Elmont vet remembers Vietnam

Many local residents know Salvatore Martella, who has lived in Elmont for 31 years. Most, however, don’t know that he served in what has been called one of the most horrific wars that American soldiers have ever been involved in.

The Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1955 to 1975, fought between communist North Vietnam and its allies and democratic South Vietnam and other anti-communist nations, including the U.S., whose involvement in the conflict was highly controversial.

The U.S. officially entered the war in 1965, and many citizens felt that President Lyndon B. Johnson — whose stated purpose was to keep communism from spreading — was inappropriately interfering in a civil war. Many others, however, believed in Johnson’s cause and volunteered to serve in the war. Martella was one of them.

Born in 1947 into a family of war veterans on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Martella said he had always wanted to serve his country. His father had served in the Army and an uncle had been a Marine in World War II, and two of his cousins were in the Marines during the Korean War. Salvatore didn’t think twice about joining the Marines when he turned 16, at the start of America’s involvement in Vietnam.

At that time, men had to be 17½ before they could enter or be drafted into the war; younger men were required to get parental permission. Martella, however, was so eager to go that, after joining up, he attempted to get on a bus transporting Marines out of New York City — until his father, furious, pulled him off it.

In December 1966, Martella, now 19, was drafted into the war, first sent to the mountains of Colorado for war training and then transferred to Bearcat, a major American base east of Saigon, South Vietnam. He joined the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division in the “Iron Triangle” — an area in Vietnam’s Binh Duong Province. The 4th Infantry was positioned at the tip of the triangle, at the border with Cambodia.

There, Martella witnessed gruesome battles, due to the use of land mines and jungle booby traps, as well as the deaths of many fellow soldiers, one of whom was a sergeant — a title that was passed to Martella.