During a college internship a few years back, I was tasked with crafting a catchy personal bio for an online art audience.
In the first draft, I included a little about my love for adventure and passion for powerlifting. Having recently returned from a deployment to the Middle East in 2013, I naturally included that I’d enlisted in 2009 as a U.S. Air Force firefighter.
After thoughtfully reading the draft, my boss thought my bio was pretty good. He liked the bit about adventure and felt fitness might be an interesting hook, too. However, military affiliation was quickly cut out because he felt it didn’t connect with our audience.
For a while I agreed with him and tried my best to keep civilian and military lifestyles separate, like peas away from potatoes.
I was in the National Guard, so it wasn’t hard to switch off after drill, grow a beard and act like a civilian.
That’s what I did every month until mid-September of this year, when I decided to hang up my ABU’s, turn in my identification Common Access Card, shift gears and drive away from Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield for the last time.
Ironically, walking away from the military caused me to turn back.
Ever since then, I’ve worn service to my country as a badge of honor; stood a little bit taller; dusted off old boots; slapped veteran stickers on my Jeep, and looked other service members in the eye with a reflecting glimmer of mutually shared pride.
Being a veteran means knowing what it’s like to sign a will at the age of 18, to understand what that responsibility carries, and to be willing to do whatever is asked.
By the grace of God, I didn’t see much, besides weightlifting, during my Air Force career, but I gained a foothold into the same world some of our nation’s finest live in every day, for better or worse.
I was an Airman firefighter at Barnes Air National Guard Base with the 104th Fighter Wing, for six years. My technical training was at the Lewis F. Garland Fire Academy, in San Angelo, Texas, and was baptized into an elite group of everyday heroes who walk among us as friends, neighbors, co-workers and dearly loved family members.
I’ve seen veterans walk into desert sunsets, heard them scream, “get up, keep moving,” cried when they left, hugged them when they returned, and carried them when they couldn’t walk another step.
Today, while thinking back over my own years of service, I wish to share the stories of some of these normal heroes, who, after having heroism thrust surprisingly upon them, rose to the challenge and now wear the proud title, U. S. military veteran.
“That was one of those battles when you didn’t know if you were gonna live or die,” Goodwin, who was in an Army Airborne division, says about a battle he experienced in Vietnam, while sitting inside his home on Grinnell Street in Greenfield, lit softly by white sunlight from a window, wearing a blue shirt.
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1966, Goodwin, a Captain at the time, was knocked over by a hurtling piece of a 75-millimeter white phosphorus artillery shell, which hit him flat on the back.
The next morning, Goodwin found and kept the shard to remind him that he almost died the night before.
He still has it today: it’s curved, like an artillery shell, and jagged with a wicked edge — so sharp I could pierce my finger with a little bit of pressure. Had the shrapnel hit Goodwin at any other angle than it did, there’s no doubt he would have lost an arm, possibly killing him.
Goodwin holds the piece of metal with a steady hand and looks at me with piercing yet cloudy brown eyes that can’t see. At 82, he’s legally blind, but you wouldn’t know that unless he told you.
Thirty years after retiring as a U.S. Army Major, with 22 years of service, Goodwin still sings in the choir at United Church of Bernardston (a feat considering he’s blind), where he also occasionally preaches. He’s a member of the Council on Aging and an active volunteer at the local Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic. For his efforts, he was named the council’s 2016 Volunteer of the Year.
“It was a minister who got me into the Army reserves, and within two years I volunteered for active duty as a sergeant,” he remembers, about enlisting in Uncle Sam’s army in 1954, a year after the Korean War had ended. “B Company, 1st Battalion of the 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division.”
A few years later, Goodwin commissioned as an officer, was immediately sent through Airborne school, and received command over a heavy weapons platoon, consisting of a few Jeeps mounted with recoiless antitank rifles and three 81-millimeter mortars.
After spending time in Korea, Germany and Japan, he was among the first boots-on-ground in Vietnam, where he served two complete tours. Goodwin hung up his hat and retired from the Army in June of 1976, but he never lost the spark of adventure that’s still in his brown eyes.
Colrain native and U.S. Army Retired Sgt. Walter Reid, 92, can remember when a torpedoed U.S. aircraft carrier limped through the Panama Canal in 1943, the height of World War II.
“Those bodies were so bad, they smelled awful,” he remembers, while sitting in an armchair in his North Greenfield home. “Some of them still had their dress uniforms on, ready to go on liberty. And you could see where the torpedos hit. They never made it.”
Reid describes bodies draped across the flight deck, unlike anything he’d seen before.
“That’s the first time I had something to drink, a rum and coke,” he continues.
In June of 1943, the same year of his enlistment, Reid was stationed at Fort Clayton in Panama, working as an electrician in the Army Corps of Engineers.
“When they transfered me from Louisiana down to the Panama Canal, they (tasked) me with transformer wires. I had the job of taking them down, seeing it was done,” Reid says about one particular day, when he was cutting down electrical wires.
“When we started cutting them down, the crew in front left one hanging,” he continues. “So I put my climbers on and went up the pole.”
“I got stung, and fell 20 or 30 feet. When I woke up, I was in a Fort Clayton hospital.”
Three weeks later, after Reid had been released from the hospital, his superior told him to climb the pole again.
“When I got half-way up, he said you’re OK, you can go back to work,” Reid adds, noting that he didn’t receive a Purple Heart because Panama wasn’t considered a war zone.
In total, Reid served 14 years in the Army, during both World War II and the Korean War.
Reid’s nephew, Merton Fisher, followed in his footsteps and enlisted in the Air Force as a radar electrician on March 13, 1970. Twenty-nine years later, Fisher retired as a Chief Master Sergeant, the highest obtainable enlisted rank.
“It was the best thing,” he reminisces about his Air Force career. “Service is great for a lot of people, not for some, but it was the best for me.”
In 1971, Fisher volunteered for Vietnam, and was sent to Binh Thuy, “80 miles south of Saigon.” In Vietnam, Fisher learned to appreciate travel, and has since been around the globe on temporary duty assignments — of note: an assignment at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, for three years.
“That was my best by far,” Fisher says, a spark of adventure in his eyes. “I didn’t want to go at first, afraid of the cold. But I loved it. One week, for seven or eight days in a row, it never got over 35 below. So when it warmed up to zero degrees we were out barbecuing.”
Another time, he was sent to an air base in Gwangju, South Korea. He flew into Busan, a city about three hours away, and had to take a train the rest of the way.
Fisher says he and his bags were crammed into a small seat for the journey, which took eight hours instead of three because the train often stopped for passengers.
“It was my first introduction to kimchi, and oh, does it stink,” Fisher continues. “They would come on with it in big bow on their heads. It was one of those experiences you never forget.”
These are just a few stories of many from those who’ve served in war throughout human existence, particularly in American history, most of which haven’t ever been told. Some are tragic, others are humorous, all are important, because the storytellers are important.
In researching this article, I was struck with the realization that I don’t know — and can’t comprehend — what many American veterans have gone through, and are currently going through.
I realized that my ignorance is because others have paid a blood-price — intentionally bore terrible burdens— to keep me shielded from the horrors of war. Most of those actions were done quietly, most have gone unnoticed.
This weekend, as we celebrate Veteran’s Day, I’d like to publicly acknowledge all the women and men out there who’ve put on the uniform of our country, shipped off to foreign places, bled, died and fought to keep me ignorant.
Thanks, from the bottom of my heart.