As a little guy, I knew about my Grandpa Brown's military career: the shadowboxed medals, ribbons, and insignia hanging on the wall; the library of books I was free to borrow; the arrow-straight military saber and the serpentine Filipino sword he would bring out from the bedroom closet once we had begged him enough; the (still) too-cool-to-believe mounted rocket from an F-4 pod that sat in the front bedroom window.
To me, he was just a nice guy who exclaimed "hello, Rickerbick" when we visited and liked to play catch. When a larger familial group gathered at the familial acreage in a town south of Fort Worth, I knew to watch for the frosty mugs of beer that would herald a raucous political argument with his large and dogmatically diverse progeny. But no matter how heated the argument, it would inevitably end in the goofy Irish sense of furious love — and more cold beer.
But that was Grandpa in retirement, not Colonel Brown.
You can't grow up Irish, in Brooklyn, and survive three wars (or four if you count being in SAC during the Cold) without some edge. He was emotional, even tempestuous, and my mother and her siblings talked enough about his disciplinarian side to make me grateful I never had to experience it personally. Seeing the stare in this photo well after he passed away is as close as Iever came.
As I got older, I learned about his long history of distinguished though unassumingly quiet service: a pre-Pearl Harbor enlistee of the U.S. Army Air Corps and navigator in B-26 Marauder bombers in Europe, then an important role with the burgeoning (and elite) Republic of Korea Air Force in the 50s, then riding an impeccable record as a safety-oriented specialist in SAC, and finally a career-harming but life-affirming move to become a wing commander of recon F-4s during Vietnam.
He might have cost himself a general's star by switching to fighters decades into his career, but he always wanted to fly. And despite the innate danger of flying unarmed photography machines over the bristling anti-air defenses of North Vietnam, he brought back every man who flew under his command.
His story, insofar as we continue to uncover details of it, is a remarkable one. One of his bombers was loaned to another crew, who got shot down; antiaircraft fire killed his best friend in his crew, though he escaped unharmed. His quiet influence on the ROKAF alone probably has a book in it, but I suspect it'll stay relatively unknown. That's the ethos of the Greatest Generation. He wouldn't talk much about it, but faces like that one do not go gentle into that good night.
They do, however, play catch with the blissfully ignorant and unassuming young grandchild who reaps all the benefits he had sown.
"Patty's Pig" of the 323rd Bombardment Group — 456th Bombardment Squadron. Lt. Walter J. Brown, second from left. (Photo courtesy of the American Air Museum in Britain)