Kuffel to Bush: ‘Bring our troops home’

PHOENIX — Ron Kuffel knows the horrors of war.

The Chicago native is in the Veterans Administration hospital undergoing surgery for a chronically dislocated knee, a wound brought about by too many parachute jumps into Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia 35 years ago.

Soon his knees will match. Both will be made of titanium. But healing psychological wounds continues for Kuffel, whose epilepsy medication also helps him deal with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

[Editor's Note: This profile is part of a four-part series that asks American veterans from different wars about Iraq.]

Kuffel served one tour in Vietnam, and then a second tour doing covert operations throughout Southeast Asia. He said it’s time for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq.

“We accomplished our mission. We went there and we got Saddam Hussein,” Kuffel said recently. “That was what our main goal was. Now that we got him, we should put our efforts toward getting (Osama) bin Laden in Afghanistan and get our troops out of Iraq.”

His message for President Bush: “Bring our troops home.”

“More of our troops are dying,” Kuffel said. “That’s how Vietnam started. We were sent there as advisories, then it escalated, and before you know it, 57,000 of us are dead.”

Kuffel, 59, was born in Chicago and grew up in a middle-class family of seven children. When he was a senior in high school, Kuffel said he had scholarship offers from the universities of Wisconsin and Iowa to play baseball. He was a catcher and second baseman.

But one night before graduation, Kuffel said he and about five friends were hanging out and drinking beer. Someone suggested they join the Army to see the world together.

“We were all from big families,” he said. “We never had the money to go do it on our own.”

The idea of seeing Germany, France, the Pacific and other areas appealed to a young Kuffel, who considers himself an aficionado of world history. The group went to the Army’s recruiter offices the next day in separate enlistment appointments.

When it was time for them to raise their right hand, Kuffel was the only one who swore the oath. The rest of them chickened out, he said.

“They were my high school buddies,” he said, laughing sardonically. “They went on their way and Uncle Sam had me.”

From there, Kuffel went to military bases in Kentucky, Georgia and North Carolina for training. He served in the Dominican Republic, then returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Mead, Md., for “classified” training before shipping out to Southeast Asia.

He arrived in Vietnam in June 1966 and was frightened when officers told his unit to “lock and load.” But when they clambered off the troop carrier, women greeted them with flowered necklaces and kisses.

Kuffel said his most cherished memories of Vietnam were the countryside and the people. He said there were many good times, but not enough for him to consider returning in the 1980s with an oil company.

“I declined because I wouldn’t have been able to trust myself in the country,” he said. “After the war, I just didn’t trust myself.”

Kuffel is married with two children: Erik, 26, and Dianna, 29. He now makes ceramic figures of wizards, dragons and animals to cope with his PTSD condition. They can be found here.

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