Like many combat vets, Jim Kyle has 2 families – one related by blood, the other by war

Ozark County native Jim Kyle recently got a phone call from a family member he hadn't heard from in decades.

"Hi, Doc," the caller said. 

Jim isn't a doctor. Now 81, he's a preacher, farmer and retired federal government employee. No one in Ozark County, and no one in his family, calls him "Doc." 

But as soon as Jim heard the man's greeting, he knew who was calling: a voice from his past, a member of Jim's other family, the one that formed 57 years ago when he served with a group of Marines in the Vietnam jungle. 

For 11 months in an isolated site in Quang Tri province, near the Demilitarized Zone that separated the warring countries of North and South Vietnam, Navy Hospital Corpsman Second Class James J. Kyle was the closest thing those Marines had to a doctor. That's why they called him Doc – and sometimes Preacher, because he prayed with them too. In return, the Marines taught him how to survive in the gruesomely harsh jungle conditions where they lived for weeks at a time with no structures, not even tents, while under constant threat of enemy attacks.

"I'm getting older. I can talk about it now," Jim said last week, acknowledging that, like many veterans, he couldn't talk about his experiences for a long time after he came home. He was reluctant to let the Times tell his story, he said, because "I made it back. There's a lot that didn't, and they're the ones that need the credit, rather than me, because I was only a part of the survivors." 

Some might disagree - especially those whose lives Jim saved in February 1969, when he rendered extraordinarily heroic care to his brothers-in-arms – actions for which he was later awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal, both with Combat V for Valor.    

Deep roots in Ozark County

Jim has deep Ozarkian roots. On his mother's side, he is a fifth-generation descendant of early settlers Paton and Nancy Graham Kissee, who were married in Marion County, Arkansas, in 1817 and lived most of their lives in Ozark County. On his father's side, Jim is the great-grandson of Civil War veteran James Asberry Kyle and his wife, Sarah, who came from Tennessee in the 1800s and homesteaded land near Nottinghill that's still owned by the Kyle family.

Jim's grandfather, Robert "Bob" Kyle, was a Missionary Baptist preacher who preached in several area churches. Jim treasures a leather bag filled with his granddad's handwritten sermons. He sometimes has some of his granddad's sayings and thoughts in mind as he prepares his own sermons at Romance Baptist Church, where he preaches every Sunday. 

Jim is named for his granddad's brother, James J. Kyle, who owned and operated a store at Hammond for many years. The uncle also served as a representative in the Missouri Legislature. His cane, engraved with the dates he served there, is now displayed at the Historium.

Jim's parents were James Alton and Linnie Johnson Kyle, who operated a general store in Isabella from 1940 to 1985. Jim learned about responsibility from his parents, especially his mother, Linnie, who reportedly didn't miss a single day of work while she served as Isabella postmaster from 1941 to 1978. Jim and his sister Joan (Henningsen) grew up working in the family's store – and later in the cafe and resort cabins the Kyles opened. 

Jim graduated from Gainesville High School in 1961. He paid his way through what is now Missouri State University with his rodeo winnings (bull- and bronc-riding) and with money he earned working for a Springfield veterinarian. He graduated in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in agriculture. 

By then, America's role in the Vietnam War was increasing, and it looked like Jim was going to be drafted. He didn't want that, so he joined the Navy. In October 1966, he took the bus from Springfield to St. Louis, where he boarded a train for the Great Lakes Navy Recruit Training Command near the Illinois-Wisconsin border. It was the first time he'd ever ridden a train. 

Then, "while I was in boot camp, they were deciding what to do with all of us, and I told them I had a B.S. in agriculture and had worked for a veterinarian for four years while going to college, so they said, 'We'll send you to corpsman school,'" he said.

During those years, the Navy was sending almost all newly trained hospital corpsmen straight to Vietnam, usually attached to a Marine Corps unit. "Looking back now, I didn't have any bad or good feelings about it," he said. "I was just doing what I had to do."

