Jeffrey Wilcox

Jeffrey Wilcox was born in New York and moved to Gary, Indiana as a youth. After high school, he attended West Point, and graduated in 1968. He was then assigned to an Army unit that was stationed in Berlin. He stayed there for a year, and was then shipped off to Vietnam. He joined the 101st Airborne Division in 1970, and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, which was operating on and around Fire Support Base Ripcord. Arriving as a 1st lieutenant, he was assigned to command a platoon in A Company, but when his promotion to captain came through, he took command of E Company, which included the mortar platoon and the reconnaissance platoon. When the commander of C Company was killed on July 2, when the company's position on Hill 902 was overrun, he took over what was left of the unit. On July 8, he led C Company in an assault on Hill 1000, which went badly, and he subsequently challenged an order form his battalion commander, which got him sent to the rear as a staff officer, where he finished his tour. After Vietnam, he spent a year and a half in the Transport Corps in Washington DC. After his time in the service, he worked for various different veterans support and advocacy groups on the west coast and eventually settled in West Michigan.