Mike Ruminski was drafted into the Army in June 1967 and volunteered to serve on long-range patrols when his unit was shipped to Vietnam.
“Usually, we were on patrol for three or four days at the most, and then we’d come back to base and be off for a week or so,” said the 77-year-old Mt. Washington native, who lives in Monroeville. “The regular ground troops would go out for 30 days in a row.”
Ruminski is planning to attend a “Faces of Battle” program April 1 at the Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College, where a panel of three other veterans will share their wartime experiences.
He has served as a previous panelist for the annual sessions. They are meant to foster community among those who have served in the military while providing first-hand insight on armed conflict for others, including students at the college campus in Unity.
There was a reason for the extended breaks between the 11 missions Ruminski completed with his six-man patrol squad.
“They put us into suspected areas of (enemy) activity,” he said. “There were times when you would think any second there could be somebody behind the next thick grove of vegetation.
“In one instance, we were about 100 yards off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We watched probably 200 Vietnamese go by with bicycles and carts with equipment. Had they had flankers out, we would have been nailed. We were all glad to get back.”
The Faces of Battle gatherings are a spin-off of a similarly named and conceived course at Saint Vincent that was taught by former English professor Richard Wissolik. Before his death in 2020, Wissolik wrote and edited several books on historical and military topics — including “They Say There Was A War,” a compilation of oral histories of World War II veterans.
Ruminski was invited to speak to Wissolik’s class when his daughter, Roxanne, was enrolled in it, and both have continued to be involved in the Faces of Battle programs.
“I never talked about Vietnam at home until Roxanne invited me to go to that class,” Ruminski said.
Recognizing the importance of sharing his experience with students, he also valued meeting older World War II veterans who participated in the program.
“I could leave Vietnam after a year,” he said. “In World War II, they were in there for the duration.
“I have so much respect for them, I made some really good friends; they opened me up.”
Roxanne Ruminski said her father continued to participate in Wissolik’s class even after she graduated in 2008 with a political science degree.
“It opened up this part of his life that I didn’t know very much about,” she said.
Mike Ruminski’s opinion about the Vietnam War changed over time as he gained a respect for the enemy his unit faced.
“Those people were fighting for their land,” he said. “I would have done the same things they were doing. People are people the same way around the world.”
While Ruminski came to see American involvement in the war as a mistake, he doesn’t have second thoughts about serving his country during the conflict.
“I’m proud how I reacted when the country called,” he said. “I have no regrets of going. I thought it made me a better person because I realized how fragile life is.”
Ruminski’s duty to his country came with a cost.
On one of his patrol missions, Ruminski tripped an enemy explosive and was wounded in the neck by a small piece of metal shrapnel.
“It didn’t come out for probably five years after I got home,” he said.
He was sent home when he ripped cartilage in a leg. He twisted the limb while backing up as he secured the rear of his squad.
Like many other Vietnam veterans, Ruminski also was exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange — a factor that has been associated with multiple health problems, including coronary artery disease.
“I’ve had a triple bypass,” he said, “but I felt I’d rather have that happen than get cancer or diabetes.”
“I’m so glad he made it home, or I would not be here,” his daughter said.
Participants may bring differing viewpoints to the Faces of Battle program, but it is intended as an apolitical, nonpartisan forum for the study of human conflict.
Attracting veterans from different eras as well as those who are interested in their stories, Faces of Battle “is kind of bridging the past and the present,” Roxanne Ruminski said. “We respect each other’s opinions on different things.”
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Eric B. Greisinger, an author and adjunct history instructor at the Community College of Allegheny County and Southern New Hampshire University, will discuss the Civil War Battle of Antietam as the featured speaker at the April 1 program.
A 1999 Saint Vincent graduate who went on to attain advanced degrees in history, Greisinger also attended Wissolik’s class as a student and later returned as a guest lecturer.
His interest in the Civil War is heightened by the fact his great-great-grandfather served in a Union cavalry unit under Philip Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer.
Later conflicts claimed two great uncles — one dying from exposure to poison gas in World War I, the other part of a crew never found when their B-42 bomber was lost over the North Atlantic during World War II.
Stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, Greisinger’s mother, Mary, served as an Army nurse in the 1960s, caring for wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam. She later joined a Faces of Battle discussion panel.
“We have a lot of former military members in the audience,” Eric Greisinger said of the Saint Vincent programs. “What we’re trying to do is also bring in students and some of the ROTC cadets so that they have a rounded understanding of what military service was about and what it can be.”
April 1 panelists will include: Korean War veteran Charlie Takitch, a native of Hecla who was involved in testing experimental aircraft at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland; Vietnam veterans George Klekner, who served with the Marines, and Jim Palochik, who was a helicopter pilot.