For more than a year, retired Army Col. Pete Bradley sent me emails. His messages were updates on efforts to gain Army recognition of a Lynnwood soldier’s acts of valor in Vietnam.
That soldier was Army Spec. 5 Ron Paschall, a 1969 graduate of Meadowdale High School. He was killed in Vietnam in 1972. Paschall’s remains weren’t found until 1994. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Bradley, 76, lives in Sonora, Texas. In 1970, as a major and company commander, he served in Vietnam with Paschall as part of the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Air Cavalry Division. For Memorial Day 2013, I wrote about the quest by Bradley and another veteran to have Paschall honored with a posthumous award. Bradley credits the young soldier’s heroism for his survival.
In the 2013 column, Bradley described what happened Oct. 6, 1970. Bradley’s helicopter had landed after running combat assaults.
“Ron was my door gunner,” he recalled. Their helicopter was refueling when another chopper crashed. Bradley said he and Paschall ran to pull that crew from “a blazing fire.”
“I got doused with jet fuel, and my pants were on fire,” Bradley said. “Ron ran over to me with a little fire extinguisher, and he did put it out. The medevac helicopter picked us up, five of us, and that was the last time I saw him.”
Bradley, who spent three months in a burn unit, earned the Army Soldiers Medal for the incident. In the spring of 2013, he and fellow veteran Wade Pavleck, of Minnesota, were involved in a long-distance effort to assure that Paschall would also earn a Soldiers Medal — the Army’s highest non-combat award for valor.
“It always bothered me whether Ron got one as well,” Bradley said when we spoke more than a year ago.
On Oct. 19, 44 years after the helicopter fire, I received one more email from the man whose informal sign-off is “Col. Pete.” Bradley included a recent message he had sent to Janet Peyton, Paschall’s sister, who lives in Everett.
Bradley told the 61-year-old Peyton that her brother had indeed received the Soldiers Medal less than a month after his heroic act. “While I had no knowledge since I was medically evacuated to the States, my people processed the award and it was presented to Ron. A copy of the 44-year-old order is attached,” Bradley said in his letter.
Dated Oct. 30, 1970, the Soldiers Medal order said that Paschall “risked his own life to save the crew of a burning helicopter.”
“He entered the blazing wreckage and pulled the crewmen out before the craft exploded,” said the Army citation. It said Paschall suffered minor burns.
For more than a year, Bradley had been sending a detailed packet about Paschall’s heroism — with photos and descriptions of the incident, the soldier’s military history, and Peyton’s signature — to the Army and to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. As Paschall’s sole survivor, Peyton was to be the award recipient.
Bradley had little luck in his quest, and said Monday he was frustrated by the lack of communication from the senator and the Army. Eventually, he sought help from a former classmate at the U.S. Army War College, who also contacted the Army.
According to Bradley’s long string of correspondence, an official from the Army’s Awards and Decorations Branch in Fort Knox, Kentucky, apologized for the delay, and said finding the Soldiers Medal documentation had involved ordering files from an archive and sifting through them. Bradley also learned that in January 1971, Paschall had received a Bronze Star Medal.
Peyton, a Mukilteo district school bus driver, said she appreciates Bradley’s perseverance. She remembers Ron hanging out with friends at home in Alderwood Manor before he was drafted in 1969.
In 1994, she and her husband accompanied her father, Marvin Paschall, to her brother’s burial at Arlington. “It was closure,” said Peyton, who regrets that her mother died before Ron’s remains were found. Her father died in 1998.
For Bradley, it was closure to learn that the soldier who saved his life was properly honored — long ago.
In his letter to Paschall’s sister, he wrote: “I thank you for your patience. I can rest now.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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