John Steele.
A name many locals may have seen or heard before as his trials and tribulations in Vietnam have been told in varying levels of detail.
Some may know his name because they knew the man behind the 14 medals, or before he had them at all.
Steele, who has now been gone for 20 years, was one of the over 200 Cashton-area boys who served during the Vietnam era. The conditions he endured and predicaments that required his bravery in 1967, for which he received those 14 medals, are almost too gruesome to print.
Steele was injured in action three times, with the third ending his career in the jungle for good.
The third and final injury, or injuries, occurred in the late hours of Dec. 10, 1967, in what was scheduled to be his last trip out in the field. It was as close as he would get to death. So close, and so badly injured, he was unable to even grip his handgun to end his own life, which Steele recalled to reporter Pat Mulvaney in a Sparta Herald article from March 5, 2001.
In an article from the La Cross Tribune from April 17, 1968 by Nora Magelee, Steele’s physical injuries included a sightless left eye, shrapnel fragments in his right eye, an elbow-less left arm, gunshot wounds in his right leg and both eardrums blown out, and 64 stitches to wounds around his left eye.
Less than half way through his deployment, he hit a breaking point in April 1967 after learning his best friend since boot camp, Denny Van Buskirk, was killed.
“Your mind just flips,” said Steele to Mulvaney in 2001. “The love and joy and happiness you once knew was gone.”
In a letter from Van Buskirk’s parents to Steele’s parents, the Van Buskirk’s relate a sentiment sent to them from Capt. John Vann, the leader of John and Denny’s platoon: “The captain said that John was the most decorated E-5 man in the company and possibly in the division, and that he had heard and felt that most of it was due to trying to make up for Denny’s death.”
Steele received three Purple Hearts, three Silver Stars a Bronze Star, the Vietnam Medal of Honor, four campaign medals from the South Vietnamese government, and the American Legion Medal of Valor.
Steele was inducted in the Tomah Veteran Affairs Medical Center “Hall of Heroes” posthumously in 2006. He was also nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor.
BEFORE THE WAR
Steele was the eldest son to Florence and Ray, and a brother to Robert, Steve, Ron, Mary Beth, and Debra. Before being drafted, Mary Beth Perry says that her brother was “a natural born leader” with a sense of humor.
“Everybody looked up to him, even when he was a kid,” said Perry. “He was loyal, he was dedicated. He was just well-liked in the community.”
Perry reminisced about their shared childhood, and said that while growing up near Melvina, their family farm was close to the Kast and Suhr families of which the eldest boys, John Kast and Roger Suhr, were also drafted into Vietnam. Perry said they had a fun time growing up in that “tough” neighborhood.
“In all our childhood games, I can see him, to this day, jumping out of the hayloft, rolling on the ground, getting up and running behind the silo to get the bad guys,” said Perry.
Steele graduated from Cashton High School in 1965, and was drafted the year after. He was selected for the 5th Special Forces, otherwise known as the Green Berets, and after months of training, landed in Vietnam at the age of a 19 in January 1967 for a year-long tour. He was to return home by Christmas.
COMING HOME
Steele returned home on convalescent leave in April of 1968 after spending months at Fitzsimons General Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. It was during his time there that he met a nurse and his future wife, Capt. Mary Ann Tokartz, who Steele attributed his survival to after having to go through 14 surgeries and rehabilitation. Before Colorado, Steele had spent months in Japan being repaired.
Perry says it was the grace of God and the neighborhood mothers’ persistent pleas that brought John Kast, Roger Suhr, and Steele back stateside.
“My mother, when he was gone to Vietnam, she prayed the rosary every day to have God return him home,” Perry said. “She was so devoted to him, and John always said ‘You're my best girl, mama’.”
While Steele received a warm welcome in his hometown, that wasn’t the case for all that served due to the division that the Vietnam War created. Perry recalls having to have hushed conversations about Vietnam as she was afraid to be harassed.
“We had ‘Welcome Home John’ on the barn but there was no ‘Johnny Comes Marching Home’ for the Vietnam veterans,” said Perry.
Despite the negative feelings of some American citizens, Perry says that Steele never felt anything but pride towards America and his service.
LIFE AS A FATHER
Steele went on to marry Capt. Tokartz and had three children: Denny, Dawn, and Holly. After about 15 years of marriage, Steele and Tokartz divorced. Perry says that their marriage was one of the invisible casualties of war.
“When he couldn’t save the men in his platoon, it haunted him,” Perry said. “He may have left the war, but the war never left him.”
John named his firstborn son Denny, after his best friend Denny Van Buskirk. Denny, who is now the keeper of Steele’s war photos and letters, says he and his dad met up every year with the Van Buskirk’s and that they were like an extra set of grandparents to him.
Sometime after the divorce when Denny turned 12, he moved back to live with his father and to finish school in Cashton. Denny, now 52 years old, recalls his childhood fondly, but laments the physical and psychological demons that his father dealt with.
“So we’d get all geared up to go hunting, and sometimes he would take me, and sometimes he wouldn’t go at all,” said Denny. “He told me ‘I can’t kill an animal anymore’. He had a hard time shooting animals after Vietnam.”
Denny said another one of his dad’s idiosyncrasies was his inability to be in silence.
“He couldn’t sleep at night without having a radio on or a record player,” said Denny. “I know every Beatles’ lyrics there is.”
Steele returned to Vietnam with another Cashton native John Guist in 1987 to take a step towards healing. Even though some psychological scars healed, Denny says his father struggled with pain most of the time.
“He took care of me and I took care of him,” said Denny. “I always just wanted him to get better.”
After Vietnam, Steele was left permanently disabled but enjoyed farming with his dad Ray and on his own hobby farm outside of Leon.
Denny, his wife Marcia and their 2-year-old daughter Emma lived with John for a short time while their house was getting built. Denny says his dad and his daughter were best of friends.
“Those two had the best time. I’d hear him downstairs laughing, and I wish he could have met the rest of his grandkids,” said Denny.
Steele passed away in 2005 at the age of 58 due to a blood clot. He had sustained injuries in a wintry car versus semi truck accident which left him with a number of injuries that led to the clot forming. Denny says that his father told him that when he was on the ground and the MedFlight helicopter was landing, he felt like he was back in Vietnam.
“He had a lot of problems but he came out of it, for the most part,” said Denny.
Denny says that the holidays were hard for his dad because that last night in Vietnam always came back around.
“Sometimes he was the life of the party at gatherings,” said Denny. “And other times... he didn’t want to be around people. Every year around the time he got hurt, he was a different person. He was always reliving that night.”
After having seen and experienced some of the worst Vietnam had to offer, Perry says that Steele still had his sense of humor intact.
“I remember so well one Thanksgiving he was here, he said ‘Well, thanks Mary for the dinner. The butter was good.”
This memory and joke continues on for the Steele family and is just one of the ways they keep remembering John – a brother, father, and grandfather – gone too soon.
“It’s been 20 years that he’s been gone,” said Denny. “Sometimes it seems longer than that, sometimes it seems like it was yesterday.”
“He’s gone but we’ll never forget him,” said Perry.
