"There's nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed." (Video Interview, 30:02)

Hector Rafael Ponton

Hector Ponton [2003] War: Cold War; Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Branch: Army Unit: National Guard; 3rd Armored Rifle Battalion, 51st Infantry; V Corps; 2nd Battle Group, 39th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division; 3rd Battalion, 13th Regiment, 9th Vietnamese Infantry Division, Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Vietnam; 2nd Bn, 503rd Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade; G3, 7th Infantry Division; 7th Army Service Location: Germany; Washington; Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia; Fort Polk, Louisiana; Nicaragua; Denver, Colorado; Far East; Korea; South America; Middle East; also: Vietnam Rank: Colonel; Corporal Place of Birth: Corozal, PR

Hector R. Ponton joined the Puerto Rico Army National Guard at age fifteen in order to attend their summer camp with his friends. Little did he know that he would spend the next thirty-six years of his life serving with the US Army, deploying to Berlin, when the Wall was being built; to Vietnam for two tours of duty; to the volatile Military Demarcation Line between North and South Korea; and to Nicaragua, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the Somoza regime. In Vietnam while still in his late twenties, he served as an advisor to a South Vietnamese infantry battalion; seven years later, his duties were in operations, administration, and logistics. Ponton ended his long military career as the US Army representative in the faculty at Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, having learned to advise and command at increasingly higher levels while still holding sentimental feelings for his troops.