2/19/97
3 wars, 3 bronze stars for Bismarck veteran
Last medal recognizes heroism in South Vietnam
JEFFREY G. OLSON, Bismarck Tribune
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Joseph Ibach stood among fellow veterans Tuesday night to receive his last medal -- a belated bronze star from the November 1965 Battle of the Idrang Valley in South Vietnam.
Ibach is one of a remarkable few soldiers who served in three wars. Now 77 years old and retired in Bismarck, he was a foot soldier in the Pacific during World War II. He served in Korea and finally, South Vietnam.
And he was a member of the famous Seventh Cavalry.
"I was so old (45 at the time he served in Vietnam) they called me Custer's bugler," Ibach said with a laugh. "Gary Owen. I was in the second (company) of the Seventh Cavalry Air Mobile."
Tuesday's ceremony at the VFW Club in Bismarck was extra special. Several of Ibach's family were on hand. His son, Daniel, 36, and a veteran of Desert Storm, sat by his side.
"That was just remarkable," said Daniel, a Lincoln resident and life member of the VFW. "That's something to see your father get something like this."
The grandfather/veteran doesn't know the particulars of this, his third bronze star for heroism in combat. He won his first bronze star in the Pacific and another during his 12 months in Vietnam.
"Somebody put me in for it," Ibach said. "It might have been the company commander, I don't know."
During Vietnam, the Seventh Cavalry relied, not on horses as in Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's time, but on helicopters. "Choppers, the UH-1 'Hueys' we called them," Ibach said.
The choppers ferried members of the Seventh in and out of jungle hot spots. On Nov. 16, 1965, Master Sgt. Ibach and hundreds of others flew into the Idrang Valley about 40 miles from Pleiku. A battle had been going, on and off, Ibach said.
The next day, Ibach's outfit walked into a Viet Cong trap in the deep, dark jungle. It was about 1 in the afternoon. His citation reads in part: "From hastily prepared defensive positions, his actions enabled the unit to repel repeated attacks the rest of the day and the entire night ..."
When the Hueys returned on Nov. 17, 174 American soldiers were dead, 256 more were wounded. It was the highest single-day casualty report of the war at the time.
Ibach wasn't wounded, but he spent his last six months in a hospital in Vietnam suffering from yellow jaundice and hepatitis. "It was the dirtiest place in the world, I swear," Ibach said of the jungle. "It made Korea look clean."
In 1969, Ibach mustered out of the Army. The family stayed another five years in Columbus, Ga., near Ibach's last post of Fort Benning. They returned to Bismarck where Ibach worked as an engineer at the old Prince Hotel. These days Ibach visits his sisters in Las Vegas and other family around the country.
And Tuesday's bronze star? "It's just an award," Ibach said. "Oh, I earned it, but it's just an award."