On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 07:30:21 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

John H
Before he died, Tom asked me not to mention this because he didn't want to be
tooting his own horn. Now that he's died, I don't think it will bother him!

During the Vietnam war, Tom was a member of the United States Marine Corps Force
Reconnaissance. Force Reconnaissance (FORECON) is one of the United States
Marine Corps' special operations capable forces (SOC).

They perform the following tasks (from Wikipedia)
Special Reconnaissance
Deep Reconnaissance
Long-Range Reconnaissance
Unconventional Warfare
Direct Action
Hydrographic Reconnaissance
Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS)
Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO)

In other words, they are the meanest, sonsabitches in the valley.

If you ever get a chance to go through the Marine Corps Museum at the Marine
Corps Base Quantico, you'll find a picture of the camoflaged Tom Francis in the
Force Recon section of the Vietnam portion of the museum.

My old buddy since Cub Scouts was Recon. He was my roomie for 3 years
after and he never wanted to talk about it. That usually means it was
pretty ugly from what I know of combat guys but the recon boys were in
the grass for most of their tour. It wasn't Budweiser and pizza for
them. I never knew Tom but I hope he was able to escape the demons. My
buddy wasn't that lucky.