The dusty trails of Vietnam still haunt Staff Sergeant Jimmy Burks more than five decades after he first set foot on foreign soil as a young Army infantryman. His journey from high school dropout to combat veteran represents thousands of similar stories that shaped a generation of American soldiers.
Burks, born in Comanche in 1950, made a decision that would alter the course of his life when he dropped out of high school in 1968 to join the Army. “My mother signed the paperwork, so that’s what I did to stay out of trouble,” he recalled in a recent interview with the Voices of Veterans program.
Like many young men of his era, Burks had preferences about where he might serve. When given options for deployment, he made his wishes clear. “I told them I’d go to Germany any day—they said ‘sorry, you’re going to Vietnam,'” he explained. The Army, as it often did during the height of the Vietnam War, had other plans.
Into the Unknown
What awaited Burks was a year-long deployment during one of the conflict’s most intense periods. The initial transition was jarring. “It was scary. You didn’t know what was going to happen, if you were going to be shot at, if you had to go out into the field and shoot or whatever,” Burks shared about his first two weeks in-country.
That uncertainty quickly gave way to the harsh reality of combat. During his first firefight, Burks found himself in the middle of intense action that would become all too familiar. “The next thing you know, here they come, opening fire so we got into a fire fight that lasted about 30 minutes. They pulled out, they had woundeds and dead—that was basically it,” he described.
Perhaps the most bitter twist in Burks’ service? He was eventually wounded not by enemy forces but by his fellow Americans in a tragic case of misidentification. “They thought we looked like the enemy,” he noted with the matter-of-fact tone many veterans adopt when discussing painful memories.
Preserving Veterans’ Voices
Stories like Burks’ are being preserved through the Voices of Veterans program, a pioneering initiative that stands as the first veteran oral history program created by a state agency. The program has already archived over 500 stories from Texas veterans, documenting not only their service experiences but also their challenges and triumphs after returning home.
This preservation effort comes at a critical time, as many Vietnam-era veterans are now in their seventies and eighties. Their firsthand accounts provide invaluable historical context that might otherwise be lost to time.
The program operates under the Texas General Land Office, currently led by Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, M.D., who made her own history in 2022 by becoming the first female Land Commissioner elected statewide in Texas.
What drives veterans like Burks to share their stories after decades of silence? For many, it’s the recognition that their experiences, however painful, form an essential part of American history that deserves to be remembered accurately by future generations.
As the Vietnam War recedes further into history, the voices of those who lived through it—from the jungles to the rice paddies, from the bases to the battlefields—become all the more precious. Staff Sergeant Jimmy Burks’ journey from a small Texas town to the frontlines of Vietnam and back again isn’t just his story; it’s America’s story, told one veteran at a time.
