At the wall, a veteran finds peace

BUFFALO — U.S. Army veteran Don Sillivan deployed to Vietnam in 1970, serving for a year as a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam, surviving two shoot-downs and the loss of close comrades.

Earlier this month, Sillivan, along with 14 additional Vietnam-era veterans from Wyoming, walked the stone path to Washington, D.C.’s iconic Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The black granite memorial bears the names of more than 58,000 soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who died in the war.

Among those 58,000 names, Sillivan found Robert Levine.

“He was one of my crew chiefs, and I lost contact with him and everything, so I didn’t know if he made it home or what happened,” Sillivan said. “We were good buddies. Basically, he saved my butt.”

Now 76, Sillivan recalled Levine as a very good crew chief, and someone he has wondered about for more than 50 years.

“I prayed every so often, someday I thought maybe I would find out what happened to him,” Sillivan said.

Despite his buddy not making it home from Vietnam, Sillivan said knowing what happened has put his mind at ease.

“I feel better about it,” he said.

In April, Sillivan and 14 other Vietnam War-era veterans from Wyoming and their companions took part in a four-day “Voyage of Valor,” an all-expenses-paid trip made possible by Wish of a Lifetime and AARP.

“The program gives veterans an opportunity to visit Washington, D.C., many for the first time, and especially for our Vietnam-era veterans, it’s really getting to be able to receive that welcome home that they might not have received over 50 years ago,” said Caitlin Shepherd of Wish of Lifetime.

This is the second time that the group has conducted a trip exclusively for veterans from Wyoming.

Sillivan was drafted when he was 20 years old. After watching high school classmates “get stuck wherever they wanted them,” Sillivan approached the Army recruiter to attempt to control some of his fate. He’d been studying mechanics at WyoTech in Laramie and had wondered whether those skills could be of use.

The recruiter told him the Army was in fact looking for crew chiefs. The crew chiefs were responsible for maintaining the “Loaches” – the nickname for the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, a light helicopter used by the U.S. Army, primarily in the Vietnam War.

In addition to maintaining the helicopters, crew chiefs flew with their crew. The Loaches were primarily a scouting helicopter and flew very low and drew fire – to set up the shots for the Cobra helicopters circling above. According to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, these “hunter-killer missions” were among the most hazardous of the Vietnam War.

“I kind of joke about it, but we got shot down south,” he said. “They were always shooting our tail rotors and tail booms off and stuff. But up north, they knew they knew how to lead us. So they were shooting through our bubble.”

On one such flight, Sillivan was taking pictures when a bullet came through the front of the aircraft and hit him in the chest, and Sillivan was certain he’d been wounded.

“My pilot said, ‘Oh God, you’re hit,’” Sillivan said. “And I just knew that I’d be bleeding fiercely.”

He took off his “chicken plate” – a Vietnam War-era ceramic-composite body armor, primarily used by helicopter air crewmen – and to his surprise, there was no blood.

“I pulled my shirt up and looked, and boy, I had a great, big old bruise right in the center of my chest,” he said. “It was from the shattering of the chicken plate when the bullet hit it.”

Though Sillivan can “joke about” that close call now, when he returned home in 1971, it was hard.

His father, a veteran himself, took Sillivan with him to the local VFW in Big Timber, Montana.

“But those guys looked down their noses at us and said, ‘You weren’t in no war. You were just in a conflict,’” he said. “Of course, then my dad stood up and told all of them where to go, and we walked out.”

While his service was not taken seriously by WWII and Korean War veterans, Sillivan said he also experienced anti-war sentiment directed at returning service members.

“You know it was like you were trash before,” he said. “They called us baby killers and you name it, they told us that.”

In addition to touring all of the major Washington, D.C., sites, Voyages of Valor also holds a welcome home ceremony for the veterans when they return from their trip. At the welcome home celebration in Cheyenne, the veterans each received a tote bag filled with thank you letters from school children around the state – a gesture that Sillivan found particularly touching.

“I’m glad that there’s these outfits that’s doing this, welcoming us home, because that is something that we didn’t get before,” he said. “It made me feel really happy and thankful for everything.”

Sillivan has been active in the American Legion for five decades, creating such community events as “Christmas in July” at the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming. Now he’s got another cause to pursue.

“In the back of my mind, I was thinking maybe there’s something the Legion could do for a program to help with being able to send more veterans,” he said.

This story was published on May 7, 2026.