Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: A song for the real veterans
Last weekend, I took my family to Fort Benning’s York Field to watch the free REO Speedwagon/Grand Funk Railroad concert.
Of course, the best part of watching live music is watching the interesting people who are watching the music. This concert was no exception.
I’ve been out of the Army for more than 20 years, which I realized when one of my four teenagers who’s either in college or heading to college within the next five years pointed out that I’d be drawing full military retirement right now if I’d stuck it out.
Dang it.
At the concert, I was reminded how much I enjoyed the people in the Army, and how earnest and fervent they are, and how, as men and women who face the threat of danger every day, they know how to live in the moment, which of course includes knowing how to party.
Anyway, one of these interesting people was a man in his sixties wearing a “Cold War Veteran” T-shirt. I took out my smart phone and Googled “Cold War Veteran” and discovered that because I’d served between Sept. 2, 1945 and Dec. 26, 1991, I too was a Cold War Veteran and therefore entitled to also wear the Cold War Veteran T-shirt.
I was also entitled to a signed certificate from the Secretary of Defense proclaiming me a Cold War Veteran. So while waiting for Grand Funk Railroad to take the stage, I attempted to go to the official military website and apply for my certificate but encountered this warning: “This certificate is not trusted because it hasn’t been verified as issued by a trusted authority using a secure signature.”
Dang it.
I began my career as an active duty future Cold War veteran on July 4, 1990, which means I would have less than 18 months to contribute to the Cold War effort. On that day, I’d dropped off my cousin at the bus station in Nogales, Mexico, and was driving to Fort Huachuca to report to duty.
Along the way, I stopped in Patagonia, Ariz., to witness the biggest Independence Day celebration you’ll ever see in a town of 896 people. It made me proud to be an American.
At Fort Huachuca, I would train to be an intelligence officer — a Cold War intelligence officer. That would have been cool if I’d been British, which would have meant wearing bespoke suits and sipping tea and whispering things like, “There’s a mole inside the Circus!”
Instead, I was learning the entire Soviet order of battle, and not a moment too late — the Soviet Union would be dissolved before I could graduate from the course.
In fact, the most exciting thing that happened in intelligence school was when our Soviet Threat instructor was calling roll and noticed the name Sadler and asked, “You’re not kin to that nut who shot himself in the head, are you?”
He was referring to Barry Sadler, the Special Forces combat medic in Vietnam who wrote the hit song “Ballad of the Green Berets,” as well as the “Casca” series of paperback novels about a Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus Christ at the crucifixion and was doomed to fight as a soldier until the Second Coming. Sadler also shot and killed his lover’s husband in self-defense, and later died in the back of a taxicab in Guatemala.
The student named Sadler stood up and said, “Yessir, I’m his son, but you have your facts wrong. Somebody else shot him.”
To which our instructor said, “I’m an idiot,” and apologized.
That was the highlight of my short career as a Cold War Veteran. You should have been there.
By the way, the concert was good times.
REO Speedwagon is still a tight band, though lead singer Kevin Cronin did what most 60-plus-old rock stars do and invited the audience to sing the choruses with him.
Max Carl, who replaced Mark Farner in Grand Funk Railroad, still had his pipes — and his ponytail — at age 65 and sounded great on “Second Chance,” which he wrote during his 38 Special days.
But he stole the show with Farner’s “I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home).”
“If you return me, to my home port,” he sang, “I will kiss you mother earth. Take me back now, take me back now, to the port of my birth.”
That song was an anthem for many soldiers in Vietnam, who wondered if they’d ever make it back. I saw one of those men, who returned home long ago, standing alone and raising his fists and singing, as loud as he could, “I’m getting closer to my home.”
I was a Cold War Veteran in 1990. We didn’t have a song, and we didn’t need one.
This old veteran needed one. When he was a young man, he’d been through hell and seen things nobody should see. Now he needed to sing those words again: “I can feel the hand, of a stranger, and it’s tightening, around my throat. Heaven help me, Heaven help me, take this stranger from my boat.”
God bless that guy. God bless him.
Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, executive editor, dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com
This story was originally published May 16, 2015 at 1:32 AM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: A song for the real veterans."