A Christmas night wedding

On Christmas Night 1966, during a furlough from boot camp, Jim married Mary Robbins, daughter of Sanford and Gertrude Robbins, in a candlelight ceremony at the First Christian Church in Gainesville. Her brother-in-law Marv Looney walked her down the aisle. The Rev. Wiley McGhee officiated.  

Jim is four years older than Mary; she finished eighth grade in Gainesville the same year he graduated from high school. They first met, very briefly, in 1964 after the Hootin an Hollarin parade. Mary, dressed in her old-fashioned dress and hoop skirt, had ridden on the float with other Hootin an Hollarin queen pageant hostesses, and Jim had ridden his horse with the saddle club participants. 

“She came up after the parade and wanted me to let her ride my horse, and I said no,” Jim said. “She had on that big dress, and I knew that wouldn’t work.” 

Later, their mutual friend Pam Klineline (Cramm) set them up for their first date.  

Mary was living in Gainesville with her sister Darlene when Jim picked her up in his 1961 Ford to drive to Mountain Home to the show. “I thought she was gonna fall out the door,” he said. “She wouldn’t sit over close to me like the girls did back then.”

Despite the distance between them in the front seat of the car, their first date apparently went well. During the following weeks, while Jim was in Springfield going to college and Mary was finishing high school in Gainesville, they kept in touch – with letters. “We didn’t have a way back then to make phone calls,” he said. “Mary still has the letters somewhere.”

In December, they will celebrate their 59th wedding anniversary. During all those years, Jim said, Mary has loved him and supported him in everything he did. 

Quang Tri province, South Vietnam

After boot camp, Jim trained at the Navy’s Hospital Corpsman School in Norfolk, Virginia, and then was posted to the Marine Corps base in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Mary went with him, and on July 27, 1968, their first child, Matthew, was born there. Three months later, the little family came home to Ozark County right before Jim left for Vietnam. Mary said good-bye to him at the Springfield airport. It was the first time he had ever been on a plane. He flew from Springfield to the West Coast, and from there to Vietnam.

It was hard to leave Mary and the baby and head off to war, but when asked about it, Jim responds in his usual way – by thinking of others. “It was hard,” he said, “but there were a lot of people going, and it was hard for them too.”

He landed first in Da Nang, South Vietnam, and then flew by helicopter to Quang Tri Province. “I didn’t know where I was going, or what I was doing. I just followed instructions,” he said. A few days later, he was dropped off “in what they called ‘the bush,’” he said. That’s where he became part of the Third Battalion, Twelfth Marines, Third Marine Division, First Provisional 155mm Howitzer Detachment. 

The site “wasn’t a base, but just this unit out there in the bush,” he said. The Marines welcomed him. As a corpsman, “I was their doc, and the doc always had the greatest respect there is,” he said. “They knew they needed me.”

And Jim needed them. At 24 and a college graduate, he was older than most of the men, but that didn’t matter. “I depended on my unit to train me,” he said. “They say your first 30 days and your last 30 days are the most critical times in battle. The first 30, you don’t know anything, and the last 30 you know too much. They helped me through all that.”

And in helping each other, the men became a family. 

Jim doesn’t remember the first time the unit came under fire because, right from the beginning, attacks seemed almost constant. “It was a 24/7 kind of deal for 11 months in the bush,” he said. “It felt like 24/7 you’re under attack.”

The men slept on the ground. “The old-timers would call them foxholes,” he said. “You had nothing but whatever you were carrying. For me, it was my medical bag and a .45 pistol.” 

A medical bag, a .45 – and the heavy responsibility for dozens of men under his care.

He helped many but lost some. “I saw all kinds of injuries and deaths,” he said. “I think of the boys I left over there in pieces. You couldn’t gather them all up. I think of the guys who suffered and died there. They’re the ones who deserve the credit.”

To Jim, each death he saw felt like losing a relative, a brother. 

Every couple of weeks or so, the unit would be moved from their site in the bush to “LZ Stud,” a huge, somewhat safer re-supply area and landing zone where Jim and his Marines could stand down for a few days, resupply, take a shower (“with water running out of a 55-gallon drum,” he said) and try to get some rest. Then they returned to the bush – and to the frequent attacks. 

