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Army lab tech Sgt. John Zavalney served in Vietnam from March 1969 to January 1970.
John Zavalney was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968.
John Zavalney of Helena fits comfortably into the Vietnam veteran credo, “All gave some. Some gave all.”
“My story is not that of a big hero,” Zavalney, 77, states up front, “just survival as a draftee, and I was able to help save lives as an Army lab tech.”
His parents came from Russia, and Zavalney is "the proud son of immigrants" and extra happy that he was “born in the USA” and not Russia.
His father fought in World War I and came back with a slightly injured leg. His stepdad, John, was part of Patton’s tank brigade in WWII. And his mom was part of the VFW women’s auxiliary and sold poppies every Veteran’s Day.
After graduating from Glasgow High in 1963, and a failed attempt at college, Zavalney was drafted into the Army on April 4, 1968. He attended boot camp at Fort Lewis, Washington, and Fort Sam Houston’s medic school in Texas. And he remembers feeling worried about being skilled enough to save lives.
Because one of Zavalney’s two older brothers, Harold, was an Air Force navigator in Vietnam, he was initially not among the 80% with orders for Southeast Asia. Instead he was off to Fort Polk, Louisiana, as part of an ambulance group. The duty was very boring, consisting of attending an occasional parade, or gathering weaker guys from the long hikes. Zavalney's commander saw him as an ambitious military man (he washed his ambulance everyday to overcome the boredom), and he was recommended for the hospital's laboratory.
"I felt so blessed to be out of the ambulance racket that starting out doing all the crappie work seemed just wonderful," he wrote in his memoirs "Fortunate Vietnam War Story." "I recall bleeding the sheep and making all the culture plates with the sheep blood.
"Blood drawing day was Friday, for units of blood sent to Vietnam, and I got pretty good at poking the large needle into about 30 guys’ arms. We had lots of volunteers because the soldiers got the rest of the day off from duty for donating their blood."
The on-the-job training and some good evaluation scores led to his military occupation specialty (MOS) being changed to lab technician. And soon enough, his brother finished his Vietnam tour, and Zavalney was ordered overseas.
After about three days of training – he skipped out on shooting the M16 rifle, figuring “If I was going to die, it would be by a bomb, or I’d miss hitting the Viet Cong and they wouldn’t" – he landed in the Republic of Vietnam on March 15, 1969. Zavalney was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh, about 50 miles from Saigon.
The 24th Evac Hospital specialized in head wounds and had "several high-powered doctors." When John learned there was also a tennis court there, he packed his big green duffle bag with his racket sticking out of the top. He described the facilities as a group of Quonset huts bunkered by sand bags.
The job entailed 12-hour shifts and the most critical work was cross-matching blood, in an effort to save lives. There wasn't a lot of equipment to do the blood analysis with, so the microscope became their main tool. Zalvaney learned to identify the various types of malaria and created quite a microscope slide collection of those types.
The most difficult part of his work was having to draw blood from the wounded soldiers. "Many of the guys would rather be dead than be paralyzed and would ask me to kill them," he recalled. "In one case, the only place I could get a good blood draw was from his ear because of an IV and missing body parts."
He said their free time was spent "exercising, drinking beer, playing lots of volleyball" and listening to a Vietnamese band sing with an accent at the hospital bar. His tennis racket gathered dust in the corner, due to lack of tennis balls and opponents.
And just because Zavalney wasn't a combat vet, doesn't mean he never met the enemy. Next to the hospital there was a prisoner complex that housed about 200 captured North Vietnamese, and the lab techs were required to do blood work on the sick.
"The first time I had to go in there, I asked the guard, 'Aren’t you going with me?'" John wrote. "As he slammed the gate behind me, he said, 'Nah, you can handle it!' So there I was just holding a lab tray with only a needled syringe for protection, surrounded by a couple hundred of the enemy staring at me in the open yard. I ... looked back at the guard in a pleading way, but he just grinned and walked away.
"But after a few times going into 'enemy's territory,' I got my strut back and greeted them in Vietnamese."
On another occasion, he found out the local barber who shaved him was with the Viet Cong after he disappeared, so he could claim the enemy "had a straight razor to my throat" and he lived to tell about it. Then there was the time Zavalney and another lab tech were helping take the body-bagged dead to their makeshift morgue, and after setting it on the floor and walking away, the bag jumped. But when they investigated to see if the soldier was still alive, they discovered the movement was caused by a loose floorboard they stepped on.
A memorable event occurred when he and four other guys from Glasgow met for a beer. The photo of the gathering hangs in Glasgow's Museum.
Zavalney received a Section VIII, Chapter 5 "AR 635-200 SPN 413 school release rad" and left Vietnam on Jan. 4, 1970, after nine months in the RVN. He was honorably discharged from the service the next day. The following day he boarded a plane for Billings, to enroll for Eastern Montana College (now MSU-Billings). Once they landed in the Magic City, after a quick trip to the airport bathroom, John grabbed his duffel bag and rushed out for a taxi ride to the college.
"So, about two days out of the war torn country, I was still wearing my army dress greens, registering for classes, where I received a lot of stares from the students also registering," he wrote. "Standing in front of a table offering philosophy and sociology classes, the college professor on the other side was giving me a long stare. I thought, Oh boy, here comes my first war protesting comments.
"He finally spoke, 'Your zipper's down.' This was the closest I came to being harassed about my role in the Vietnam War."
Zavalney graduated from Eastern in 1972 as a business major. The majority of his career he worked for the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, doing economic research, for 29 years. John has three children – Nathan, Matthew and Katrina – and one grandchild. Among his pastimes are photography and running the Governor's Cup.
“To a large degree, the responsibility of being a lab technician in a war zone, saving and healing lives, changed me for the good,” he concluded, looking back on his Vietnam service. “I moved up in rank to an E-5 (Sergeant) in less than two years, and I realized that I can achieve in life.”
Curt Synness, a Navy vet, can be reached at 406-594-2878 or curt52synness@gmail.com. He's also on Twitter @curtsynness_IR
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Army lab tech Sgt. John Zavalney served in Vietnam from March 1969 to January 1970.
John Zavalney was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968.
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