Richard Stewart: a true country boy, a true hero

Richard Stewart (Courtesy photo)

Editor's note: The Lebanon Voice reprinted a story about Marine Sgt. Richard Stewart and his sacrifice for country made in Vietnam in observance of Memorial Day last Monday. We caught up with his brother, Henry, later in the week. This is their story.

LEBANON - Henry Stewart lives in the sprawling gray house he grew up in on Lower Cross Road.

He loves to talk of the way it used to be growing up: lots of woods, tons of rabbit and partridge to hunt with his brother, and railroad tracks on which steam trains chugged along connecting Rochester and Sanford not far from their house.

But when he talks of his kid brother, Richard, there is a certain reticence, a distant sadness, faded yet still intact.

There are no pictures of Richard on the wall or mantle.

“I don’t like to think of him in harm’s way,” Henry says softly.

Marine Sgt. Richard Stewart died in a dried up Vietnam rice paddy on March 12, 1968, three days before he was due to ship home to the states.

Shrapnel from a VC rocket grenade sliced his throat, a mortal wound.

Richard Stewart as a youngster. (Courtesy photo)

Henry Stewart, who retired several years ago, would rather talk about the way it was, the way Lebanon was. He said growing up he and his brother were just a couple of “country boys,” hunting and helping their dad farm the land behind their home.

“Dad couldn’t make a living farming, so he started working at shoeshops in Rochester to make ends meet,” he said.

He said his brother and he both got shotguns on their 9^th birthday: Richard had a 16-gauge and he had a 20.
“There was tons of partridge then,” Henry smiled. “We’d make partridge soup. It’s pretty good.”

And it was nothing to get four or five rabbits for eating on a Saturday, he added. The fields were full of rabbits.

He recalled the family didn’t get electricity until 1953.

Medals awarded Marine Sgt. Richard Stewart. (Courtesy image)

He said during the summer Richard and he would pass the time building forts and makeshift cabins out of birch trees, and in the winter, their father would saw them up for firewood to keep the house warm.

Both boys graduated from Spaulding High School.

Soon afterward, Richard went into the Reserves, did his basic training and looked for a job, which he ended up getting at a Massachusetts Polaroid plant where he packed film.

He applied for a lab job and was shocked when he got it, since he had no experience.

 “He ended up working directly with Mr. (Edwin) Land (who invented the Polaroid),” Henry said.

After working at Polaroid for a while, Richard decided to “Go Active,” with the Marines. After a stint at a stateside base where he learned film photography and was base photographer, he shipped out to Vietnam in 1967 where he basically did every type of camera work he was asked.

Having a laugh at home while posing with his sister, Helen. (Courtesy image)

“He might be doing still shots with infantry one day and film in a jet the next,” Henry said.

As fate would have it, three days before he was supposed to ship home he volunteered for a mission when another photographer couldn’t make it.

Marine commanders had gotten wind of a Viet Cong village and wanted to take it, but when they got there, there was nothing but women and children, so they headed back to base, Henry said.

That’s when they were ambushed near Lam Zuam East. That’s when Richard took the shrapnel in the neck.

“When he died I got letters from platoon members that he died instantly, you know they wanted me to not feel bad, but he bled for a half hour before he died,” Henry said earlier this week. “A soldier who watched him die wrote a note about what happened.”

That soldier was Wallace “Skip” Schmidt, who said in the note that as Richard’s life slowly ebbed, that he made Schmidt promise to get his body out. Schmidt’s company was driven back that day and the next, but on the third day they fended off VC attacks and finally got Richard’s body out.

Henry Stewart in his Lower Cross Road home that he grew up in. (Harrison Thorp photo)

It was testament to the Marine credo that you never leave a fellow Marine’s body behind no matter what.

Schmidt received a Silver Star for his bravery in leading two separate attacks in the effort to recover his fellow Marine’s remains.

Henry found out about what really happened to his brother only after Schmidt, tortured by the effects of PTSD and haunting memories of Vietnam, committed suicide years later and his sister found the note about the battle at Lam Zuam East.

The sister, Diane Finnemann, then spent nearly a decade tracking down Henry Stewart, so she could tell him of the note and they could exchange photos of their brothers who had so bravely served and sacrificed.

Henry, who is retired from GE, still works part time for the Lebanon Post Office. He delivers a rural route once a week. He served in the Armed Forces in Germany.

“Richard was a true Marine,” Henry said. “Whatever they needed him to do, he did it.”

One other Lebanon boy died in Vietnam, according to virtualwall.org: Air Force Major Robert Lee Baker, on Nov. 27, 1970.