Dale Huhtanen remembers Vietnam

by John Dowd, Editor

Dale Huhtanen was born in 1943. He is from Butte and has lived in Montana all of his life, except during his short stint in the U.S. Army. He was in the Army ROTC for two years before going into U.S. Army Intelligence. Originally, he went in and was trained to brief colonels, generals and high ranking officers. However, when he was sent to Vietnam, he was put into an interrogation role.

Huhtanen was overseas for a year, and worked with a team of seven Vietnamese interpreters and seven enlisted men. They were stationed in Chu Lai, at Landing Zone Baldy in Vietnam. Part of their job was to debrief and interrogate captured North Vietnamese soldiers and get information from them. 

They would then bring anything of value to the higher ranks, whom Huhtanen would brief on the information. He didn’t know the Vietnamese language at all when he got there, but learned a lot during his time, which came in handy. 

Their main objective was always to gather intelligence on troop movements, locations, potential attacks and more. He spoke of a battle after one attack from a group of North Vietnamese that led to the capture of several North Vietnamese soldiers. These detainees were brought to receive medical attention. Huhtanen noticed how one of the soldiers was sensitive and flinched at the alcohol poured on his shrapnel wound. Huhtanen spoke with one of the medical staff and then proceeded to interrogate the man as he was being treated. Every time the man would resist questioning, the medical personnel would add a little more alcohol to the wound. The Vietnamese man finally gave some important information that they then used to go out into the field with. 

Huhtanen led a company out and after the group that was involved in the original attack. Though they did not find the group, they did recover numerous caches. His work on this earned him a Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Honor Medal.

During his time in Vietnam, he said they lived pretty well. “Everything of intelligence value flowed through us, so we had to take advantage of it,” said Huhtanen. They were the ones that signed off on souvenirs captured from battle, so many of the staff and soldiers wanted to stay on their good side. Huhtanen and his team were also able to trade a lot of things for good treatment, like steaks for dinner. Huhtanen himself only kept a few things, including a small Vietnamese razor. 

Huhtanen was often frustrated at how their hands were tied on how they could obtain information. He often wished they could have been harsher with their treatment of detainees. According to him, the North Vietnamese were never so polite with the Americans they captured, and he knows they missed out on a lot of information that could have saved the lives of his men. He knew many people who died, including a pastor that drove over a landmine on his last day as the man was heading to fly home. 

Huhtanen wanted to get married before he went over but his future wife did not. “I guess she didn’t want her husband to come home in a box,” said Huhtanen. Then, after only about three months overseas, she changed her mind. He said it got complicated to get everything organized while he was in Vietnam, but they got married as soon as he came back. 

When Huhtanen returned to the U.S., he was a park ranger for three years, then worked as a school administrator in five different school systems across the state for 20 years. After that, he worked in the Hamilton City Administration for 10 years. While there, he wrote $6 million in grants that went into improving the sewer and water lines throughout the community. He loved doing this job and said, “I just enjoyed the service.”

Looking back at his service, Huhtanen has a mostly positive outlook. The main thing he came away with from his service was that to the military, “you’re just a number.” He said he never got the posts he wanted, and “everything was always against me, and yet I enjoyed the service.” For him, it came down to “the satisfaction of accomplishing something,” and being recognized for it. 

He said being a Vietnam veteran was not something he would stand up and be open about often. There was so much controversy around it, even though he was just a regular guy who wanted to do something that mattered. 

Vietnam veterans were only recognized 50 years later, by presidential decree. On March 29, 2012, then President Barack Obama proclaimed Vietnam Veterans Day. According to Huhtanen, that was really the first time he and many other Vietnam-era veterans could publicly show pride in their service in Vietnam.

Even then, moving into civilian life, he never felt the same. For him, his service was about doing something that mattered. “We take so much for granted,” and no one notices anything anyone does. He said in the final days of employment before he retired, it seemed that, “we have the satisfaction but no one else does.”

Looking back, he said it is important to him that people remember, “I’m a normal person, and I did good.”

Huhtanen’s wife is from Corvallis, and that is why he is in the valley. Together, they have two children. Their son is a Colonel in the U.S. Army for 20 years, and their daughter works for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Bozeman. 

Currently, Huhtanen lives at Sapphire Lutheran Homes, in Hamilton, and his wife stays in the Remington building there. According to Huhtanen, she is losing her memory and he visits her every day.