After 40 years, Vietnam veteran finally shares what happened to him after basic training

TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains material regarding sexual assault and may be hard to read for some readers. The national StrongHearts Native Helpline is available 24/7 at 1-844-762-8483.

Seventeen-year-old David Blair Morgan drew a low lottery number in 1970, and he knew he was destined for Vietnam. Rather than put it off, he voluntarily enlisted with the reluctant approval of his parents. Morgan, who was in top form then, stands at 5 feet 7 inches. He describes his weight as 140 pounds of will. If something needed to be done, he had the will to get it done.

He was dispatched to Fort Lewis, Wash., for basic training. Pvt. Morgan was “gung ho” through basic training, a sharpshooter who was offered officer training. “I declined because it required another four years of enlistment; I didn’t even know yet if I liked the Army,” he said.

After basic training, the Army sent him to desert country at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, where he attended Advanced Individual Training. “What in the hell is a country boy like me doing down here in this very dry country?” he said. But the weather soon meant nothing to the teenage boy.

“My parents wondered, especially my father, a World War II decorated vet, why I got a leave.”

David Blair Morgan, Vietnam veteran

At Fort Huachuca, Pvt. Morgan was sexually gang raped, trapped in a shower, and attacked by five much larger men. “They threw a towel over my head, and all had a turn with me,” he recently told me. “They were shouting that it was because I joined, and they were drafted. That point always sticks in my mind. It was gawd awful painful, and horrible. I was sobbing like a little girl, and they found that very funny.”

“Sexual Assault in the military happens more than we like to think about,” said Lettie Irons Connell, a Veterans Service Officer who is from the Standing Rock Reservation. “The military does not like to acknowledge this.”

Due to the physical damage of that assault, surgery was required. The Army officials made a report, but Morgan could not identify the assailants. “They ambushed me from behind.”

The Army gave Morgan 30 days’ leave to recuperate. He flew home, remembering the embarrassment of bleeding from his rectum and staining the airplane seat. “Oh, my gawd, that was awful,” he said.

“Sexual Assault in the military happens more than we like to think about.”

Lettie Irons Connell, Veterans Service Officer Standing Rock Reservation

“My parents wondered, especially my father, a World War II decorated vet, why I got a leave,” he said. “I did not tell why and until just a few months ago, have never told anyone what happened. Maybe people would think I was queer.”

During the leave, he got some healing. From horses, cows, and cowboying in the shadows of the Big Horn Mountains in Montana. That helped him feel a little bit better. After 45 days, his father forcibly took him back to report for duty. Blair was told he had to go back to the base where the assault occurred. “I could not face that,” he said.

He tried to commit suicide, cutting his wrists. Thankfully, he did a poor job of that and was saved by medics.

“The world can be so cruel.”

David Blair Morgan, Vietnam veteran

The Army then decided that it was not a promising idea to send the young private back to where the assault occurred. Instead, they detailed him to the now-deactivated Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Colorado. His job then was to visit the patients and take down their words for letters sent to relatives back home.

“They were so pitiful,” Morgan recalls. “Many with missing limbs, blinded, and so forth. Some refused to write letters, not wanting their loved ones to know the condition they were in. It broke my heart, and sometimes I cried with and for them.

“I recall some episodes. With no arms or legs or blinded, they would ask me. ‘Will you pull my tubes?’ I could not do that, and then a few days later, I would come to visit again to find they had died. The world can be so cruel.”

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After two years in the military, Morgan, at age 19, was given an honorable discharge. He returned to Bozeman, Mont., and tried to get on with life. In some ways, that worked. He got married and produced some children. He got divorced. He re-married time after time, on and on. He scrabbled through life.

Through it all – for more than 50 years — he kept his secret about the rape. Until this year when he finally told me about it.

“I had to open my heart pretty hard on that one,” Morgan said.