Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Chipola / United States Army

“Vietnam was the most frustrating action ever engaged in by the U.S. military,” said then-Captain Lewis Chipola. “It was a war the politicians wouldn’t let us win. Our guys would fight to take a hill or some other piece of real estate, many times with a high cost of lives and wounded. We would kill at least as many of the enemy, the rest would then melt back into the mountains. A day or so later, that same piece of real estate belonged to the enemy again. There was just no winning.”

Chipola spent a year in Phu Bon Province in Vietnam’s Central Highland area as part of Advisor Team 31; Chipola explains their mission, “We were a Mobile Advisory Training Team, a five-man unit whose job it was to work with the Vietnamese to train them to use American firearms to defend themselves. The vision was to create a defense team for each village. We also had a medic on the team to help the sick we encountered.”

Chipola relates his Vietnam experience, “At the time there was not a lot of enemy action in the Phu Bon Province, which was a blessing. We didn’t lose team members in our unit to enemy action. We worked mostly with the Montagnards. These were a small group of people indigenous to the Highlands. Their name comes from the French meaning ‘mountain people’ or ‘highlanders.’ They even had their own language. We had two Jeeps that we traveled in with all our supplies. If we happened to stop in a Vietnamese village, we had to leave someone with the Jeeps, otherwise all our equipment would disappear. The Montagnards were not like that. They never touched our supplies. However, the Montagnard children liked to stand around the Jeeps and listen to the radio chatter. They were mesmerized by it.”

“We gave the Montagnards all kinds of hand-held weapons, explained Chipola. “These were very small people and we had them carrying rifles and BARs that probably weighed as much as they did. They got a kick out of it. They liked looking tough. But they were more comfortable with the homemade crossbows they usually used for hunting. At least, when we took them with us out in the jungle, we didn’t need a map. They knew exactly where we were going. All we needed was an interpreter.”

Lewis Chipola was not born in Nashua; he was born in New Jersey. But he moved to Nashua in 2006 and has been very active in the Nashua VFW serving in a variety of posts including Post Commander and NH State Commander. So, we are pleased to include him under the Nashua heading.

Chipola attended Bridgeton, NJ high school and went on to what was then Pennsylvania Military College. (This is now Widner University.) He graduated from college in May 1968 going on to training at Fort Knox, then commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant.

From there Chipola was shipped off to Fort Bliss, Texas to train on Redeye missiles. This is a small, shoulder-fired heat-seeking weapon capable of taking out an aircraft in flight. Chipola explained, “The missile is heat-seeking so it looks for the engine of a plane or helicopter. Once it finds it’s target, that’s the end of the plane or chopper.”

Next, he was off to Bremerhaven with the 11th Army Terminal Command in northern Germany on the coast of the North Sea. Ships came into this port bringing U.S. military supplies for units in the US sector, which was Southern Germany.

Chipola was a maintenance officer. He explains, “We had technicians that could and did fix anything and everything – from vehicles to communications equipment to weapons and even kitchen appliances, household furniture and drapes.” Chipola served in Germany for 18 months; then it was off to Fort Bragg, NC, and then to Vietnam.

Chipola served his year in Vietnam, shipping back “to the world” in November 1971 and a new assignment at Fort Knox. He was made an Operations Officer for basic training. His job was to monitor the training of new recruits and write operations orders.

In April 1972, Chipola left active duty after serving his four-year stint and then joined the NJ National Guard spending the next nine years in an Armored Battalion attached to a Tank Company. Chipola remembers, “I had not been with the outfit very long and we had to go to Fort Drum in upstate New York to take a proficiency test with the tanks. So far that season, no outfit had passed. Prior to the beginning of the test, I was able to fly over what was to be the battlefield to work out a strategy. I figured the ‘enemy’ would be hiding just behind a woodline as we moved along an open field just in front of the woods. We were sure to get clobbered. Once the action started, I sent part of the team sweeping around the back side of the wooded area and attacking the ‘enemy’ from behind. We were the first tank crew to pass the test.”

Chipola was then made Commander of HQ Co. in New Jersey, and then to Logistics Officer being promoted to LTC. Eventually, he was assigned to the 154th Supply Services out of Cape May, NJ as Battalion Commander. He was responsible for getting all types of supplies from fuel to water to rations and ammunition out to troops on training exercises. This took Chipola to Canada and Italy for training exercises.

Chipola notes, “My last job with the Guard was at the state headquarters in Trenton, NJ. My title was Labor Relations Officer which is a bit of a misnomer when you consider how this job is defined in civilian life. This was during Desert Storm. I had to provide help for the families of deployed soldiers. For example, if a deployed soldier left a spouse behind who needed help with getting the family car repaired, I would point her toward a supplier/vendor with whom we had already established a relationship and who agreed to provide service at a reduced rate. So, the vehicle repair provider may charge the spouse only for required parts and do the labor for free.”

Chipola continues, “Helping the families of the deployed soldiers was a full-time job. So, during Desert Storm, I worked full-time for the NJ National Guard.

Lewis Chipola spent 24 years in service to his country leaving the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1992. He moved to the Nashua area to be close to his family.

After retirement, just for something to do, Chipola went to work for a civilian company that created military ID cards. His work location was back to a military base – Fort Devens in Shirley, MA. In 2018, Chipola became the Quartermaster for Nashua VFW Post 483, a position he still holds as of January 2025.

US Service Personnel Profiles
 By Gary Ledoux January 6, 2025