American Hero

I’ve had some time to think about it now; I was deeply honored on the Friday before Vietnam Veteran’s Day to attend a Vietnam Veteran’s Day memorial service in Murfreesboro Tennessee, at the request of my son Jon Taylor an Iraq war veteran. Jon joined the Marine Corps right after high school graduating in the year 2000. While I used to laugh and joke with him about being a jarhead and one of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, he retorted that Army stood for Ain’t Ready for Marines Yet; I was very proud of him.

Jon was hurt badly on his first tour in Iraq when a trailer that they were trying to take off of a vehicle collapsed and fell on his foot. Initially we thought he was going to lose two toes in the process but fortunately a surgeon on the USS Comfort was able to save the toes.

When Jon came home from Iraq he went back to Camp Pendleton CA and was on the cusp of the end of his enlistment when his unit received orders to go back to Iraq. Jon could have gotten out of the Marine Corps at that point, but he felt obligated to stay with his buddies and go back overseas. He extended for another year.

During his second tour Jon was wounded when the vehicle that he and his buddies were riding in set off a landmine. Jon received a Purple Heart for his war wounds as well as a metal for going back in and rescuing his injured teammates and bringing them safely out through the minefield onto a road where they were picked up.

When Jon came home he got out of the Marine Corps and went back to college. He graduated from the University of Tennessee and then moved back to Camp Pendleton to work as a civilian contractor teaching other marines how to deal with IEDs.

Jon like so many Californians grew weary of the high taxes the terrible political policies, the traffic, and some of the other issues with his company constantly changing contracts and owners that he decided to leave and go to work for the American Red Cross in Tennessee as a volunteer coordinator.

Jon, like so many of us, faces his daily demons as a result of his participation in combat. He’s fortunate in that he has joined a very interesting group of men and women in the Murfreesboro area who meet regularly to be with fellow veterans.

The interesting thing about this group is that they are surrounded by some wonderful songwriters and musicians who come to their meetings and talk to the guys. They listened to their stories and then actually write songs that tell their stories with lyrics and music. I mentioned in a previous blog how this wonderful group had actually used Jon’s stories to tell his story and write a song about his time in the military.

But what I didn’t know until that Vietnam Veteran’s Day memorial service was that Jon did not want to write about himself, he wanted to write about his dad.

AMERICAN HERO
“This is Marine veteran, Jon Taylor’s story. Thank you for your service, Jon.
I was sitting down at the VFW with a table full of Vets.
We were laughing, drinking, and reminiscing about the friends we can't forget.
An old soldier walked in the front door, sat down by himself, 
I felt something move inside of me, way deep down in my chest.

See that old man at the bar? He did three tours in ‘Nam, 
Charlie put a bounty on his head,
but they couldn't kill that man. 
He was the last one out when Saigon fell.
Would you believe he survived that hell?

Look at him now. You’d never know that man's an American Hero

I grinned and said it's guys like him who made me join the Corps.
And just like him, most of us were kids when we fought that desert war.
Let's raise a glass and drink to him. He's the baddest of the bad.

I'd like to introduce him, boys. I'd like you to meet my dad.

I'm proud of my old man. He did three tours in Vietnam.
Old Charlie put a bounty on his head,
but they couldn't kill that man. 
He was the last one out when Saigon fell
You believe he survived that hell.

Look at him now. You never know the man's an American Hero.

You know, I followed Daddy's bootsteps. I did two tours in Iraq.
Let's drink to the ones that didn't make it home and those of us who made it back.”

The song and the accompanying video were great. My son got some of it wrong, I wasn’t one of the last men out of Vietnam when Saigon fell. I left from Saigon when the last of the American troops were pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. I left on March 29th, 1973, which is now Vietnam Veteran’s Day.

The song and the accompanying video brought a lot of tears to my eyes. Not just because the song was about my assignments in Vietnam, but that my son and his crew would actually use my story to write the song which is published on an album at this point.

On March 27th of this year, I happened to be in Nashville visiting some friends and my son asked me to go to this Vietnam Veterans memorial service with him. He said that they were going to be using some of the songs from the album and that I really needed to be there with my fellow Vietnam Veterans.

When I arrived, I got some additional instructions. My wife and our friend Debbie and I were seated right in the front row in front of the stage. After they sang and played a number of songs from the albums Jon got up and moved to the front and sat down. They announced that they were going to play Jon’s song over the loudspeaker system with Jon sitting there. Jon was asked to get up and give a short talk about the musical group that he’s with and how they serve veterans in the Murfreesboro area.

Of course, then they began playing Jon’s song and it was American Hero, his and my song. When they got to the spot on the song where they sang; ‘I’d like you to meet my dad’, Jon had me come up to the stage with him. There were a lot of oohs and awe’ from the other fellow veterans that were there and their wives and then a loud applause. They then finished the song, and I have to tell you that I was very emotional at that point. Jon gave me a big hug, and I hugged him back and we got a standing ovation as I walked back to my seat.

But in a way I object to the title of being called an ‘American Hero’. Like all 2.2 million of us who went to Vietnam during the war I never thought of myself as a hero, and I still don’t. I was a soldier; I went to Vietnam to do the duty that the government had given me, as an officer I went over there to ensure that I supported the government that had commissioned me and that I was there to do a job.

I’ve always told my son that the real heroes from Vietnam have their names inscribed on the wall in Washington DC. The rest of us were the lucky ones, we went over there, we did our job, we came home and most of us settled back into civilian life. I was one of those who stayed in the military until I retired. I always felt that my time in the military was serviced to the country, and that I was not a hero.

While I was honored and humbled by the song I did feel a little uneasy about the title. And I hope that everyone understands why. For those of us who went we did our job, we protected the citizens of the United states, we followed our orders, we survived and came home and filtered back into life in the United states. Perhaps we are heroes.

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Again, please take a look at all of my books that I have listed. They can be purchased from Amazon.com with the click of a button directly from my website,

The Advisor Series:

• The Advisor Series:
• “The Senior Army Instructor” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0GSXJ2ZHC)
• “The Advisor, Kien Bing, South Vietnam, 1969-1970. A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B09L4X5NQ3)
• “The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor, Kien Song Province 1970-1971; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0BHL2XCX5)
• “The Hardchargers,” Vietnam 1972-1973; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0C7SPR1JY)
• “The Tuscarora Trail” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0D3QY2GM6)