You Are Not Forgotten Read online

  More than a decade after Grandpa George’s death, when the quagmire that became Vietnam was a dark stain for so many, Harriet still exhibited little bitterness about what it had cost her and her four children.

  “George wanted to be a military man, he was trained for it, and we have always been proud of what he did,” she told a newspaper reporter in 1977. If she had any anger at all, it was that the United States had walked away from the war, allowing the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to fall to the North Vietnam Communists. “I don’t pretend to know the political subtleties,” she said, “but we could not help asking ourselves what all the loss of life was for. Yet I hate to say George’s life was wasted.”

  Theirs, too, was a storybook Army love affair. Grandpa George and the former Harriet LaRoche both grew up in Army families. They met in high school at Fort Leavenworth and were married in the West Point chapel on June 6, 1945, Grandpa wearing his starched white cadet uniform. Harriet’s father, who was serving in World War II as the chief military surgeon in the Pacific, couldn’t make the ceremony. Harriet’s bridegroom did not get a chance to fight in World War II, but he served in the Philippines and then on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in postwar Japan, where Big George had been. He later led an infantry company in the Korean War. He had been one of the Army’s most accomplished battalion commanders when he was cut down early in the Vietnam War.

  The fact that a photographer and a war correspondent were standing just feet away when he was shot made his loss even more acute. His wife, children, and grandchildren were in effect forced to watch his violent death. Three weeks after the family first heard the news, three images of his final moments were flashed on national television. An obituary by the Associated Press published in dozens of newspapers across the country further immortalized him.

  “He was the son of a general,” it began, “a West Pointer and a battalion commander. But Lieutenant Colonel George Eyster was to die like a rifleman.”

  Harriet received twenty-two hundred letters from strangers offering condolences. After reading her husband’s obituary in the Orlando Sentinel, she felt compelled to thank the war correspondent who chronicled his death.

  “You gave his children a legacy that no one else could have by writing in such a manner that his courage and heroism will live with them and be an inspiration to them forever,” she wrote.

  Harriet eventually remarried—to a retired Army general of course. But she kept the memory of her first husband very much alive. She did so, in part, by making it known, not always so subtly, that his children could best honor him by living up to his example of selfless service. She was supremely proud when both of their sons followed in his footsteps and their two daughters married military officers. She clearly wanted her favored grandson, George V, to follow suit. But there was time for that.

  Big George, who was away at preparatory school when he heard the tragic news from his mother, spoke little about how his father’s death affected him. Whenever Little George asked him about Grandpa George, his father volunteered few insights into the man or his influence on him—other than to assure Little George that his father had been far more of a disciplinarian than he was. Only years later would George learn how his father struggled to live up to the ideal that Grandpa George set as a leader of men and how the pressure of it all steered him away from West Point and almost from becoming an Army officer altogether. Big George, too, had ultimately answered the call, earning an ROTC scholarship at Florida State University and graduating in 1971 with the real prospect that he, too, might be sent to the jungles of Vietnam.

  But while Big George refrained from lionizing Grandpa George, Grandma Harriet retold stories of his bravery and heroism at every opportunity. Little George ate them up in those early years, rereading his grandfather’s obituary countless times, both because he was captivated by the man and in an effort to better understand his own father. A year after he first saw the images of his dying grandfather flash across the TV, a newly published book about the battle further added to the mystique. In the book the men who had been with him that fateful day reported that before he died, Grandpa George voiced his begrudging respect for his enemy.

  “Before I go,” Lieutenant Colonel Eyster whispered as he gasped for breath on the jungle floor, “I’d like to talk to the guy who controls those incredible men in the tunnels.” He never got the chance. After being evacuated to a field hospital, he died on January 14, 1966, at the age of forty-two.

  There was a lot to live up to if you were named George Senseny Eyster. But as Little George soon learned, there was more—much more. In fact, most of his male forebears, going back seven generations, had been soldiers, serving in nearly every major conflict in the nation’s history. His was a martial legacy—some might say a burden—stretching back more than two centuries to before American independence. It was a paternity that made him eligible for that most exclusive of military fraternities: the Society of the Cincinnati.

  The Society of the Cincinnati is located at Anderson House, a stately fifty-room mansion on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Distinguishing it from the ornate diplomatic posts along Massachusetts Avenue is the statue of General George Washington standing sentry underneath the flags of the United States and France. The society was established in 1783 at the close of the American War of Independence by officers who served in the Continental Army and their French counterparts who came to their aid. Among its founders were such illustrious patriots as Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton and Major General Henry Knox. The fraternal order, which took its name from the Roman citizen-soldier Cincinnatus, is essentially the nation’s oldest veterans’ group—and its most exclusive.

