As he ran the wire from each stack of dynamite sticks tied together at each of the bridge supports, he marveled that his job was important enough that the Army sent a squad of men just to protect him from Viet Cong fire. He knew that very few soldiers in Vietnam had a squad of men whose sole duty was to protect them from being wounded or killed. Herman didn’t worry too much about getting killed because he figured his chances of survival were better than about everyone’s except the Generals in Vietnam. He carefully set up the explosion so all he had to do was to light the fuse near him which would leave him plenty of time to get back to the convoy before the bridge blew.
Herman knew that the bridge was used by the Viet Cong as a major supply line in the Quang Duc province of South Vietnam. If he managed to successfully blow it up, then one of their major arteries would be out of commission and just maybe the war would over a lot quicker.
As the wire started unrolling from the spindle along the side of the hill, Herman crept very low so no one would see him. The squad of soldiers were still in place looking every where for snipers or a platoon of Viet Cong. After a few minutes, he made it up the side of the hill where the convoy of vehicles was waiting. Herman was sweating up a storm because it was really humid outside so he decided to get into one of the trucks to cool down. While he was sitting in the truck daydreaming about his wife and young son, he felt horrific pain in his back and he fell over in the truck. A sniper that no one had seen, high up in a tree, near the very top of the hill, had waited until he got his best shot to take out the demolition expert. The sniper didn’t really care about the rest of the men because they didn’t blow up bridges.
Herman was rushed to the field hospital where they stabilized him and then they flew him to bigger hospital near Siagon. The sniper’s bullet had penetrated Herman’s abdomen after it tore up the top part of his back.
His wife, Delores Liani Sloop Sturm, and his parents, Herman Arthur and Mary Louise Simmons Sturm, all of whom lived in Kannapolis, were also notified that he had been wounded. Delores and her father, Robert Sloop were going to fly over there to see him in the hospital however before they got permission to enter Vietnam, they found out that Herman had died seven weeks after he had been shot. The doctors never moved him to a hospital outside of Vietnam because he never stabilized from the perforated abdominal wound.
Herman was scheduled to leave Vietnam three months after he died on August 9, 1970. His son, Patrick Sturm, said that his mother never got over the loss of his father and it was twenty five years later before she ever remarried. He said that his mother would never talk to anyone about his father.
Herman and Delores had married in April, 1968 soon after they left South Rowan High School. They had met in 1967 and had dated until they got married. Herman worked for a brief period with a company in Kannapolis that did brick work. He was drafted and went into the military in January, 1969, which was three months after Patrick had been born.
Demolition training for the Army was held at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri and Herman lived there during his training. He was sent to Vietnam in October, 1969 and he was there for ten months before he died.
He received the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star with First Oak Leaf Cluster, the Army Commendation Medal for Heroism, the Air Medal, the National Defense Medal, and the Republic of South Vietnam Service Medal.
Herman was born in Houston, Texas and lived there the first five years of his life until his parents moved to China Grove, North Carolina. He had two sisters- Lena Sturm Leibrand of Kannapolis and Rebecca Sturm of China Grove.