Sergeant Rocky Gibbons Silver Star

My dad, Richard Gibbons worked for the United States Postal Service for over thirty years and he had his retirement party at the local Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW) where he was an active member since his discharge in 1956.  The military part of his life was a complete secret to the rest of us, my brother Russell and me and mom.  My name is Sherman and I had  the misfortune of growing up with that clunky name, a second banana to a talking dog named Mr. Peabody and his Way-Back Machine. My mom Ethel waited on my father hand and foot since that’s what wives did back in the 1960s.  Dad hated hippies and would start spewing during the evening news using the word Pinko’s as if that was the worst insult he could voice.  He would sit in his Easy Boy drinking beer, usually whatever was on sale. “Nixon will set those Pinkos back to where they came from.”  

Russell and I would be in our room as mom prepared dinner that meant shoving a television dinner in the oven at 350 and letting it cook for an hour or so.  Russell had his favorite possession out, his G.I. Joe who was single handedly defeating the enemies with his plastic grip, wearing his army fatigues, his blank expression with the fresh scar on his cheek.  I wasn’t a big fan of the one foot tall soldier that was engaged in a covert operation on my brother’s bed.

“Hey, I found a duffle bag in the attic.” I informed him.

“You’re not allowed up there, you know.” He stopped for a second and gave me a quick glance that had plenty of judgement built in.  

“Yeah, I know, but did you ever stop to think what he’s hiding up there?” I asked tilting my head and raising an eyebrow like Secret Agent did all the time. 

“Not really.” He shook his head and let his G.I Joe toss a grenade into an enemy pillbox. 

Unlike me, Russell had no imagination or curiosity and was content living in the safe suburban world that mom and dad moved into when she was pregnant with me.  

As it turned out, ten years later I was registering for the draft after dad made it abundantly clear to me that I would be disowned if I skipped out to Canada instead of going to Vietnam.  In his sermon, he made the only acknowledgement of his service during Korea which of course made me ask the obvious question.

 “None of your business.  Korea is a place in Asia that I happened to be at in 1951.” His face turned red as mom handed him a beer.  He popped the tab and nearly drank half of it in one gulp and that would be the extent of our conversation.  

The war in Vietnam ended before my number was called on the draft.  I was already attending community college before moving up to a full four year institution where I would major in electronics.  At the time I had no idea of what was about to take place and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when some guys produced a personal computer in their garage, an event that would revolutionize the world.  So with the boom in the field, I was moved by my company to San Jose near the pulse of the explosion in Silicon Valley where each day someone would come up with a better program or a better way to get things done. The decade slipped by at a supersonic speed that made it seem like a single year.  

Russell, on the other hand, went the other direction as he managed to buy a record store around 1986 when records would be replaced by compact discs and sound would evolve into digital recordings so that by the dawn of the millennium, he filed bankruptcy shortly after he filed for divorce.   With some quick renovation of our three bedroom home, Russell moved in with me, my wife Anne, my son Warren, and my daughter Cindy plus three quite independent felines that did not seem to care too much for my younger brother. 

“Should have followed you.” He sighed one night on the back patio as we both drank sangria.

“You had no way of knowing.” I tried to cut him out of his midlife depression.   Sitting at the edge of the pool, his Pity-Party seemed to dampen the mood I was trying to maintain.

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved me off.

“C’mon, bro, lighten up, you have a lot going for you.” I took a health sip of the wine. 

“Like what?” He snapped. “I am over forty years old and my entire worldly possessions can fit into two suitcases.  My wife is banging my ex-business partner.  No, my life is a shit-sandwich.”

He stomped inside to his room that we had renovated from the attic. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Anne asked as she wandered out to where I had lit the tiki lamps.

“The usual.” I sighed and shook my head.

Things did not improve the following month when mom called to inform us that dad had been taken to intensive care with a massive coronary.  A week later, his heart stopped all together and I was appointed executive of the estate.  There wasn’t a whole lot to account for as we had agreed mom would keep the house, but there was the matter of getting rid of his things due to the state of our mother’s delicate mental condition.   