  Originally, membership was only for military officers who could trace their parentage directly back to one of the 5,795 eligible officers who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Now in its third century, the society reserves membership for those with the same lineage, but they do not have to serve in the military. With the exception of the South Carolina chapter, each of the original Revolutionary officers can only be represented by one relative at a time, keeping the society exceedingly small; currently, there are roughly thirty-eight hundred members, including several hundred from the French branch. One of those Continental Army officers was George Eyster’s seventh great-grandfather Wilhelm Heyser.

  The family’s martial lineage, recounted in some of the brittle parchment rolls kept in the secure vault in the society’s library, began in the hot, turbulent summer of 1776. On July 12, a week after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Wilhelm Heyser was commissioned a captain by the Continental Congress. He prepared to set out from his farm in the hills of western Maryland to command a company of ninety soldiers in the German Battalion of the Continental Army. Heyser, a German-speaking immigrant, was born in Holland in 1748 and came to the colonies in his teens. A physician, Freemason, and master builder of the First Reformed Church of Hagerstown, he had already demonstrated his support for the cause of his adopted land, providing “rashons and drink” for the Maryland militia and feeding a company of Continental Army soldiers. He also served on the local Committee of Observation, convened in September 1775 to raise several companies of militia and serve as a clearinghouse for intelligence on British activities in the area. Patriotic fervor was strong in the area, where there were few known loyalists to the British Crown. The mostly German and Swiss immigrants responded in large numbers to the call to arms. Local communities provided uniforms, while gunsmiths struggled to keep up with the German Battalion’s training and supply needs.

  After taking command, Heyser’s unit was dispatched to the outskirts of Philadelphia, where its first battle orders came on Christmas morning, hours after General Washington crossed the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack against the British forces near Trenton, New Jersey. Captain Heyser, who was now going by the Americanized William, gathered with his fellow company commanders on the Pennsylvania side of the river to he
ar their orders:

  You are to see that your men have three days’ provisions ready cooked before noon, everyone fit for duty, except a sergeant and six men to be left with the baggage, will parade with arms, accouterments, and ammunition (40 cartridges) in best order and with provisions and blankets. No man is to quit his division on pain of instant punishment. Each officer is to provide himself with a piece of white paper stuck in his hat for a field mark. You will order your men to assemble and parade them at 4 pm in the valley immediately over the hill from McKonkey’s Ferry, to remain there for further orders.

  By late afternoon George’s seventh great-grandfather and the main body of the attacking force, a little more than five thousand men, assembled near the ferry landing. Washington ordered they be read a new tract by Thomas Paine, the pamphleteer whose writings gave voice to the American cause. The troops, some wearing woolen cloaks, others clutching blankets to shield them from the wind, stood at attention as Paine’s words were read:

  These are the times that try men’s souls.… Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

  As darkness fell, the formation was ordered to move. The 350-strong German Battalion forded the icy waters of the Delaware around midnight, just as it began to sleet. By 4:00 a.m., they were trekking southeast across open fields with their rifles and cannons toward the main road between Trenton and Princeton. The faint sound of musket fire pierced the stillness. Just after daybreak, the enemy opened up a full attack, their cannons raining down on the Americans and splitting open the hardened winter earth. Two enemy regiments tried to outflank them, and in the ensuing melee Washington, mounted on horseback, ordered the German Battalion to “throw themselves before them,” which “they did with Spirit and Rapidity and immediately checked them,” as the commander in chief reported two days later. The enemy troops, two regiments totaling about 600 men, fell by the dozens and finally surrendered to the smaller German Battalion.

  Heyser spent the winter of 1777 encamped with Washington’s Army at Valley Forge, where he received a letter from his eldest son, William Heyser II:

  My Dear father, my greatest grief is, that I am incapable of the military Service, that I might enjoy the company of so loving a father, and serve my country in so glorious a cause, but tho’ absent from you yet my constant prayer is for your safety, in the hour of danger, your complete victory, over the enemies, of the United States of America, and your safe restoration to the government of your family. I and my brother Jacob continue at school, and hope to give a full satisfaction, to our parents, and friends in our regular conduct, and progress in learning, my Mamma, my brother and sister do join me in their prayers and well wishes for you.

  I am Dr. Father your most dutiful and obedt son,

  William Heyser

  Hagers Town

  Captain Heyser’s military career came to an end less than a year later, on September 11, 1777, when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. Upon hearing the news, Heyser’s wife, the former Anna Trudy, rode on horseback to Philadelphia to nurse him back to health and bring him home to their Hagerstown farm. Heyser reported after the battle that his company was at less than half its full strength, with only thirty-eight men fit for duty. He also reported two of his soldiers “missing.”

  In nearly every succeeding generation, George’s ancestors answered the call to defend the nation. Heyser’s teenage grandson, upon hearing the news that the British had burned Washington in 1814, joined a unit of volunteers in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, just across the Maryland border, where the family settled after the Revolution. To the sound of the drums and fife, William Heyser III, then only sixteen, marched off to the defense of Baltimore. Two of his sons later fought in the Union Army during the Civil War, while he watched Confederate troops burn some of his storehouses and, in the summer of 1863, tended to wounded soldiers from the battle at nearby Gettysburg.