In February 1969, some of the worst combat occurred – and some of Jim’s most appreciated work was done. According to his medals citation, during an afternoon attack on Feb. 2, Jim “unhesitatingly rushed across the fire-swept battery area and administered first aid to several seriously wounded Marines. Steadfastly ignoring the enemy rounds impacting near him, he continued his determined efforts until all the casualties were evacuated.” 

Then, on the night of Feb. 8, “hostile artillery rounds ignited a powder bunker and caused a large fire,” the citation continues. “Undaunted by the fire and the enemy attack, he skillfully treated several Marine casualties. During the following three days, while the battery came under continuous artillery fire, Petty Officer Kyle remained constantly alert and frequently positioned himself in exposed areas in order to be readily available if his services were needed.”

At one point in the battle, the citation says, Jim saved the life of a South Vietnamese soldier by “applying external heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

Remembering those who died

While Jim is honored to have received the medals, he wants to refocus attention on those who died in Vietnam. He appreciates people thanking him for his service, but when he hears that, he can’t help thinking that “there are so many that didn’t get any thanks,” he said. “You see these signs – in memory of Pvt. So-and-So – and that’s good. But I think of all the mothers, sisters, brothers and communities that didn’t get anything in remembrance of what their relative did, or what their family did. There are thousands of mamas whose sons have no memorial.

“When I came back, a lot of people said they were praying for me and they were glad I made it back,” he said. “I was grateful for all the prayers back home, but I know mamas who have said, ‘I prayed for my boy to make it back, and he didn’t come home.’ You don’t know what to say.”

Returning home

In July 1969, when Jim was given five days off for “R&R” (rest and relaxation), he met Mary in Hawaii. It was the first time she’d been on a plane. Marv Looney and his wife, Mary’s sister Dorsey, watched 1-year-old Matt while she was gone. 

From Hawaii, he went “right back out into the bush,” he said. 

A month before he left for home in October, he was moved back to LZ Stud, where he set up a battalion headquarters as a medic. While the Marines were safer there than at their site in the bush, the area still came under frequent artillery attack. “I had about 100 men, and I was their family doc,” he said. “Units would come in and spend a week to resupply and then go back out, and I was there anytime they needed me. That was my deal for the 30 days before I came home.”

On his last day in Vietnam, Jim boarded a helicopter-carrier ship that would transport him and about 2,000 other sailors and Marines home to America. Jim thought it would take a few days to get back to San Diego. “But due to the planning of the military,” he said, it took three weeks. 

In San Diego, he bought civilian clothes at a military commissary as soon as he could. Then he eagerly headed home to Mary and Matt, flying on commercial flights from San Diego to San Francisco to Denver to Kansas City to Springfield. 

On his flight from Denver to Kansas City, he was the only passenger on the whole plane. “They knew about it, and the whole crew – except the pilots – celebrated that I was going home. Of course, we had champagne and wine,” he said, laughing.

The plane landed in Kansas City about 2 a.m. While Jim was sitting in the airport, waiting for his connecting flight to Springfield, he was startled to see Marv Looney and his sons, Doug, Bill and Chris, walking toward him – a wonderful surprise. At the time, the Looneys lived in St. Joseph, where Marv was president of what is now Missouri Western State University. They came to Kansas City in the middle of the night to welcome Jim home.

Finally, he arrived at the Springfield airport, and there were Mary and Matt in the place where they had said good-bye a year earlier.

When he was discharged from the Navy, “they said I would be called back in a year. I said, ‘No, you’ll have to find me first,’” he said with a smile. 

Working and preaching

He, Mary and Matt settled back on the Nottinghill farm Jim’s great-grandfather had homesteaded in the late 1800s. In its Dec. 18, 1969, issue, the Times published a story about the family being the fourth and, with Matt, the fifth generation of Kyles to live on the land. The article also quoted the military’s full citation that awarded Jim the Bronze Star and the Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medals, both with Combat V for Valor. 

