HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 8

(By Delegates  D. Jeffries, Pinson, Smith, B. Ward and Wamsley)

[Introduced February 23, 2021]

Requesting the Division of Highways name bridge number 20-79-9.20 NB and SB, carrying Interstate 79 over Little Sandy near Elkview in Kanawha County, the “U. S. Army SFC Guy R. Hively Memorial Bridge”.

Whereas, Sergeant First Class Guy R. Hively was born on May 22, 1938, in Roane County, and died on February 2, 1968, in Vietnam. He left behind his wife Rita Cassell Hively, and their child, Alison who was three at the time; and

Whereas, In 1998 Don Fitzwater, Sr., wrote “Memories That Won’t Go Away” that he dedicated to Sergeant Hively’s family: “Here it is soon to be 1998 and I still have some memories of 1968 that are almost as clear as yesterday. I suppose that is because they are burned into my memory by fear or for some other reason that I don’t understand. I have decided to write this story about the loss of your husband, your father, your brother, and my friend. I have driven through or near Clendenin, West Virginia on several occasions during the past thirty years and every time that I see the city limit sign or a directional sign on the Interstate my mind immediately flashes to the memories of Guy Hively. I have often thought of finding you and telling you about his last days and hours and the events surrounding his death, however, something always caused me to talk myself out of it. I even stopped at a service station in town one day and inquired about you but still couldn’t make myself look you up. I kept thinking that maybe time has taken care of everything and it would be pointless to do so. I now think that I have been wrong all these years. I first met Guy while assigned to the Berlin Commands’ Second Battle Group of the Sixth Infantry. I had been assigned to Bear Company for some time where this tall, gangly, slow walking and slow talking fellow reported for duty. As everyone does when someone new shows up, we all asked him where he was from and when he said he was from Clendenin, West Virginia I then told him I was from Clay County near the small town of Ivydale. Actually, I was raised on Otter Creek some five miles northwest of Ivydale on Route 16. Everyone liked Guy. He always had a smile and a good word for everyone in the unit. He was never loud and boisterous as some of us were in those days. He had a special gait which often got him teased about being a plowboy or Hillbilly. The unit we were in was a show outfit more than anything else and required us to do an extraordinary amount of close order drill continually preparing for the inevitable parade. Our big Polish-American First Sergeant, Casmir J. Ceizyk, had a set of lungs that could over shout any speaker system and I am sure all of the Berliners knew all of the country boys by name because when parade practice was going on you could always hear this booming voice yelling ‘Hively, Fitzwater, Garrett, or some other country boys name, telling us to settle down and quit bobbing up and down like we were following a plow or climbing a hill’. Everyone got a kick out of that kind of stuff after it was over. I can’t recall a lot more about him while we were in Berlin. I left Berlin in 1965. On January 2, 1968, I arrived in the Republic of South Vietnam and was assigned to the Ninth Infantry Divisions’ Fourth Battalion, Forty Seventh Infantry located at a base camp called Dong Tam. I was assigned to Company A as the Third Platoon Sergeant. The platoon was on base security the evening that I arrived, and l didn't get to meet all the men for a day or two. I can’t remember exactly when I finally saw Guy for the first time and can’t even remember if he was in my platoon initially after I arrived at the company. Shortly after l arrived, there was some shifting of personnel within the company because some of the platoons had lost people due to casualties and normal rotations back to the states and other places as is common in all units. Guy ended up being one of my Squad Leaders. We went on patrols around the base camp and flew here and there on a Med Cap (security missions for the medics to treat the Vietnamese civilians) or two. We had the occasional sniper and booby traps and shellings but nothing major during the month of January until the night of the 29th. We had flown out in the direction of the Cambodian border and established a security perimeter around a floating artillery base. The artillery pieces (howitzers) were mounted aboard pontoons and were either pulled or pushed through the myriad of waterways in the area. The troops had been pretty busy, and it was just the beginning of Tet or The Lunar New Year Season. The Armed Forces Network Radio and TV, as well as the Stars and Stripes Newspaper had been talking of the truce that would be in effect during the next few weeks or so. The troops had been a little slow building up our defensive positions and all of the squad leaders and I had to make them all understand that we had to be ready just in case the truce was a trick to get all of us relaxed in order for the enemy to get in a surprise attack. Guess what!!! It was a trick with devastating consequences for some units, especially the