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Ronnie’s family had fought in every war the United States waged since his great-grandparents came to the country from Ireland and established their home just west of the Chicago River in a place called “The Patch.”

“Granny” would tell rumored stories about a distant relation that fought for the North in the Civil War by the name of Skelly, but little was known or able to be proven of that part of the bloodline. Yet, his father and two uncles would serve in the United States Army in World War II and his other uncle in the Air Force during the Korean War.

Uncle Jimmy, who used to rub his right fist in his left hand and ask all the kids if they wanted a little “business” in the form of joking fisticuffs, survived the Bataan Death March in 1942.  Jimmy was “skin and bones” even before he was captured and marched from Mariveles to San Fernando in the Philippines that April. Still, he kept his feet while other POWs that fell to the ground from malnourishment and exhaustion were executed. Jimmy had several ticks, one was a noticeable twitch and audible suction sound from the left side of his mouth. The other tick… he was genuinely out of his fucking mind.

Was it the horrible experience of war that impacted Jimmy? Not according to his younger brother who said he wasn’t right in the head before he enlisted. The insanity of war was probably a normal existence for Jimmy.

Uncle Jack was a Military Police Officer and only fired his .45 caliber Colt service weapon once, which was a major problem because he was never deployed across either ocean during the war. While transporting a prisoner and waiting for a train at Union Station on Canal, he decided to visit his mother and little brother at their third-floor apartment on Grand Ave. While showing off his weapon, his prisoner sipped his tea with his cuffed hands. With one careless wave that Colt 1911 made one hell of a noise and one hell of a hole in the wall. Mother, brother, prisoner and neighbors all hit the floor and Jack stood stunned trying to figure out how he was going to explain that unaccounted for round.

The last of the WWII relatives who served was Ronnie’s father, Michael, whose dalliances with alcohol were legendary for their never-ending columniations of brawls and police intervention. Michael proudly hung a German officer’s dagger above his basement bar, boldly engraved with a revolting Nazi swastika. Michael’s recollection is that he battered that German officer to a point of death and he kept that officer’s dagger as a spoil of war. Ronnie and his friends for years heard his father tell that daring escapade of how he obtained that dagger through hand-to-hand combat in the European Theatre.

The only thing theatrical about Michael’s service was that recollection.

After so many years of hearing that story, Michael was driving Ronnie to the bus station when his number came up in the draft and he was headed off to serve with Company B, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry in Vietnam. During the ride with two other draftees, Ronnie asked his father to retell the heroic story of the dagger, once more before deployment.

“That dagger,” Michael said. “I won that in a crap game. I worked in the motor pool as a mechanic.”

“What an asshole,” Ronnie said and that set the tone for the rest of their lives until Michael’s death, including the time Ronnie wouldn’t bail Michael out of jail on Christmas Eve night. During an intoxicated rage fueled by Yule Tide disappointment, Michael was locked up for his own protection. When the sympathetic policeman with holiday generosity called Ronnie and offered to release him on his own recognizance, Ronnie went to pick Michael up and the rage was still glowing behind bars. “Fuck that,” Ronnie told the cop, “I’m not spending my holiday in hell. He’s your problem.”

Ronnie was a “Grunt.” During the course of time the names for soldiers change. During his uncles’ time in WWII, they were called “GI’s” which some claim meant “Government Issue” and others said meant “Galvanized Iron.” Either way, the term is debatable.

Not “Grunt,” that term of endearment is irrefutable. Major H.G. Duncan of the U.S. Marine Corps, who served two combat tours in Vietnam and was twice wounded, once defined “Grunt” as “a term of affection used to denote that filthy, sweaty, dirt-encrusted, footsore, camouflage-painted, tired, sleepy, beautiful little son of a bitch who has kept the wolf away from the door for over two hundred years.”

Ronnie served his country with distinction and was awarded the Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars, and 4 Purple Hearts all issued by the direction of the President of the United States under the provision of Executive Order 11046. The Bronze Stars came with a V device which is a military decoration that recognizes acts of valor by an individual above and beyond what is expected in direct combat.

Just after he went off to ‘Nam his youngest uncle Rory, the Korean War Air Force veteran, became the proud father of a son who was named James in an effort for a family “do-over” with that name. Ronnie had a special place in his heart for Young Jim just because of the timing of his birth and the nightmares of war he endured. After every patrol, after every body bag he helped carry back to base, he would take out the letters from Rory and look at those baby pictures of Kid Jim and think about all the reasons to live. 

One level of Ronnie’s hell that challenged those reasons came in Phu Loc when his company became heavily engaged and with complete disregard for his own life, he charged through what was reported by the survivors of his Company as a “murderous hail of small arms and automatic weapons fire in an effort to draw most of the hostile fire on himself.” A Lt. Col. wrote a letter stating his “personal bravery and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service.”

After that last combat wound, a VC bullet through his left leg that shattered his fibula and dropped him to the jungle floor only to be peppered by a mortar round’s shrapnel that would never leave the right side of his body, Ronnie returned to the United States to recover. His life would certainly be different as a horribly wounded veteran whose scars were much deeper than the skin that was mauled forever. It wasn’t easy for any of those who returned to a fractured country. 

Ronnie didn’t recognize the world he returned to after surviving ‘Nam’s “murderous hail.” He went away a patriot in the spirit of his father and uncles before him. He fought with valor and the recognition of medals meant little to the returning Vietnam veterans facing unemployment and other economic-related struggles due to the recession the war had a hand in causing. 

Every “Grunt” had the guilt of the politicians and bad decisions of the military’s higher echelon hurled on them in public by the hippies and the war protestors. With world wind changes from what he left, the “Grunt” would choose to become an outlaw which would lead to a challenging life and Ronnie would take his pleasures as he could.

