James J Klaus

Red Button and a Rose for Freedom James J Klaus

This is a story about my friend Wayne Felde, but for a long time, I only knew him as Harry Hershey. We became work partners and good friends. As a boy, Wayne could not wait to join his family tree of heroic combat veterans. As the story is told, his dad fought against the Japanese in the Pacific, his uncle Bob, now a college professor, fought the Germans in Europe in WWII. At the risk of losing his sweetheart, Wayne was determined to join the Army, whereas a Tunnel Rat in the jungles of Vietnam, he experienced the horrific reality of war. When he returned to the World, anger burning inside, he no longer had a girlfriend, he abandoned his family, and nothing seemed to matter. In a fog of booze and drugs, the Nam buddy he shared a few rooms with was killed as they fought over a loaded rifle. Wayne was sentenced to fifteen years for Manslaughter. Wayne was brutalized in prison and spent many days in solitary confinement. He always felt that he was wrongfully convicted. He found a way to get assigned to the prison farm. When the opportunity arose, he walked away and spent many months surviving the forests and farms of eastern Pennsylvania while continuing west. I met Harry on a job site in Denver. After I left Denver and moved to Michigan, Harry traveled to New Orleans to see his ailing mother. The young police officer who was assigned to pick up "Drunk and Disorderly" at the Dragon Bar had no idea that Wayne was an escaped Felon. The officers who arrived at the scene of the crashed police car found the young officer lying partially out of his car and that he had been shot. They found Wayne in a nearby lumber yard. Wayne was hospitalized after many surgeries from the wounds he received from police buckshot. His trial came many years later. I attended his murder trial. Many professional Psychiatrists testified because Wayne's defense was the first ever based upon Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (P. T. S. D.). Lynda Van Devanter, Army Surgical Nurse in Vietnam, also testified. To this day I am undecided about whether my friend intended to kill that Police Officer to avoid returning to prison.