Four decades later, Fort Worth man remembers the day he stepped on a mine

By Chris Vaughn

cvaughn@star-telegram.com

HASLET -- Vince Rios graduated from high school in Fort Worth and couldn't wait to join the Marines.

Soon enough, the government sent Rios to a far-off war in a place too politically complicated and multilayered for him to quite understand. He pulled two tours, earned two Purple Hearts and planned on a long career in the Corps.

Then, in the snap of a finger and a fateful step, Sgt. Vince Rios was left with only one limb.

It happened with agonizing frequency the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan: Improvised explosive devices buried in roads and trails killed and maimed thousands of U.S. troops.

A $40 million complex in San Antonio -- the Center for the Intrepid -- was privately funded and built to serve the young amputees, many of whom survived with multiple amputations and complex blast injuries.

Rios' story sounds familiar. Except his life was changed in Vietnam, 43 years ago.

"I was within days of rotating back to the States," he said.

Rios, a 66-year-old grandfather who lives in a custom-designed handicapped-accessible house in Haslet, can relive that day in shocking and unemotional detail, almost as if he's speaking about someone else's horror.

"I didn't realize I was tumbling through the air until I hit the ground," he said. "I never heard the explosion."

But Rios, knowing his name is not on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, takes every day more fully, positively and proudly than he might have without his injuries. He earned three college degrees, worked close to three decades to help disabled veterans get jobs, toiled to make sure that Vietnam veterans weren't shamed publicly, even taught himself to walk with a modified crutch.

Through it all, well before the days of the Americans with Disabilities Act and accessible buildings and bathrooms, he maneuvered his manual wheelchair until finally and reluctantly making the switch to a powered wheelchair four years ago.

"We all respect him. We all love him," said John "Doc" Hutchings, who served as the Navy corpsman in Rios' platoon and lives in Florida. "I named my son, Vince Hutchings, after him. ... When he was laying out there being treated, he said, 'Don't worry about me, Doc. I'm going home. I've got a son to raise.' That's an amazing man."

Both of his sons, Mitch and Pete, went off to their generation's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Marine Corps.

"Given what he did go through and also knowing how proud he was of being a Marine and always supporting the Marine Corps, I thought, 'That must be a heck of an organization. I want to be a part of that,'" said Mitch Rios, who entered the Naval Academy in 1986 and retired a lieutenant colonel in 2010. "It made sense to me as a young man that I wanted to be part of something that had that effect on him."

With Mitch retired and his younger son finished with his enlistment, Vince Rios acknowledges feeling relieved when they were out of harm's way.

"There's not a Purple Heart between them," he said. "That does my heart good."

A will to survive

In 1973, Rios moved to San Francisco to study psychology at San Francisco State University.

He had a manual wheelchair and one arm to use on streets and sidewalks that are strenuous enough for someone who walks on two legs.

"It was a killer sometimes, yeah," he said.

But Rios, the oldest of six children raised in the Diamond Hill neighborhood of north Fort Worth, has always relied on one personality trait above whatever smarts he has.

"The side that has always tended to come out is a stubborn streak," he said. "I'm competitive, and I'm stubborn." There's little doubt about that. A less stubborn man might well have died in that field.

The Marines of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines were based in a mountainous area to try to interdict the movement of men and ammunition by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.

Twice Rios had already been wounded on that tour, once a fairly minor bullet ricochet into his arm. The other wound, in September 1968, was more serious -- a piece of shrapnel had penetrated his shoulder during a firefight. Rios had earned a Bronze Star for valor during that fight for leading his men on a flanking maneuver against a numerically superior force despite his wounds.

In the early afternoon of Feb. 6, 1969, Rios, acting as platoon sergeant, led his men out of a hamlet in the An Hoa basin about 20 miles southwest of Da Nang. His platoon was on patrol when it walked across a field with help from locals who were supposed to point out the mined areas. Rios, however, found one.

The buried explosive turned his legs into a bloody mist, all the way up to his hips. There was nothing left of them. His right arm, holding his rifle, virtually disappeared too. A few strips of tissue remained connected from his shoulder to his hand, which still somehow contained his high school ring.

"I never lost consciousness," he said. "I managed to prop myself up on one arm and yell to everyone that the place was mined and booby-trapped."

