Veterans Day: Memories of mail call amid war’s toll

Updated Nov 11, 2022

Updated Nov. 11, 2022 attendant to Veteran's Day, 2022. 

Doug Fetterly, pictured in 1967 stationed near Cambodia and reading one of among many copies of Overdrive his owner-operator father sent him from back home.Doug Fetterly, pictured in 1967 stationed near Cambodia and reading one of among many copies of Overdrive his owner-operator father sent him from back home.

In November 1966, then 19-year-old Doug Fetterly deployed to Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s Fourth Infantry Division. He had trained for a year at Fort Lewis, Washington, to be what he describes as a ground pounder before he landed in Vietnam’s West Central Highlands, near the Cambodian border.

“I lived like an animal for many months and was lucky to make it home alive,” the retired owner-operator said recently of his 13-month tour in Vietnam’s mountainous region. “We lost many of our guys.”

Packages that Fetterly’s father, owner-operator Al Fetterly, sent him from home in New York helped relieve war’s toll. “When we got mail, it was a treat. I read all the Overdrives and still have them,” he said of the photo above, taken of him reading the magazine in summer 1967, shown above.

When he returned to his home near Thousand Islands, N.Y., he drove for two companies before he became an owner-operator in 1986. The 1972 R Model Mack he drove for Burdett Oxygen Co. would be Overdrive’s February 1974 Tractor of the Month Runner-Up.

While some truck drivers honed trucking skills in the military, others simply appreciate getting back to the United States, even if -- as in the case of Vietnam -- they were publicly ridiculed by those who opposed the unpopular war.

Fetterly is succinct: “All I can say about the Army is that it was an experience you will never forget. Trucking is a lot more fun.”

Thank you, to all soldiers past and present for military service. It is an endeavor that demands far more than most of us can fathom.

[Related: How trucking changed this military veteran's life]