HANCOCK COUNTY — Following a firefight in the A Shau Valley during the Vietnam War on July 22, 1970, U.S. Army Sgt. Mark Draper was found with an IV bag in one hand, his .45 handgun in the other.
The 20-year-old Hancock County native and medic had died defending a wounded comrade.
His friends remember him as quiet, dedicated and a bit cantankerous, but above all heroic.
Draper was the 11th and final Hancock County resident to die in the Vietnam War. Over the past three years, the county’s veterans community has held remembrance ceremonies for all of them on the 50-year anniversary of their deaths. A 12th Hancock County resident has been listed as missing in action since 1965.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryOn Wednesday, a half-century after Draper was killed, attendees of his ceremony honored the fallen service member’s life and brought the tradition to a close.
‘A courageous man’
Draper grew up in Finly and graduated from New Palestine High School in 1967. He worked in Indianapolis for the Allison Division of General Motors and Ed Martin Ford Sales.
Rick Walker graduated with Draper and remembers him as quiet guy who followed the rules.
“He seemed to be just a straight and narrow classmate,” Walker said.
They both were called to take their draft physicals together and passed, meaning they were heading for the service in a time of war.
Walker spent much of the bus ride home thinking about his upcoming marriage.
“I don’t know what Mark thought his future entailed,” Walker said. “…I don’t know why, but I looked across the aisle and Mark was just in a really somber mood, a really serious mood.”
They both entered the Army. Walker admitted he sometimes feels guilty about the different paths their service took. He was serving in Germany when he got news of Draper’s death.
“Why was I lucky and he wasn’t?” Walker said. “I always wonder why was it him and not me? …He was just a really good man, and I hate to know we don’t have him anymore.”
It’s difficult not to be affected by the details of Draper’s death, he continued.
“Could I have been that courageous?” Walker said. “That’s probably one of the things that goes through my mind. He was a courageous man.”
Draper served in the 2nd Battalion of the storied 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.
“In Vietnam, they faced an impossible mission,” said Kurt Vetters, an Army veteran and an organizer of the ceremonies through the Dale E. Kuhn American Legion Post 119 in Greenfield, at Draper’s remembrance ceremony Wednesday, July 22.
Vetters went on to recall how the 101st Airborne was the only full-strength combat division left on the ground in Vietnam at the time. The division prepared for an offensive in the A Shau Valley and established a series of fire support bases, one of which was dubbed Ripcord.
“Perched on a hilltop, surrounded by mountainous jungle canopy, only accessible by helicopter, the paratroopers of 2/506 ran patrols for months to keep the swarming NVA (Northern Vietnam Army) regulars off balance,” Vetters said. “Dropped in remote LZs (landing zones), company- and platoon-sized units would sweep through the terrain, in almost continuous enemy contact, in efforts to fix and destroy the enemy.”
Draper landed in Vietnam on Jan. 6, 1970, the day Hancock County native Norris Borgman was killed in action.
Doc Draper
William “Baldy” Baldwin of Corinth, Mississippi, served with Draper at Ripcord.
“He was actually pretty sarcastic,” Baldwin said of his late friend with a chuckle. “None of that mattered to us, when you’re out in the bush humping together. But he was very quick to react to anyone that was wounded. I’m telling you, he was right there Johnny on the spot.”
Draper quickly responded to a wide variety of ailments with the “pharmacy on his back,” Baldwin said, including combat and booby trap wounds, heat stroke and jungle rot.
Soldiers had to take two different kinds of pills to fend off malaria, Baldwin recalled. One had to be taken every day, the other once a week.
“Doc would bring those around; that’s how we knew it was Monday,” Baldwin said.
He said they’d give Draper a hard time and insist they wouldn’t take the pills.
“He’d say, ‘No, you’re taking this because I’m humping it on my pack!'” Baldwin added with a laugh.
Baldwin remembered his M16 rifle was missing upon returning from a few days of leave. After linking up with a different battalion, he never ended up getting a rifle and had only a .45-caliber pistol
“I’m telling you, I did not feel safe just walking around with that thing,” he said.
After a trek through the bush, he and his fellow soldiers arrived at where they’d be staying for the night.
“And Doc was walking in behind me and he had this M16 and he’s using it like a walking stick,” Baldwin said. “And I just ask him point blank, I said, ‘Doc, are you going to shoot anybody with this M16?”
The medic said no.
“I said, ‘Well, give it to me, because I can,'” Baldwin continued. “And that was the weapon I carried with me. The rest of the time I was in Vietnam, I had Doc’s M16. I told him I’d take care of him with it.”
By July, the fighting around Ripcord had intensified, and Draper was in the thick of it.
