I still remember the sound of boots on gravel at dawn. Cold Missouri air slicing through our uniforms, steam rising from our breath like we were old trains chugging toward something none of us could name.
We were just kids in olive drab, really. Me, Clay McAllister from southern Idaho, and the rest—Deeks, Ramirez, old Calvin “Moonshine” Lorette. We didn’t come from much, but once we stepped into that barracks at Fort Leonard Wood in ’69, we belonged to each other.
God, the pranks we pulled. Calvin once swapped out the mess hall eggs with powdered potatoes—no one noticed for three days. Deeks sang Elvis in the showers like it was the Opry. And Ramirez… he’d write love letters for the rest of us. Real poetry. Even I got two dates from one of his best.
But it wasn’t just the laughs. It was the silent moments, too. Like the night Clay got that letter. The one that said his brother wasn’t coming home from ‘Nam. None of us spoke. We just passed him a cigarette and sat with him till the sun came up. That was how we handled pain—together, wordless, present.
There was this rhythm to it all. PT in the morning, chow line grumbles, cleaning rifles while talking about dreams we’d never chase. We said we would, though. “After the service,” we told ourselves. “After.”
And then, one by one, we scattered. Some to the war, some to wives and mortgages, and some—like Deeks—just disappeared, like a dream fading at daylight.
I’ve still got a photo. Us, leaning on the tailgate of a truck, smiling like fools. You can almost hear the gravel crunching under our boots if you stare long enough.
We were young men holding each other up in a world that didn’t make sense. We had no idea what was coming, but we had each other.
And for a while, that was everything.
Forty-six years passed before I saw any of them again.
It was my wife, Maureen, who suggested I go to the reunion. “You talk about those guys more than you talk about your coworkers,” she said, flipping through a flyer from some veterans group.
It felt weird, buying a ticket to Georgia and packing a bag like I was eighteen again. But when I walked into that church rec hall and saw a silver-haired man doing a half-hearted Elvis hip swivel near the buffet table, I damn near dropped my coffee.
“Deeks,” I said, and it came out more like a whisper.
He turned, squinted a second, then grinned that same crooked grin. “Clay McAllister. I’ll be damned.”
Turns out he hadn’t disappeared. He’d moved to British Columbia, bought a fishing lodge, and lived mostly off the grid. Still wrote songs, still couldn’t cook to save his life.
Ramirez showed up late, wearing a suit too sharp for a potluck. Still smooth, still quoting poetry, but quieter somehow. He’d lost his youngest son the year before. Cancer. He didn’t say much about it, but I knew that same quiet pain we’d all known in that barracks hadn’t left him.
And Calvin—well, Moonshine walked with a cane now, arthritis in his knees, but his laugh was exactly the same. He’d started a landscaping company back in Louisiana. Had five grandkids and a bird dog named Whiskey.
We stayed up late that night. Told the same stories three times over and laughed even harder each time. Someone brought bourbon. Someone else played a guitar. And for a little while, we weren’t just graying men with creaky knees—we were those boys again.
Then Deeks said something I never expected.
“You remember Carson? From C-platoon?” he asked, eyes scanning the room.
I nodded. Quiet kid. Real young. Didn’t say much but always had your back.
“He didn’t make it home. Found out only a few years ago,” Deeks said. “No one claimed the body. No family left.”
That hit me like a brick. We hadn’t been close, but we’d all shared the same air, the same dirt. The idea of any one of us being forgotten… it didn’t sit right.
So we made a plan.
Two months later, the four of us drove out to a small cemetery in Kansas where Carson had been buried under a plain government stone. We brought flowers, cleaned up the area, and stood in a line like we had all those years ago—shoulder to shoulder, eyes straight ahead.
Deeks read one of Ramirez’s old letters. Calvin poured a shot of whiskey into the earth. I said nothing. Just stood there, letting the wind carry what it wanted.
We didn’t fix anything that day. Couldn’t bring back the past. But we gave a damn good man a proper goodbye.
Life’s strange like that. You spend decades thinking you’ve moved on, built something new, maybe even forgotten. Then one old photo, one old voice, and you remember exactly who you were.
And maybe that’s the point. The uniform comes off, the hair turns gray, the stories fade… but what you shared with your brothers? That never really leaves.
We all have seasons in life—some we’d relive in a heartbeat, others we wouldn’t wish on anyone. But if you were lucky enough to have a season like that one, full of rough laughter and unspoken loyalty, hold it close.
Because in the end, it’s not the medals or the memories that matter most.
It’s the people who saw you at your lowest… and stood beside you anyway.
If this stirred something in you, share it. Maybe one of your old brothers needs to remember too. ❤️
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