Richard Lay
Richard Lay was born on February 27, 1949 in working-class Yorkville on the East Side of Manhattan, where his family’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a walk-up building. His father, a bus driver, served in the United States Army during World War II. His older brother was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam from 1966 - 1967. Richard grew up during a time when the monthly rent was twenty-eight dollars, and a subway ride cost a dime. Richard’s neighborhood was a tight-knit community. His block was “the nucleus of the neighborhood. All my friends lived nearby… [and] there was a library a block and a half away. It was a great time to grow up.”
In 1960, however, his family moved to Woodside, Queens. “It was a different atmosphere, a different setting. It was a melting pot, where I met people of different backgrounds, different cultures.” He attended William Cullen Bryant High School. “The streets of New York were a great learning experience.”
On April 1, 1967 Richard took a walk-in test to become a New York City policeman. He scored high on the test. However, to enter the police academy and carry a gun legally, the minimum age was twenty-one. The NYPD therefore hired him as a trainee and he began work on July 1, 1967.
Because of his job, the government granted Richard a draft deferment. Richard nonetheless chose to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. His friends were incredulous. “ ‘You were draft-exempt and you enlisted? Are you nuts?’ ” one of them asked. “The recruiter promised me free clothing, women, good meals, and a chance to see the world. Marines never lie-they just exaggerate a little,” he laughs today.
On August 21, 1967 he was sent to Parris Island, South Carolina for boot camp. Boot camp was intense. “There was never a day off…. They break you down as an individual, and build you back up, to learn to be a part of a team, to protect your buddy, and he’s there to protect you.” At camp, “the entire time you stand at attention, from the time you get up to the time you retire.” The only exception was four hours a week on Sunday for religious services. “PT in the morning, PT in the afternoon. Close order drill. An integral part of discipline.” After his graduation, Richard was sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for AIT. “It prepares you for the rigors of combat.”
On December 26, 1967, Lay was sent to California then Okinawa on a commercial flight before landing in Vietnam in January 1968. They landed in Da Nang, just in time for the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive. They saw the plane in front, a C130, get hit by a rocket and become engulfed in flames. They were quickly hustled into trucks. “Just follow the sergeant,” they were told.
Richard was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division. Richard’s unit, Battalion Landing Team 3-1, was to act as a special strike force, stationed on a ship off the coast and darting in and out of hot spots via chopper. But the Tet Offensive changed the plans.
Lay had arrived in Vietnam and landed at the Cua Viet River just south of the DMZ with a specialty in Advanced Infantry Tactics. He was soon given another. “One of the sergeants said, ‘Oh, so you’re from New York? You look like you’re pretty strong. Drop down and give me five push-ups.’ Now, I’ve got on my combat gear, M16, helmet. We’re in a foxhole. But, I dropped down and did five. So he gave me this radio, twenty-five pounds of communication gear in a backpack. We went out on an operation. Two weeks later, I ask, ‘Sarge, you want me to give the radio to someone else?’ Sarge says, ‘you’re doing a great job.’ I carried that radio for my entire tour.”
The fighting was often intense during the enemy offensive. Once, during Operation Pegasus, Lay’s unit joined others in a joint movement to relieve the 26th Marines who had been under siege for seventy-seven days at the Khe Sahn combat base. Other times, “we would get up in the morning, there were sometimes hot C-rations, sometimes cold. We would go out on patrol, find a place to camp for the night, set out an ambush site, return the next day and do it all over again…. It was a gigantic camping trip. There was no one place we’d stay at twice.”
After suffering heavy casualties, Richard’s unit came back to Da Nang, pulling security for a bridge leading into and out of the city near an old French outpost, patrolling for land mines, and other chores. He was given a one-day pass to leave his unit, hitchhiking into Da Nang. The experience was surreal. From fighting an invisible enemy in the jungle to walking around in a city that could have been in the United States. Complete with cars and trucks and ships and even an IBM office. On the Navy base he jumped on a bus, when two Air Force policemen got on board, wearing immaculate uniforms. “They looked as clean and sharp as Gillette razors.” They asked him if the weapon he was carrying was loaded. “They told me that I couldn’t be on a military vehicle with a loaded weapon…. I slept and ate with my weapon. It never left my side. I couldn’t understand the transition from the jungles to the city.” Told he could either unload his weapon or exit the vehicle, he chose to leave the bus.
His time in Da Nang was a day of much needed rest and recreation. For the first time in months, he enjoyed such simple luxuries as ice cream, cold milk, and hamburgers. Some of the older Marines in his unit wanted some booze. So Lay went into the Navy PX, but they refused to sell him any. Two Air Force pilots took pity on him, and the next thing he knew, they handed him two heavy brown packages. “Keep low. It’s our gift.” The roads were closed at night, so he walked through the fields into camp with his M16 and a backpack full of liquor and sundries like soap, toothpaste and candy.
