee was shot beside his left eye.
Inexplicably, the bullet turned upward when it struck the skull, rather than penetrating to the brain.
He remembers, "The bullet just hit me and turned up. And that's when I knew God was with me. He had his hand there."
Lee said, "It just had got to where I wasn't afraid. You couldn't scare me anymore, you couldn't hurt me, you couldn't do anything else to me."
According to Lee, he wasn't tortured physically at the Hanoi Hilton. "They would stake you out and put a bucket up over you with a little pin hole, and that drop of water hit you right there," he said, pointing to the bridge of his nose where it joins his forehead.
But he found it wasn't really true that after a time it begins to feel like being hit with a hammer: "It feels just like a truck being dropped on you. And you have it down, timed to the minute; you would close your eyes when it was time to hit you. It could drive you crazy. I thank God that I'm not crazy."
When he was returned to the United States, Lee spent 22 years in VA hospitals undergoing major surgeries and recovering.
"I go to Lyons Chapel Baptist Church in Lubbock," he said. "Life now is great. I have lived my entire dream. I was born in Georgia on a cotton and peach farm. I wanted to be a Marine, which I am. I wanted to fly helicopters, which I have. I wanted to drive trucks, which I have. ... I wanted to live in Texas, which I do. And I wanted a little house in Texas, which I have.
"I have a super wife," he said, referring to Gay Lynn Lee. "She is there for me if anything goes on."
He has no regrets about being a Marine. "That's the most glorious thing in my life, other than my wife. Once a Marine, always a Marine; you will die a Marine. Once you put that uniform on, you have put on the most honorable, the most decorated, the most everything with that uniform. You are proud to wear that uniform."
He does have one thing he would change. "My friend Bill. If I could have given my life for him, I would have given my life for him to come back.
"That's the kind of friend I had."
But the trauma of war also produced a zeal for living: "I've got a life to live. I want to live my life for God now, and myself and her," he said of Gay Lynn.
"That's what I'm living my life for."
Interesting thread. Thanks to all contributors.
pownetwork.org
Told them he was not a pow and a fraud.
Still waiting for a response to an e-mail sent to the reporters yesterday...will post what I receive.
Yes... afraid so :(
Thanks for the ping.
This guy claims that he and another guy, a "son of a KKK grand wizard" graduated boot camp and both became helicoptor pilots?
Oh nevermind. This story is so obviously a fantasy on the face of it that only a small-town newspaper reporter looking to meet a Veterans Day deadline could ever believe it.
I'll be dipped; I don't remember that character. I will have to reread the books, I guess. It will be sheer torture... call the UN! Call Amnesty!
(Embarrassed at having poorer retention than a Marine here - BSEG).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Check this thread, again...
Good job all.
Lee, Kenneth
Huachua, AZ 02/2002
06/2002
11/2002
Claims POW ... when the North Vietnamese did an officer exchange he just followed the officer out; said that he didn't care if they shot him in the back, he couldn't take anymore.... escaped. Used to rice and fishheads in captivity.
Claims 5 tours in Vietnam - how long he was in the military?? He says 5 Yrs.
When called, Lee declared, I don't like to talk about that {his captivity}. Sadly, he allows his wife Judy to repeat his fairy tales in public, unaware she is perpetuating the fraud and deception he maintains.
Come on back and read the thread.
Thanks for the ping, freema, I came back and read it last night. It's a shame that some people take pleasure from living a lie, and it looks like that's what this is.
Wrong guy. The guy in the story is Clarence Lee.
Because your cousin was DNH/BNR he too is on the DPMO list. Vehicle involved is listed as an LCU (Landing Craft, Utility... a small landing craft left over from WWII.
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/pmsea/pmsea_html_p.htm
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/pmsea/pmsea_info_p354.htm
There may be more information on Pantall available online if you search. The POW Network has someone listed here, who was looking to get in touch with his family, because her friend had worn an MIA bracelet with his name.
http://www.pownetwork.org/tletter9.htm
Because there does not really seem to be any doubt about your cousin's death, he's not listed by the POW "activist" sites (which are at best a double-edged sword, and at worst, a scam).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
And John McLame hugged his captor at a Senatorial Hearing. Wonder why?
MilitaryUSA.com has a good database of Vietnam veterans. They caution that their information isn't definitive, but my experience is that it's generally pretty accurate. They only show 3 Marine veterans of Vietnam named "Clarence Lee." Of those, just one has the middle initial "J."
Name: Lee, Clarence J.
Service: Marine Corps
Rating: E02
Rank: Private 1st class
MOS: 0311 Rifleman
Entered: 690529
Discharged: 710310
State: Unknown
Race: African-American
I rather suspect this is the same guy.
Got a three word reply from them a few minutes ago: "PHONY...on it"
Looks like this guy is just another wannabe. I wonder if the reporters tried to confirm anything, the Purple Hearts .....anything at all.
---
Mr. Westbrook, I suspect you've probably heard from a few other people about your story on Clarence J. Lee of Shallowater, Texas.
If not, here's what I've been able to ascertain.
Lee was not a Vietnam POW. The list maintained at POWNetwork.org [http://www.pownetwork.org/bios.htm] is definitive, and hasn't been modified in years. He's not on it.
Numerous other aspects of Lee's story were disputed by veterans with relevant expertise, including his description of helicopter warfare in Vietnam.
Mr. Lee is not "in his 60s," he is 58 years old. That would make him an 18-year-old helicopter pilot at Danang in 1966, which is not believable.
I checked Mr. Lee's name against a military database I've used many times with good results, and found just three Marine Vietnam veterans named "Clarence Lee." Of those, one has the middle initial "J."
Name: Lee, Clarence J.
Service: Marine Corps
Rating: E02
Rank: Private 1st class
MOS: 0311 Rifleman
Entered: 690529
Discharged: 710310
State: Unknown
Race: African-American
It seems probable that this is the same man. Had you checked into Mr. Lee's military records before publishing the article, it might have prevented you from being taken in by the fantasies of a pretender. For more information on the widespread problem of phony Vietnam veterans, I recommend B.G. Burkett's excellent book "Stolen Valor."
Regards, [Interesting Times]
SEMPER FI
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