Palmyra VFW hosts dinner for Purple Heart recipients on Purple Heart Day

Palmyra Memorial VFW Post 6417 hosted a dinner Friday for Purple Heart recipients and their families, marking Purple Heart Day with a meal, a cake, and a room full of veterans who share a decoration none of them sought.

The post submitted an account of the dinner to LebTown, along with an interview its representatives conducted after the meal with Vietnam veteran Robert Ardner, president of Military Order of the Purple Heart Chapter 1983, which meets monthly at the Palmyra post. Ardner’s remarks below are drawn from that interview.

Ardner was working as a combat medic shortly after midnight on Dec. 22, 1968, when he was wounded.

“I was in a bunker working on two wounded servicemen as a combat medic. A reinforced North Vietnamese Army regiment had come out of Cambodia, fully restocked and rearmed. They overran us,” Ardner said. “The enemy threw a couple of grenades into the bunker. They killed the soldier I was working on and wounded the other. The force of the explosion blew me out the back of the bunker. I lost my aid bag but managed to keep my rifle. I made it through the night.”

At first light he made his way to an aid station, where medical personnel cut away his boots and uniform and ordered him evacuated to a hospital in Saigon, according to the post’s account. Surgeons there believed his wounds were severe enough to send him home. Instead, the day after Christmas, he was transported to a rehabilitation facility in Japan.

“The doctors told me that once I could get up, walk, and talk, I wasn’t going home — I was going back to Vietnam,” Ardner said. No longer assigned to combat operations because of his injuries, he finished his tour at an aid station, “dodging rockets,” he said.

Coming home was its own ordeal, Ardner said in the interview. Nobody explained the VA, the VFW, or the Military Order of the Purple Heart, he said, and the only advice he received was to avoid wearing his uniform off base because of protesters at the gates.

“The problem was, I didn’t have anything else to wear,” he said. “That was my introduction to coming home as a Vietnam veteran.”

He found the Purple Heart organization years later, by accident, he told the post. Someone had left a copy of Purple Heart Magazine at the hospital where he worked, and an article about scholarships prompted him to apply on behalf of his college-bound son. The son did not get the scholarship, but a membership card arrived in the mail.

At his first meeting, Ardner said, he stayed off to the side until someone told him, “Come on up. You’re one of us.”

“It’s the camaraderie,” he said of what keeps him coming back. “Purple Heart recipients share experiences that others can’t fully understand. There are no egos and no pretentiousness. You leave feeling a little better, a little calmer.”

Asked what the public should understand about the medal, Ardner pointed to the veterans who came before and after him.

“We all raised our right hand. We all went where we were told to go. War is war, and that’s a sad fact. We all did the same thing. We all took the Oath of Enlistment,” he said. “The Oath of Enlistment is a road map for your life. You may not remember every word, but if you served honorably, you’ve lived by it.”

Purple Heart Day marks Aug. 7, 1782, when Gen. George Washington established the Badge of Military Merit during the Revolutionary War — a heart-shaped piece of purple cloth edged in silver with the word “Merit” embroidered across the center, created to recognize extraordinary service and valor by enlisted soldiers. The award was revived as the Purple Heart in 1932, the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birth, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It is awarded in the name of the president to members of the armed forces wounded or killed as a result of enemy action.

Post Commander Harmonie Sherk wrote in the submission that the dinner was an opportunity to recognize recipients, honor their sacrifices and welcome the families who have stood beside them.

Deborah Hornick, a Lebanon County resident who has represented Post 6417 as All American Royal Queen, sang the National Anthem, the post said. Phil Arnold, commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart’s Department of Pennsylvania, also attended.

Purple Heart recipients interested in the Military Order of the Purple Heart can contact Ardner at rardner1953@gmail.com. More information about the post is available by visiting Palmyra Memorial Post 6417 VFW’s Facebook page or emailing vfwpost6417@gmail.com.