BRACEVILLE — In honor of the upcoming Veterans Day celebrations Tuesday, the Braceville 250 Committee hosted a program Sunday that concentrated on Vietnam-era veterans at the Braceville town hall.

The speakers included men in different branches of the service who saw combat in Vietnam. Some were there early in the United States’ involvement while others took part in some of the pivotal skirmishes of the war.

Revolutionary and Civil War historian Rick Nelson discussed Braceville’s soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War.

“I found the information from the Ohio Daughters of the American Revolution. They had three volumes of Ohio residents who served in the Revolutionary War. Braceville had 18 men who fought in that war. They are buried together in the Braceville Center Cemetery,” Nelson said.

Theodore Toles, project coordinator of the BAAHM (Braceville African American Heritage Museum), read a letter written by Braceville Vietnam veteran Howard Broome. It discussed his enlistment into the Army in 1957 to see more of the world than rural Braceville. Following two weeks in Fort Knox, Kentucky, Broome flew for the first time on a prop plane to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia.

From there, he was sent to Frankfurt, Germany, and became part of the rifle team. At one point, they were on high alert with the possibility of the Russians attacking their base.

A 1965 Braceville High School graduate, Ralph Neumeister joined the Air Force in 1966.

“I went to tech school to become a loadmaster, and I was sent to Dover, Delaware. From there, I was sent to Vietnam. We would deliver weird cargo. On my first trip to Vietnam, we delivered 30,000 pounds of maps,” he said.

He received a medal for flying 25 missions to Vietnam. His squadron supported the troops fighting in Vietnam with supplies and one flight took out emergency leave passengers.

Neumesiter left the military in 1969.

“Not many people know that by this time, the war was winding down,” he said.

Neumeister believes that “every graduate should do two years of service while deciding what they want to do for a job.”

During the program, Karen Andris and Janice Powell Kistler of the Daughters of the American Revolution gave a pin and a Vietnam War commemoration certificate to three of the seven Vietnam veterans in attendance.

“The commemoration is for those who served overseas or in support from Nov 1, 1955, to May 15, 1975. We appreciate your service,” Andris said, noting her husband was also a Vietnam veteran.

Silver Star recipient Terry Shavers gave a PowerPoint presentation about his service in Vietnam.

“I usually don’t like to talk about this stuff, though my wife, Gwen, says, ‘Tell me some stories about Vietnam.’ I am on Facebook and I get a lot of photos from other veterans so I used some of the photos to give you an idea of what some of the stuff looked like,” Shavers said at the beginning of his presentation.

He discussed landing in Vietnam in the late 1960s as he showed on the map where he was on the country’s east coast.

“Cam Ranh Bay, which is now supposed to be one of the hottest tourist attractions in Vietnam, is a nice beach area. I walked outside and got off the plane. I thought somebody had a heater turned on, it was so hot,” Shavers said.

He discussed his first assignment at Camp Evans, not far from North Vietnam’s supply area and the mountains.

“When I went there in February 1968, it was one of the hotter areas. There were 20,000 to 30,000 North Vietnamese in that area at the time,” Shavers said.

His first day in the country involved using a machete to clear brush in the woods and sleeping there. He heard noises in the dark and found out there were tigers in the woods.

“I grew up in rural Braceville, and I was used to playing in the woods and camping out. Most of my fellow troops grew up in the city and the woods scared them,” Shavers said. He brought up the conflict he was involved in that awarded him the Silver Star, which is an award for valor in combat and gallantry against the enemy of the United States during a conflict. His group consisted of 135 men and only Shavers and 34 other soldiers survived.

During the question-and-answer portion of the program, former Braceville resident Bill Young discussed his time in the Air Force and Walter Toles discussed being in the Army early in 1965, which was very early in the Vietnam War.

All of the veterans held the same view that they were proud of their service, and they were happy to give back to their country.