Naples native inducted into Army Rangers Hall of Fame

[SR-25]

By GEORGE HUTCHINS, Citrus County (Fla.) Chronicle
September 12, 2004

Gavin Storter, 65, is a member of the pioneering Storter family of Collier County. His great-grandfather was born in Alabama and moved to Everglades City shortly after the Civil War.

Storter, a retired Army major, was born to George and Jessie Storter and has one brother, Bem, and a sister, Nancy Hanks.

He is a 1958 graduate of Naples High School. He and his wife, Alvarene have three sons — Jamie, Mike and Duke — and now resides in Inverness.




The Vietnam War, to retired Maj. Gavin Storter, was like an unfair football game.

The U.S. armed forces, he said, were the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Their opponents, the Viet Cong, were a pee-wee team.

"Only, the rules were that the Bucs couldn't cross the 20-yard line," Storter said. "Makes it harder to win the game, doesn't it?"

For Storter, an Inverness resident, the comparison is haunting.

As an Army Ranger for three tours of duty there between 1966 and 1971, Storter is a primary source on the subject.

In July it became known to military brass how extraordinary Storter's three tours of duty were. On July 8, he was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in Fort Benning, Ga.

In Storter's three tours, he ran between bullets to save lives, led an ambush and made historical leaps by parachute into enemy territory.

Some 35 years later, parts of the stories are lost. The heroic parts, however, remain fresh in Storter's mind.

Gunfire heard toward camp


Storter was 26 and six years into his military career in 1966, the year of his first tour of duty in Vietnam. He had left his hometown, Naples, because he didn't have a taste for construction labor.

So he set out to Vietnam. On Jan. 30, 1966, he was an adviser to a battalion of South Vietnamese troops in the Anh Loa Valley, near Da Nang.

American military officers often helped their allies with logistical and tactical advice. Another American officer on the scene was named Norman Schwarzkopf.

Gunfire rang out near the American camp that day. Storter was the only one around. So he started running — toward the gunfire. He found a wounded American adviser, named Tony.

Storter carried Tony a quarter-mile to safety, running on a path on a rice paddy. The act of heroism is clear, but Storter thinks anyone would have done it.

"I think most people knew what they had to do," he said. "I was in a position to assist him. Being hurt or killed isn't really something you think about."

Storter won a Silver Star for his effort.

He said there were lots of bodies all around as he ran for cover — ditch to ditch, through the rice paddy. He's tried to find Tony, a blond Italian, on the Internet, but hasn't had any luck.

'We ran at 'em'


By 1969, Storter's second tour in Vietnam took him to the border between North Vietnam and Laos.

Storter was leading a group of 75 Americans to a town in Laos. The town, it was believed, was home to a stockpile of Viet Cong weaponry. He described the group he led as "mercenaries" of the U.S. Special Forces.

Also in the group were Cambodians and Chinese. Local soldiers with unusual customs.

"For them, they were very careful to cover their mouth when they picked their teeth," he said. "But they'd go ahead and pick their nose out in the open. It was OK for them."

The battalion slashed through the jungle, and got involved in an unexpected firefight on the way, about 25 miles from the targeted town. Typically in that situation, he said, commanders split the group into smaller ones, and have them attack from both the right and left.

That didn't work. So Storter and his men ran right at them through the jungle. They fired into a small, unknown camp.

"We ran at 'em," he said.

They fought for 30 minutes. He fired a 60 mm mortar about 100 yards — a direct hit on the enemy. The Army considered the encounter a "rout."

"It happened on the way to the real incident," Storter said. "The bigger battle was there, but they remembered this one."

Parachuting into enemy territory


On Aug. 10, 1971, Storter was back in Vietnam on a third tour — over Vietnam, to be exact.

At the time, with the Paris Peace Talks between the Vietnamese and American governments in progress, military intelligence was at a premium, he said.

The Army started dropping Rangers from the sky, in the middle of the night, from 12,500 feet up from an Air Force C-130.

Three other groups had tried to parachute into enemy territory, but all three were shot or killed.

Storter went in anyway. For four or five days he gathered intelligence so valuable that it was relayed to Paris, for review by U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

It was the first successful "Halo" mission in U.S. military history, he said.

Quiet of Citrus County


These days, Storter is 65 and retired. He serves part-time as a volunteer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He's an avid hunter and fisherman, and has a healthy stack of books about Vietnam in his living room for when he gets the itch.

The Hall of Fame induction ceremony in July brought back memories. He saw some old friends. Colleagues had compiled his war stories and nominated him for the hall — a compliment he noted right away.

Since completing his own heroics so long ago, Storter's moved on, but said he still has the bitter taste that so many Vietnam Veterans have about the war. Why couldn't the country commit itself to fighting like it did during the Gulf War, he asked. He called it "a frustrating irony."

"We never lost a battle in the whole war," he said. "But it will never be changed, that it was a total waste of time."