PRIOR TO GOING TO VIETNAM PAPPY WAS A DRILL SGT AND A DAMN GOOD ONE. HE WAS MY TEAM LEADER AS A DRILL SGT. I ATTENDED HIS FUNERAL IN GA.

Published Sunday, May 27, 2007

In Coffee, the bridge is the memorial

There are a lot of monuments at cemeteries, on courthouse lawns and in parks to those who died in America's wars.

Nobody makes you visit them.

It's different for monuments to Coffee County residents who died in Vietnam. You go if you want to get to the other side.

In a ceremony Saturday, the U.S. 221 bridge over the 17 Mile River north of Douglas was dedicated to the memory of brothers Nathan and James Simmons, who served in Vietnam. Coffee County gave seven citizens to the war and all have bridges dedicated to their memories.

Both of the Simmons brothers were lifers, career soldiers who planned to retire from the Army.

Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Bedford Simmons was 40 when he was killed in action on May 12, 1969, in Quang Ngai Province, north of Danang, while serving with the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. His younger brother, Staff Sgt. James Q. Simmons, was with the 101st Airborne Division when he was wounded at Phu Bai on April 18, 1968. James Simmons was brought home from Vietnam and lived to be 69, a good long age for some. But when he died seven years ago, federal veterans officials said he would have lived longer if not for exposure to Agent Orange.

Their surviving brother, Theodore Simmons of Broxton, said he's proud of the honor for his brothers. "It was a long time coming," he said.

Both won Bronze Stars, among their many awards. Nathan Simmons, who had served in Korea, also won a Soldiers Medal during the first of his two tours in Vietnam in 1967 when he jumped into a river and saved a soldier from drowning.

It's not as if the brothers grew up dreaming of joining the Army. Because opportunity didn't knock on many doors in Coffee County in those days, the military was one of their few options, Theodore Simmons said.

"We sharecropped on a farm," in Westgreen, he said.

It was a tough life growing and harvesting tobacco, peanuts and cotton, Simmons said.

"You'd farm a whole year, pay everything off and you were broke," he said.

When Theodore Simmons was 12 or 13 and Nathan, the oldest, was about 17, their father died, Simmons said.

"He was more or less head of the family when Daddy died," Simmons said of his big brother. "He was pretty much of a man."

They tried sharecropping another year, then gave it up, sold their two mules and wagon and moved to Douglas, he said.

But there wasn't much to do except hire on to work someone else's tobacco or at a warehouse or service station, Simmons said.

That didn't show much promise, so the older Simmons brothers joined the Army. Both sent a pay allotment home to help their mother make her $12-a-month house payments and to raise their two sisters and brother.

"When I went on my senior trip, Nathan paid for it," said their sister, Willie Cohen, who lives on St. Simons Island.

They both grew to love the service. Nathan was two years past the normal retirement when he was killed.

But that's the way it has always been in the military. Plenty of career soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen, who retired with chests full of medals, were drafted. Others enlisted to escape the poverty of inner cities, coal mines and hardscrabble farms. Many died on beaches, in oceans and in jungles.

On Memorial Day, we will remember those who gave their lives for us.

It's a pity we don't think of them more often. It's a pity we don't have more bridges.

terry.dickson@jacksonville.com,

Simmons, Nathan Bedford, SFC USA(Ret)