In 1963, my brother Gil was standing in formation at the Oakland Staging Area in California. This was the final stop on the way to Vietnam for countless thousands of young soldiers, and he assumed that his orders would take him there, along with all of those standing in the formation. He was eighteen, an enlisted Army volunteer, and had been trained in communications at Fort Gordon, Georgia after doing “basic” in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was probably going to be assigned as a radio operator (RTO) in an infantry unit, which meant that he would be target number two, after the officer or sergeant leading the unit in the field.

Gil was really my half-brother, as his father, Gil, Sr., had been killed over Japan in June of 1945. My mother remarried in 1948 to my father, a young widower and single parent and father to my half-sister, Maureen. Six more children, including me, followed.

Gil, like his dad, was slightly built and about 5’6” with curly blondish hair. He kept his father’s last name, Finn, in part to honor his dad’s memory and sacrifice, but also because of the V.A.’s ever-changing rules and because my mother knew he would receive an insurance inheritance from the V.A. upon turning twenty one. A name change complicated that reward. The words “half-brother” or “half-sister” were never used in our house, anyway.

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Gil heard his name called out and took a step forward. Whoever called it out handed him new orders. He would be going to Korea, not Vietnam. He didn’t know why, and the Army isn’t given to long explanations, so off he went, returning a year and half later with some exotic stereo stuff and some cool silk suits and some great stories. But returning alive, unlike some 50,000 others.

A few years before my mother died, we were sitting at a party in my sister Rita’s back yard, when the talk somehow drifted to Vietnam. Someone talked about the “tunnel rats”, the slightly built G.I.’s who weaseled down Viet Cong tunnels to flush out the enemy. My mother, nursing her “highball”, (never more than two!) casually mentioned that that was why she had kept her son out of Vietnam. A bit cynically, I suppose, I asked her how she managed that.

She had read an article in Life Magazine on “tunnel rats” and figured her slightly-built son Gil would end up as one. She told us how she had researched the “sole surviving son” act, the same one that is the premise for the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, and that she had written her senator, who I believe was the legendary Everett Dirksen at the time. On the premise that Gil’s father had been killed in World War II, Gil was a sole surviving son, and therefore exempt from combat. The Senator had enough juice with the Army, and Gil got his orders changed.

We were astounded, and Gil most especially, who never knew why his name was called that day. She had kept this amazing story from all of us for some thirty five years before casually sharing it with us. A mother can show her love in countless ways, but I have never forgotten this quiet, determined act of love, nor the strength if took to actually pull it off; and then to be content for so many years to keep it to herself.

Happy Mother’ Day, Rita Wogan.