Yuma veteran worked with explosives in Vietnam

One Yuma veteran decided to join the fight against the Vietcong in 1960.

George Scott decided it was time to join the army, but little did he know he would go on to have an extensive career in the military.

“The draft was facing me and also the fact that I did very poorly in high school I didn’t have a very good grade record. My interest were not in school. They were in other things,” said Scott.

When he first entered the Army he worked for their newspaper but soon made a transition to working with explosives.

He was not on the front lines battling the enemy, but he was facing incredible risks with explosive ordnance disposal.

Scott was in charge of disposing and detonating explosives so that the enemy could not get to them.

“I mean when you go out and you have a satchel charge on the end of a fuel truck and you look at it and you can’t see how it’s set up to explode then you’ve got to do some heavy thinking,” explained Scott.

He explained one particular time dealing with an explosive.

“We removed the satchel charge, took it to a safe location and inside was a chemical delay pencil,” explained Scott.

He said that if the glass vial inside were to break, it would set off the explosive.

Scott also faced what E.O.D.s called “the long walk.”

“So we have no idea if we’re dealing with something that going to explode or was supposed to explode and didn’t,” said Scott.

Scott served a total of four tours while in the Army, but that was not enough for him.

He took a civilian job that was connected to the military after.

Close to his retirement, in 2003, he was even sent to Afghanistan.

“My job was to oversee a contractor that had the mission of going out to wherever they found ammunition and recovering it and storing it until such time they disposed of,” said Scott.

He even had to build an above ground storage facility for the ammunition.

“The last time I looked on Google Earth it was still there,” said Scott.

Throughout Scott’s career, he was reminded of why we are lucky to be American.

“I can remember on our trip from Athens to Istanbul, getting up to the Greek-Turkish border and there were guns, artillery emplacements set up on either side of the border and it felt good to know that here in America, we don’t have guns facing north or south or against us or against someone else,” said Scott.

Scott said that if he could do it all over again, he would.

He now serves the Yuma community by making sure that damaged flags are replaced and disposed of properly.