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NATCHEZ — Doug McCallister has been honoring veterans and working to help make their lives a little easier since he returned from Vietnam in 1967.

McCallister served in Vietnam for under a year. However, he said many people do not realize the sacrifices those who served have made and the wounds that haven’t healed, particularly among Vietnam veterans. While McCallister did not make the military his career, he has volunteered a tremendous amount of time helping veterans who need it.

McCallister was born and raised in Natchez, graduating from Natchez High School in 1965. He entered the military right after high school graduation.

Despite many who were drafted into military service in those days, McCallister voluntarily entered the military, and after basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and armor training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he was a squad leader, he served in Hersefeld, Germany, in the armored cavalry.

“In Germany, I served as an armor crewman and tank recovery specialist. We were located on the German border and performed border patrol,” McCallister said. “After 18 months in Germany, I was hearing things about the war in Vietnam and I thought I might ought to go over there and check that out. I volunteered to go. I met several other veterans who also volunteered to go to Vietnam.”

Before heading to Vietnam, McCallister came back to Natchez for 45 days on leave.

“I was almost a civilian again before I left to go to Vietnam. I had been on active duty and then I was home. It was hard to interact with people. I knew my time at home was brief and would end abruptly.

“While I was home, I went by the Holiday Inn one morning — my mother worked there — and I saw an army burial detail. I went up to the army captain and asked him who they were here for. They were there to help bury Calvin Douglas Alford. I didn’t even know he was in Vietnam. We played football together in school. He wasn’t ‘in country’ for very long before he was killed in action,” McCallister said. “That set the stage for me. It made it very clear what I was about to face.”

In late September 1966, McCallister headed to San Francisco, then to Oakland, where he was “processed,” and took a flight to Anchorage, Alaska, then to Japan and then to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon.

“Almost every veteran I’ve talked to had pretty much the same reaction I had. When I walked off the plane in Saigon, the humidity engulfed me. It was like walking through a wet blanket. The southeast Asian humidity is like none you have experienced before,” he said.

From Saigon, McCallister boarded a bus to Pleiku Province in the central highlands of Vietnam.

“There I joined Charlie Company and the 299th combat engineers heavy,” he said. “The bus that we were traveling on had wire over the windows. I asked the bus driver what the wire was for and he told me to keep the VietCong from throwing grenades into the bus. They set ambushes and booby traps everywhere.”

McCallister said his work in Vietnam took him all over the central highlands. He said he was a part of many operations there, but the one he remembers the most was his last, Operation Horace Greeley.

“In March 1967 in Pleiku Province, while we were building an ammunition supply point, which we called an ASP, I was leaving Charlie Company to go to the ASP with some heavy equipment. A guy, who was new to Vietnam, asked me about riding shotgun. His name was Harold Lee Tyson and he was from Indiana.

“We reached a checkpoint and they waved us through and told us they had checked the road and we were good to go. I hadn’t gotten very far when I drove the truck over a landmine,” he said. “I was told by people who were eyewitnesses that I was basically wearing Tyson around my neck. The blast threw us both out of the truck.

“While there, I had become close friends with a fellow soldier, Victor Preston Prestigiacomo of Louisville, Kentucky. We called him Rock. Rock was a driver for the CO, who told him let’s go. We’ve got to go see about Mac. Rock told him you saw what happened. He’s dead. He didn’t live through that.”

But McCallister did live through the blast, as did passenger Tyson.

“By the grace of God, we walked away. I always think about how we lived through that,” McCallister said. “I did everything I knew to do to make that truck as safe as possible. I stuffed sandbags everywhere I could get them in that truck.”

McCallister and Rock have remained friends. In fact, Rock was best man in McCallister’s wedding when he married his high school sweetheart, Carolyn Brown, and the two continue to talk on the phone every Sunday.

He left Vietnam shortly thereafter and returned to Natchez.

“When I got to Fort Lewis, Washington, where I was processed out of the army, we were cautioned about anti-war protestors we may come in contact with. Thank God, I didn’t encounter any of that, but I’ve heard horror stories from people who did that impacted them in a very negative way.”

McCallister said the emotions he was hit with when he returned home were unexpected and troubling.

“You are walking the streets of Natchez, self-medicating with alcohol and less than 10 days before you were sitting on a hill overlooking the Ben Hai River in Vietnam. It’s hard to make that transition,” he said.

McCallister was awarded an army commendation for his service in Vietnam.

When back in Natchez, he eventually took classes at what was then Co-Lin Junior College and became self-employed in the insurance industry.

While in Jackson at the Veterans hospital visiting a cousin who had been injured in Vietnam, McCallister saw a quote hanging on a banner at the entrance to a ward at the hospital that read, “Through these doors lie the cost of freedom.”

“I will never, ever forget seeing that. From that point forward, I have worked to interact with veterans,” he said.

In 1992, McCallister worked with a group of veterans in Natchez who brought a replica of the Vietnam Memorial to Chester Willis Field in Liberty Park in Natchez.

“It was so heartwarming, the outpouring of love and support we had from the Miss-Lou. It was huge. It made you proud to be a veteran. I think the mindset of a lot of people was that they didn’t welcome us home then, but were doing so at that wall in Natchez so many years later,” he said. “On that last night, the stands at Chester Willis were full. They were at capacity and hundreds of people were standing around. We had put an electronic counter on one of the walk-in gates, just one, and more than 50,000 came in that gate during that five day period.

“We asked all veterans to come to the pitchers’ mound and join us on the field for closing prayer. There were almost as many people on that field as there were left in the stands. God was present in a huge way. You could sense it. One veteran told me it was the first time in his life he was ever recognized for his service to his country.”

Today, McCallister works with Point Man International Ministries of the Miss Lou, which is working to bring a replica of the Vietnam Memorial to a permanent site in Vidalia, Louisiana near the riverfront, which is being called the Cost of Freedom project.

McCallister is helping to raise funds to make that project a reality.