“We know he was in almost constant combat as the medic for A company,” Vetters said at the ceremony.
Part of Vetters’ research came from “Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970,” written by Keith W. Nolan and published in 2000. The book includes several references to Draper, including the account of his death as he held the IV bag and his .45. It also recounts how he patched up one of his platoon leaders, Lt. James P. Noll, under fire on July 2, 1970.
Not long before Draper died on July 22, Baldwin received a different assignment and was no longer near his friend.
“When he was killed, it completely crushed me,” Baldwin said. “Because I had told him that I would take care of him. I wasn’t in a position to.”
The fighting around Ripcord was intense, he continued, adding he still has shrapnel in his back from a rocket-propelled grenade.
Baldwin said Draper was a conscientious objector and that aside from briefly using an M16 as a walking stick, the medic never carried a weapon.
In response to the account given in Nolan’s history of Ripcord, Baldwin said Draper could have obtained a fellow soldier’s .45, but he can’t be sure.
“The Mark Draper I knew, I don’t think he was capable of killing anybody,” Baldwin said. “I don’t really adhere to that story. I can’t say it’s a lie, because I didn’t see it, but Doc was absolutely not a weapons person.”
That doesn’t mean he should be thought of any less, Baldwin continued.
“Make no mistake about it, he was certainly a hero, because he gave it all,” he said. “And he gave it all in the process of trying to do his job, which was to help another wounded brother.”
Draper was buried in New Palestine Cemetery and survived by his parents, Max and Dorothy Draper. His father died in 2007, followed by his mother in 2013.
Robert Wright, Indianapolis, also served with Draper at Ripcord and attended Wednesday’s ceremony, where he presented framed photographs of his fallen comrade. During the event, he recalled how Draper called him “soul brother” and looked back on the uniqueness of a friendship between a guy from New Palestine and one from the projects in Indianapolis.
Like Baldwin, he remembered Draper’s aversion toward combat, but indicated he did carry a weapon.
“He didn’t like war,” Wright said. “He didn’t even like cleaning his .45. We used to get on him all the time. We’d say, ‘Doc, you got to clean that thing.'”
Wright said Draper could be cantankerous as well and compared him to Wishbone from the TV series “Rawhide.”
He said his friend was also committed to his duties and likened him to Desmond Doss, the pacifist who served as a combat medic in the Army during World War II. (Doss was the inspiration for the 2016 film “Hacksaw Ridge.”)
End of a tradition
In July 2017, the Hancock County veterans community started commemorating the 11 men from Hancock County who died in the Vietnam War on the 50th anniversaries of their deaths, starting with John Larry Modglin.
“Veterans organizations have to find a mission,” Vetters told the Daily Reporter. “They have to find what resonates with their members and what their place in the community is. And this was a mission that I could think of no other group more prime to do than the groups of veterans organizations.”
Along with the local American Legion post, VFW Post 2693 and the Greenfield Veterans Honor Guard were also involved in the ceremonies.
“The honor guard is critical, and they’re really the linchpin because the ceremonial part of what we do is mostly embodied by the honor guard,” Vetters said, referring to the guard’s gun salutes. “The VFW has got a good group, and they were where a lot of the Vietnam veterans live in the community. And the Legion brought the energy and manpower and organizational effort to bring it all together. The last component was the public and the families, and they embraced it from the beginning.”
Vetters said the ceremonies also aimed to positively impact Vietnam War veterans, a group that didn’t always receive the warmest welcomes from Americans following their tours of duty.
“What they got with this over and over and over for three years was a tribute to the fact that we know they sacrificed,” he said. “So it’s been about the KIAs, but it’s also been about closure and healing.”
At Wednesday’s ceremony, Vetters called Draper and the 10 men honored before him heroes.
“They and their comrades fought an impossible mission,” he said. “But they stood their ground, for us, and for America. We stand here to say thank you. It is not enough, yet it is our impossible mission.”
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Eleven men from Hancock County died during the Vietnam War, and one is missing in action. They are:
John Modglin on July 18, 1967
Rodger Haste on December 22, 1967
Frank W. Marks on March 9, 1968
Elvin Gose on March 18, 1968
Michael Ebert on March 21, 1968
Vaughn Brown on July 1, 1968
William Brees Jr. on Oct. 8, 1968
Huger Phelps on Feb. 10, 1969
Michael Terry on Oct. 12, 1969
Norris Borgman on Jan. 6, 1970
Mark Draper on July 22, 1970
Robert Harlan II, missing in action on Oct. 25, 1965
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Bronze Star with first and second oak leaf clusters
Purple Heart
Good Conduct Medal
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