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Vietnamese soldiers flanking him on the left and right were shot down in a burst of fire, but he kept going.
A bullet ripped through the back of his helmet, gouging out a chunk of his scalp, but he received 20 stitches and returned to action.
“When I went, I felt I was invincible,” Quirin, 68, said. “I wasn’t worried about it. Even though I’d seen a lot of death and destruction, I just felt I was immune to that. I don’t know why: This guy goes down and this guy goes down, and you don’t. Now when I think back on it, it causes me to shudder a bit.”
The retired Army lieutenant colonel who served two years as Monroe County sheriff, has plenty of reminders: the permanent crease on the back of his head and a bevy of military honors, including two Silver Stars, a Purple Heart, three Bronze Star Medals of Valor, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
Monday, the Sparta resident will be one of two veterans inducted into the Hall of Heroes at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah. The other is World War II veteran Henry Weinberger of Butternut, Wis.
“There are lots of soldiers in all wars who do brave and gallant things. Sometimes it seems unfair that some get recognized and some don’t,” he said. “I was very lucky that I had some good supervisors who felt strongly enough about what I did to document what happened.”
He was awarded the first Silver Star, the third-highest miliary decoration, for refusing evacuation in order to search for wounded men on foot, the second for a “complete disregard for his own safety” in signalling air support while his company was under heavy enemy fire.
The decorations are a source of honor for the soldier who returned from war to domestic infighting and a nation that spurned the military. He had gone to Vietnam for an adventure, with memories of World War II returning soldiers embraced as American heroes.
“You know, you don’t remember much when you’re 5 or 6 years old, but I remember when the second World War ended,” Quirin said. “I remember women running out in the street crying and hugging each other. I remember that night, we went into town and everybody was out celebrating. It was like New Year’s Eve. But the thing that I remember most about that was anybody in uniform was not walking. They were being carried around on shoulders.”
He held onto those images when he and his comrades boarded a plane back the the U.S. But on the flight back, he recalled the sergeant advised them to change into civilian clothes.
“You can imagine the culture shock I had when I found out we were the public enemy,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe that. It was just a hard thing for me to understand.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the career soldier said he felt he could proudly wear his uniform, but his only regret is that he didn’t stay in Vietnam another year.
“It was what being a soldier was all about,” Quirin said. “I don’t want to sit on the sidelines. I want to be in the fight.”
After enlisting at 24, his first overseas assignment was in Korea, despite his eagerness to go to Vietnam and “prove that I was a real soldier.” The Army was sending only seasoned veterans to Vietnam, but the floodgates opened when the war escalated.
He learned Vietnamese during six months at the Armed Forces Languages School in Monterey, Calif., and at 26, Quirin became an advisor to a Vietnamese infantry batallion, a company of 100 soldiers all younger than him. “We were a young army. I didn’t have a senior sergeant. I didn’t have anybody. Being in charge of that many people at a young age in a combat, hostile environment, you just did what you had to do.”
While he couldn’t offer much in the way of advice or wisdom to the more experienced veterans who had fought to expel the French in the 1940s and ’50s, he provided American supplies, medical evacuation and air support.
“Most of then had fought the war with the French. This was old hat to them, and it was all a new and great adventure for me,” Quirin said.
He spent 30 years with the Army in Korea, Vietnam, Germany and across the United States. In 1998, he started work as a jailer for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff retired, and with a stroke of a pen, Gov. Jim Doyle promoted Quirin to the post, which he held for two years.
