SGM (R) Bobby Howard

Sergeant Major (Retired) Bobby Howard sat down with me for Heroes I Know. Audacia. The 3-4 crest on the desk. One hundred and five minutes.

Farm in Blakely, Georgia. August 1944. Two months after D-Day. He likes to think of himself as a great-generation person. Two dollars a day. Seventeen. He told his dad he was joining the Army. 1962. Seventy-eight dollars a month. Cash on payday.

Airborne buddy-ship. A friend from high school. Atlanta. They tested in different rooms. His buddy failed. Bobby went. Basic. Fort Sill for artillery. A train to California. Then Korea. Cuban Missile Crisis. Dug in on the DMZ. He turned eighteen in a battle position he thought was the real thing.

Reenlisted 1966 for air defense. Fort Bliss. A battalion training six months for Vietnam. Young soldier. A lot of responsibility because the war was on. Drill sergeant later. Then the 82nd. The buddy-ship plan he never forgot. Friends from that tour followed him the rest of his life. Thirty-five years and counting.

Battalion Soldier of the Year. Brigade. 31st. Twentieth NORAD Region at Fort Lee. Colorado Springs for NORAD Soldier of the Year. Paratrooper was the best of the twenty-four years. The bond you make when you fling your body out of an aircraft late at night.

C-141s over McGregor. Sergeant Major Ralph Loft marching off the drop zone. Young recruits in the bleachers. That roar. Thank you, Sergeant Major. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.