When I got home from the Army it was the fall of 1977. The farm had changed. I knew it would be different. Mom had kept me posted on Dad retiring from milking cows. I knew the barn would be empty of the lumbering beasts. Yet, when you see the void for yourself it is quite different from the imagination. You can see a barn without animals in it anymore, from a mile away. Its aura is gone. Most of the cats will even move on because cows need feed storage and feed attracts mice. My old dog Sandy still ran to the barn when someone would drive in the driveway to show off her cat chasing prowess. The only problem with the show was there were no more cats to chase as there had been before I went in the Army. I will always remember her chasing those phantom cats and ripping apart the ever present empty plastic milk jugs that my dad kept around for her to play with.  Sandy loved it when you would give a beleaguered jug a kick in her direction.  

   The thing my clever father did was keep the farm and rent it out. The buildings were full of hay, the corn cribs were full of corn, and the machine sheds were now full of boats and campers. The big sheds that once housed combines, tractors, wagons, and plows, were excellent for storing recreational equipment. There was a constant stream of people coming and going to tend to what ever crop they were loading or what ever equipment they were storing or parking. 

   A neighbor man who was a big time grain farmer had hired dad to tend to his tractors, trucks, combines, and what ever else (duties as assigned). Dad did not wreck the equipment like the constant stream of college help, so Dad was "the go-to man" - steady, reliable. Either by necessity or from the goodness of their hearts, Dad and the neighbor asked me if I wanted to work that harvest season. There were both soybeans and corn to be tended to. The neighbor also worked with his brother from the nearby town who also had a big grain operation.

   The Illinois trend of large farms of corn and soy beans had worked its way up to my small Southern Wisconsin community in Lima Township in Rock County. Gone were the long fence rows between fields - ripped out now to facilitate open fields handy for large machines to tend to corn and soybeans. Gone were the alfalfa fields of grazing milk cows guided in gaggles by those once ubiquitous fences.  

    The neighbor grain farmer rented our land.  The long row of giant maple trees along Lima Center Road north of our farm buildings had been cut down - cut down to glean a few extra feet of land to harvest.  I was heart broken.  The stripped earth policy of Illinois farming theory had leached its way to our back-road Wisconsin farm. 

    It was also still a time way before cell phones.  So operations in the big fields and many properties a grain farmer might work were facilitated by Citizen Band radios.  CB-radios were ubiquitous in all kinds of vehicles in those days.  Everyone had a nickname (handle). Dad was "Mr. President."  as in real life he was the Town Chairman.  One of the college guys that worked for the neighbor was "Cookie Monster," and on and on.  

   That fall I drove grain truck, drove the tractor and soil-saver that ground up the corn stalks, and monitored the corn drying process. It was a stark contrast to the dusty, olive-drab Army equipment, and the crass military bases I had just come from. Rural Wisconsin however, has historical ties to Germany. I started to notice some of the houses and old barns I had seen for years as a kid and had never really paid close attention to. I realized some had similar architectural traits as the ones I had seen in the German country side. Wisconsin is awash with communities built from German, Norwegian, and English heritage. 

   It was a strange thing to come back to a world where few people even knew we still had soldiers in Europe in 1977. Having just come from a foreign land where many of my GI colleagues had been in Vietnam it was also odd to now be in a world where Vietnam was "a taboo" to talk about. It was the time void between the end of the war and the soon to be plethora of movies about it.  America just did not want to talk about it. I know I for one, had my head bitten off more than a few times for just bringing it up in a conversation..., and I had not even been stationed over there.  

    Really only a couple movies had even come out about 'Nam at the time. The Green Berets (1968) was a "'Nam" movie in the World War II construct. And, the quirky movie The Losers (1968) was an exploitation drive-in theater movie about motorcycle gang types hired to go to 'Nam and fight Charlie Cong and rescue an American held in a prison camp there. The Boys in Company C (1978) and Go Tell the Spartans (1978) were still not out when I got back home, and even after they came out they made no real impact. You are probably Googling those two movies as we speak because you have never heard of them. The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) were still in production and soon to finally hit theaters. And as it turned out, they each tried to put too much of the war in single movies anyway. But, those latter two movies are usually the ones many people remember even today after there has now been at least 100 Vietnam War movies made. A couple more well-known ones are Platoon (1986), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). 

   At any rate it was good to be home. Even though the Wisconsin economy was even worse than when I left in 1974 - Rust Belt, few jobs, lay offs, high interest rates, high gas prices, and the Misery Index.  I would work for the grain farming neighbor once more one fall a couple of years later.  It did not seem as busy that second year.  I don't even remember which year it was - speaks to getting older and having had many jobs to keep the bills paid. 

     I will count the two falls working for the grain farming neighbor as one job - my sixth. 

   This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Specialist Bert E. Hoyer, 23, an Army Reservist. Specialist Hoyer died Wednesday, March 10, 2004 in an explosion when his convoy was ambushed in a roadside bombing in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. He was the 11th soldier from Wisconsin and the fourth person from the 652nd Engineer Company to die in Iraq. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hoyer was a 1999 graduate of Ellsworth High School. He enlisted in the Army Reserves while he was a student at Vermilion Community College in Ely, Minnesota. He was studying wildlife management and had one semester left. Hoyer had shipped out to Iraq in April 2003. According to the Journal Sentinel, Bert enjoyed writing back to sixth-graders who had been writing to soldiers in Iraq. The 652nd is described as a bridge and road engineering unit that had built bridges in Baghdad and across the Tigris River. Another Wisconsin soldier previously killed in Iraq from the 652nd was Sergeant 1st Class Dan Gabrielson, 40, of Frederic. Two soldiers from the Michigan detachment of the 652nd have also been killed in Iraq. Specialist Hoyer is survived by his parents, and a younger brother and sister.

   3,545 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   26,129 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   76 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

   106 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.