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77-year-old Marine Corps veteran Bob Winn of Monterey, CA appears on episode #767 of Hometown Heroes, airing January 7-12, 2023. The son of a career Marine whose service spanned three wars, Winn turned down an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy to compete as a swimmer at the University of Idaho, where he joined the ROTC program, but his eventual branch of service had long been established.

Lieutenant Robert D. Winn, Jr., USMC. For more photos, visit the Hometown Heroes facebook page

“I was an only child,” you’ll hear Winn say. “My mother says that the first words I ever learned were the Marine Corps hymn.”

Bob grew up on Marine Corps bases around the U.S., and his childhood included seven years in which is father was deployed elsewhere. He was born while his father, Robert D. “Doug” Winn, Sr., was still overseas in World War II, and Bob was “walking and talking” by the time father and son met for the first time. The Korean War took Doug Winn out of the country for another two years, and there were more unaccompanied assignments after that. But even before the war in Vietnam escalated, Doug was preparing Bob for the realities of war.

Bob’s father, Robert D. “Doug” Winn, Sr. was a career Marine, serving 1941-1967.

“There are times in combat where you can do everything right and everything will go wrong,” Bob remembers his father telling him. “And troops under your command will die.”

Serving as a rifle platoon commander with the 3rd Marine Division in Vietnam in April of 1968, Bob learned exactly what his father meant. Operating near Khe Sanh during the first Tet Offensive, Bob’s company was sent “outside the wire” and up a ridge line, where they would be vastly outnumbered. When his platoon took the lead on the second day of that effort, a heavy price was paid.

“We went up with 43 men in my platoon, and only seven walked off,” you’ll hear Winn explain. “And I was not one of them.”

Herman Lohman, the Marine who died in Bob Winn’s arms in 1968.

Bob was one of three dozen casualties who would be evacuated by helicopter that day, having been wounded in the leg. But while waiting at the landing zone for his rescuers to arrive, Winn found himself holding a dying Marine in his arms. It was Herman Lohman, who had been serving as the platoon’s right guide.

“He kept looking at me saying, ‘Help me, Lieutenant, help me, help me,’ and I knew from the wounds that he had suffered,” Winn elaborates. “That there was nothing I could do, just hold onto him.”

Company commander Bob Winn salutes a fallen Marine during a burial at sea.

It was the first time that Winn had experienced a man under his command dying in his arms, but it would not be the last. He spent a total of 13 months in combat in Vietnam, surviving several other close calls. Years later, after a friend recommended Karl Marlantes’ Vietnam-themed book, Matterhorn, Winn struck up a friendship with the author, strengthened by their parallel experiences in combat.

You’ll hear Winn explain how that connection ultimately led to Winn’s decision to give presentations designed toward helping families cope with the effects of PTSD. If you would like to have Winn share that presentation with your group, e-mail your contact info to paul@hometownheroesradio.com.

While Winn’s memories of his time in Vietnam often take him back to that moment where there was nothing he could do to save the life of a fellow Marine who died in his arms, a gesture decades later did enable him to save a Marine’s life. At age 59, Bob donated one of his kidneys to his father, Doug, then 83, who received seven additional years on earth as a result. Those extra years also came with an unexpected new element of their father-son relationship.

Bob Winn, with his father, Doug, at the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, VA.

“Neither of my parents were churchgoers,” Bob says, leading into his memory of the day his kidney became his father’s. “We were laying in the beds, side-by-side, and he held out his hand and asked me to pray for him. We had seven more years of that kind of a relationship.”

Bob and his daughter, Kristin, after a 2-mile swim from one tower of the Golden Gate Bridge to the other.

Statistics show that becoming a living kidney donor does not reduce one’s lifespan, and Bob, a lifelong athlete, has been just as active with one kidney as he was with two, if not more so. It was after that nephrectomy that he began to compete in triathlons with his daughter, Kristin. The father-daughter duo has completed 20 triathlons, in addition to several century rides on their bicycles, and many popular open water swims around San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and Lake Tahoe. Like his father and his father’s father before him, Bob Winn exemplifies that “Once a Marine, Always a Marine” mindset, pouring his heart into every opportunity he has to make a difference. Let us know if his latest mission of helping people understand and cope with PTSD, is something you’d like to bring to your organization, and watch the video below for more of Bob’s Marine Corps memories from Vietnam.
—Paul Loeffler