Tomorrow Magazine Veterans Day Special Issue, 2003

[We] used to talk about the food we missed the most.
For me, it was always the cheeseburger.
W
Tom
Finch as told
to S.C. Biemesderfer
When the Army drafted me in 1967,
I was 20 years old and living in Clare,
Mich. By June of 1968, I was in
Vietnam. I was a sergeant assigned to
the 4th Infantry Division in Dak To,
November 1960. Ho Chi Minh’s
guerrillas, called Viet Cong,
infiltrate the countryside. Hanoi
establishes National Liberation
Front as its political organization.
near what they called the tri-border of
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. There
was a lot of intense fighting.
Just to distract ourselves, my buddies
and I used to talk about the food
we missed the most. For me, it was
always the cheeseburger. In fact, when
I got five days of R&R in Hawaii, the
Tom Finch
U.S. Army, 1967–1969
Michigan National Guard, 1977–1979
Alabama National Guard, 1982–1996
U.S. Army Reserve, 1996–present
Staff Sergeant
Production Line Worker
Huntsville Electronics (retired)
UAW Local 1413
May 1961. President
Kennedy sends Green
Berets to South Vietnam.
Vietnam cont.
1960 1961 1964
April 27, 1961. In a speech on the occasion of
the 25th anniversary of the UAW, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. compares sit-down strikes of
the 1930s to civil rights sit-ins.
first thing I did — after finding my
wife — was get a cheeseburger.
After two years of active duty, I
went home to Michigan and worked
at Chrysler’s INTROL electronics
division in Ann Arbor. In 1977, I
joined the Michigan National Guard.
When they closed the Ann Arbor
plant in 1982, I took a job on the production
line at Huntsville Electronics.
I retired last year after 30 years.
After moving to Alabama, I joined
the Alabama National Guard. Then I
switched to the Army Reserve in 1996
so that I could have more promotion
opportunities. I’m a staff sergeant
now. The last time I got called to
active duty was this fall, for three
weeks at Fort McClellan in Alabama.
I worked in operations and helped set
up classes at the signal school.
I realize now how young we were
when we fought in Vietnam. A lot of
the people we send to fight are barely
20 years old. When you’re older, you
realize how young that is.
✮
Tom Finch and his unit received many
honors, including two Presidential
Unit Citations, the Vietnamese Service
Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal
and the Cross of Gallantry.
August 1964. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution authorizing the president to take “all
necessary steps” to prevent attacks on U.S. forces.
1964. First
model year for
Plymouth
Barracuda.
December 1964. UAW organizes
airlift of food and medicine to
South Vietnamese children.
FLIP SCHULKE/CORBIS
14 www.uawdcx.com