Who says there were no "wonder years"?

Today is October 7 2009,  41 years since my neighbor was shot and killed in a rice paddy in Viet Nam. I was 14...he was 20 and each year since then I recall his funeral where his picture sat on top of his closed casket at Berg Mortuary on Provo's Center street...Oh my, the emptiness that comes each year as I try to honor him with something, a visit to the WALL 41W line 23  ...either in real life  or via the cyber wall which helps me recall the letters I often touch when I find his name in stone...or the telling somthing about him to some total stranger who probably couldnt care less...

He was a member of the 25th infantry...more specifially the Second Battalion, 12th Infantry, Bravo Company. He died just 5 miles NE of TRANG BANG which is just five miles north west of the CU CHI military base which is about 8 miles north west of Saigon(Ho Chi Min City) ...Each year I look up his name and discover a little more about his last two months on this earth...from his arrival in Nam in August to his death just 2 months later.   

Aaron was a roly-poly kid with a scruffy little beard and a penchant for spinning a yarn to those of us naive enough to buy it all...how often we played "army" in the woods north of Provo along the river, rode bikes to the canyon or floated the rapids thru the river bottoms.  

THIS YEAR after looking up Trang Bang on Google to locate the appx area of his death...I came across the eight weeks of NEWS published by his 25th Infantry division in the "TROPIC LIGHNING NEWS".   From the first of August ... http://www.25thida.org/TLN/tln3-32.htm#v3n32p6a  

thru the week before he died...   http://www.25thida.com/TLN/tln3-40.htm  ...the pictures are HAUNTING

Especially interesting to me was the mention of his company in late August...the White Warriors of BRAVO and Charlie companies..  http://www.25thida.com/TLN/tln3-35.htm#v3n35p6d   

Learning something more about him and telling someone seems to be such a meager form of rememberance...but his parents are gone...his sister and brother old now...not really wanting to re live the pain.  And so I take the time each year to think about my friend...to try to honor him in some small way. Getting out a Machette he once owned, and My telling you may be all anyone does... 

I once wrote a blog about him...this year..I just looked at google maps...read the 25th division news for 8 weeks...revisited the cyber wall...and laughed about our last joint family vacation together...especially our midnight stroll thru the streets of Elko NV in the shadow of the STOCKMAN'S Casino lights...  

He was always so good to me. 

My blog about him...from a few years ago...called DEATH of a SOLDIER.   http://thotman.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!90B6042A632BD161!108.entry