THE WALL OF FACES

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. The remembrance from your friend Hugh is poignant. As long as you are remembered you will always be with us....

John and I completed the Ordnance Officers Basic Course in the same class at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., Aug. - Oct. 1966. Then we completed the Army Supply Officers Course at Fort Lee, Va. John was smart, funny, and I think felt at home in the Army in a way I never did. He was serious without being gung-ho, and somehow always looked the sharpest of us all in uniform. He admired his older brother, a career Infantry officer, tremendously. After we parted at Fort Lee, I never saw him, but have visited his grave in Arlington and think of him often.

First Lieutenant John Thomas Coll Jr., Served with Company B, 704th Maintenance Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, United States Army Vietnam.

Dear Lt John Coll,
Thank you for your service as a Supply Management Officer. 2017 almost gone, and it is the 6th Day of Christmas. It is so important for us all to acknowledge the sacrifices of those like you who answered our nation's call. Please watch over America, it stills needs your strength, courage and faithfulness. Rest in peace with the angels.

I was serving in Korea when the letters stopped coming from John. The reason should have been obvious, but it did not occur to me, or subconsciously I would not let it occur to me. I thought to myself: He has a fiancee and parents who need to hear from him more than I do, and so he is writing to them. I'll see him soon. We had entered active duty the same day at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, with the same active duty commitment, so we were to be discharged the same day. We would reunite, marry the women we loved, and begin our careers and adult lives. It was only after I returned to the U.S. and was released from active duty that I learned of his death. So only one of us married, had a career, had children, and grandchildren. No more than a few days have ever passed without my thinking of him.