The Magnificent 13

Ft Bragg. 1966. My father's A Team just before deployment to Vietnam. Three men did not return. In memory of their sacrifice. I don't know what else to say. Only, that I look at their faces and remember when they were alive. At a party in my living room with the theme from "The Magnificent Seven" blaring from the stereo as they drank beer and smoked cigarettes . How I wanted to be like them.

American Imperialist Aggressor

Here's the old man in Panmunjeom in 1971. I though it wise to post this in case he's able to get out of his wheel chair and kick my ass. You never know with these guys. This was a good five years before the "Poplar Tree Incident" where...Well, I'll let my Dad tell it, "The nasty felons of the north attacked our guys with axes and murdered them." So it says on the back of this photo.

Panmunjeom is a serious place. Was then and still is. Even when your father is not in a shooting war they can be assigned to some very dangerous places. You can just see on the bottom left of the picure an extra magazine stuffed down the back of the holster. I assume it's a .45 but he was known to carry a Browning 9mm Hi Powered automatic as well.

This photo is how I remember my father. Starched fatigues with his beloved Topcon Super RE (known as the Super D in the states). After I was 12, he built a darkroom in every house we lived in. He hooked up speakers and would spend hours in there sloshing paper in Dektol and listening to Astrud Gilberto and Ahmad Jamal. I guess it beat reading in the bathroom.

Funny Dad - - but not at home.

He'd kill me if he knew I was doing this. But he's going thru Chemo so he's not gonna be kicking any one's ass. Especially mine. These were taken in South Korea around 1971. He was with the 2nd Infantry Division. That's a woman's Red Cross uniform and I can't even begin to think -- of what this -- was all about. Except as a grown man I look at these picture and laugh out loud. I wish he did this for us every once in a while. But I guess he's doing it for us now.

Travel

My grandparents in Paris while my grandfather was chief announcer for Armed Forces Network Europe. Sometimes these photographs alone are worth the lost friends, constant moving and postings to less glamorous assignments. I loved moving until I hit 14 or so. Before then, my bags were the first packed. "Get me on the road and outta here." I still love to travel and have vivid memories of our moves.

After 14, there's a real issue with leaving. You're still excited about the new place and your Dad's job but you're leaving real friends this time. Relationships with people you'll never forget.

But you see things differently as a Brat. You're in a new place. With an ocean or mountains or cowboys or hippies. And you see everything in a new way. I can stand in a London drug store for hours just looking at the product packaging. I'll look into cars parked on the street in Paris just to see what "they" keep on their dash. Because Brats are not from anywhere - -we're open to anything. I didn't blink when I was offered monkey meat in Panama.

Travel molded me into who I am. Accepting of all cultures, I always know there's two sides. For me, that alone is worth the loss of friends.

Quarters on Bragg - 1978

Ft Bragg in 1978. Me on the left. I can't remember the guy on the right. We lived in these WWII barracks just next to Pope AFB. I would stand on the top of the fire escape ladder and read Richard III aloud to the guys below drinking beer. "What glorious summer this son of York..."

The latrine had six toilets without any partitions. Something that took a while to get over. A Staff Sergeant, who I would never think about twice as a Brat, was God. He could make my life a misery. Same with the mail clerk and mess hall sergeant. These were people you didn't screw around with.

I felt like I had fallen from some sort of grace as a college freshman to these circumstances. I do not recommend it to any Brat. However, I'm damned glad I did it.

Quarters on Bragg - 1965

Ft Bragg in the Spring of 1965. That's my little sister. Our experience was somewhat unique from other Brats in that my sister was deaf. And it took a while for the doctors to figure that one out.

The quarters were on Sunchon Street. I have memories of running behind platoons while they did their PT. Singing cadence songs in fatigue pants, boots and white tee shirts. The beautiful sound of the boots striking a beat on the pavement - - all in time with the cadence. What a blast.

My family was kicked off post (we don't call it a base) that summer since my father was in Vietnam. That was the procedure then.

10 years later I was an enlisted man running in formation through this area. And I was not having a blast. I looked behind me and sure enough - -two kids were running behind us with ear to ear grins. I thought, "I hope they don't do what I did. Enlist. At least go in as an officer."

My Father - - The Army Brat

First row on your far left. My paternal grandfather in WWII. WO-2. Assistant to the 77th Infantry Division G-4. Taken somewhere in the Phillipines circa 1945. Famous for being a great scrounger. Also the guy who figured out gasoline was lighter than water. While everyone wondered how to get gasoline drums to shore, he just kicked them off the ship. They floated.

Reduction in Force after the war saw him reduced in rank to Master Sergeant. A big man of Norwegian descent, he stayed in the Army and was Chief Announcer of the Armed Forces Radio Network in Europe. He retired a Sergeant Major.

I remember a soft spoken man who never swore. Self educated and a three pack a day smoker. Consequently, he had a beautiful deep voice that lingered in the air like smoke. It was thick and stuck to your clothes. Like so many of his time he was a lover of good clothing. I have a tie of his as well as a French beret. He couldn't nail two boards together if his life depended on it. Not a handy man at all. But in 1976, he sent me a encyclopedia of the world's wine and a Zippo my father gave him for his birthday.

Do we skip a generation from our fathers? Except for the swearing I am my Grandfather...less four inches or so. On my first post I mention the desire for an Army Brat of WWII to give me advice and show me the way. Oddly, I forgot that my own father was that man. A Brat himself who spent his childhood growing up with a father at war and moving with his father's career afterwards. Maybe he was giving me lessons - - and I didn't even know it.