Brothers in arms: Veterans volunteer to help other veterans

MOSES LAKE — There was the training exercise where Fil Rivera accidentally got dropped into the Caribbean Sea in the middle of the night.

Rex Rogers was a young GI in West Berlin, in the years right before the Berlin Wall was built. But GIs were warned about certain taxicabs that could take them for a ride they didn’t expect.

Rivera and Rogers have many years of service in the U.S. Armed Forces, and now they volunteer to help other veterans who need help with disability claims.

“For me, I made out fine in civilian life, and this is a way of giving back,” Rogers said.

“We’re here to serve. And it’s service to others, not for ourselves,” Rivera said.

They volunteer their time three days each week. The office is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday in the Grant County offices of the Vietnam Veterans of America at 1525 E. Wheeler Road in Moses Lake.

“These offices provide veterans services,” Rivera said. “We do claims for the VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs).”

Rivera is an accredited VA service officer, he said, so he can help any veteran who comes into the office. They also can help the families of veterans, he said.

Veterans or their family members coming into the office should make sure all their paperwork is in order, Rivera said, to ensure the claim can be evaluated as quickly as possible.

Both men spent many years in service to the country.

“I’m a retired Air Force master sergeant. And Rex here has spent 10 years in the Army,” Rivera said.

But before enlisting in the Air Force, Rivera was in the Army, and spent his share of time in Vietnam, serving with the Army from 1965-1966 and the Air Force from 1969-1970.

“I served with the 101st Airborne and the 5th Special Forces over there. I was a former Green Beret,” he said. “They say ‘former.’ I am a Green Beret.”

He was also in the 6th Special Forces Group, he said.

Rivera spent part of his childhood in New York, and enlisted in the 42nd Infantry Division, which is part of the U.S. National Guard.

“I served the Rainbow Division. I was in that before I was of proper age,” he said. “I was raised in the military. My father was in the service.”

His special forces service involved airborne operations.

“That’s another thing young people do, jump out of perfectly good airplanes,” he said.

He had his share of bad landings, he said, including one on a pitch-black night off the coast of Puerto Rico. The goal of the training exercise was to end up on shore, but the pilots miscalculated and missed the drop zone. Rivera was carrying the radio gear.

“It was a night drop, I was not going to make the island, and I let that bag go – I didn’t need an anchor dragging me down,” he said. “And then you literally come out of your parachute. You’re supposed to wait until you feel water on your feet before you let go of it (the parachute). I think I made (about) a 30-foot free fall.”

His first instinct was to swim, he said, but he had no way of judging direction. So he waited for rescue.

“I was in the Caribbean Sea long enough to get hypothermia,” he said.

Rogers served during the Vietnam era, but was never in Vietnam during the war.

“I volunteered a couple of times, but the Army saw fit to send me somewhere else,” he said.

His duty stations included Berlin, in the days when it was divided into East Berlin and West Berlin, but before the Berlin Wall made it official. He was a guard at Spandau Prison, where, including seven top Nazi leaders convicted in the Nuremberg trials were held. The prison was the joint responsibility of the four Allied powers, the U.S., the then-Soviet Union, the U.K. and France.

“We always took over from the Russians,” he said. “It (the changeover) was a big folderol.”

The barracks his unit used are now luxury condominiums, he mentioned.

“It was an education,” he said.

It was a time of high tension between East and West, and Berlin was a focal point.

“We had to be very careful. There were East Berlin taxicabs in West Berlin. One had a solid stripe, and one had a checkered stripe. Checkered stripe – (soldiers were told) don’t get in those,” he said.

Both men had prosperous careers after their military service, and Rogers said he has a message for the veterans he meets now.

“There’s life after the service. This is still a country of opportunity,” he said.