Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9102030079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Brown and the Army had different plans.
Brown first joined the Army when he was 17, in 1955. He completed his tour in three years and left the service.
During the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Brown enlisted again. This time around, he saw action, not in Cuba, but in Vietnam. He was a combat engineer and a paratrooper. He did demolition work with the infantry. He spent time stationed around the world and at stateside bases as a drill sergeant.
Brown left the service for good in 1979 and settled with his wife and four children in Troutville.
He drives a tractor-trailer now for Coca-Cola, making long round-trip highway drives between the Roanoke bottling plant and West Virginia cities.
Brown's life is settled. He sings in a gospel quartet. He tends his lawn and chops wood. His youngest daughter is 16.
Robert Brown is 52 now.
The calendar is moving, but Brown - like most of us - never figured he was along for the ride.
So in August, when Iraq overran Kuwait and Robert Brown knew in his gut that war was inevitable, he offered his battle-tested skills again to the Army. He could parachute or lead troops into combat.
"You put in 20 years and then you leave, figuring you're still young, that you can still do it," he says.
The Army wants Sgt. 1st Class Robert Brown to help.
But it has younger bodies to jump from planes, younger men and women to blast bridges.
Brown was assigned to military escort service, but the Army won't call him until there are more casualties. When it does, Brown will have 48 hours to report to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
There, at the military mortuary, the remains of the U.S. war dead will be identified.
In coffins, the bodies will be loaded onto jets and flown to hometowns around the country. Brown will fly with them and will see the coffins into funeral homes and churches. He will offer official condolences. If families ask him to stay for the services, he will. Then he'll return to Dover to start over again.
"It's not what I wanted, let's put it that way," he says. "But it's an honorable and a necessary job. I've done it before."
During Vietnam, he occasionally escorted bodies home, and that was not always a popular thing to do.
"There's an art to it," he says. "You've got to be very, very diplomatic."
Brown is realistic, too: "I don't smoke, drink, chew, nothing like that, but I know down deep that I couldn't keep up with those kids on the front."
He has already wrestled with that reality.
But another still bothers him. Brown listens to the radio while he drives his truck. The war reports make him itch to be part of it again, and he is eager to get back in uniform.
This time around, though, he knows that when the Army calls, it'll be somebody else's loss.
"It's a real guilt trip," he says. "I want in, but I hope they don't need me. I'm sort of hoping they won't call."
by CNB