Page 17 - BusinessWest November 9, 2020
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 Tom Hebert began his service in Vietnam a few months after the Tet Offensive in 1968, when the conflict was at its height.
Chicopee and went to work as a pressman for Springfield Newspapers, retiring at age 62.
Hebert said his father, like many who fought in World War II, didn’t talk much about his ser- vice.“ButhewasalwayssingingtheMarine Corps hymn when I was a boy,” Tom recalled, adding that, while his father never pushed him to join the service or that specific branch, he found himself signing up.
That was in May 1968, just a few months after the Tet Offensive, when the Vietnam War was in some ways at its height. Hebert had just earned that accounting degree at AIC, and attended Office Training School for 10 weeks, and then another five months at a specialty school for officers.
His military occupational specialty was to be a tank officer, so he then went to Camp Pendleton in California for two months. Around that same time, he got married and was told he could spend another 18 months in California.
But there was a quick change in plans, as he and several other tank officers were told there was an urgent need for their services in Vietnam.
“When we arrived at First Marine Division and met with the personnel officer, he said, ‘I don’t know why they sent you all here — I have three times as many tank officers as I need,’” he recalled. “That’s typical of the military, and my father had warned me about the bureaucratic aspects of being in the service.”
With his background in accounting, Hebert was eventually sent to the Central Service Agen- cy, essentially a supply position — and wasn’t too happy with that assignment.
“After being there a short time, I went to the personnel officer and said, ‘I can’t do this —
my father was in the Marines, he served at Iwo Jima ... this is not why I joined,” he recalled. “He kicked me out of his office and said, ‘you’ll go where you’re told.’”
So he spent a year in Da Nang as — in the languageofthattime—anREMF,whichstands for rear echelon mother... well, you can fill in the rest. Or, as they also said, ‘in the rear with the gear.’
Still, that time gave him a deep appreciation of the Corps and some valuable life lessons about leadership and teamwork.
When he came back home, he had a case of what was and still is known as ‘survivor guilt,’ which prompted him to publish a Vietnam War newsletter and also sell books through what was known as the Vietnam Book Store, a mostly mail- order operation.
Turning the Page
Longing to do more, Hebert eventually settled on the idea of writing about fictional Marines, but with art imitating life in many ways, espe- cially when it comes to the Marine Corps being a generational phenomenon, or what Hebert calls a “family business.” It was that way for his family, and for the one he’s writing about as well, in sto- ries told by the youngest generation.
That would be Will Remain, whose back- ground is similar to Hebert’s, but with some important differences. Remain graduated from Harvard, not AIC, and upon graduation enlisted in the Marines and attended Officer Candidates School and Basic School in Quantico, Va. Instead of serving in the rear with the gear, he fought at Khe Sanh in 1967 and the Battle of Hue City dur- ing the Tet Offensive of 1968.
Hebert said he was inspired in many ways by the war novel Once an Eagle, written by Anton Meyer. A New York Times bestseller, it has been a favorite of American military men and women sinceitwaspennedin1968,henoted.
“That book just fascinated me,” he told Busi- Author
Continued on page 26
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