Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The late Henry “Hank” Bergman, a Genoa native, was a veteran who documented his time while serving, and his footage is now featured in a new Apple TV documentary titled, “Vietnam: The War That Changed America.”
The six-episode documentary, which is narrated by Ethan Hawke, features on-the-ground stories from those who fought in Vietnam.
Thomas Bergman, Hank’s son and current Genoa village administrator, had his father’s footage converted from reels to digital in 2015 and decided to put some of the non-rated R footage on YouTube in early 2016.
One of those videos garnered over a million views and caught the attention of 72 Films, a production company out of London. That led to many back-and-forth conversations via email and footage was sent to a place in Atlanta, where they upgraded it to 4K for use in the documentary.
“There’s an episode in there about a guy who was a pilot, and they used (Hank’s) footage, and it just made me think if Hank was still around, he might have gotten a whole episode,” Thomas said. “But because they couldn’t tell his story, they gave an episode to someone else and kind of used his footage to tell their story.”
The production company was very curious to discuss how they could use the footage to tell specific, on-the-ground stories according to Thomas.
“If you watch the documentary, they weren’t saying First General (William) Westmoreland did this and President (Lyndon) Johnson did this,” he said. “The whole time, they conveyed to me that they want to tell on-the-ground stories, and I thought that was pretty cool.
“You’re not going to watch the documentary and understand the high-level stuff like why the U.S. didn’t invade North Vietnam or why presidents were making certain decisions. You’re hearing about the people who were there and their experiences, which I think takes away a lot of the political baggage, too.
“You can’t talk about the Vietnam War without asking whether or not it should have happened, but this documentary doesn’t touch on that. It doesn’t need to touch on that. Take all the politics out of it, what happened happened and here was the story of these men and women.”
RARE FOOTAGE
Thomas believes it was pretty uncommon for soldiers in Vietnam to document things like his father did.
“We were told that they weren’t happy he was filming it,” he said. “You see that in the documentary, especially in the episode about the pilot, where he says, ‘We weren’t supposed to be doing this, but we did it anyways.’”
Conversely, Hank’s daughter, Nicole Bergman, said that her father wasn’t one to film or take pictures once home from the war.
“When he came home and lived the rest of his life, he wasn’t the one taking pictures,” she said. “That was an interesting thing. He documented his time in Vietnam, and then he came home and didn’t really take pictures of anything else. He just kind of lived his life.”
EARLY LIFE IN GENOA
Hank Bergman, who passed away at the age of 56 on Feb. 4, 2000 after a battle with leukemia that his family attributes to Agent Orange, was the second of 14 children born to Eldo and Agnes “Thomme” Bergman. He attended elementary school in Genoa and graduated from St. Francis de Sales High School in 1962 before earning a degree from Xavier University.
Nicole said her father had to carpool, in part by hitchhiking, to classes at St. Francis from Genoa.
Thomas said his understanding is that the bus lines would go out to the refinery or where the old Kroger was, and his father would have to hitchhike the last 10 miles.
“He knew exactly what corner he would have to be at to try and get a ride back to Genoa,” Nicole said.
TIME IN VIETNAM
While at Xavier, Hank studied economics and was part of the ROTC program, which coincided with the start of the Vietnam War. He enlisted in the Army and was deployed in 1968 with the Mobile Riverine Force based in the Mekong River delta.
His duties included driving up and down the rivers and creeks with flamethrower-equipped boats to torch vegetation on the shores that hid Viet Cong units and bunkers. He was a forward observer down in the “very, very south of Vietnam.”
“(As a forward observer), you’re crawling through a jungle to radio back,” Thomas said. “You’re the guy in the thick of it. That’s a horrible task that I’m sure most people can’t imagine. The only thing that comes to mind worse than that was the guys who went into the holes, the tunnel rats. It was just a horrible thing to have to do.”
Hank served with an artillery battalion that was part of the Army’s 9th Infantry Division. He was the artillery liaison officer with C Company, 3rd 60th Infantry Battalion, Second Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division. His division was based at an American-constructed base called Dong Tam, which was about four miles up the Song My Tho from the village of My Tho.
“After college, you write down where you want to serve, like your wish list, and (Hank’s father) served in the Pacific during World War II, so (Hank) wrote down Asia, and they were like, ‘Oh, this guy wants to go,’” Henry Bergman III said. “That’s my understanding.”
