Bill Stevens

Military Police Captain hears the echoes of war.

By Natalya Bucuy, Correspondent


Bill Stevens is a busy guy.

He serves as a councilman on Doylestown Borough Council. He coordinates sports officials for four Eastern collegiate conferences. He plays softball three times a week.

He is also a member of American Legion Post 210 in Doylestown and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

A graduate of Pennsylvania Military College, Stevens was commissioned as a Lieutenant to the Military Police Corps in 1965. From there he moved closer and closer to the combat zones of Vietnam.

First, Stevens went to Georgia for training. From there he was sent to Washington to form a military police unit. Then his and two other military police companies packed their gear to ship overseas. Only no unit knew where to until the last minute.

Steven’s company did not go to Vietnam. Instead Stevens and his men went to Ryukyu Islands – a cluster of about 50 islands south of Japan. The main island in the cluster, Okinawa, housed a U.S. military base with every branch of the military present. It became a home base for Stevens for the next three years as he served as a military policeman.

Okinawa, infamous for the battle of Okinawa during World War II, served as an important communication zone – a base of support for those fighting in Vietnam.

Although located more than 700 miles from the combat zones, Okinawa heard the echoes of the war as soldiers came and went through the base, Stevens recalls.

“People were coming and going; many of our people went. We referred to Vietnam as ‘down south,’ we never said, ‘Vietnam,’” Stevens remembers. “We had a lot of men who went back and forth to Vietnam for different reasons. I had a good friend who ran a dog training school so he went down there every month. The first Special Forces group was stationed there and they were always gone, we would never see them there.”

Stevens’ job was to run the military police station on the island, where the MP was the major police force.

His wife joined him on the island and worked as a librarian. The couple’s first daughter, Julie, was born there.

Stevens recalls that most of his classmates form college went to Vietnam, as did a lot of his friends. None of his military police friends died in combat, but some other friends did, he recalls. A close family friend, whom Stevens wrote to during the war, was killed right before Stevens went to the Army.

“That hit pretty close to home,” Stevens remembered.

Stevens said that though it was a given that he would be sent to Vietnam when he joined the Army, he never got to go.

“I wanted to go. Even though I had a family, I wanted to go,” Stevens said.

In 1968 Stevens left the Army as a Captain. His father told him he needed help with the family business, so Stevens made the decision.

“I was going to stay and become a general, but I realized after two years I wasn’t going to become a general,” Stevens said.

Once Stevens returned home he helped his father with the family business for two years and then became a commercial banker.

“That was the best job I ever had,” Stevens said.

For the past 32 years Stevens and his family have lived in Doylestown. Stevens has three children, Julie, 43, Jessica 40, and Tim, 36, who all reside in Bucks County.