Through the advantageous government benefit of Veteran Contracting, Ronnie had a great front operation in Section 8 housing. He could move his drugs or boosted swag from empty unit to empty unit, always one step ahead of the law. He also owned a bar called the “Hole” and operated a used car lot, which was ironic because he lost his driver’s license after his 12th DUI.

No matter how wild or outrageous his life swung, Ronnie always felt compelled to think of Kid Jim whom he credited with giving him great hope during tremendous darkness. 

To honor the family tradition, when it was time for Kid Jim’s service to his country it came during the Gulf War in 1990 as a United States Marine. This time a true battle-hardened veteran would see this family member off and as Ronnie gave Kid Jim his sendoff, he handed him a special card. 

Ronnie carried that laminated card during his entire tour of ‘Nam. It was given to him by his childhood friend Hugh McMichaels, who rose to the rank of Sergeant with the 2nd Battalion 24th Marines during his second tour of that war. It was about the only thing on Ronnie’s body that didn’t get shot by the Cong.

On the front was a hand drawn picture of Saint Patrick and on the back, it read; “An Irishman doesn’t need luck when he has St. Patrick on his tour.” That card, Ronnie and Hugh had a bond that lasted beyond war and through Hugh's continued service protecting civilians as a decorated Chicago Cop. 

Kid Jim’s tour would be as a member of the 1st Marine Division that provided the ground combat element of the Marines’ Expeditionary Force, the core of the US response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The 1st Marine Division is the oldest, largest and most decorated division in the United States Marine Corps.

Ronnie’s message to Kid Jim was simple, yet profound. “War will test your heart, your head and your soul. Your mind will tell you you can’t do things and your heart will tell you not to do things. Your #1 mission is to bring your soul back home, alive. When I got shot in the leg and was laying in that wet jungle, I thought shit couldn’t get worse. Then I got hit with that mortar round from temple to toe and thought I was a dead man. Surviving was all that mattered. Enduring that pain in order to live was my only mission at that point. That’s your mission now. Stay alive.”

“If you try to understand why the soldier next to you gets killed and you don’t, you’ll lose your fucking mind. Then you are useless to the soldiers that are alive next to you.”

With God’s grace, Kid Jim stayed alive as he carried that card through Operation Desert Shield as he made it through his deployment unscathed. When Ronnie got word his cousin was discharged and on his way home to be a civilian, he planned a welcome home party that would be a rager. Bathtubs full of beer, plenty of weed, mountains of cocaine on glass tables, strippers and loud music.

Kid Jim was back from the desert and Ronnie wanted to celebrate his being alive, so the “Hole” was shut down for the private welcome home event. 

As Kid Jim walked in with his father Rory, the wall-to-wall crowd erupted with applause, whistles and shouting all enhanced by two topless waitresses ready to serve the young veteran. 

Kid Jim’s shock was overcome by his Korean War veteran father’s discomfort. The Dad remembered his welcome home was a walk down Madison Street from Union Station and when he went through the door of that same old third floor apartment, he was handed a semi-warm 6-pack of Schlitz beer and a cold ham sandwich. This party was not the pomaded father’s comfort zone and he stood stoic, shoulders against the wall next to the refrigerator in the kitchen slugging back glasses of whiskey and whatever he could find to top it off.

While Ronnie asked the Dad if he was OK, one of the waitresses came in hot and close to the nervous father. She was beaming a gap-toothed smile as she brandished her newly sculpted breasts that were courtesy of Ronnie’s generosity. The uneasy Dad said he should have gotten her new teeth to which Ronnie replied, “Tits you can play with.”

It was a free-for-all in the “Hole” that night and at one point as debauchery will often lead to, there were some heated words between Ronnie and an associate. Before it got escalated Kid Jim deescalated the argument by picking up the associate and slamming him on the pool table. The issue was mediated and Ronnie just smiled with pride.

There were raffles throughout the night for bottles of booze and dances with the naked ladies, all of which Kid Jim won as his matching tickets were all taped to the bottom of the wicker raffle ticket basket. It was a lightly wicked hero’s welcome home, the kind Ronnie never received. 

At the end, with the sunrise about to hit the windows, it was time for last drinks. 

“Now that I’m back,” Kid Jim said to Ronnie, “I want to work with you.”

“No Kid, this life ain’t for you.”

Both knew that was the right decision and each would hold each other in high regard for the rest of their lives. 

Many years later, Kid Jim stood at Ronnie’s bedside in the hospital and he knew Ronnie had heard his last reveille. He was in and out of consciousness and in total pain, a pain he knew his whole post ‘Nam life. Now Ronnie lay without a premonition of feeling pleasure again. 

When the doctor came in while Ronnie was unconscious, Kid Jim asked if there was anything the doc could do to ease his pain. The doctor replied that Ronnie was already on a morphine drip.

“Fuck that Doc,” Kid Jim said. “Put it on full pour. He’s self-medicated with a hell of lot more than a drip for the last 40 years and with better drugs than you have in this hospital.”

Dropping to a bedside knee Kid Jim pulled out that laminated card, which he held sacred and over his heart in a leather wallet every day since it was handed to him. Ronnie held it one last time and whispered though the oxygen mask and beeping and wheezing machines, "Now you give that card to someone you love and want to protect."

Ronnie had one last lucid moment and as Kid Jim held his hand, he asked if a Priest had given him his last rights. Ronnie had one last laugh, “Ya, Saigon 1969.”

Cancer did what the VC could not and after just a few last labored breaths, the Grunt was gone… later buried in Arlington National Cemetery. 

Coming soon!