  It was Heyser III’s son-in-law, J. Allison Eyster, from whom George got his surname, who was supplying equipment to Union forces when he was captured by the Confederates and imprisoned in the notorious Libby Prison near Richmond, Virginia. J. Allison Eyster’s ancestors came to America from Germany and settled in Chambersburg in the early eighteenth century, also giving their share of sons to the defense of the country. One of his brothers was Captain George Eyster, who served as the provost marshal in charge of the military police for the Union Army in Pennsylvania during the Civil War. The first George Senseny Eyster was born in Chambersburg in 1795, his middle name derived from his mother’s maiden name. It was a name that would stick.

  By the twentieth century, the tradition was embodied in George’s great-grandfather, who graduated from West Point in 1917. In World War II he served as chief of the operations branch on the staff of General Dwight Eisenhower, the top Allied commander in Europe. After the war he oversaw the withdrawal of American forces from Europe, and his last assignment before retiring in 1950 was as a brigadier general serving as the chief spokesman for the Army.

  The ancestors of George’s mother, the former Ann Pate, also had deep roots planted in the New World, arriving in Virginia from England in 1650, along with their own military tradition. Three Pate brothers were among several Pates who served in the Revolutionary War.

  As he came of age, George was learning he had a pedigree that was about as all-American as it gets.

  In the summer of 1985, twelve-year-old George Eyster knelt down next to his father on the rocky ridgeline known as Little Round Top. He listened intently as Big George described the ferocious fighting that had taken place there on July 2, 1863. His father gestured to where the federal troops had repelled the Confederate attack during the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War, pinpointing some of the locations on the granite spur where the decisive engagements took place.

  The Gettysburg battlefield was one of Big George’s favorite places to visit on long drives between Army posts or on family getaways. He knew intimately the history of the bloody battle, including all the skirmishes and the units and officers that played prominent roles in them. He was especially thrilled when his wife, Ann, was hired to type the manuscript for The Killer Angels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about the Gettysburg battle that was later made into a popular film.

  On this particular visit to the farmland of southern Pennsylvania, the Eysters spent several days at the historic site. They toured the military cemetery where President Lincoln gave his famous address and traced each battlefield marker. The patience of a young kid could grow thin after a few hours. One day as they took the battlefield driving tour, a restless George sat in the backseat with a picture book his father purchased at the gift shop. It showed image after image of the carnage that had taken place over those dreadful three days at the beginning of July in 1863. He looked intently at the grainy photographs of Union and Confederate soldiers lying dead and wounded on the sloping fields of corn and in culverts along the wooded dirt roads. It was difficult to tell the Union soldiers from the Confederates. They were stacked up like so many cords of wood. It was hard to see the glory in it all.

  His was an early distaste for the cost of war that George learned later was shared by others in his bloodline. His ancestor William Heyser III expressed a similar disdain in his diary in late 1862 as the Civil War engulfed the nation and grew ever closer to his native Pennsylvania.

  “Every day we hear the sad strains of martial music as the hearses pass carrying the dead from some distant battlefield to be buried at their home,” wrote the veteran of the War of 1812, reflecting that “all lose in the end, the poor victims killed giving the most.”

  As he approached his teens, George began searching for glory elsewhere.

  George’s eyes were opened to a new reality when he entered middle school. Big George was assigned to the small Army base of Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, and George was enrolled
for the first time in a public school made up largely of kids with no military ties. He was now learning what lay outside the gate of an Army post, beyond the strictures and expectations of military life. They were living in Abingdon, Maryland, a middle-class suburb about twenty-five miles northeast of Baltimore. George was that in-between age when childhood begins to fade and a newly discovered independence fuels a desire to test one’s limits.

  He was blessed with a natural athletic ability, inherited from his father, who had been a football star and accomplished high school baseball pitcher. But George was drawn to the traditionally less popular sport of lacrosse, which not only was physically demanding but also required keen hand-eye coordination. As he entered seventh grade in suburban Baltimore, it was also clear that he had a knack for it. Before long, he was recruited to play with the high school kids and even found himself invited to practice games under the lights with college players from nearby Towson State University, who were impressed by the tenacious twelve-year-old’s skills as a midfielder, a position that allowed George to roam freely, playing both offense and defense.

  Nearly overnight, George was thrust from the sheltered world of an Army brat into a world of greater autonomy and self-reliance—and the pitfalls that came with it. Both on and off the field he found new acceptance among his lacrosse buddies, all of them several years older than he. Soon they were dragging him to high school parties. The adulation from his teammates and the attention he was getting from girls pumped him with a new confidence. Though somewhat shy and tentative in social situations, he started to gain a greater sense of himself than simply as the son of an Army officer dutifully playing his part supporting his father’s calling and striving to meet his parents’ high expectations.