Mom’s condition did not improve and five months later her friend Gladys found her slumped over in her chair with an empty bottle of anti depression medication on the table next to her along with one of dad’s prized bottles of scotch.  Dad usually drank beer, but there were those occasions when he would go to the VFW to meet some of his friends where they would drink and toast those of their company who were no longer alive, those who died in combat and those who came home often time ending their lives by their own hand, just like mom had done. 

Russell was a mess, tears flowed constantly. “I am an orphan.” 

“So am I.” I sighed realizing that part of my life had come to an end.

Since mom’s passing, I had to get the house ready to sell and so I hired people to clean out the home including the effects dad had stowed in his attic and forbid us to look at.  It gave me great satisfaction to finally open the family mystery and shake a few skeletons in the closet, but what I found literally shocked me to the core. 

Inside his foot locker was the duffle bag I had managed to get a look at years before.  Dumping the contents on the floor of the attic, I saw documents mixed in with army shoes, boots, socks, dog tags, black and white photos that had faded over time of a much younger version of my father smiling surrounded by a bunch of other guys dressed in army uniforms, smoking cigarettes and toting rifles.  Moving one the documents, when I saw the title, I picked it up and read it: 

Silver Star awarded to Sergeant Rocky Gibbons on December 13, 1951 for courageous action in combat that is above and beyond the call of duty during a military action in the Chosen River, Republic of Korea…

Dad was a hero.  He was decorated for his bravery.  Why on earth would he choose to hide this from us? In a small box like one that would hold jewelry was the Silver Star with a red, white and blue ribbon meant to hang around the neck of the recipient.  There was a photo inside as well and fade though it was, I saw a man dressed in a light colored uniform wearing sunglasses and clutching a corncob pipe in his mouth as he in the process of putting the award over my father’s head as other soldiers in the background of photograph were standing rigidly at attention.  Then it flashed in my mind that the man presenting my father with the silver star was General Douglass MacArthur.  

I became angry with my father for not telling us about this, a silver star presented by MacArthur who up until that moment was nothing more than a name in some history book I had read many years ago.  

The next day in my office, I began to do some Googling on the Korean War since dad had never allowed us to talk about this, I figured I needed to find out on my own.  Anne came into my home office and asked, “Whacha doing?” 

“Looking at some things about the Korean War.” I answered without looking up at her.

“How come?” She ran her fingers through my hair.

“Because my father earned a silver star and there is a picture of him getting the medal by General MacArthur.” I got to the part about the Chosen River. 

“Really?  He never struck me as the hero type.” She shook her head and left my office after leaving a glass of iced tea on my desk.  

“I had no idea.” I shook my head, “Where’s Russell?”

“Where he usually is, sulking at the pool.  The kids don’t pay much attention to him.” 

“Good.” 

“How long are you going to be?” She stood leaning on the door frame.

“Not much longer.” I sighed again, but the information I had was quite engaging. 

“Don’t stay up too long.  Early day in the morning.” She closed the door behind her. 

When I got the email from Buster about another reunion at the VFW, I answered it, informing him of my father’s passing.  He emailed me back and invited me to one of their shindigs the following Tuesday.

Walking in to a place my father had never taken me, I was overwhelmed by the framed photographs that hung on the walls cover nearly all the available space, there was some old Hank Williams dripping from an old jukebox, pennants hung from the eaves of the gabled ceilings and each of the pennant displayed the number of an honored unit.  

Sitting at a booth in the corner were the surviving members of my father’s unit, Moe Desmond, Butch Reinhart, Buster Bradley, Goofy Reynolds, and Angelo DiCiscanti, each of them wore the VFW hat on their head with their unit sewn near the letters VFW.  

“So old Rocky is passed on.” Butch shook his gray head.  He had a mustache the same color as the hair on his head and a half crewed, half smoke cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Boys, let’s have a drink to old Rocky.”

“Here, here.” They all said in unison holding their glasses in the air.

“He was a good man.” Buster nodded.

“We used to have a dozen in our numbers, kid, but time is working against us, ya know.” Angelo had jet black hair slicked back tightly to his head. His dark puppy dog eyes were very bloodshot as he kicked back what was remaining in his glass in one swallow. “Bartender.” He held up his glass and a man who appeared even older than the men gathered at the table plucked the glass from Angelo’s hand and went back to the bar. 

