Bob Weinschenk learned the meaning of teamwork on a river patrol boat in South Vietnam

Teamwork is depending on the alertness and skills of three other guys with you on a river patrol boat in an area of South Vietnam known in English as the “Forest of Assassins.” Bob Weinschenk learned that lesson during his year in Vietnam from October 1967 to October 1968, and it is a lesson that has served him well in the animal health industry. He is Southeast regional sales manager for MWI Veterinary Supply, managing reps whose territories span eight states.

Born in 1946 in Madison, Ind., Weinschenk was raised in Noblesville, Ind. At the time, it was a sleepy farming town north of Indianapolis. Today, it’s a suburb. His father, Ed, worked for years as a retail merchant for the now-defunct Morris Five and Dime. After that, he opened his own women’s clothing store, named Mr. Ed’s. When Ed’s wife, Dorothy, wasn’t taking care of the kids, she worked with her husband in the store.

While in high school, Bob worked in the retail store of a local dairy, selling ice cream creations. His starting salary was 65 cents an hour. But what he lacked in salary (later raised to 75 cents), he got in valuable experience. “I had to interact with the people coming into the ice cream shop,” he says. “It was a good experience. I learned great people skills. Sometimes you don’t know at the time what you’ll find useful later in life.

Following high school, he went to college. After two years, he joined the Navy Reserve, figuring that after he got out, he could finish his college education on the GI Bill. The deal then was, you would serve one year of inactive duty, followed by two years active duty. So he figured that he would be back in school in three years.

After his first year in the Navy, he reported to Treasure Island Naval Base in the San Francisco Bay, where he received his orders to serve on a river patrol boat in Vietnam. “I found out later that almost everyone on the river patrol boats had volunteered to do it, with a few exceptions … and I was one of them,” says Weinschenk. It was dangerous duty, but he found himself surrounded by exceptional, dedicated people, and he’s grateful for the experience today. He went on active duty July, 1967.

PBRs
River patrol boats, known as PBRs (for “patrol boat, river”), were heavily armed, 31-feet-long, 10.5-feet-wide fiberglass boats used to search traffic in the rivers and canals of South Vietnam, in such areas as the Mekong Delta, Saigon River and the Rung Sat Special Zone (also known as the Forest of Assassins.) They were also important in dispatching and picking up special forces units, including Navy SEALs and South Vietnamese commandos. PBRs drafted just a couple of feet of water, meaning they rode high in the water, making them highly maneuverable as well as fast. They were part of what was called the Brown Water Navy, so-named because the vessels never got in water deep enough to be blue. Filmgoers who saw the 1979 film Apocalypse Now are familiar with PBRs (though the vessel shown in the movie was a second generation PBR, known as the Mark II).

The PBRs were an important part of the war effort, because the Mekong Delta housed thousands of Viet Cong and VC sympathizers. The boats were an integral part of what came to be called Operation Game Warden, designed to deny the Viet Cong access to resources in the Mekong Delta.

Training
Even before Weinschenk reached South Vietnam, he learned another valuable life lesson, courtesy of the Navy – the importance of training. “What the Navy did was incredible insofar as training,” he says. “They really prepared us for what we were going to do over there.” But it wasn’t pleasant.

Weinschenk and his colleagues went through two survival schools. The first, called SERE (for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), on Whidbey Island in Washington State, was “the worst week of my life,” he says. “They were preparing us for what could possibly happen if we were captured in Southeast Asia,” he says. “A lot of the training was based on what had happened to our soldiers in Korea, with some of the atrocities that were committed there.”

The intent was to bring the soldiers up to – and even beyond – their breaking point. Armed with just a whistle, compass, canteen and parachute, they were challenged to evade capture and live off the land. For a couple of days, the soldiers were thrown into realistic prisoner-of-war camps. “You soon realized you weren’t in the United States anymore,” says Weinschenk, who prefers not to go into detail about that portion of the training. “They wanted to break you down mentally.”

Following SERE, the soldiers attended enemy language school, counterinsurgency school, and on-the-boat training in the sloughs of California. “When it came time to go to Vietnam, you were ready,” he says. Even so, after leaving the States, the PBR trainees went to jungle survival school in the Philippines. “It was an unbelievable experience,” recalls Weinschenk. His guide, an indigenous Filipino, had fought the Japanese in World War II, and regaled his trainees with tales from that brutal conflict. Weinschenk celebrated his 21st birthday in the Philippines jungle, and his guide gave him a birthday present – a machete – which he still owns today.

Vietnam
Launched in early 1966, Game Warden demanded a coordinated effort by the PBRs, Huey helicopters, landing craft and, of course, the SEALs. “We would patrol for six days, 12 to 14 hours a day; then we’d get a day off; then we’d go on night patrol for six days,” says Weinschenk.

“Our mission was to enforce the curfew.” Each PBR was equipped with twin .50-caliber machine guns in the bow, a single rear .50-caliber gun, and a side-mounted machine gun and grenade launcher. “Anything on the water at night, you engaged,” he says. “And during the day, you searched the sampans and junks for contraband. Our job was to interdict any kind of enemy infiltration.” The PBRs also provided fire support for besieged outposts, inserted and extracted Navy SEALs for combat and rescue operations, and helped with medical evacuations.

