BRAD CURRIER • VIETNAM WAR
Brad Currier, 77
Gloucester, MA
Born: 8/14/48
Born/Raised: Salem/Gloucester
Service: US Army
Unit: 82nd Airborne/101st Airborne
Rank: E-5 Sergeant
Dates of Service: 1968-1971
Brad Currier played football, was captain of the baseball team and was a pretty good hockey player as a young man. Good enough, in fact, to play for Salem State along with five other guys from Gloucester High School. Brad was born in Salem, but his family moved to Gloucester in the sixth grade and he grew up in Lanesville. His dad Clarence was a machinist at United Shoe and his mother Margaret “Jiggs” was a nurse at Addison Gilbert Hospital. He has a brother Ed.
Three years into his college education, he grew unhappy with the program he was pursuing so left school to join the Army in 1968. “I wanted to find out what was really going on.” After signing up, he volunteered for the 82nd Airborne and went to jump school. With 21 jumps under his belt he also became a trainer for a while at West Point. He also trained at the MP (Military Police) school in Fort Gordon. In 1970 he was reassigned to the 101st Airborne and sent to Vietnam.
There wasn’t a lot of call for parachuting into conflict zones in Vietnam “it didn’t work out very well,” so his unit was assigned to guard troop and supply convoys out of Da Nang. He would sit in his Jeep manning an M60 machine gun leading a convoy of 5-8 ‘cattle cars’ with newly arrived troops on their way to Camps Eagle and Evans. In addition to the convoy duty, they would often be called on to engage in assaults dealing with drug interdiction. “Heroin was a terrible problem. We were sending troops home who were addicts. Our goal was trying to stop it from getting to the bases. The enemy was trying to kill you, and sometimes the troops were trying to kill you. They were making a lot of money off the troops.”
After spending the entirety of 1970 in Vietnam, Brad shipped home and spent the remainder of his enlistment at Fort Hood in 1971. Returning to Gloucester meant a return to Salem State and a degree in Counseling and Psychology. This led to a 40-year career as a SPED teacher in Peabody. He met his wife, Cindy Bibbo, also a SPED teacher at the Lakeside School. They married in 1982 and have one son, Brad Jr. an attorney with the State of Alabama, and two grandkids. He retired in 2015.