No brass bands
This is about a Vietnam vet. Let’s call him Tom. Great choice, that, since his name IS Tom.
Tom was an Ohio boy. Drafted in the mid ’60s, he wound up in an infantry unit as the RTO – the radio guy, to those who aren’t sure. Not a great job in combat – enemy priorities are communications, leadership, and heavy weapons – the RTO is at the top of the ambush priority list ‘cuz he can call in the hurt on you.
Tom was an ordinary guy – well, unless you consider that he claimed he had the record for lost helmets in the Army, and said he never saw the enemy.
“They started shooting, I hit the dirt. Since I didn’t have my helmet strap attached, when I hit the ground my helmet always bounced away. And in the middle of a firefight I sure as hell wasn’t going to go looking for it.”
Tom figured he would break his neck hitting the ground that fast with that strap doing its level best to tear his head off.
I asked him how he got through his tour never seeing the enemy – he held both hands up over his head and mimed shooting with his arms extended like that. “I never WANTED to see him, either.”
Self-effacing guy, hunh. Kind of belied by the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts he was awarded. PFCs don’t get pretty end-of-assignment Stars like officers do.
He never said he saw any of the spit-on-the-vet stuff. With the way he went through life, he probably could have been in the middle of a college riot and shrugged it off, or made a joke about it.
But he came back to no brass bands, no ‘thank you for your service’, no parades. He just came back, went to work (ironically, at first for the company which made P-38s from the C-rat boxes), somewhere along the way collected a beautiful wife and two sons who towered almost a foot taller than him. “I always had my suspicions about that tall milkman””…
We met on business toward the end of last century, hit it off, and were friends ever since. We were in two different armies – his was a draftee corps in a jungle war, mine a Carter/Reagan era Cold War intelligence unit. But it was all Army, all the same kind of stupidity and craziness, and we were friends for a very long time. Lots of phone calls and lunches.
Got a phone call Tuesday that we lost Tom. Had some health issues he never mentioned, apparently.
Goddamnit. A quiet hero gone. I’m gonna miss him badly, and wish I had called more often.
Category: Bronze Star, Vietnam
Rest in peace, Tom. The quiet ones are usually the realest.
Sorry to hear about the passing of your friend.
RIP Tom.
You can always tell the real heros from the Stolen Valor by the silence.
Rest Well
“Are the marches that we marched, and the flank marches; are the battles we fought; are the victories, the defeats, the retreats, the sharp night attacks, the cheers of wild charges, all the scenes and actions of that splendid time, so rich with color that it glowed like scarlet; are they perhaps but a play we have played, and will we awake some day and say: How real it all seemed. — Ah, sometimes it seems to me now to have been but a dream, — a glorious dream. Yet I did — I did — I did. I did keep the night watch, alone with the moon and the tide, beneath the palmetto; and I did hear the wash and the grind of the waves while the dark, heavy hulls of the ships lay low on the sea; and I did follow Jackson and Lee in their tramps through the Valley; and I have seen the battle-flags, tattered and torn, flare red on the sky; and I have mixed my voice in the roar and the clamor of battle; and it is no dream.”
-Berry Benson’s Reverie
Did not know of this one.
Thanks for educating me more.
Berry Benson was a lesser known living legend of his time, who also came home to no brass bands playing. He fought to the very end of the war and never surrendered. After the Civil War he then went on to live a long, interesting and productive life as an accountant of all things.
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/berry-benson-1843-1923/
Depending upon which version of The Civil War with Shelby Foote you watch, the full version of the Reverie may be at the end of Ep9. It was edited completely out of some versions and partially in others.
Foote explains that while most Southerns fought initially because they were invaded, they then kept fighting for their brothers in arms.
“….they then kept fighting for their brothers in arms”
Pretty much the same reason that many fight, and continue to fight, is not necessarily for a “cause”, but for their brothers (and now, sisters) in arms next to them.
Rest Easy, Tom…we’ve got the watch. We’ve all lost our fair share of “Toms”, and it is never easy on the ones left behind. “…wish I had called more often.” Let that be our lesson for today.
Our sympathies, David, to you and Tom’s Family.
Thank you for your service, Tom. Rest in peace. We’ve got the watch now.
Thank you for going, dude. Rest in peace.
Requiem in Pace, Private Tom.
God grant comfort and solace to your friends and loved ones.
Good bye, Tom. I’ll miss you though I never met you.
Sounds like a straight up dude who just handled things as they came at him. Fair winds, Brother.
“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” Losing him and so many others like him, makes the world a lesser place.
“No unwounded”. An excellent description.
If it’s not physical, it’s mental and spiritual.
I’ll tip a frosty one for you Tom.
That is always how that goes, we wish we did “x” more often, call, visit, something fun for our memories…a lesson visited upon far too often these past 20 years.
So very sorry to hear about your friend, he sounds like a very solid man in every way a man should be solid.
My takeaway is the same now, it reinforces my decision to spend far more time making memories with children and grandchildren so when I too join those who’ve gone before me the memory they all have of me is someone with whom they enjoyed their time. I suspect that is best we can hope for, no one really remembers all the things we accumulate, they simply remember how you made them feel for better or worse.
