My journey last week took me to a reunion of friends who shared a journey in an Infantry Rifle Company 54 years ago in Vietnam. The only thing better than a friend is an old friend.
Vietnam was one of the signature events of our lifetimes. We had plenty to talk about as a year in combat produces many memories. The urgency and camaraderie of living, fighting, and dying together made us brothers. We gathered in Columbus, Ga. (Ft. Benning) to memorialize Robert “Buster” Hopper at the service his widow, Susan, had scheduled. We visited for hours, recalling events: one was of torrid, penetrating heat one hot summer’s day when a new replacement Artillery Forward Observer (FO) stepped off a chopper, just assigned to our unit. In the command group, we saw a distraught young man who had never seen combat before; some heard him muttering curse words. After a short introduction he looked for shade from the heat and went to a nearby tree… BOOM! That shade tree hid a large bobby trap, which killed him instantly. The same chopper that had dropped him was summoned to fly back to pick up his corpse after only a 10-minute interval. That memory produced a pause; and then much conversation about how fragile life can be.
We remembered the heroic actions of 1/LT Steve Karopczyc, awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously; and our carrying him off the mountain in March, 1967. He lay down his life for the unit. John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this…that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
