GEORGETOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — As Honor Flight Kentucky prepares for its next mission, flying 66 veterans to Washington, D.C., LEX 18 sat down with some of the servicemen and women before the trip.
One of the veterans chosen to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Hib Theriault, grew up in Maine but now calls Kentucky home.
Theriault was the 11th child raised in a mill town in Maine. After high school, Theriault said he had two choices: work for the mills or the military.
“I was a private-e-nothing,” said Theriault. “I went into the Army, I was gonna do three years and get out, but that was not the Lord's plan.”
He was assigned to Europe and, after 18 months, qualified for officer candidate school back in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Before he knew it, Theriault was on a ship, leaving San Francisco for a 21-day journey to Vietnam.
“At that time, I was married, had one child and one on the way,” recalled Theriault. “Nobody wants to die, and naively you might even think it's gonna be the other guy, you don't know. Emotional things going back and forth, but I had 43 men in a rifle platoon that I was responsible for as a young second lieutenant.”
The 20-something-year-old kid whose resume stopped at high school football had to grow up fast. Theriault described himself at that time as cautious but deliberate.
A CBS news segment captured it perfectly when they followed Theriault and his rifle platoon in the Mekong Delta. Theriault yelled into a radio as the enemy fired 200 meters away, the segment stunning his family when he appeared on the television back home.
“Nobody can make somebody else who's never experienced what it is to be shot at or to witness someone dying, or the first time I had a guy get blown up by a grenade, standing there trying to provide aid with my medic… it's hard to express. Can you really understand? No. No one can unless you were there and doing it.”
That unspoken bond will ripple through next week's Honor Flight when Kentucky veterans visit the memorials dedicated to the wars they fought in.
But Theriault made it clear he doesn't want to be seen as a hero.
"The heroes never left. 60,000 of them.”
Lucky to have made it home and grateful for the faith that sustained him, Theriault doesn't take a day for granted.
“I am grateful, I am humbled to have the opportunity.”
