Milford History Online

The spring of 1965 was a turning point in support for the war in Vietnam. For the first time, large swaths of the American public began to question the wisdom and purpose of a war in a little-known Asian country where our national interest was unclear. The fate of one local boy — 24-year-old sergeant Roger McAllister in the Spring of 1965 — would stir the debate in Milford. First, in April, a nationally printed Associated Press story on the horrors of the war featured McAllister prominently. Then, just a few weeks later, McAllister became the first Milford boy to die in Vietnam. 

Roger McAllister of 37 Clinton Street was a native of Milford. His mother, Addie Martin, worked at the Hitchiner Manufacturing Company for 30 years, while he and five brothers and sisters attended Milford schools. As a teenager, McAllister served at the Milford Observation Post and then joined the army before he could graduate with the Milford High School class of 1958. After service in Kentucky and Germany, he was shipped off to Vietnam as a radio specialist with a special forces unit of the 82nd Airborne. He was soon fighting the Vietcong in the jungles of Asia.

His war experience became front-page news in Milford — and across the nation — when an Associated Press reporter found him in deep distress near Tay Ninh in April 1965. Journalist Horst Faas interviewed and photographed McAllister in a state of extreme heat exhaustion as ants crawled on his face and enemy fire sounded nearby. He and his fellow pathfinders had been dropped into the jungle to establish a landing area for helicopters. With nearby streams having dried up, his unit was desperate for water as they crawled through Vietnam’s spiney bracken. The AP wire story featuring McAllister’s condition was picked up by national papers and made a particular impression on Milford Cabinet readers. As he emerged from “a near-coma,” McAllister told Faas: “Just imagine, there’s now snow in New Hampshire.” Although he continually vowed to go on (“I’ve been to jungle schools before I came over here,” he informed the reporter), McAllister soon collapsed and was airlifted to a medical hospital. 

On Mother’s Day, five weeks later, Roger was back in action when his unit was ambushed in fighting west of Saigon. He died of a gunshot wound to the head and hemorrhagic shock. His mother learned of his son’s fate when a Sunday telegram reached her at a Mother’s Day church picnic. McAllister became the first New Hampshire soldier to die in Vietnam, and as the Cabinet pointed out, “His death suddenly brought the war in that far corner of the world very close to home.”

Accounts of the jungle chaos contributed to a sense among some that the war was an unwinnable quagmire. For others, it only strengthened their patriotic resolve. Writing in the Cabinet Op-Ed page on May 13, Milford resident Gerry Styles penned a “Tribute to a Soldier” and contended in the article’s headline that “Sgt. Roger McAllister Died to Keep the Vietcong out of Milford.” Asking the same question as an increasing number of Americans: “Just what do you figure he died for?” Styles provided an answer the Pentagon surely would have approved. “Sure as hell not for the fun of it. He died so that you could continue to live in relative peace right where you are. So you could buy another sweepstakes ticket, go down to the VFW tonight or sit in your own backyard with a cold beer and listen to a steak sizzling on your outdoor broiler."

The following week former resident Dale Stover offered a blistering 3-column response: “The writer (Styles) believes that this man’s death ought to spur us to offer more American lives in the hope of killing even more Asians. I, for one, am not at all happy with the notion that we are killing Vietnamese so that Mr. Styles can enjoy his evening beer.” He went on: “That Americans are fighting in Vietnam to keep the Vietcong out of Milford is pure emotional fog. No one can possibly believe with any seriousness that the Vietcong represent a military threat to the US with our nuclear stockpiles.” It was the start of a debate that would rage in both Milford — and the country at large — for nearly a decade. 

Perhaps lost in the discussion over what the soldier’s life “meant” was the soldier himself. In 2018, when the Faces Never Forgotten project was attempting to assemble photos of every Vietnam veteran who served, they could not find an existing picture of McAllister.  A search led to the Cabinet, on to the Milford Historical Society, then to McAllister’s nephew, then to his son, and finally to a couple photos — which can be found here. Indeed, it was really only as the Vietnam debate cooled, that the heroism and bravery of soldiers like Roger McAllister could truly be recognized.