July 22, 1968, “a day of hell.” His unit was out on patrol. Although only supposed to last a few days, the mission turned into three weeks. Their unit was sometimes resupplied by helicopter; they often had to live off of the land and C-rations. They were encamped in the tree line outside a village sheltering Vietcong soldiers. The unit was supposed to sweep across the field of rice paddies towards the village in the morning, while another unit was to push the Vietcong towards them from the other side. “We were tired and hungry. One of our guys walked over to a mama-san who had sugar cane. He gave her some money and brought back four stalks for us…. We had some new guys come in as replacements, walking point… and then we old timers realized something. There were no water buffalo.”
Water buffalo are the villagers’ most valued possessions. Their absence meant only one thing. They had walked into an ambush. Suddenly they heard “villagers running, then heard incoming mortar rounds, then heard land mines going off in the paddies. The mortar rounds also set off some of the land mines…. We were dealing with the Vietcong coming out of the village when a mortar round landed nearby.”
He was blown eight feet away by the blast. The radio that he was carrying took most of the shrapnel, saving his life. He lost consciousness, waking up with a tremendous ringing in his ears. “It’s a strange sensation, to see everything happening around you… but you can’t hear anything.” The other radioman had also been hit. Still strapped onto the bulky radio, he recovered enough to call in a medevac helicopter. He was wounded in the leg, his arms, hands, face, and chest.
In the helicopter, he was sitting next to a Navy corpsman suffering from an intestinal wound. The medics placed Richard’s limp arm over the injured area in an attempt to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Another Marine on a stretcher was laying at his feet, Alas, the corpsman died at Richard’s feet. To this day, Lay is haunted by feelings of guilt that he could not do anything to help him, that he did not even know his name.
Richard was taken to an Army MASH unit in the rear of the lines, before being loaded onto the USS Sanctuary, a Navy hospital ship, where he spent several weeks in recovery. The Marine Corps was going to send him back home to the States, but he insisted on returning to the front lines with his fellow Marines to finish out his tour of duty, despite the shrapnel still in his body, which he carries with him still to this day.
Richard, like all the other Marines in his unit, kept what he called a “short timer’s calendar. We counted off the days until the end of our enlistment, praying that nothing happened until then.” He spent Christmas Eve on patrol in a Jeep. “We stopped in the middle of the night to wish the other guys a Merry Christmas- and a sniper fired a couple of rounds right through the windshield. So much for the truce….” On his last night in Vietnam, he went out on ambush patrol, one out of eighty patrols he’d been on in Vietnam. He came back at dawn. “I sat down, started cleaning my weapon. This guy says, ‘What are you doing? Your orders came in. You’re going back home.’” Lay gave his replacement his magazines, radio, and all the information they needed. The guys said, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ He turned, walked away, and hitched a ride into the rear.
“It was bittersweet. These guys, you rely on them for your life, they rely on you for their life. We watched each other’s backs. You love these guys. They’re truly your brothers. That’s what the military life is all about. A belief in your mission, a belief in your comrades…. It was just ‘see you.’ That was as close as we got to warm and fuzzy.” In January 1969 he flew into Okinawa, Japan. He caught a plane to California, and then flew across the country, landing at JFK Airport in New York City.
He had shaved in the airport washroom and was wearing his uniform when he entered his parents’ apartment building, where he saw his older sister about to walk the family dog. “It was great to be home.” Richard remained at home for his birthday, before reporting to North Carolina. The Marine Corps sent him as a guard to Guantanamo Bay for five months. Following his assignment in Cuba, he was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps on September 10, 1969.
He graduated from the New York City Police Academy in 1970. He was assigned to the 28th Precinct in Harlem. “It was the city’s smallest police force with its highest homicide rate…. I went from one war to the next.” He served on the police force during some of the city’s most dangerous years before retiring in 1983.
Richie Lay since then has involved himself in a number of volunteer pursuits. His activities include helping veterans returning from warzones, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress. He has been active in the Literary Volunteers of America, helping people learn English and acquire their citizenship and a GED, where he served on the board of directors, and then as president for eight years. “It was very powerful, very impacting. It was a rewarding experience. There is a great sense of satisfaction from helping others. It is the most gratifying feeling in life.” He served for thirteen years as Executive Director of Leadership Orange, dedicated to identifying and then guiding the future civic leaders of the county. He is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and sits on the board of directors of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, Inc. the not-for-profit support organization for the Hall.
He got involved in horse care through a friend and learned of Equine Rescue, an organization established to care for abused, neglected and homeless horses. Richard has adopted one such horse, whom he cares for daily, named Cosmo. Being in the Marines, being a New York City cop, caring for veterans, and now rescuing an abandoned horse, is “a gift, a gift given to us from a higher power. Nobody can take that away from you.