Blind in one eye, the draft sent Randall Merimee to Vietnam anyway

When Randall Merimee looked at the vision chart with his left eye for the draft board in 1968, the 17-year-old could only identify the sticks of the top ‘E’.

Everything else was lost to the haze Merimee had dealt with since childhood. He was legally blind in that eye, and every specialist his father took him to said nothing could be done.

The draft board said they would give him glasses and sent the Indiana youth to Vietnam.

The youngest of six boys to serve in the armed forces, Merimee was the only member of his family to see combat. He would be wounded twice, and face countless more close calls while serving in the Marines.

Merimee and his wife, Debbie, have lived in Poplar Bluff since he retired about 20 years ago. It was at that time injuries from his service forced Merimee to stop working and his PTSD became something that could no longer be pushed back behind the tasks of daily life.

“Sometimes I wonder why God would spare me and take the rest. Who knows why. I’ve often wondered if my blind eye would have caused anything ... That’s the thing that bothers me the most...

I wonder if anybody died because I didn’t have the vision in my left eye. I don’t know if anybody did or not,” the 68-year-old said recently, opening up about the tragedies that haunt him and the memories of friends in arms that still make him laugh.

Poplar Bluff veteran Randall Merimee served in the Marines from 1968-1970. Photo provided

The average age of the men he served with was 19. Once a guy reached 22, 23, he was considered an old man, Merimee laughed.

“We had a high fatality rate. We saw more than we should have probably. But that’s how that goes,” he said.

One of the worst of those times was during ‘in country R and R,’ at a place called Christmas Island, about seven miles outside Da Nang. The lance corporal’s unit typically operated as far north as troops could go without getting into Laos.

“It was supposed to be a place where there was no enemy activity whatsoever,” said Merimee, visibly struggling with the memory. “We did a stupid thing. We set a pattern down. We went swimming at this same place in front of the ARVN camp for seven straight days… I think it was the eighth day… it came and they had a claymore.”

Only Merimee and the corpsman survived.

“There was 13 of us. I was dead in the middle of them when the claymore went off. Everybody was dead on each side of me,” he said. “You were swimming one minute and trying to bandage up the dead the next… Don’t know why, but I survived.”

Poplar Bluff veteran Randall Merimee is pictured with a friend during his service in Vietnam. Photo provided

Memories like this, have become clearer and more persistent since he retired, Merimee said.

“I guess you keep it in the back of your head and when I retired, that stuff came back up like crazy,” he said. “It was like it happened yesterday. I still feel just like it happened yesterday.”

Merimee was home, eating dinner at his mother’s kitchen table, before his 20th birthday, a thought that still makes his head spin.

“You’re killing one week, this next week you’re home being back to normal,” said Merimee, adding times have changed and more support is offered now to those returning home.

That comes both from the military and the public, said Merimee, who has been plagued by back problems after being thrown from a vehicle during an explosion.

He takes comfort in providing a place for disabled veterans to hunt and helping those applying for benefits.

---

Editor’s note: Merimee is featured today in a book on area veterans that will be distributed this evening at the VAlentines for Veterans concert at the Black River Coliseum.