South Vietnamese Forces. We were attacked with mortars at around 9 PM. We also had some ground fire, but the engagement wasn’t much more than harassment as our choppers came out and hosed the area down good with machine gun fire and rockets. We stayed the rest of the night and were sent back to the base camp sometime the next day and were assigned the mission of ready reaction force in the event that the basecamp was hit hard, or some other unit needed help. Our base camp was hit pretty hard with rockets and mortars during the next couple of nights, but we were hunkered down in our large bunkers and didn’t do anything but complain about the heat, bugs and cramped conditions in the bunkers. Some of us would stand around the entrances to the bunkers and make a mad dash for the door when we heard a rocket or mortar coming. Talk about traffic congestion. It was always hot, and the bugs were plentiful. During these few days the First Sergeant, Bob Careless, came to me and asked if I had any objections to him making Guy a Platoon Sergeant of one of the other platoons that had lost theirs in a skirmish. I had no objection as we were all career folks and I knew he would do a good job and be good for the men in that platoon. He was a good noncommissioned officer. He worked hard and looked out for his soldiers. On the morning of February 2, the Platoon Leader, Second Lieutenant John Walsh, from Moses Lake, Washington, came to me and told me to assemble the squad leaders for a meeting and to have the troops prepare to move out in a hurry. At the meeting we learned that our sister battalion, the Third Battalion, Forty Seventh Infantry, was pinned down in or near the town of My Tho some four or five miles up the road from us and that our mission was to break through them and help them. I don’t recall knowing it at the time, but the country was locked in combat nearly from one end to the other. To conduct the breakthrough, we were given a company of M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, with drivers, from B Company Fifth Battalion, Sixtieth Infantry for transportation, small arms fire protection, and 50 caliber machine firepower. This mission would not be successful. My platoon was chosen to lead the movement. I rode the lead Track (personnel carrier) as both Track Commander (TC) and 50 caliber gunner. Guy was several Tracks behind me also in the TC hatch. We moved out and picked up our prearranged distance between tracks and made communications checks with the company leadership making sure we could talk to each other when necessary. The Company Commander was several Tracks behind Guy. As we were pulling out of the company area the new company clerk, whose name I have forgotten, went to each track passing out updated versions of what we called ‘Unit Line Rosters.’ The rosters were used to identify someone in the unit during radio communications without having to say their names. Each Roster was in alphabetical order and also in numerical sequence with a number in the far-left column beside each name. There was never a number 13 because some folks are superstitious, and you don’t need any superstitions that you can avoid in a combat zone. A short distance after leaving the base camp we traveled through a small village occupied by local civilians and several members of the South Vietnamese military. I remember seeing a number of young men standing around in white shirts which was indicative of them not being in the South Vietnamese armed forces and wondered why there were so many of them not in the military when we were there fighting for them. Near the end of the village we had to make a hard tum to the left. After we left the village we would next pass by a South Vietnamese training camp on the left side of the road. A small contingent of American advisers were also stationed there. We passed by the training camp waving at the guards and other locals standing around the entrance. No warning or any word of approaching danger was given by any of them. Nothing looked suspicious to any of us and we continued up the road. As I remember we had gone approximately 1,000 yards past the training camp and the road made a gradual tum to the right. As I was lead track I was the eyes and ears for the front of the column. After making the right turn we had another 1,000 or so yards of open territory, both rice paddies and grassy area, to cross before the road passed a South Vietnamese Army outpost located just inside the tree line of a fair-sized forest. Just after breaking into the opening area after making the tum, I looked at the tree line through my binoculars and immediately saw that the outpost had been overrun by the enemy and was flying Viet Cong (VC) flags on what was left of the towers on both sides of the road. I immediately gave the halt signal to the rest of the column by holding my right arm up with the palm facing forward. We had a quick discussion with the Company Commander as to what the proper action should be to minimize our risks and the decision was made to form a line with the tracks side by side, a few yards apart, and move to the tree-line. With the tracks online we would be able to put all of our 50 caliber firepower to the front instead of everybody