Tuesday afternoon, joined by other military veterans in the congregation of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Steve Johnson worked the kitchen of a steak fry for former soldiers living in the Andrew’s Glen subsidized housing complex in Factoria.

Johnson knows how hard it is to come back from war, knows there are things soldiers see they would just as soon forget. Even today, Johnson — now an international property manager for Boeing, living in Issaquah — would rather avoid discussing the particulars of his service in Vietnam.

More than 45 years ago, Johnson was a student at Illinois’ Bradley University, at that time known as Bradley Polytechnic. He didn’t quite know what to do with his studies.

“I was drafted,” he said. “The consequences of being an unfocused poly student.”

The year was 1968 and the birthday lottery draft hadn’t yet been instituted. Instead, the Army drafted physically able men who weren’t in college for a “critical job skill.” The potential deferments didn’t apply to Johnson so away he went.

He was placed as an infantryman in the 4th battalion of the 23rd regiment with the 25th division — the Tomahawks.

At the time, the 4/23rd were deployed to Filhol, the Hobo Woods and the Iron Triangle, where they were tasked with clearing former Viet Cong strongholds in South Vietnam. It was an ambitious operation. It was a hostile area with terrible weather and rough terrain. And there were no guidelines for this particular type of mission — the Battalion was setting standards on the fly. And they were entirely reliant on aircraft support for resupply and evacuation.

Johnson and the Tomahawks were on operation “Barking Sands” in Hobo Woods when the enemy launched the Tet Offensive, breaking a three-day cease fire for the Lunar New Year.

The Tomahawks were pulled from Hobo Woods and relocated to Saigon and Tan Son Nhut to push out the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.

“It was like nothing you’d ever been prepared for,” Johnson said. “It was intense. It was… a word a I think best describes it was… well, no, that’s it. It was intense.”

After the close of the clearing operations that February, the 4/23rd and Johnson were tasked with protecting supply convoys and Armored Personnel Carriers throughout South Vietnam.

“We were usually up before dawn … and we operated in the field for most of the time,” Johnson said. “We were attached to mechanized unit APCs, or we would provide security in an area where they were bringing convoys through, or we would go on offensive missions. Usually we were back before dark.”

Because of the protection they supplied to convoys in hostile territory, they were always mobile and never returned to the rear defense perimeter, instead making their homes in forward bases — “a glorified camp house,” Johnson said.

“The main risks out there were mines and RPGs,” he said. “Much like today with the (improvised explosive devices) in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had the same kind of risks there.”

The convoys were small and fast-moving, with no time to creep through a route with minesweepers. Instead they relied on their eyes to spot the freshly turned dirt that was the calling card of a new minefield.

Johnson doesn’t like to talk about the most affecting memories of the war. There are things best left in the past, he said.

He was out of the military by 1969 and he married his sweetheart, Dee, immediately.

“That was a probably a higher risk situation than the war,” he said, chuckling. “But we’ve been married 46 years.”