Howard Michael Ehrhardt Jr. Is This Week’s Hometown Hero

It’s brought to you by Batavia Downs Gaming and our friends at WNY Heroes who help us with our nominations each week.  This week’s hero was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and now resides in Kenmore.  He served our country proudly in the United States Army.  It’s Howard Michael Ehrhardt Jr.

Howard Michael Ehrhardt Jr followed in the footsteps of his his father (WWII) and grandfather (WWI) who both fought for our country.  Howard left his family at the age of 19 when he was called to active duty by the Army in October of 1965.  He was a Specialist 4 in the 565^th Transportation Co., 10^th Battalion.

What follows is the nomination we received from WNY Heroes:

When speaking with him about his days in Vietnam you can often see in his eyes he goes off to a different place that unless you are a soldier who fought for your country, do not understand.  Not only the horrors of war where innocent people die, areas are turned to rubble, fellow soldiers killed or injured were reflected in his eyes but he would often talk about the protest of the American people with regard to the war.  While American soldiers carried themselves with poise, bravery and patriotism for their country, they also carried the sorrow that back home there were war protesters along with the Viet Cong broadcasting that the soldiers’ flight was hopeless.  He will tell you his first impression of Vietnam was the sand and heat.  He and fellow compatriots were stationed amongst rubber plantations owned by Goodyear and Firestone.  Their responsibility were to unload some rather strange things over the sides of ships such as sub nets with buoys, full size trains, box cars, military vehicles, brand new radio trucks, etc. when these items were not needed.  While doing this, if they were under attack by the enemy they were instructed not to fire back, reasoning not to harm the rubber plants surrounding the area.   He had saved one of his compatriots who were using one of the forklifts to get one of the above items off the ship.  When he noticed that the forklift was starting to break through some of the old wooden boards on the ship he quickly grabbed some cables and stopped the forklift from falling.

Remember, if you have a Hometown Hero that you would like us to recognize, click the button below.  We like to spotlight both active duty and veteran heroes from right here in Western New York.

Thanks once again to Specialist 4^th Class from the United States Army Howard Michael Ehrhardt Jr., our Hometown Hero of the week.