Although it has been over 35 years ago I can hear her as if it was yesterday “Africa” “The Congo” “Don’t you realize we have a 3 month old baby”. She had followed me all over the world, from one desolute country to another, packed up our family on a moments notice without so much of a wimper but had I now asked to much?

Sitting in the team room going over some training course someone called out “Hey Chief, ya got a call.” On the other end of the line was my assignment officer in DC. He wanted to know if I would be interested in an assignment to the Democratic Repulic of the Congo. Without a second thought I said “sure”, he then said it was a short notice assignment and that I would have to be there within 30 days, “no problem” I said. That is no problem until I got home and broke the news. After a bit of sweet talking her she started to relent - a bit. We got out all the books, went to the library and just about read everything there was to read about the Congo. A few days later I got a letter from my “sponsor” in the Congo. We laid out the housing situation, very good, the school, run by the State Department and also very good. He then went on to say that we would be authorized an additional three thousand pounds of good to be shipped beside my normal allowance. This extra weight was to be used for food item! WOW how do I explain that to the wife??? He also indicated that if we had a freezer we should also have it shipped, as a matter of fact he had mentioned that several times in his letter. Time was drawing short and we started the process of buying enough food to last us for at least 4 to 6 weeks as well as packing up our furniture and making arraingments to get the car to the port. The additional weight for food stuff was because of the lack of “safe” food handling procedures and great cost of paper and food products, $10 per pound for bacon and this was in the early 70’s. The Air Force would supply most of our food stuff on a monthly flight from Charleston S.C. and Johannesburg South Africa, this wasn’t a free service we had to pay for it, the food that is not the flight.

The day had finally arrived, drove the car to New Jersy for shipment and wife, I and 3 kids took the shuttle to New York International for our flight to the Congo. The lady at the counter checked everything in and make a casual remark about how brave my wife and 3 kids are, I could of done without that. Then came the call over the speaker “Flight 1234 is now boarding for Mauritania, Ghana, Cameroon, Gabon AND Points Beyond! She looked at me and said “Are we going to Points Beyond.” All I could do was shake my head yes.

I wrote this about a month ago but with this being Memorial Day weekend thought it was fitting to repeat myself.

We buried a good friend today, a Sergeant Major who served with me on many a mission, a good man and a good soldier, first met him as a young buck sergeant, ramrod stiff and fire in his eyes. During the initial Special Forces interview I asked him why he wanted to join the Special Forces his reply was: “For the same reason you did Sir.” I was afraid to ask him what he thought my reason was, so we accepted him and started him through the training course. He passed and held the highest passing score for many years. He was on our “A” Team for 3 years in Vietnam and served again with me on a few other missions that only he and I will ever know about. We retired about the same time and I went to work briefly for another covert agency and he did also. He and I met again in Cairo, neither of us spoke to each other as we didn’t know who was doing what to whom. A few years later I was sitting in the local watering hole and who do you think walked in! We shared a few stories and a lot of bourbon, found out that we live within shouting distance of each other and an old friendship was again moved to the front burner.

The other soldier we buried today wasn’t known to us except by name, but we knew him by spirit and the honor he gave to us all and to his country. He was killed in Afghanistan by an enemy who is as dedicated to their cause as any we as a nation have ever known. The battle will be long and hard and I pray that we as a nation will prevail.