Will tip a cold one for you today Tom.
RIP Soldier🇺🇸
https://www.poetry.com/poem/33632/tommy
Yes. Also:
This post seems to be the appropriate place to say this, so here goes:
“There is no unknown soldier from the war in Vietnam who is buried at Arlington. But in a sense, all who served in Vietnam were unknown soldiers because their service to our country has not been adequately realized. They were no less brave because our Nation was divided by the war.” **
That being said, here’s my annual remembrance for a soldier who only has an In Memory Of plot at Arlington.
WO1 Jay S. Aston KIA/BNR 18 Jul 71 while a member of the Black Widows, C Co, 101st AHB, 101st Airborne Division.
RIP Cowboy.
** Jimmy Carter at Arlington Cemetery 11 Nov 78
Well, there were four to pick from at the time, so now the selected guy got identified there’s still three left. (Not being cyncical or anything. They can still put another legit unkown in there.)
The Vietnam era unknown wasn’t put into the Tomb until 1984.
Rest in peace Brother. God be with your family now.
For those unfamiliar with a Prick-25:
Source of image:
https://www.historynet.com/vietnam-an-prc-25-radio/
Oh, I’m ALLLLLL to familiar with the Prick 25. I repaired it, and its younger sibling, the Prick 77. Along with a host of other ground, jeep, and shelter radios in the 30-76 MHz FM range. Fun times.
There were some module differences between the two (25 vs 77), but the biggest difference between the two was the amplifier module.
The -25 has a tiny vacuum tube in it, and the -77 had a transistor in it. And you couldn’t swap them.
For those of us who don’t know, how much does one of those weigh.
I was a crew chief on a Huey and didn’t normally carry one. Only lifted one a dozen or so times.
pdoggbiker over at Cherries Writer said about 26 pounds, but that may have included an extra battery or two:
https://cherrieswriter.com/2023/01/11/what-did-it-feel-like-to-be-a-cherry-in-vietnam/
In addition to that 26 pounds, one of the RTO’s had to carry the KY-38, which with its metal encoder weighed about 15 pounds with its battery. It was the device that scrambled voice transmissions.
For those not familiar with. RTO’s and PRC-25s, I had three of them following me around in my company CP group in the Viet of the Nam. Two of them were my company RTO’s; the third was the RTO for my Forward Artillery Observer (FO). I told them all, if the bullets start flying, don’t come to me, if I want to talk on the radio, I’ll come to you. This direction was in part the result of having a company commander in my brigade killed by a sniper shot that hit him while talking on that PRC-25 handset in the bush.
Rest in peace unknown brother.
RIP Tom.
Sorry for your loss David.
Rest in Peace, Tom. Your service made it possible for your fellow combat infantrymen to communicate. Without your function, we would not be able to communicate, call for fire support, and for life saving medevacs.
The greatest kind of warrior, and a beautifully written tribute. Sorry for your loss but jealous of your friendship.
Is it possible to add a “like” option for the article, itself?
When we’re young, we lose our friends to marriage.
When we get old we lose our friends to death.
Kind of the same thing….especially if you’ve ever done the divorce dance. But it’s a lot harder to take when the Grim Reaper is the bride.
God, please bless Tom, and give him peace.
As a young Soldier, I was an idealist. I went to war and came home to a big parade through the streets of Clarksville, TN. The local Chamber of Commerce minted “thank you” challenge coins, and we were all personally presented a challenge coin for “Excellence in Combat” from MG Petreaus and CSM Marvin Hill while still at Tall Afar. Making the decision to remain in, parades and ceremonies only became grander in scale and visibility, with the 55th Inaugural Parade being perhaps the grandest in spectacle (and suckery–it was cold in those wigs and tights).
Somewhere along the lines, that all changed. Maybe it was the hundreds of funerals, the loss of friends, or the lack of perceived progress in my own career. Maybe I really should have just followed in the footsteps of most in my family, doing an enlistment and going home to raise and better appreciate my family. Regardless, by the time I retired (and, obviously, to this day), I became a cynical and somewhat conflicted person. The Army provided a lot. The Army took a lot (perhaps more) in exchange.
It’s ingrained in me to respect those who’ve served, and like many careerists (as opposed to Lifers, which I define as those who place their own career over all else and usually retire as 30-year E-9s after being forced out), I’m biased towards those who commit to decades of service. But I’ll admit that I both admire and envy those who served their time–whether it was two or 10 years–and moved on without making the military a career.
I loved serving alongside Pershing’s Own and the Fife and Drum Corps, and always appreciated the job that military musicians do (especially at their levels), but in the end, the brass bands are reserved for those exalted senior leaders to look down upon their troops with pride (and occasionally contempt). Most of us are simply cogs in the wheel, whether it’s peacetime or wartime service, and only a handful receive the recognition they truly deserve.
Hear ya. Was a cynical mofo, grown up overseas and in the American inner-city, when I joined and respected when I’ve been pleasantly surprised since. You, sir, ain’t wrong.
My condolences on your loss. Tom sounds like quite a guy.
RIP Tom