Chickasaw veteran James Newberry credits what he learned at the feet of his great-grandfather, grandfather and father for the fact he and his troops survived top secret military operations behind enemy lines.
“As we do, we honor those who came before us. If it weren’t for their teaching, I don’t think I would be here today,” Newberry said. “I’m going to give my grandfather, great-grandfather and father all the credit, because I was raised hard.”
Even though it was difficult, he now sees his youth from a different perspective.
“It was hard at the time, but I didn’t realize it was the best times,” he said. “In the summer after school you took your shoes off, and you didn’t get another pair until you went back to school. I never knew I was poor until I was told I was poor.”
He recalls his grandfather taking him into the woods near their home in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, to learn the Chickasaw ways that would serve him so well in the military.
“I still remember the day my grandfather took me down on Pennington Creek. It was dark, and my grandfather said, ‘Close your eyes and don’t talk unless I tell you to.’
“I sat there for the longest time, and he finally said, ‘What do you feel?’ I said, ‘Well, I feel the air. It’s cool and I’ve got some bugs on me.’
“He said, ‘Keep your eyes closed. What do you smell?’ It was the time of year I could smell the honeysuckle. I could smell the creek. ‘He said, what do you hear?’ I said, ‘I hear birds. He said, ‘No, what kind of birds? What are they saying?’
“We walked along and saw coon tracks. He was going over all the basic stuff. Most of it I knew but I didn’t know why.”
Much later, while serving overseas in the military, the lessons became clear. On patrol in the jungle, Newberry smelled the aroma of cigarettes emanating from enemy soldiers no one else in his unit perceived. By the narrow trail they came across he could tell a handful of enemy troops was close. Upturned leaves on a bush alerted him to a boobytrap tripwire.
“I learned a lot about nature, and I never lost a man,” he said. “I learned how to identify things.”
He instructed his troops to never take established trails, to walk five steps and stop to notice what they could smell, see and hear.
“When a deer or a squirrel walk in the woods they walk or hop and then stop,” he said. “It’s for a reason. If you walked a trail or walked a road you’re open to snipers and to booby traps. People did not like to go on patrol with me because I never took the easy way.
“I’m not a hero. I was using some of the things I learned as a little boy in Tishomingo from my granddad.”
Newberry attended Texas A&M university on a track scholarship.
“One day my uncle called me and said, ‘Jimmy, get down to the recruiter — we’re about to have a war (Vietnam), and no Newberry has ever been drafted, and you better not be the first one.’”
As it turned out, the Marine recruiter was out to lunch, and he ended up joining the Air Force.
His athletic ability and education gained him the attention of higher-ups who wanted him to join the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
He admits he didn’t acclimate especially well to military life, but there was an upside.
“I got to eat three meals a day and started gaining weight. I put on so much weight I was twice the person I was when I went in,” he said.
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, his second parachute jump ended with a hurt ankle after which he transferred to the air cavalry. Upon being transferred to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, he learned he had been selected for a special group.
“That’s when I found out we were a mixed team consisting of the Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force. Later on that group of guys became known as the Green Berets. And they said, ‘You’re going to go to Vietnam.’”
Instead, he ended up in Thailand as part of a Special Operations Group.
“I was a forward air controller. My job was to carry a communications pack and direct artillery and airstrikes.”
It was a two-person job, which involved a spotter who estimated distances.
“My spotter had to know more than I did to do the distance calculations, to know what type of aircraft was coming and at what speed.”
His were top secret missions about which Newberry says tongue-in-cheek, “They told me I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t going to be doing what I was doing.”
His combat operations left lasting scars on his body and his psyche, and he admits he suffered a bout of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I got shot and stabbed too. I took a bullet in my shoulder that passed under my nose. You can still see the scars on the back of my hand.
“Somebody shot me in my radio pack. I felt something back there but didn’t know what it was. I just knew my radio wouldn’t work.”
Twenty years later, he noticed a bump on his back and his doctor dug out a part of the dial on the radio he had been carrying on his back two decades earlier.
An apparent toothache led to a doctor digging out a part of a bullet that had buried itself in his cheek.
“It was some of the brass from a bullet that had screwed itself all the way up into there. I had been walking around with that all those years. It wasn’t a toothache,” he said.
Newberry’s military career from 1962 to 1970 also saw him on missions in North Africa, Israel, Greece, Crete, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, Turkey, Cypress and Columbia, sometimes working with the CIA and the Strategic Air Command.
Newberry turns 83 in November. He said his military experiences had definite upsides.
“I became an air traffic controller through the military. I saw Cleopatra’s gates and traveled on the King’s Highway. For a guy from Tishomingo, I saw things I could not believe.
“By the grace of God, I’m still here,” he said. “It was a privilege to serve my country and an honor to be a part of the Chickasaw Warrior Society and a former member of the Chickasaw Color Guard.”