shooting over or past the front tracks. Everything went smoothly with just a few nervous bursts of fire from the tracks until we reached a small canal near the tree-line. The canal was obscured with grass and wasn’t on the maps. Everyone had a bad feeling about having all those tracks stopped out in the open 50 or so yards from the tree line. The decision was made to dismount the troops and walk to the tree line and to have the tracks return to and line up on the road. All of the troops crossed the canal and went into the tree line without incident. The company commander then gave the word to move back to the road and mount back up onto the tracks. The tracks came forward and stopped for the troops to load up. I walked to the lead track but discovered that the tracks had gotten all mixed up during their movement back to the road, and instead of my track being in the lead, Guys’ track was the front vehicle. The area surrounding the outpost was sort of a half circle on each side of the road. We had cleared the outpost by several yards before the tracks moved forward. When I discovered that my track was not the first track I started back toward the other vehicles looking for mine. I had just reached the rear of Guy’s track when he arrived looking for it. He was smiling and we chatted for a few seconds with his last words to me and probably his last words to anyone being, ‘What a mess those mixed up tracks were and that there probably wasn’t a VC within 10 miles of the place.’ We were to get our tracks back into our assigned positions once we began to move up the road again, however, we never reached that point. I had stopped at the back of Guys’ track talking to him when my platoon leader stopped to say something to me. As LT. Walsh and I began talking, Guy went to the front of his track and climbed aboard. Just as he was entering the TC hatch a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit his machinegun mount and blew him off the track killing him instantly. The track driver was critically injured and several others, including my platoon leader, were injured in the initial blasts of RPG and small arms fire. We exchanged fire for what seemed to be an eternity. Some of our own artillery landed in our positions killing some more soldiers and wounding several. Everything, including my flak jacket, except my boots and pants were blown off me and my M16 was destroyed in my hands. God was looking out for me that day. I had another track driver pull his track in front of Guys in order to provide protection for some of us to get into his track to render life-saving first aid to the critically wounded driver. The covering track hit the mine that my track was supposed to have hit to spring the ambush initially, had we driven straight up the road instead of getting in line and becoming disorganized as we did. Fortunately, that driver was uninjured, but the track was badly damaged, locking the tracks so that it wouldn’t move until we disconnected the final drives. Guy’s track took another hit and burned. It was full of gasoline and ammunition and burned and exploded for a long time. He was not burned. I only saw his body at a distance a few seconds after the initial burst of enemy fire. I didn’t know it was him until after the fracas was over.  Some of the men told me that the only wounds they observed were small shrapnel wounds in the middle of his chest. Your husband, your father, your brother and my friend died bravely and dedicated to that which he thought to be right.  He didn’t run and hide in Canada or disobey orders or make excuses. He died as a soldier dies true to his country. If only the national leadership at the time would have supported the soldier as much as the soldier supported them, the results of the Vietnam conflict would have had been better recorded in the annals of history. I don’t want his memory to go away. Sometimes memories are all you have. Oh yes, that new company clerk that had just finished updating the Unit Line Roster hadn’t learned the routine and added a 13 to the list. Guy was number 13; and

Whereas, Sergeant Hively’s funeral was held at the First Baptist Church on February 22, 1968, and his body was interred at Elk Hill Memorial Gardens in Big Chimney; and

Whereas, Sergeant Hively was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for his heroic efforts; and

Whereas, It is fitting that an enduring memorial be established to commemorate Sergeant First Class Guy R. Hively and his contributions to our country and state, having made the ultimate sacrifice; therefore, be it

Resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia:

That the Division of Highways is hereby requested to name bridge number 20-79-9.20 NB and SB, carrying Interstate 79 over Little Sandy near Elkview in Kanawha County, the “U. S. Army SFC Guy R. Hively Memorial Bridge”; and, be it

Further Resolved, That the Division of Highways is hereby requested to erect signs containing bold and prominent letters  identifying the bridge as the “U. S. Army SFC Guy R. Hively Memorial Bridge”; and, be it

Further Resolved, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates forward a copy of this resolution to the Commissioner of the Division of Highways.