PROGRESS 2024: Veteran Spotlight – Thomas Randall Miller
Miller, who moved to Russellville in October 2020 to be equidistant from his daughters, graduated from high school in 1963 and got into the trucking business. The draft was on the horizon. “I knew eventually it was going to happen, and ’68 was the worst year for the Vietnam year,” he said. “We knew it was coming.” Miller said he was willing to serve. “I was kind of looking forward to the Army,” he said. “My dad served in World War II in the Pacific Theater, and I’ve always appreciated the armed services and had no problem with going.”
When Miller got his letter, he reported to eight weeks of basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “After basic I was assigned to a research unit at Fort Knox, Kentucky, which is an armored division.” The achieved his E4 specialist rank. “This unit was instrumental in developing the Starlight scope that was being used in Vietnam.”
His deployment orders came in April 1969, and in May 1969 he flew to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.
“One of the hardest things, the day I left, was leaving my family,” Miller said. “My parents were about to fall apart over it. My mother was walking the floors. It was as hard on family members as it was on the soldier who went – that’s the way I look at it. They went with you in spirit, and every day I’m sure they wondered what was going on.”
Miller was assigned to serve in the 4th Infantry Division in the headquarters, chief of staff’s office, “which was a good assignment,” Miller noted. “There I was considered an administrative specialist … I was privy to a lot of information that was confidential.”
He was a super-fast typist and took on a range of office duties while assigned there – along with other responsibilities.
“The work week was seven days a week, and our office hours were 7 a.m. to 12 midnight. It was long days,” Miller said. “Besides working, we had to pull guard duty and walking guard. When you’re there, you do everything. It was one busy year.”
Miller said HQ ran everything pertaining to the battlefield. Officers would make decisions about what measures to undertake, what operations to assign next. That doesn’t mean they were far removed from the fighting.
“There were constant attacks from the north Vietnamese. They were always hitting us at night with mortar fire and rockets,” Miller added. “It was a mess, a lot of times.”
“One night they came through the razor wire, and it was a battle inside the camp that night,” Miller recalls. “They came on the air field, where all the choppers were, and they pulled the pin on explosive devices inside of satchels and threw them up in the choppers. It was just boom boom boom continually.”
Based at Camp Radcliff in An Khê, Vietnam, Miller had other duties, too. One was a standing order from his colonel to destroy all sensitive information if HQ was breached by enemy forces. A grenade sat atop the safe with all the important papers inside, and if the crucial moment came, it was Miller’s job to pull the pin – and then make a mad dash.
There was a close call one night when a Viet Cong force got too close for comfort. “They didn’t get to the headquarters, but it was a pretty hairy night,” Miller said. “I’m a fast runner, but I didn’t know how fast I had to be to get away from that explosion. When you pull that, you’d better be moving. You couldn’t hesitate by any means.
“That was probably the scariest mission I think we had.”
Miller had the range of experiences while Vietnam – he flew in Huey helicopters to hand deliver instructions or carry out other courier missions, and he manned a machine as part of chemical missions to flush out suspected enemy positions.
“The last mission I was on, the transmission in the helicopter went out. When the transmission starts failing, the blades don’t work very well,” Miller said. That’s putting it lightly. Miller said they had to make an emergency landing near a fire base, where howitzers were set up. “That’s pretty scary, when you’re falling from 1,000 feet a little faster than you should be.” The tail hit. The nose hit. The copter skidded across the grass – and they all walked away.
For his heroism Miller treasures an array of awards, including the Bronze Star, two Army commendation medals, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the overseas service ribbon, the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. The uniform he wore home from Vietnam still hangs in his closet.
All in all, “It was a year that had to be done. That war was a lot of politics involved, but it was to stop the advancement of communism,” Miller said, adding, “and it didn’t work.”
After his time in Vietnam was completed, Miller’s colonel urged him to re-enlist, promising a re-enlistment bonus and a promotion – but Miller said he was ready to return home to his wife. The couple had lost their twin boys when a car wreck forced his wife to deliver at seven months – right before he deployed – and both of them had grieving to do. “I needed to go ahead and leave active duty.”
Miller’s first marriage did not survive his deployment and the loss of their sons, ending in divorce about a month after he got home. “There was just too much trauma,” he said. “But that was life. That was what we had to endure.”
He served a total two years of active duty and four years in the reserves, assigned to a medical unit in St. Louis, Mo. In 1974, “at that end of that four-year time, I received my honorable discharge.”
He met and married his current wife, Shirley, and they have three daughters and now six grandchildren.
Miller is retired from the transportation business and from general commodities brokerage, after turning the company over to his oldest daughter. Among his retirement pursuits, he has spent time writing down his military memories for his children and grandchildren. “Someday my little grandson’s going to say, ‘What did Pop do during the war?’ Well, here it is. Read it,” Miller said.
