It was July 1968 and Jim Files — an airborne and scuba-qualified reconnaissance Marine — was assigned with fellow Marines to guard a bridge at Cam Lo, Vietnam.
“We would scuba under the bridge,” recalled Files, 69, of Tucson. “We called ourselves the Parafrog Devil Dogs.”
That name, and the pride behind it, reflects the strong, enduring esprit de corps of Files and his comrades in arms.
His path to the Marine Corps and Vietnam might be traced to his days at the University of Illinois, where he studied after his youth and high school years in Barnhill, Illinois.
“The Vietnam War was escalating, and there was a lot of debate about it” among students at the university, Files said. “I was usually the one saying that yes, we belong in Vietnam. We must stop the aggression of communism.”
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Those beliefs eventually led to action.
“At the end of my second year at the university, I enlisted in the Marine Corps” in 1966, Files said.
He completed boot camp, infantry training and radio operators school.
“I went to jump school (for parachute training) at Fort Benning, and I also did amphibious recon training,” Files said.
He went to Vietnam at the end of March 1968.
“Our company was doing four-man patrols,” said Files, who served with the Third Force Recon Company. “We went into the bush for a week at a time — scouting for enemy troops and supply dumps.”
Later, after guarding the bridge at Cam Lo with his fellow Parafrog Devil Dogs, it became his role to “keep in communication with recon teams in the bush.”
It sometimes involved going into combat in support of a recon team and engaging in firefights with the enemy.
He survived those firefights, but other experiences left a mark. One of those involved a close friend.
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“We had a plan to someday open a combination bookstore, bar and restaurant,” Files said. “Then he got killed.”
Files received an honorable discharge in 1969, returned to the United States, continued his education, and eventually settled into a long career in journalism that took him from Illinois to Colorado, Guam and Arizona.
He met his wife, Meg, in a writing class in 1970, and they were married in 1971.
Meg Files, who is the English and journalism department chair at Pima Community College, nominated her husband for recognition in this series, saying “his experience in Vietnam was influential in shaping his professional and personal life.”
“He had some unique experiences in Vietnam,” she noted. “He said, ‘If you’ve grown up reading certain books, watching certain movies, hearing certain stories, you need the opportunity to know you are brave.’ He is one of the bravest people I know.”
