Thank You for Your Service, Steve Massey

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (WSPA) – Steve Massey had just finished dental school when he received his draft notice.

“And next thing I know, my cousin said, ‘Did you get your draft paper?’ And I said, ‘no, no.'”…And the next day I got my draft,” Massey explained.

Massey was drafted into the Army as an anti-personal carrier or a tank driver.

“We did, we would pool security for everybody with the tanks,” Massey shared. “We would drive it, learn how to pull maintenance on the tanks, drive the tanks, pull security.”

Massey said the day he graduated boot camp, he deployed.

“We deployed all over Vietnam. We pulled security for anybody that needed anybody,” Massey shared. “If they got into a fight or anything they would call us and we would come, we had the M-60 on, fit decal on, the front, and the 60s on the side.”

Massey said he prayed every day because the atmosphere always kept him on his toes.

“You would hear bullets go by your head. B-40s,” Massey told 7 NEWS. “We’d have to put a fence screen up in front of the tanks so the B-40s would hit the screen and blow up before it hit to tank.”

Then he added the “welcome home” wasn’t great either.

“That was a time when people were throwing things at you and booing you and stuff,” Massey said. “It was uncomfortable.”

After the war, Massey got a job in New York in material management.

“Anything came into the hospital I took care of it and not only me, three of us took care of it and issued out into the hospital material management,” Massey explained. “Until I slipped my back. I got three disks and I got three bolts in my back.”

That fall forced Massey to retire and move south.

“When I came down here, I walked into Walmart and ladies were running up, ‘Thank you for your service! Give me a hug and kiss!'” said Massey.

He shared receiving thanks and praise for his service, was something he wasn’t used to.

“I wouldn’t talk about it and I sit here, that’s my chair and I wouldn’t do anything,” Massey said. “I go to get in a car and crank it up and the car automatically goes to Walmart and I come back here and sit down and wouldn’t go nowhere.”

Massey said medical professionals suggested he keep going out as a way to cope.

“They told me what to do. I did it. They said mingle. Don’t lock yourself up. Mingle. Because it hurts here,” Massey explained as he pointed to his head.

Massey said it’s the mingling amongst his friends and his wife Pat that keeps his spirits high.

Steve Massey, Thank You for Your Service.

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