HARTFORD — Joel Matte was just 17 when he joined the U.S. Air Force in 1955.
He was a Whitehall boy, born and raised, but his military service would take him all over the world, from the Bering Strait in Alaska, to England, to Vietnam.
With Veterans Day around the corner, Matte reflected on his nearly two decades of military service from his Hartford home on Oct. 18. It was mostly positive, he said, except for his time during the Vietnam War.
Matte, who retired in 1975 with the rank of master sergeant, was in the Air Force’s special operations. He was an investigator of sorts, doing background checks and researching when a conflict arose.
His service in the Vietnam War is difficult for him to talk about, but Matte said he received a Silver Star, two Bronze Star medals and a Purple Heart medal. He doesn’t like talking about his awards, though, because he feels other people deserve recognition.
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During his time stationed in the jungle of Vietnam, he was in charge of a group of soldiers, men he considered his children.
He still has nightmares about those 18 months.
“We lost too many good people,” Matte said.
His military service wasn’t just defined by Vietnam, however. Matte traveled the world during his service and was an instructor for one of the training schools, and participated in many, too.
The schools covered a number of things, including mountain climbing, jumping out of airplanes and wilderness survival. Survival school, Matte said, was easy because it involved things like building shelters and fires, things he learned growing up in the Adirondacks.
Mountain-climbing school was particularly nerve-wracking, he recalled, because instructors made him sleep on the side of a mountain. Instructors would tell him he wouldn’t roll off, but it didn’t make him sleep, he said, laughing.
“It was really scary, but of course, you did it,” Matte said.
Even after retiring from the military in 1975 in his late 30s, Matte continued to satisfy his traveling bug. He lived in California, Florida, back to Whitehall, Kentucky and several other places before finally settling down in Hartford a little over a decade ago. He had numerous different jobs, but now husband, father and grandfather takes the front seat.
“I enjoyed the military,” he said. “I had a good life in the military. I had a lot of good friends.”
Reporter Gwendolyn Craig can be reached at (518) 742-3238 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @gwendolynnn1.