While ultimately serving 20 years, Hank later went to reserve duty with the Army Corps of Engineers. The major unit was out of the 583rd, and he was a major there. He also went to Lima, where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, the position in which he retired from.
His “last hurrah” was going to Honduras to help build some roads, and he also spent time in Germany at one point.
Overall, Hank served three tours and earned the Bronze Star Medal with four bronze oak leaf clusters with letter “V” device, along with a meritorious service medal and the Army commendation medal with three bronze oak leaf clusters.
POST WAR IN GENOA
Once done serving, Hank co-owned with his Uncle Jim a business named Henry W. Bergman Inc., which is an asphalt company that was first formed by his grandfather, Henry William Bergman, in 1912. It was originally titled Bergman & Son Company, but Hank’s father, Eldo, changed the name to its current one as a tribute to his father.
Along with that, Hank was also a husband to Ellen, and they had five children together over a span of six years - Elizabeth, Kathleen, Nicole, Henry and Thomas.
“That was kind of his life,” Nicole said.
Thomas said his parents were civically engaged in Genoa, and he shared a story about how they helped save the town hall building from demolition in the late 1970s.
“My dad was her workhorse if you will,” he said. “Somehow they got it to where the Army Corps of Engineers constructed the town hall parking lot. The picture in my office of all these guys in Army uniforms … my dad directed them to put the curbs in for the town hall parking lot.
“They were always civically engaged, and you probably didn’t live in Genoa without knowing Hank Bergman. He was a hard worker. He worked pretty much sun up to sun down.”
HUMBLE MAN
Hank’s father, Eldo, served in the Navy in World War II. His mother, Thomme, witnessed Pearl Harbor, and Eldo was on one of the ships that were shipped out a few days prior to Pearl Harbor happening.
“Our grandfather never talked about his service,” Nicole said. “I think our dad took that same advice, and he never talked about it. I was talking to my aunt the other day, and she mentioned when he came home, he had us watch the footage. She said Hank was a very quiet man, and the footage told his story.”
Thomas shared a story about Hank returning from a tour and visiting the American Legion in Genoa, which was mostly World War II and Korean War veterans at the time. The story was passed along to him by a World War II veteran that was there, and they were all curious about what was going on in Vietnam.
“What was told to me was that he basically went to the American Legion meeting and said, ‘I’m going to tell this story one time. Don’t ever ask me about it again.’
“He told them what it was like over there and how horrific it was,” Thomas said. “It probably confirmed a lot of the rumors that were going on about what the war was really like as people were being fed a different story.
“I have letters from him that talk about when they were at Fort Sill, where you practice artillery. He wrote home to his great aunt that 700 yards was considered close at Fort Sill. In Vietnam, 70 yards was considered far away in terms of how close you are to where you're dropping artillery shots.
“I think that speaks volumes, really. I think he was kind of that guy to the American Legion where their jaws were hitting the floor. Those guys were in World War II and saw a lot of stuff, too, but Vietnam as we all know was a different war.”
TELLING HANK’S STORY
For Hank’s children, especially with Feb. 4 being the 25th anniversary of his passing, telling his story allows him to become part of history.
“He passed away when we were all very young (ages nine to 16),” Nicole said. “He wasn't around in the age of the Internet as it currently is, so I’m sure when (you Google him), nothing (comes) up. So it’s one of those things where with this footage, he now becomes part of history. For me it’s very special, with these articles too, he now has a story that someone can research.”
For Thomas, he wasn’t sure how to describe what it means to tell his father’s story.
“History is complicated. People are complicated,” he said. “The Vietnam War in particular is about as complicated as it gets. Going back to the documentary and how they are using the film, they’re telling real stories of real people, real experiences, real horrors of the real thing.
“When I uploaded it to YouTube, I did not expect Ethan Hawke to be narrating this pretty-well produced worldwide documentary. They could have used someone else’s footage.”
THE RIGHT SIDE OF THINGS
In summation, Nicole shared some kind words about her father.
“I think it’s one of those things where if you ask anybody if they knew Hank Bergman, they absolutely talk about just what kind of man he was,” she said. “He was always doing the right thing. He was a standup guy.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s not one negative thing that anybody has ever brought up about our dad, actually both our parents. That’s just how he lived his life. He did what was right. There are also multiple stories about things that he had to go through where he was always on the right side of things. If things just didn’t make sense, he wasn’t going to do it.”