Though sailors rotated through with regularity, given the one-year tours-of-duty that were common during Vietnam, the goal was to keep the same group of sailors together on one PBR as long as possible. “’PBR’ also means ‘Proud, Brave, Reliable,’” says Weinschenk. “That summarizes what we were.” Indeed, only 1,500 or so “brown water sailors” served in Vietnam at any one time, yet two Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded among their ranks. “That’s incredible,” says Weinschenk. What’s more, in 1968, approximately 33 percent of the sailors on PBRs received a Purple Heart, he adds.

“It was a very unique group of guys,” he says. “When there were only four of you on the boat, your life was dependent on them, and vice versa.” To give in to fear would have been disastrous. “What you did was try to stay focused on the task at hand. That means going out and doing your job and making sure the other guys didn’t get hurt.” All four sailors on the PBR were cross-trained, so that if someone got injured, the others could, for example, drive the boat or make a quick engine repair. Weinschenk himself was a gunner’s mate.

“Very seldom did I fire first,” he says. “It was almost always in reaction to being attacked. That’s why it was so important that the [other sailors on the PBR] were in tune with the war as much as you, insofar as their ability to react quickly.”

Tet
Patrolling the 485-square-mile Rung Sat Special Zone, the PBRs had to negotiate an estimated 3,000 miles of interlocking streams, thick mangrove swamps, Nipa palm and rice paddies. Located near the equator, the “Forest of Assassins” was so difficult to navigate that pirates used it as a staging area in the old days, says Weinschenk. Turns out, so did the Viet Cong.

“Traffic on the river increased considerably in early 1968,” he recalls. “But we never put it together until the Tet Offensive was launched.” The Tet Offensive was a massive, well-coordinated assault on South Vietnam by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army, launched on Jan. 31, 1968, the first day of the new year, or Tet. Though the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately fought back the offensive, fighting lasted for several months.

On the night of March 25, 1968, as Tet was winding down, Weinschenk’s PBR was hit while extracting South Vietnamese commandos from the jungle. “They knocked out one engine, and three out of our four were wounded, one severely,” he recalls. “We had to make our way back to the base on one engine.” Weinschenk sustained shrapnel wounds throughout his arm, for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.

Transition
Weinschenk left Vietnam on Oct. 14, 1968, but not before taking a couple of souvenirs – the tattered, bullet-ridden flag from his PBR, and the patrol map. He returned to Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., as planned, to complete his education. “But I couldn’t adjust,” he says. “You were in combat one day, then 24 hours later you’re back in the States, and then going back to school. I honestly couldn’t make the transition.” So, after finishing the semester, he left college for good.

He answered an ad regarding a distribution manager position in Indianapolis with Pitman-Moore, an old animal health manufacturer. “I ended up spending 11 years with them,” in distribution and then sales roles. At the time, Pitman-Moore was a venerable company that sold a wide variety of animal health products. At one point, Weinschenk was bit by the entrepreneurial bug and joined some others in starting their own business. But he found that he didn’t enjoy being an entrepreneur, so after four months, he called back Pitman-Moore and returned to work there.

From Pitman-Moore, Weinschenk went to ER Squibb, which was later acquired by Solvay Veterinary. In 1989, he was recruited by Ciba Geigy (now Novartis) to help launch that company’s animal health business. He was there roughly 10 years before joining MWI as the company’s first sales rep east of the Mississippi.

Like his comrades on the PBRs, Weinschenk’s colleagues in animal health sales have been terrific, he says. Starting with Pitman-Moore, “the role models I have had are unbelievable. They modeled the way for me.” He recalls Fred Harris, who hired him at Ciba Geigy to help launch its U.S. business. Harris knew Weinschenk had not finished college. “But he saw me for what I was and gave me that opportunity. Whenever I hired somebody after that, I remembered Fred Harris.” He figures he has hired more than 60 people over the years, and many are still in the business today.

Passing on a legacy
Today, Weinschenk is a collector of animal health memorabilia. His fascination with memorabilia was fueled by his years at the now-defunct Pitman-Moore, one of the country’s oldest animal health companies, whose roots lay in Indianapolis. Years later, calling on a veterinarian in Daytona Beach, Fla., Weinschenk noticed and commented on some old bottles of Pitman-Moore products the vet had in his office. “The next time I saw him, he gave me a bottle of a product produced in 1934,” he recalls. “That started it. Whenever I would be in a clinic and see an old bottle of something, I’d try to finagle the veterinarian out of it. So I started a collection.” Among his keepsakes are Pitman-Moore catalogs from 1922 and 1951.

Weinschenk has passed something else along as well. Using a 19-inch model of a PBR (which he obtained through one of the veterans associations to which he belongs) as well as other souvenirs he collected from Vietnam, he dresses in uniform and shares his experiences from Vietnam with students in the Atlanta area, where he lives. At the end of his presentations, he pulls out the tattered, bullet-ridden flag from his PBR and shows it to the students. “I tell them, ‘This flag will be buried with me. I was proud to serve my country, and I’m proud to be here today.’”