“Were you in any action, kid?” Goofy asked leaning back in the booth.  Goofy I would find out later earned his name because he was in love with the Disney character of the same name, but even under his hat, you could see the absence of hair on top of his shiny round head.

“No sir.” I put my hand up and the bartender came tottering back with Angelo’s drink and then looked at me, “Just a beer.”

“Point of order kid, we was all enlisted dog faces, please don’t call us sir.” Goofy was very firm, but not unfriendly in his request. 

“Yeah kid, we work for a living.” Buster snorted with laughter. 

“I do have one question.” I raised my hand and the bartender returned with a bottle of beer he placed on a coaster next to my elbow.

“Shoot, kid.” Moe spoke up.

“Moe, not really a good idea.  What do you wanna know.” Buster asked as Moe’s face turned red.

“When I was cleaning out the house the past week, I saw he had earned a silver star with General MacArthur putting it around his neck.” It took a moment before I noticed that all of them were silent for some reason, frozen in place like statues. 

“Did he ever tell you the story?” Goofy asked.

“No, he never told me.” I answer by noting that Moe and Angelo were still frozen.

“Now that he’s gone, I guess we could clue you in.” Buster leaned in as if he was about to reveal information that was top secret.

“That place was like Hell.” Moe managed to say.

“Frozen Hell.” Goofy added.

“Well we got there and the first night a company of Chinese rushed our position.  Rocky was on point and he opened fire when he saw the horde.  The two machine guns began rattling.  It was like mowing grass.  Some of them weren’t even carrying weapons, but we just kept shooting and by the morning their bodies were piled up like a mountain.  I ain’t never seen so many dead bodies.” Buster explained.  Rocky saw a couple of our guys lying there covered by dead guys.  So he went down there to get them out, but a couple of them soldiers weren’t dead and they reached up and began to struggle for his rifle.  One of them got it, but he managed to get to his belt, pull out his bayonet knife and slit the guy’s throat. He managed to get our guys out.  They were a machine gun team that got buried alive by the bodies.  Covered in blood they stumbled back up our hill like they had been birthed again.  One of them began to spit out some of the blood that flowed into his mouth during the firefight.” Buster threw back his head and drained his entire drink and then held up the glass.

“So he was a hero.” I said after sipping some of the beer.

“Yeah, but there’s more.” Goofy sniffed.

“We had managed to win the night, but then our sarge had us poke around under a bridge where some hostiles were supposedly hiding out.” Buster waited for the bartender before continuing his story, “So we get there, but all that we find are a bunch of Korean civilians shivering in the cold.  We radio back and then all hell breaks loose again as some of the civilians were really the enemy, so Rocky opens fire and cuts them all down, the civilians and the enemy.  He had his Thompson and he didn’t stop until all of them lay there in the ice and snow, blood was everywhere. God, it was a nightmare.” 

“So why did he get the medal?” I asked.

“Army don’t give a shit.  Collateral damage.” Buster said in a dry labored voice. 

“But Rocky wasn’t the same after that.” Goofy added, “It was like someone had cut out his heart.  Until he rotated back home, he hardly said another word.”  

“Sure he kept the star, but in his heart he felt as if he didn’t really earn it. He got his mug on Stars and Stripes posing with MacArthur, but it was like a slap in the face to him.” Buster took another health swig of his drink, “None of us were the same after that.  We was the good guys, for chrissakes.” 

“Things were so confusing over there.” Angelo added, his sad eyes clearly expressed the emotion he was feeling even after so much time. 

“Don’t blame him, kid.” Butch shook his head, “He was a good man in an awful place.  They give us all kinds of medals, but the truth is we carried the ghosts of the horrible things we were told to do. When he came home, he told us that he would never tell anyone about his medal, because it reminded him of all those people he shot under the bridge.  Some were enemy, but most were just these poor folks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

Driving home later that night, I tried to process what they had tried to tell me about my father Rocky Gibbons, my father.  It would have been so easy for him to tell me he got his medal for being a hero, but his conscience would not allow him to accept that platitude that he felt in the end was nothing more than a lie.  I guess for that reason alone, I would always hold his memory in esteem.