By Mark Hallum
Norman Heller was not waiting around for recognition after he stuck his neck out for a fellow soldier who had been shot on a desolate roadway in Saigon in 1962. He was later told by a commanding officer he was recommended for the Bronze Star for valor, and four decades later he will get the award he earned trying to save a man’s life.
The former Bayside resident, who is 90, will attend a ceremony near his current home in Florida where he will finally get his Bronze Star on Memorial Day.
“It’s very hard to pat myself on the back,” Heller said. “I was getting ready to come home–to rotate in a couple of days. I was in my quarters and they started shooting outside. I guess it was meant for us.”
Heller, who was a chief warrant officer in the Army, explained that a passing American GI had taken several rounds to the body and was lying on the pavement.
“It was unbearable, I just tried to attend to him until he was evacuated,” Heller said. He never learned the fate of the man he stepped into the line of fire to help, but he heard a report that a soldier was killed that day.
“I jumped on the guy and protected his body. I took my undershirt off and used it as a tourniquet … the area just emptied out, nobody would come near. You don’t stop and think before you do these things. If you asked me if I would do it again, well, I probably would.”
Heller and his men he served with were headquartered in an alleyway near where the shooting began. He was packing his bags to go home and believes he would have been the one lying in the street if he had left just a few minutes sooner.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Louis Kochanek went down to the scene later and interviewed the soldiers and people present at the time of the fire fight. Upon learning the details of the day, he formally submitted paperwork to recommend Heller for the Bronze Star.
But problem in the system left the military with no record of the recommendation paperwork submitted.
“I waited years and I hadn’t heard anything about it. I started asking questions and they did a search and they couldn’t find the recommendation. They wanted witnesses,” Heller said.
Heller eventually crossed paths with Kochanek on Facebook in the last year, and the retired Army officer not only proved he had made a recommendation, but contacted U.S. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), who oversaw much of the process.
Heller spoke highly of Kochanek, who is himself a distinguished infantry officer.
“He’s quite an individual. I could never follow in his footsteps,” Heller said with a chuckle.
He laughs when he admits to being one of the older men who served in Vietnam at the age of 36 at the time of the event that won him the Bronze Star, but he had also served in Korea before that. As a chief warrant officer in 1962, Heller had a military intelligence ranking.
He spent the last three years of his military career in Garden City, L.I., where he began his life in Bayside.
His daughter currently lives in the neighborhood and works for Northwell Health.
Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhall
