http://www.vancouversun.com/news/sav...525/story.html
Steve Ashton flew the third-to-last helicopter mission out of Saigon.
As the South Vietnamese capital collapsed in panic in April 1975, Ashton made 22 trips from the backyard of the U.S. embassy to a waiting aircraft carrier, ferrying out those desperate to escape.
"It was total, complete chaos. Think of the worst piece of combat or riot footage that you have ever seen on television or in a movie, then double it."
He says this on a sunny Victoria afternoon, parked on the porch of Freedom Kilts, the store he owns in Fernwood.
The son of a career Marine, Ashton grew up with the corps, had been around the world three times by age 10. His dad was one of the first into Vietnam, in 1965.
Ashton didn't plan to go to war himself, though. By the early 1970s he was a seminary student, had a draft deferment. Even without the deferral, his chances of being called up were slim to none, thanks to the number assigned to him by the draft lottery system.
The number assigned his 18-year-old brother, on the other hand, made the kid a slam dunk for induction. "His chances of being drafted were about 100 per cent."
So Ashton took the bullet, literally. Went to the recruiter, said to take him instead.
"I felt I had a better chance than my brother would. I'm better suited to that life, that temperament. My brother is just a very gentle soul. ... He's a farmer. Absolute bliss to my brother is sitting on a tractor, baling hay."
Ashton enlisted in the Marines in early 1972, was shipped to Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic just before the peace treaty of 1973. Got trained as a pilot when the corps ran short, ended up flying a big CH-53 cargo chopper hauling supplies, pulling mines out of North Vietnam's Haiphong harbour, as required by the peace treaty.
Although U.S. involvement scaled back dramatically, the fighting continued in Vietnam for almost two years after the documents were signed.
Three times Ashton was shot down, his helicopter unarmed -- another requirement of the treaty.
"Of course I was scared," he replies when asked, hiking up his kilt to show a bullet scar in his thigh. His other leg has got one, too, he says. There's another in his side.
"I was young, I was immortal, I was idealistic and I did what I thought I had to do," he says of those days.
"Would I give up the experience? No. Was it a good experience? Not always, but I grew up goddam fast. Does it temper who I am today? Yes."
Ashton moved to Victoria in 1997 after meeting his Canadian wife while in Europe. He has his Canadian citizenship, chooses his words carefully when speaking of Vietnam. "This is where I live now, and I am very cognizant that there are people of other opinions." After 9/11 he planted Canadian and American flags on his porch. Someone cut off the U.S. flag. That hurt.
"I'm proud I did what I thought was right at the time," he says of going to Vietnam. He says he's fine with those who made a different decision. "As long as it was right for them at their time, it's not my job to judge someone else, just as I ask people not to judge me."
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