Veterans shared their war stories with Woodland students on May 28, 2010.

Woodland History teacher Tim Phipps invited veterans from World War Two, The Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans to come participate in a veteran’s forum at Woodland.

Juniors and seniors were invited based on their class performances to take part in the forum by their respective history teachers.

The forum began at nine o’clock in the morning and ended five interview rounds later.

Each of the veterans were situated at their own table in the schools Media Center.

Each group of students rotated around the room, taking 30 minutes at each table to draw out the recollections of these American heroes.

Christopher Shea, Woodland Alumni, served in the Connecticut National Guard since his high school graduation in 2004.

He was deployed with his unit to Mosul, Iraq in 2006.

“My company was deployed with the Michigan National Guard, but only because they only needed one company to be up to full strength,” said Shea.

He spent his one year tour of duty in Iraq with the Division from Michigan, becoming very close with some of its members.

“We had a rivalry when we first got there;  the Michigan soldiers were huge Michigan fans and those of us from Connecticut supported UCONN heavily, causing us to butt heads,” recalled Shea.

Frank Mis, another U.S. Army veteran, served with the 45^th Division during World War Two.   He participated in the last part of America’s African campaign, the invasion of Sicily and served with the infantry during the start of his tour, but was selected join the Signal Corp.

The Army used pigeons to relay combat messages to all the fronts, using the Signal Corps as the pigeons handlers.

Mr. Azeredo, another Veteran who took part in the forum, served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War as a member of the Navy’s Elite Special Forces team and the SEALS where he participated in the United States’–possibly the world’s–hardest and most selective Military training.

“We started off with a class of one hundred and thirty men and only about thirty were graduated,” said Azeredo.

When he shipped out to Vietnam he took part in some of the U.S.’s most secretive combat missions, which required an effort of his entire team.

“I had one specific job, but I knew how to do everyone else’s job as well,” said Azeredo.

He knew how to accomplish all of his teammate’s jobs in case one of them had become one of Vietnam’s many casualties.

“We had become as close as a team that I could not see one of my teammates for five or six years and we could get back together as if there was no time lost at all,” recalled Azeredo.

Azeredo was one of two Navy veterans to participate in the forum.

Bruce Carlson was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy’s Seabees or Construction Corps.

He was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq in 2005 and spent a year there building roads, schools and completing humanitarian missions.

Gregory Wright, the only Air Force veteran to participate, served in Vietnam the late sixties.  He spent a year there at Da Nang airbase and loaded explosive ordinance onto fighter jets and bombers.  While in the country, Wright saw some pretty amazing things, good and mostly bad.

“One amazing thing that I saw, and it’s going to be bad, was an airplane with one failed engine attempt to make a landing,” said Wright, “but was called off and the wing with the failed engine clipped a building causing the plane to cartwheel, crash, and explode, killing most of the crew.”

This was one of the terrible things the Vietnam Vet had to witness but according to him it was just one of those things that happened, it was Vietnam.

The veterans spent a total of three and a half hours in the Media Center recollecting on their war experiences and spent an hour eating lunch with Phipps and a few select students.

As the forum came to a close, Phipps dismissed everyone with a few short words about this coming Memorial Day weekend.

“Remember the real meaning of this weekend folks, its about the real heroes,” said Phipps.