Van of Valor

SWAN VALLEY, Idaho – For over half a century, the memory was a fragmented, painful ghost.

For Lance Cpl. Bill Klobas, the date April 26, 1969, was less a specific event and more a source of a lifelong, invisible storm. It was the day a 155 mm artillery round—friendly fire—hurled him 40 feet through the air on a hillside in Vietnam during Operation Oklahoma Hills.

He was evacuated, hospitalized, and eventually sent home to a nation that spat on him, ridiculed him, and forced him to bury the trauma deep.

The brain injury he sustained was not understood; the cause, friendly fire, was not then a qualifying path to the military’s oldest award, the Purple Heart. His sacrifice, and that of many like him, was lost in the fog of war and bureaucratic technicality.

But today, thanks to a daughter’s relentless love and a chance internet connection, Klobas’s story is not only recognized but has become part of the cross-country mission to ensure no service member’s sacrifice is ever forgotten again; the Van of Valor.

“Lauren and my calling was to do this mission everywhere across this nation so heroes like Bill, won’t be a dusty record, but a living, breathing lesson in courage and sacrifice,” said Dr. Kevin Wallace, a Purple Heart recipient and co-founder of the Van of Valor project. “This becomes more personal with each brother and sister we meet, and I only hope those across America hearing my voice can know their story and remember their legacies, their sacrifices, sometimes their ultimate.”

The Van of Valor, a project launched by Wallace and his wife, Lauren, involves crisscrossing the continental United States in a renovated van, serving as a mobile recording studio and story-gathering hub. Their goal is singular: to collect and share first-hand accounts of Purple Heart recipients and Gold Star families, creating a living archive of service and sacrifice.

Klobas’s story is a testament to why their mission is so critical. For 52 years, his injury existed only in his own fractured memory and the assumed-dead recollections of his fellow Marines. It was a forgotten chapter.

“I would like to, if I could, dedicate this to the veterans that I was with in Vietnam that I haven’t seen or talked to in 52 years,” Klobas said.

The path to that podium was paved by his daughter, Casey Byington. While helping her father navigate treatment for a severe PTSD crisis—what he called his “final meltdown”—she discovered the Purple Heart was never in his file. He told her not to bother.

“She called me the next day and said, ‘I’m going for your Purple Heart, and I’m not stopping until you get it,’” Klobas recalled with a smile.

The search was a labyrinth of lost records. The USS Sanctuary, the hospital ship he was medevaced to, had been decommissioned and its records purged.

The military needed eyewitnesses, a near-impossible task given that the men who served with Klobas had spent decades believing he died on that Vietnamese hillside.

The breakthrough came from a digital miracle. While watching a documentary about Operation Oklahoma Hills, Klobas accidentally opened the YouTube comments section—something he never did. There, he saw a years-old comment from Al Moreno, a fellow Marine seeking contact with anyone from the operation.

Klobas called the number.

“I told the man who I was and I heard the phone hit the floor,” Klobas said. “He started screaming ‘Rocket Man!? Rocket Man!?’ and then picked up the phone and asked me if this was a joke.”

For Moreno, it was a resurrection. He had been one of the first to reach Klobas’s broken body. “Klobas was hurled through the air like a rag doll… He was hemorrhaging blood from his nose, mouth and ears,” Moreno recalled. “Nobody thought he was going to make it.”

Through Moreno, Klobas connected with another comrade, Richard “Ski” Czerniejewski, the radioman who called in the medevac. “We all assumed he was dead,” Czerniejewski said.

These reunions did more than just provide the necessary witness statements. They began to heal a wound that had festered for five decades.

“Getting in touch with Al and Ski was probably the best thing to happen to me in my life,” Klobas said. “I felt pride for the first time in 50 years! I would give my life today for the Marine Corps.”

For Dr. Kevin Wallace of the Van of Valor, a story like Klobas’s is precisely why he and his wife hit the road. As a fellow recipient who understands the weight of the medal, Wallace sees his project as a sacred duty.

Being broken down for weeks, their morale was in what they called, “a rut,” but in just hearing of Klobas’s story, they felt the earlier, “Get up Soldier!” that Purple Heart recipient Ocie Gay, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, relayed to them in an interview in March. When Gay was wounded, it was the, “get up Soldier!” in his head that kept him going.

“Each Purple Heart has a story etched into it, not just in the metal, but in the life of the person who wears it,” Wallace said. “For Bill, it was a 52-year struggle for recognition. For others, it’s a memory they carry quietly, or a loss that a Gold Star family bears every single day. By collecting these narratives, we are building a monument of memory. We are telling our heroes, ‘We see you. We remember what you gave.’”

The ceremony in Pocatello was the culmination of that long struggle. With his emotional support dog, Bentley, whining at his side, Klobas stood before his family and fellow veterans as the medal was finally pinned to his chest. He struggled to speak, overwhelmed by the moment, until a quiet word from a fellow Marine cut through the emotion.

“Bill, this is long overdue,” said Jim Van Osdol, Pocatello Marine Corps League Commandant. “Semper Fi, Marine.”

Klobas thanked the veterans center, his comrades, and his daughter. “You are and forever will be my hero,” Byington told her father.

The moment was one of profound closure, not just for Klobas, but for his entire family. “The difference in him is huge,” Byington observed. “It’s a weight lifted off of his shoulders. It’s a place of forgiveness for him.”

This journey from trauma to recognition, from being forgotten to being honored, is the core of the Van of Valor’s purpose. It’s a reminder that the cost of war is not always paid in a single moment on the battlefield; sometimes, the bill comes due over a lifetime.

For Bill Klobas, the storm hasn’t fully passed. The memories of war, triggered by something as simple as his granddaughter’s smile, can still bring him to his knees. But now, he carries a tangible symbol of his sacrifice, and his story has been recovered from the abyss of lost history.

And for the Van of Valor, rolling down some highway toward the next veteran, the next story, the next legacy to preserve, the mission continues.

“We travel to share these stories because a nation that forgets its defenders risks forgetting its own character,” Wallace said. “Bill’s story—of survival, of being lost and found, of a family’s love that refused to let his service be forgotten—that is the story of America’s resilience. It’s our honor to help tell it.”

In a quiet corner of Idaho, a 71-year-old Marine finally has his medal. And somewhere on the open road, a van filled with similar stories of valor drives on, ensuring that no hero, and no sacrifice, is ever again forced to wait so long to be remembered.

Van of Valor would like to thank Disabled American Veterans and East Idaho News for their help in compiling Klobas’s full story.

To read more, visit http://www.HelpVoV.com