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The most meaningful thing I possess is a set of captain’s bars — the old, flat, railroad track style. They are sterling silver, but their value is way beyond anything monetary. These are the bars that were pinned on my father’s lapel in 1942, which he then pinned on mine in Vietnam in 1971 and I pinned on my son’s at Fort Bragg in 2009.
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I was always going to be a soldier. My father, Theodore Mataxis, known as Ted, pointed to my mother’s belly in 1944 and said that he wouldn’t have it any other way. Then a major, he rose to become a brigadier general in a 32-year career.
Dad dragged us all over the world. We lived in occupied Germany from 1946 to 1947 and then in India, where he attended staff college and was then assigned as a United Nations observer in Kashmir. After that he volunteered to go directly to the Korean War.
He was a perennial volunteer and a relentless adrenaline junkie, continually seeking out dangerous roles that no one else wanted.
My dad, who died in 2006 at age 88, commanded a battalion in combat in World War II at 26 and a regiment in Korea at 36. He served for four years in Vietnam and Cambodia. I was also in Vietnam for two of those years.
Although he rose to high rank, he was always a combat soldier first, earning a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with “V” devices and two Purple Hearts along the way. He referred to his Combat Infantryman’s Badge with two stars — signifying it had been awarded in three separate wars — as his perfect attendance pin.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, he served as the field director for the Committee for a Free Afghanistan in Peshawar, Pakistan, making eight trips there to assist the mujahideen against the Russians. That was his fourth war.
As a child, I didn’t get to spend much time with him. He would send me letters and recordings from faraway places. It wasn’t until I went to Vietnam as an adviser that we really bonded over our shared love for military life. I never resented his absences because I knew his calling was to serve his country.
His values had been passed on to him by his father, a Greek immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island in 1907, where his surname, Metaxas, became Mataxis because an Ellis Island official misspelled it. He was penniless and unable to speak English, but he lived the American dream and built a better life for his family.
My father believed that he owed this nation a debt for the opportunities it provided our family. He fully subscribed to the pre-Christian Greek saying “It is a great thing to fight, and die if you must, in defense of your land, your home and your wife and children.”