In 1970, Jim followed in his grandfather Bob Kyle’s footsteps and began preaching –but in the General Baptist denomination instead of the Missionary Baptist churches his granddad had served. For a short time, the family moved back to the Springfield area so Jim could take Bible courses at night while working during the day for the same veterinarian he’d worked for during college. On Sundays, they returned to Ozark County, where he preached at Liberty Baptist Church, the same church in Isabella he had attended as a boy when his parents ran the nearby store, cafe, resort and post office. 

One day in Springfield, while he was working cattle with the veterinarian, Marv Looney appeared unexpectedly. He told Jim, “The old Crisp place is coming up for sale, and I think you need to get down there and buy it.”

Marv was referring to the farm his sister Earlene Looney Crisp and her husband Horace owned on the county road that runs between Gainesville and Mammoth. Jim was surprised by Marv’s suggestion, but then he looked at the veterinarian, who smiled and told him, “Get out of here!”

He and Mary still live in that house near Mammoth that they bought in 1970. 

In February 1971 Jim was hired to finish out the year for the vocational agriculture teacher, who had left Gainesville High School mid-year. His students included several young men, including Halbert Smith and Rex Donley, whom he considers old friends now, more than 50 years later.  

For a short time, Jim and Mary operated Kyle Feed & Fertilizer in Gainesville, but that business was short-lived. Jim worked at other jobs for a while. Then, in 1983, more than 20 years after he graduated from high school, he started a 32-year career with what is now the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, which administers federal programs that impact farmers.  

During his first three years with the agency, he worked in Fulton, where he lived during the week while Mary stayed here with their growing family. A daughter, Marti (Warden), was born in 1971; a second daughter, Kelli (Humphries), was born in 1973. He made the long drive home every weekend to be with his family – and to preach at Liberty Baptist Church. Later, he served as district director in the Boot Heel, and then as district director over a 21-county area in central Missouri that included Ozark County. He retired in 2015.  

These days, Jim still does some farming and also serves as an elected member of the White River Valley Electric Cooperative Board. For the last 15 years of Sundays, he has preached at Romance Baptist Church, where a small group of members gather to worship – and “to keep the doors open” on one of Ozark County’s oldest established churches, Jim said. The little congregation is very active in helping operate Piland Youth Camp during the summers. 

Since he started in 1970, Jim has preached or spoken “in every church in Ozark County,” he said. “Christian, Church of Christ, Lutheran, Catholic, all of them. I just go anyplace to preach.” He has officiated at weddings and preached countless funerals, including, a month ago, the funeral of Marv Looney, his longtime mentor and one of his closest friends. 

He’s also spoken at Veterans Day events; he’ll speak at the Ava Cemetery at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11. 

He enjoys spending time with Mary and their three adult kids and their families, including 13 grandchildren, two great-grands (and another on the way). His encouraging smile is a familiar sight to his family and friends. His daughter Marti said that, according to her dad, “Every day is a beautiful day.” But she adds, “He is the toughest man I know.” 

Remembering that other family

It’s been 56 years since Jim returned from the war, “but I still experience Nam every day,” he said. Whether or not listeners are aware of it, his war experience “comes to light” in every sermon he preaches and in many memories he recalls. It’s an awareness, he said, not only of combat but of the men he served alongside. 

“Actually, I’ve had, or still have, two families. My own biological family and a family I served with. Most of them are gone now, but they’re still family,” he said.

Many of Jim’s Vietnam friends enjoy renewing those family ties, despite the hard times that spawned them. Not too long ago, Jim got a call from a man in North Carolina, who said, “Hello, Doc. I’ve been praying for you. We came home together on the same ship, and I remember you praying over all them boys.”

Another Vietnam friend called from Arizona and asked, “Do you remember me?” 

“I remembered him very much,” Jim said. “We were out there together in the bush every day.”  

He also hears from friends in North Dakota and Wisconsin, and he communicates frequently with a friend in southeast Missouri. They’re all part of that other family he cherishes, even though it’s a family that was created by war. Jim says these enduring friendships show that “some good can come out of anything.” 

Theirs is a complicated relationship that other folks might not understand. But for those who were there, it’s summed up simply by saying, “I was with him in Nam.”