Green Beret from Lyndhurst earns posthumous salute

Sunday, March 9, 2003

By JUSTO BAUTISTA
Staff Writer

He was a soldier's soldier. Airborne infantry all the way. Known as "Pop," he was the non-commissioned officer young soldiers turned to for help and inspiration.
Gabriel Ralph Alamo of Lynd-|hurst had served in World War II and Korea.
By 1964, he was in Vietnam, a 45-year-old master sergeant with a Green Beret A-team at an outpost called Camp Nam Dong near the Laotian border.
Back in the states, Vietnam was not yet a dominant story.
The civil rights battle was heating up. Lyndon Johnson was president. Leonid Brezhnev was the new Russian leader. An unknown actor, Sean Connery, was a sensation as movie spy James Bond. A Plymouth Fury cost $2,450. Work shoes sold for $1.97 at Modell's.
On July 6, 1964, at Nam Dong, Green Beret Capt. Roger Donlon's instincts told him the Viet Cong were going to attack. He was right.
In a frantic, five-hour, predawn battle, Nam Dong was overrun by a Viet Cong battalion. The odds against them were 3 to 1.
The Green Berets and South Vietnamese defenders blazed away with their weapons, and in hand-to-hand fighting, rushed from one endangered point to another.
Already burned and wounded several times, Alamo was killed while directing mortar fire and manning a 57mm recoilless rifle.
His death was reported in five paragraphs in the local newspaper.
On Tuesday, in Mahwah, Alamo will be one of 10 veterans awarded the New Jersey Vietnam Service Medal posthumously. The medal, approved by the Legislature in 2000, commemorates the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in January 1973.
In two ceremonies - at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. - Brig. Gen. William Marshall of the New Jersey Army National Guard will present the medals to 290 Bergen County residents who survived the war during ceremonies at the Law and Safety Institute, 281 Campgaw Road.
Alamo's story is one of bravery and self-sacrifice.
His wife, Edna, was eight months' pregnant with the couple's fourth child when Alamo was killed. The child, Wayne Douglas Alamo, died shortly after birth, a death she attributed to the trauma of learning about her husband's death.
In an interview in August 2001, Edna recalled meeting "Gabe" at Fort Bragg, N.C. She was 22, a diminutive North Carolinian with brown hair and hazel eyes.
"We met at my sister's house at Fort Bragg," she said. "There was a mutual attraction. We didn't date a long time. We hit it off right away."
Alamo separated his Army life from his home life.
"When he jumped [by parachute] he never told me until after he jumped," Edna said. "He never brought his Army home. I know he liked Special Forces."
In his letters from Vietnam, he told the family not to worry.
"He just talked to me, wanting to know if I was all right," Edna said. "He said he was good. Don't worry. I would just read them and cry."
On July 6, 1964, an Army chaplain appeared at her front door. It could only mean one thing.
"Well, I started crying," she said. "I could hardly believe it."
Edna remarried five years after Gabe's death, to Sgt. Artis Powell, a career Army man who had served two tours in Vietnam. She retired as a clerk at a school at Fort Stewart, attended bingo, and bowled.
"I'm never going to forget him [Gabe]," she said. "But I don't set around and wish it never happened. But when Mike [one of her sons] wants to talk about it, we do."
Edna died of cancer in September, a month after her 68th birthday.
Mike Alamo was 4 years old when his father died.
Now, 42, and with three children, he is a firefighter and paramedic at Fort Stewart, and lives in Hinesville, Ga., where he displays his father's medals in a small office at his house.
After his death, Gabriel Alamo was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest decoration for extraordinary heroism in action.
Fifty-four Viet Cong were killed in the Camp Nam Dong battle. Fifty-five camp defenders were killed, and another 65 were wounded. Alamo died in Donlon's arms, who, wounded several times himself, was trying to drag Alamo to safety when they were hit by mortar fire.
Donlon was awarded Medal of Honor for his efforts in directing the camp's defense. It was the war's first Medal of Honor.
Four A-Team members were awarded Silver Stars, and five other team members were awarded Bronze Stars with V's, the valor insignia.
"I think he lived up to that saying, 'quiet professionalism,'" Mike Alamo said, referring to his father. "I think he was that kind of person: quiet and did his job. And I guess he expected the people under him to do their job."
When Mike enlisted in the Army, Donlon, then a lieutenant colonel, swore him in.
"It was ... heck, I was 19 years old. That was a big thing," he said, referring to Donlon's presence.
When Mike became a Green Beret he graduated from Special Forces school, Donlon was there again.
Mike Alamo said he has tried to teach his children about Vietnam and let them know what their grandfather did.
"My oldest boy [Mike] is 19," he said. "He's trying to decide what part of the service he wants to go in. Doug [another son] is 15. He's in ROTC at high school. He's already a company first sergeant on the rifle team. He's hoping to go to The Citadel or West Point. More power to them. That's their choice."
Others have not forgotten Gabe Alamo.
Several months ago, out of the blue, Mike received a book in the mail, "Window of War - Anthropology in the Vietnam Conflict."
It was written by anthropologist Gerald C. Hickey of the University of Texas, who was at Camp Nam Dong doing research on the Montagnard tribesmen.
"I would love to hear from anybody who knew my dad," Mike Alamo said.
Justo Bautista's e-mail address is bautista@northjersey.com