A Navy corpsman worked to save his life, though it was difficult to apply tourniquets because of the extent and nature of the injuries. The good part about the blast was that it essentially cauterized his leg wounds. Within minutes, a helicopter was on the scene and Rios was en route to a hospital at Da Nang. He made sure he never shut his eyes.

"The last thing I wanted to do was relax and pass out," he said. "I knew I'd never wake up."

At the Da Nang hospital, as the corpsmen carried Rios into the surgical ward, they turned a sharp corner. Rios' right arm fell off the stretcher, broke off and fell to the floor. "I reached out and punched the guy carrying me right in the face," he said. "My arm had just fallen off, and it was his fault. I know they were in a hurry to save my life, though."

It was hard to imagine at that point that Rios had already served one full 13-month tour in Vietnam, in 1965-66, and never got a scratch. "I remember thinking to myself in the hospital, 'What am I going to tell my wife?'" he said.

A decade ago, Rios finally retired, but not from the Marine Corps. That happened in 1969 after he left a naval hospital in Oakland, Calif.

The second time, Rios retired from the U.S. Labor Department in San Francisco. For nearly 30 years, Rios had worked for the federal government, mostly in the Labor Department. His last title was assistant regional administrator, which meant he traveled all over the West. He had spent almost all his adult life working as an advocate for the disabled in employment.

"I knew while I was in college that I wanted to work with disabled veterans," he said. "I liked it because I was mostly dealing with people my age. I could bond with them."

After months of rehabilitation and recovery in hospitals, Rios used his benefits to attend college, earning a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees. A triple amputee from the war in Vietnam had started college and set down roots in the very heart of the anti-war movement.

"I got along with everybody," he said. "I just wanted to be where the action was. But I was going to college with all these young guys who smoked dope and partied, and I studied. I told myself that I would finish in the top 10 percent of my class. I did too. I was no genius, but I was willing to work."

Had he not retired from the Labor Department in 2001, he undoubtedly would have worked with the first significant numbers of combat-disabled veterans since Vietnam.

Lifesaving measures and the equipment that troops use are immeasurably better today. Armored vehicles and Kevlar vests better protect heads and vital organs, and the ability of medics to rush the wounded to hospitals has dramatically improved survivability. Almost 90 percent of those wounded survive today, compared with 76 percent in Vietnam and 70 percent in World War II.

But some of those improvements in equipment have come at a cost to the body's extremities. Through September 2010, more than 1,200 troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan had had limbs completely amputated, a number that does not include partial amputations.

In Vietnam, where many more servicemen fought than in either Iraq or Afghanistan, there were 5,283 amputations. About 1,000 of those troops lost more than one limb.

Preserving dignity

Occasionally Rios visits with amputees from the current conflicts. He makes no assumptions about how they're dealing with the change, and he said he never tells them how they should live their lives. But he does make sure they know that their background gives them discipline and a mission-oriented frame of mind.

"I tell them, 'You can go get your education,'" he said. "I also tell them, 'You've got to get over any reluctance to be in public. You look different from people now, and they might stare at you. So what? Don't let it bother you. At least pretend that it doesn't bother you.'"

He said he has always told people with disabilities -- whether they served or not -- that "if you spend your time concentrating on your abilities, you'll be surprised how quickly you don't worry about your disabilities."

He and his third wife, Cheryl, a fellow Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School graduate who married Rios 18 years ago, decided to return to Texas in their retirement. Two years ago, they moved into a house that they personally planned, down to the grade of the entryway, the height of the windows and the unique shower design. All of it comes from learning how to adjust the way they live their lives.

"The only difference in Vince and these young guys today is that they roll and you walk," his wife said. "They can do almost everything you can, given enough thought and creativity. But the most important thing is to preserve their dignity. As long as these men have their dignity, they'll have the confidence to accomplish what they want."

In an extended conversation, most of it dealing with his lifetime of challenges and hardships, Rios got emotional only once.

He was recounting a story of a visit to a school for the deaf in Northern California some years ago. The school had asked him to speak to the children about overcoming their disabilities.

They sang a song for him in sign language, and his eyes misted over at the memory.

If he was supposed to motivate them, it had the opposite effect.

"It was a powerful moment for me," he said. "The human spirit."

Chris Vaughn, 817-390-7547

Twitter: @CVaughnFW

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