The National Purple Heart Honor Mission was saddened to announce the recent passing of Board Vice Chairman, Rich Drago.
Rich was a member of the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division Air Assault in Vietnam during 1969 and 1970. Rich served our nation with honor and distinction. He was seriously wounded by a North Vietnamese mortar round, which resulted in his being awarded the Purple Heart.
Rich was a great patriot who showed unwavering commitment to his brother and sister veterans, and he worked with great passion every day to improve their lives and ensure they received the recognition they deserved. Along with his current service as Vice Chairman for the National Purple Heart Honor Mission, Rich was also the Military Order of the Purple Heart Department of New York State Commander, MOPH Chapter 1782 Commander, a member of John T. Kenney Memorial VFW Post 973, AMVETS Post 826, and a member of the American Legion Post 1420.
The Honor Mission extends our heartfelt prayers and condolences to his partner Karen, and all of Rich’s family.
His story is posted on the Honor Mission website:
“War is like nothing you will ever experience.” With these somber words U.S. Army veteran Richard Drago recalls his service in Vietnam during two tours of duty in 1969 and 1970. Nothing in his childhood growing up a city kid in Brooklyn prepared him for the grim reality of war. Born June 3, 1949, Richard lived with his family in a brownstone in an age where cell phones and the Internet were not even dreamt of and most days after school were spent playing games on the street or on the front stoop. He was grateful living only three blocks from his high school, which enabled him to wake up only five minutes before class and still be able to dash to school in time for the bell. It was a Catholic School, Bishop Ford, where he played catcher on the baseball team and guard for the basketball team against opponents like six-foot eight Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then called Lew “the Tower from Power” Alcindor on the Power Memorial High School team which won three straight Catholic high school championships with a 79-2 record.
A good foot shorter than Lew, and mechanically inclined, Richard turned to hot rods, Corvettes, and Harleys and “all that other fun stuff.” And then came the draft. All his friends it seems, even his family relatives, received the letter more or less around the same time. It didn’t come as much of a surprise. They all expected it sooner or later. “When the first letter came for you to go down for your physical, they give you carfare to get down there and back home. When you get that second letter telling you you’re inducted, they only give you carfare for one way.”
Fort Gordon, Georgia. When it was started up in 1917 for World War I it was called Camp Gordon, in memory of Confederate General John Brown Gordon later Governor of Georgia and U.S. Senator. The famous 82nd Airborne trained there. Richard Drago, not so famous, also trained there, at boot camp for the first three months, then, after a week’s respite, returned for three months of Advanced Individual Training. Richard enjoyed the experience. “I liked the discipline in the military. I liked the fact that that you could learn new things, so different from what you knew as a city kid…. You learn a lot of stuff you never, never would have been exposed to.”
As he was to find out all too soon, while the actual combat itself is chaotic and constantly changing, his training served him well. He was in Alpha Company, First Battalion, 7th Air Cavalry, “Custer’s Unit.”
But the lessons didn’t end at boot camp. “War is constant on-the-job training and you have to learn to adapt, to adjust, every day, every hour, every minute.”
Richard and his division were stationed with III Corps, under our ally the Republic of South Vietnam, about 86 miles north of Saigon near Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, rising above the rice patties of the Mekong Delta, not far from the Cambodian border.
“War is constant on-the-job training and you have to learn to adapt, to adjust, every day, every hour, every minute.”