Lance Corporal Calogero Lombardo

Changing positions three or four times a day as part of a mobile unit in Vietnam, Calogero Lombardo survived relentless marches, blistering heat, crippling diseases, and wounds to his leg, knee and back during a 12-month tour of duty.

The fourth of six children, Calogero Lombardo was born in Altavilla Milicia, Sicily, to Onofrio and Maria (Bucaro) Lombardo. The family immigrated to Chicago in 1956 when Lombardo was 6 years old, settling into the Little Sicily neighborhood of St. Philip Benizi Parish on the city’s Near North Side. In 1961, they bought a home in the neighborhood near Riverview Park.

Lombardo’s maternal grandmother lived with them and did most of the cooking and baking. “Dinners were just magnificent,” he says. “We never knew that we were poor.”

Lombardo graduated from John James Audubon Grade School and continued at Lane Tech High School. After graduating in 1968, he attended classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle for two months. “I wasn’t emotionally ready for it,” he says. “So I joined the Marines. I wanted to join the Peace Corps, but you had to be an American citizen.”

Lombardo’s father, a World War II veteran in Mussolini’s army, was proud when he joined, but his mother hated it. Lombardo reported for his physical on Jan. 29, 1969, and left for boot camp the same day. “I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye,” he says. He phoned his family and they rushed to the airport. “My mother was there, crying,” he remembers.

Lombardo arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and was assigned to G Company, Second Battalion. He scored high on the Italian proficiency test and hoped for embassy duty in Naples, but that was not to be. Sixteen weeks of training were crammed into 10 due to the urgent need for replacement troops in Vietnam. Daily he learned to be a “lean, mean fighting machine.” Almost nightly he received guilt-laden letters from his mother telling him how much she missed and worried about him. “My mother threw all the darts that she could at me,” Lombardo says. “I understood how she felt. That was her nature.”

He received orders for Vietnam and transferred to Camp Pendleton for Infantry Training Regiment. In July 1969, Lombardo boarded a plane to Okinawa, Japan. “I was thinking I’d never come home again and I was thinking about the neighborhood,” he remembers.

Lombardo remained in Okinawa a few days before flying into Da Nang, Vietnam. “It was 5 in the afternoon, 104 degrees,” he says. “‘What the heck am I doing here?’ ‘I don’t want to go!’ All of a sudden you think these things; this is the reality of it!”

He was stationed at Northern I Corps, assigned to India Company, Third Battalion, as an infantryman. The mobile unit sometimes changed positions three or four times a day. “Anything under 10 miles we would march there,” Lombardo says. “If you had to be there sooner to help somebody or provide security, they would helicopter us.”

Most of the daily patrols were search-and-destroy missions. “You walk around and look where there may be suspected enemy and if you find the enemy, you shoot ’em,” says Lombardo. He marched through slime, rice paddies, beaches and the jungle. “Triple canopy,” Lombardo says. “We’re talking about you cannot see the sky from the ground.”

They searched caves in the mountainous area and occasionally found hospitals and rest centers for the North Vietnamese. “You make the place you find inoperable so that they can’t reuse it,” Lombardo says.

Monsoons brought rain from September to March but did not stop the missions through the hilly terrain in the slippery mud. “If you could find a stick, you’d chop it down with your machete and use that as a walking stick,” he says.

Lombardo fought the weather, mosquitoes and the enemy during his Vietnam tour. “We went to different landing zones,” he says. “We never stayed anywhere more than maybe a month, tops.” Lombardo was wounded three times and suffered from malaria, dysentery and jungle rot.

Two weeks after arriving, Lombardo caught shrapnel in his left leg and kept fighting. “I still have that piece in my left leg, embedded in my shinbone,” he says.

One week later, Lombardo and his unit helicoptered onto Barrier Island. Under heavy fire, casualties were high and Lombardo helped his Corporal, who had suffered a head wound. “He was bleeding like a fountain,” Lombardo says. “I got wounded, something went inside my knee and I was helping other people ’cause I didn’t even feel it at the time.”

Lombardo’s unit continued on their missions and approximately three weeks later suffered casualties under heavy mortar fire. Lombardo helped his buddy, who was bleeding profusely. “I got shot in my back that time, and once again I was patching people up,” he says. “I didn’t know I was bleeding until my buddy said, ‘Hey, you’re bleeding.’ Then I passed out.”

He recovered in Da Nang Hospital and returned to the bush. Lombardo recalls a close call. “I got shot in my chest, the bullet went through the flak jacket and it stopped in my Zippo lighter,” he says. “I still have that lighter.”

Lombardo contracted “jungle rot” from cutting his skin on dense jungle brush. “Then, because of the water and dirt, it infects and you get weird stuff on your hands,” he says. “I still have scars from it on both of my arms.”

Suffering from malaria, Lombardo lost over 30 pounds in 12 days. He recovered on the hospital ship Sanctuary and returned to his unit, assigned mess duty for the remainder of his tour. Lombardo returned to California in August 1970 and was discharged as Lance Corporal, with a Purple Heart among his various medals and awards.

He returned home and stayed in his bedroom for three months. “My family was very supportive, anything you need, just say the word,” Lombardo says. “And all I said was let me listen to my Beatles music.”

Lombardo eventually returned to Chicago Circle and under the G.I. Bill earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech communication and theater. A Renaissance man, Lombardo held numerous jobs, including actor, director, carpenter, musician, university teacher, writer, copy editor and banquet chef before retiring from the U.S. Postal Service. He is married to Dr. Judy Kemp.

He chuckles as he remembers getting a draft notice from the Italian army during his tour of duty. Lombardo wrote back, “Dear sir, I’m in a foxhole in Vietnam … ”

Lombardo wrote “Vietnam/University,” a memoir of his experiences during and after the war. A companion book, “Worlds Away,” is used in the treatment of PTSD patients in New York and Chicago. “The only way you understand is if you’ve been through it,” Lombardo says.

He recalls the terrible conditions, carnage and fierce fighting. “It taught me survival and it also taught me how precious life is. I went in at 19 and I turned 95 in a year.”

“The rhythm of the war is to stay alive if you can,” he concludes. “There is no magic involved, you either get hit or you don’t get hit. I got hit three times and I didn’t die. Some people get hit once and they die.”

The article above appears in the November 2025 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture.

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