A question the other day brought to mind friends lost in Vietnam. There is one friend whose death hit me very hard. His name was Roger Buss. Roger and I had gone to electronics school at Fort Monmouth New Jersey. Those jobs were supposed to be relatively safe unlike serving in the infantry. We both graduated from the electronic school at the same time, but I took a detour to Fort Sill Oklahoma. That’s a story for another time. Roger went directly to Vietnam. I had not been in Vietnam very long when word of Roger’s death and others who had been in the electronic school with us came to me. The date was January 24, 1965. There was more to that part of the story, but it all remains very vague to me. It took me over 20 years to remember Roger’s name. Roger was from Wisconsin and if I remember correctly from a farm community. He talked about a girlfriend he planned to marry. He turned 21 when we were at Fort Monmouth and of course we had to take him out to a bar to celebrate his birthday and turning 21. Roger was such a nice gentle person that we didn’t even get him stinking drunk as we would most other people. I think it is when we were getting our assignments that he asked all of us that if something happened to him to make sure to tell his girlfriend what had happened. I failed him. I couldn’t remember his name or where he was from, but strangely I could remember his request. However, I think it was his death that led me to take a TDY assignment. A TDY assignment is a temporary one and, in my case, far away from the relative safety of being on the Da Nang airbase in an air-conditioned communications trailer. I still regret not being able to tell his girlfriend what happened to him. His life ended far too soon.
Does anyone have any person from any war they would like remembered? Please feel free to post a remembrance of them here.
