T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Steven Hyde of rural Marshalltown, who was wounded twice in Vietnam while serving in the U.S. Army, recently released a new memoir titled “Blood Sweat and Mothballs” about his time in the military between 1965 and 1968.

Steven Hyde was a teenager without political beliefs or preconceived notions when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in the mid-1960s, setting off a journey that would result in over 30 years of total military service, being wounded twice in Vietnam, and, much later on in his life, a deployment to Afghanistan with the Iowa Army National Guard as part of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The Purple Heart recipient, who resides just outside of Marshalltown with his wife and fellow veteran Marian, has put his experiences down on paper in the new memoir “Blood Sweat and Mothballs,” which focuses on the period between 1965 and 1968 culminating in his return to the United States. Both the beginning and the end of the book reference mothballs, hence the title, as he remembers the stench as he entered boot camp at Fort Lindenwood, Mo. and when he got off the bus to return home.

Hyde, who grew up in Cedar Falls near the University of Northern Iowa campus and graduated from the now defunct State College High School (later known as NU High), wrote the book between 2010 and 2012 before “sitting on it” for 13 years and only sharing it with members of his family — he eventually found a willing publisher in Newman Springs Publishing of Pennsylvania.

“So many people that read bits of the manuscript told me ‘You’ve gotta get it published,'” he said.

He recalls conversations with a gym teacher who had served as a WWII fighter pilot about the escalating conflict in Vietnam and made the decision to enlist at the Waterloo Post Office not long after graduating, and Hyde said he literally flipped a coin to decide between the Marine Corps and the Army. He hoped to become a military policeman but was told that wouldn’t be possible because he wore glasses, and his test scores were higher in mechanics.

Thus, his decision was made for him, and after completing basic training in Missouri, he spent a year at Fort Lewis before shipping off to the front lines, meeting his best friend from the service, Richard Ahlborn, in the process — they would visit places like Bangkok, Australia and Singapore during their leaves and even briefly went AWOL before returning to service. He arrived in Vietnam in January of 1967, spending a total of 15 months on the deployment and being involved in a total of three helicopter crashes — one due to mechanical failure and the other two from being shot down by the enemy.

He was first wounded in October of 1967 when a round came up through the floor of a helicopter into his foot, which Hyde figured was a “million dollar wound” that would send him home. Three weeks later, however, he was flying again with a bandaged leg.

“In May of ’68, it was bad enough that they medevaced me out. I spent two months in the hospital,” he said. “We had taken some fire the day before, and some rounds came through. Apparently nobody was hurt, but the next day, I’m working and I got an itch. So I reached inside my trousers, and my hand came out full of infection… It was a tiny piece of shrapnel that caused that infection. Well, it cost me two months in the hospital because of the septic shock.”

One of the months was in Japan, and the other was stateside in Massachusetts.

“I actually was blessed because I had time to cool down, and I didn’t get spit on. I didn’t get called a baby killer, all that crap,” he said.

When he finally got back to Iowa, Hyde “scrambled” to find a job and wound up taking one at Marshalltown Manufacturing, which led to a better opportunity at Lennox. The move was fortuitous in that it led to his meeting Marian, who he eventually wed in 1976, but his background as a helicopter mechanic actually brought him back to the Cedar Valley in 1974 for many years for an opportunity at the Waterloo airport. Hyde ended up re-enlisting in the Iowa Army National Guard and served for another 33 years, and he and Marian moved back to Marshalltown in 1993.

“Blood Sweat and Mothballs” is available for purchase through Amazon and the Barnes & Noble website, and it joins a long list of memoirs, works of fiction and films (both documentary and narrative) detailing the American experience in the controversial war that ended in 1975 — as most Marshalltonians know, a native son, Darwin Judge, was one of the last two American soldiers to be killed in the conflict during the final evacuation of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City.

In Hyde’s view, only one Hollywood film ever did the war justice: the 1986 Oscar winner “Platoon,” written and directed by Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone with consultation from another decorated veteran of the conflict, the technical adviser Dale Dye.

“It was realistic to the detail, and things like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ those are bulls*** movies. Forget Marlon Brando,” he said.

He also struggles to make it through documentaries that frame Americans as the bad guys and their North Vietnamese and Viet Cong adversaries as the good guys, though he mostly refrains from political debates and discussions these days. After deploying to Afghanistan for about four months in 2004 — and feeling that the 18-and-19-year-olds he was serving alongside were “too young” to be there — Hyde finally retired from the military for good three years later.

“The difference, of course, is night and day because Vietnam was such a divisive conflict. I was an 18-year-old doing what I was told. I had no political views really. I was very naive,” he said. “Even all these years later, there’s still that political divide. I have people I graduated from high school with that were anti-Vietnam War, and I still run into those people sometimes. And then, of course, after 9/11, now we’re on a righteous mission and off we go.”

Today, he remains an active supporter of those who have served and are serving now in the wake of another escalating conflict across the world, and Hyde belongs to the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Marshalltown chapter of the Lions Club. As for “Blood Sweat and Mothballs,” Hyde hopes it connects with readers, and he’s exploring the option of creating an audiobook version as well with more details to come on that front.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.