I Will Bring You Home- KOREA MIA THOMAS W GREER
I will Bring you home.
I will bring you home, and if I can’t, Finnley will.
Finnley will bring you home.
Finnley will bring you home and if he can’t, someone will.
Someone one will bring home
Son
THOMAS W GREER
1ST LIEUT U S ARMY
WORLD WAR II - KOREA
1924 - 1951
I will bring you home
Or
Finnley will bring you home
Or
Someone will bring you home
You were only 26 years old.
I didn’t know my Grandfather Ralph’s older brother Tom.
I didn’t know my Great Grandparents son Thomas, name after my great grandfather.
Thomas Willis
I didn’t even know that I was already a Willis when I, a Greer, repeated a circle and married a Willis.
On both my Dad’s side and my Mom’s side we have a long history of Army and Navy and Patriots going back to and past the American Revolutionary War for Independence.
But I didn’t know any of it until just a few years ago in 2019.
My story is not unique, when you come from a generational military family, what is most abundantly passed down and presented as inheritance is pain and trauma.
Well, Pain, trauma and courage.
Groing up I did not have the opportunity to spend much time with my Grandfather Ralph.
I rember flying on a double engine plane around the age of 6,
and the MacGregor Kilt that has always hung in the guest room closet,
the business card he had printed for his 60th birthday, an image of him and 6 topless women holding hands in a circle as the jumped out of a plane parachutes to their backs.
Brief visits where he traced with a suit bag and always dressed like he was indeed cornel Mustard. Retro glasses and a pure white mustache. A big man, an intimidating man.
He didn’t send me cards for my birthday or call, but he was at my wedding, and when I would call him Grandpa, he would look around the room before chuckling and saying gahhh, that’s me.
As a child you don’t realize you have the agency to form individual relationships outside your parents, and so it wasn’t until 2020 that he and I began speaking with some regularity.
Ralph was a West Point Graduate, and proud of his Scottish Lineage. He said we are related to John Wythe who signed the declaration of independence, and Pocohauntis (though more accurate John Rolfe who she married) and that Moses Bailey Greer (and others) fought in the American Revolution.
Ralph encouraged me to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. It was important to him that someone (not neccesarilly me) carry on the family tradition. It was important to him to remember the Greers place in American History, and so only a year before he died, I wrote it down and I asked questions.
In hindesite I wish I had recorded our conversations, and I wish I has asked more questions, but I have been able to work with what I got.
And then I began to visit their graves.
In Arlington National Cemetery in one of the old parts with a non standard headstone lie my Great Grandfather Thomas Willis Greer and German wife who came through Ellis Island Margaret Buchman.
On the back in stone is an “In memory of our son” engraving.
Also in Arlington National Cemetery under the iconic white pill shaped headstone is the name
THOMAS BAILEY
GREER JR
VIRGINIA
LTI USNR
WORLD WAR II
AUGUST 5 1921
FEBRUARY 17 1949
When I first started visiting my dead family, now including Remmel Dudley (my grandmother Charlotte’s brother) and his wife Sunshine Verplank, I did not realize that the Thomas on the back of my great grandparents headstone was a different person than the Thomas in section 12A.
I hadn’t stopped to really look at the dates.
Then last Spring, my dad mailed me the information about attending the Korea Cold War Debreifing Action Confrencey that would coincidently be held in Arlington that Summer.
A 2 day conference in which a room of people who have almost but not quite given up tell stories and share information about their loved ones.
I was a signed a case officer and given a folder with a map.
An advisor sat at the table as well.
We think he dies somewhere here, pointing to the map, just over the demilterazed line.
The problem is the area is controlled by North Krorea, the problem is his body is most likly also surround by hunderands if not thousands of old land mines.
Thats why we haven’t been able to look there yet.
Hmmmm, I see.
PAUSE To be continued, this writer needs to get her 10 year old read for school.