Home Front: Mike Jeske

After graduating from Pittsville schools, he began working at Weyerhaeuser in Marshfield.
When he was drafted into the United States Army, he said that his parents were “kind of scared and nervous, but then they were proud, and they were okay with it. My dad would have preferred I stayed and worked on the farm, but I got drafted, so I had to go. That’s that,” Jeske recalled.

“So, they learned to deal with it, yes. They were very supportive. My dad was supportive.”
But his parents and siblings weren’t the only ones he left behind.

“When I came back for Christmas-time leave, I got engaged. And my dad was always teasing my fiancée that when I got home, the first one I would want to meet would be my sister, Christine, because we were really close. So, he was always teasing my fiancée, Karen, that ‘he’s going to go to Christine first.’ And she was worried that I would. And no, I went right straight to my fiancée, and I hugged and kissed her,” he added.

“I went in January 1970. I got drafted by my lottery number at that time; they had the lottery, and I was number nine, so I knew I’d be going. So, then I had to go to Milwaukee, and then from Milwaukee I went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. That’s where I took basic training.

“We met in Rapids, and then they bused us to Milwaukee.”

During basic training, Jeske recalled a bad incident that changed him in a good way.
“In basic training, we had a guy that didn’t want to be there. He wanted to get out. So, he got this bright idea he was going to shoot himself in the foot. And he shot himself in the foot, and the bullet went through his foot, struck the floor and another guy was coming into the room and the bullet grazed him along the head and stuck in the door. And I was close by, and I heard it. And, he needed blood, so I was O-positive, and I volunteered and donated blood,” he recalled.

“Since then, I’ve been donating blood all my life, and now I’m up to 14-plus gallons of blood I’ve donated. So, I’d say: donate blood, it helps so many people. One donation, a pint, helps three other people.

“So, I donate because that helps a lot of people. I would like to see more people... hopefully, you never need it, but if you do, it’ll be there, you know?

Jeske said that the military also taught him respect and discipline, “for the United States, the law, the officers, and respect for other people and especially the law. I was a hell-raiser, and I was kind of a bad boy before I went in, and totally changed after I came out. You learn a lot in the military; it’ll change you. And for me, it turned out for the good. I was actually proud then.”

“I went to Fort Sill, Okla., and I learned to operate a 105mm howitzer cannon and a LAW (Lightweight Anti-armor Weapon) rocket. That was my first assignment in AIT (Advanced Individual Training),” he said.

“I went over to Germany, that was very good because we were scheduled to go to Nam, and our orders got changed. So, that was one of my better memories is going to Germany and not Vietnam.”

Jeske said that being away from home was hard for him.

“You know, I couldn’t think of my buddies, my family doing things, and things going on. It was really hard to get that out of your mind. You had to focus on just getting through this, doing what you were asked to do because that was hard — that you’re missing out on a lot of things. And then I got engaged and that was hard. Well, I came home for Christmas, and I got engaged, then I had to fly out of Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. I got on a plane, I was okay, and I heard the lift-off the ground and I looked back, and that was a mistake. I bawled my head off for four hours because I missed my fiancée. That was tough,” he said.

“I got letters from my wife and my family, a lot of mail. And then a couple of times, the Germans had a communications network where we could go there, and it was about 11 hours or so difference in time. “So, at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, I would go over to this communications network, and we talk by ham radio. They would contact the person I wanted to at home.

“Because I wrote in a letter, I told them I would try this and if this worked on a certain day, a certain time.

“So, that’s what we did, and it worked out; I got to call and talk to her.

“I’d say something, and then I had to say ‘over,’ and then they would receive that, and they would say something, and then they’d have to say ‘over.’ That’s how the conversation went back and forth.”

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Joren Anderson and the students of Auburndale High School for making these veterans columns possible.