Good thread, Al. Thanks.
I'll only mention a few of the people closest to me.
1. Infantryman Pvt Al Greene of Brooklyn: POW in Italy. Continued to serve in Korea, and Vietnam, (when he returned from VN, he mostly sat silently in a little boat ignoring his fishing rod, nursing a single warm beer. He raised our family to be patriotic and religious and he later taught school as a second career.
He kept his emotions deep inside, like a good Catholic boy. But I remember the only time he ever raised his voice in the house. Mom had said to someone "It’s character building--everyone should have to suffer in their lifetime” and he stood up to put his foot down: "No, they don't,” he said firmly.
After his Army career, he started another career teaching grade school students who were special discipline problems.
Eventually the brain injuries from his capture event finally caught up to him in his 80s, so he spent the last 5 years of his life in a VA hospital, silently staring at the wall.
2. Bright, smiling, and energetic USAF Captain Kristine Wills, who excelled at everything she did but she had never been on a date. She was dedicated to her patients, and had no patience with staff who would leave at 5 o'clock when there was still a patient in her exam room. During the Gulf War, she was eager to go in to the Landstuhl Army hospital at midnight to help a sick or wounded soldier. She enjoyed helping in birthing soldier's babies on a Saturday. She honestly never understood why everyone on the staff wasn't totally dedicated to the patients.
I could see deeper inside her than most men had, and found her travels, experiences, knowledge and attitude fascinating, so I asked her for a date. Over the next 20 years, she gave me two perfect children. In 2010, a couple of days after Christmas, I watched a neurologist say "ALS" to her. I had never seen her cry before that moment. That was her last Christmas. Later, the VA decided her ALS was connected to the Gulf War somehow.
3. When I was a child on Army posts around the world, I overheard my father's conversations. Many began, “Hey Joe, where you been? Haven’t seen you since we are in Europe!. Hey, do you remember our old buddy? Where is he now?”
Those conversations often ended with, “Sorry Al, he was last seen trudging through a ditch near Nui Ba Den, carrying a wounded Vietnamese over his right shoulder and firing his M-16 with his left hand.” No one’s seen him since.
That particular conversation was about Art Elliott. I played with his kids. His wife often cooked dinner for our family after my Dad and I and Art and his boys finished working bailing hay. After Nam, we were sure he was dead. Everyone thought he was dead. But in fact, he was marched at gunpoint, barefoot, up to a prison in the north, where he spent 1000 days. After release, he too, continued serving in the Army afterward.