Basic training and advanced individual training took place at Fort Polk, Louisiana, today known as Fort Johnson.

“I wasn’t really surprised when I got the draft notice. It was always in the back of your mind,” he said.

After landing in Vietnam, he remembers boarding a bus that had no windows.

“It had chicken wire where the windows were. I remember asking the driver, and he goes, ‘it’s just in case they throw a grenade in the bus.’ That’s when I realized Oh, my God, I’m really here,” Schelling said.

After leaving the Army in 1971, Schelling married, had children and worked first at Marshalltown Manufacturing then Fisher Controls before retiring.

“Here” was a small village where he spent five months driving a tractor-trailer hauling bombs, ammunition and soda. It was during this time he befriended Bill Bodily and Richard Ashlock who were in his platoon, becoming life-long friends.

“You always went by your last name,” Schelling recalled. “Bill said we’re good friends and should call each other by our first names. People were amazed. It was some normalcy.”

The second half of his year in Vietnam saw Schelling working on a gun truck he helped build dubbed “Frustration,” hauling ammo, refrigerated goods and petroleum. At the time, there were no gun trucks issued by the Army so crews and mechanics had to use salvaged scrap metal for their armor.

They drove supplies to the city of Pleiku, for use by the Fourth Infantry Division.

“We were the main supply,” he said. “We had two mountain passes we had to go through that were very dangerous because you could only drive 15-20 miles per hour at the most. We got shot at just about every day. We were easy targets. The enemy knew if they could stop the trucks with supplies there would be no fuel or ammo for the helicopters or for the infantrymen.”

After trips that could last days to a week, they’d return and have the truck serviced and the ammo reloaded.

“We had four machine guns on there, so you had to tear them all down, clean them all, wash the truck up,” he said. “You had pride in your truck.”

Ashlock would usually drive, but the men would take turns. Schelling spent his 21st birthday in Vietnam. In May and June 1970, he and fellow men went into Cambodia for supply runs.

“It was a little scary because they wouldn’t tell you where you were going. It was top secret,” he recalled. “I made it back okay.”

Central Vietnam, he noted, is mountainous, whereas Cambodia has red soil and less vegetation.

He returned home around Christmas 1970. (Bodily and Ashlock had left in September). When he got back, he reported to Fort Hood, Texas. He left the Army on Aug. 21, 1971.

“When I did come home, you walked through an airport in your Army greens — for a discount you flew standby — and you did get dirty looks. That’s always kind of bothered me,” he said. “It was not a very popular war. I understand that, but we were just doing what we were told. And for a long time, I never talked about (my time in Vietnam).”

When Schelling was discharged, he did what many service members did: got married, started a job and tried to acclimate to civilian life.

“You’re away from somebody for a year, and they’ve changed too. But, you come back and say ‘this is what I got to do and get my life back going.'”

PTSD complicated things.

“Loud noises bothered me. You always scan a room, just looking for danger,” he said. “I still do that today.”

He took work at Marshalltown Manufacturing then moved to Fisher Controls where he worked for 36 years before retiring.

“I’ve been divorced three times. I think the service had something to do with that. I’m not gonna blame anybody else. It was just me,” he said. “I changed a lot then when I first got out of high school. You grow up fast.”

It was later discovered that in February 1971, the new crew of “Frustration” were hit and the gun truck destroyed at the Devil’s Hairpin on An Khe Pass.

Schelling, Bodily and Ashlock stay in touch via phone, email and the occasional in-person meet up. In Oshkosh, Wisconsin they toured a plant where gun trucks are made.

“They treated us like kings,” he said. “With us together it’s like you’ve never been apart. You know their history, they know yours. There are no secrets.”

He has two children, Jennifer Ladehoff, a teacher at Hoglan Elementary School, and a son Jim Schelling of Arlington, Texas, plus several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife Pam has saluted his service with a Vets Banner and a bench and brick at the American Legion.