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These Tough Americans Fought In WWII, Korea, and Vietnam

Khalid Elhassan August 2, 2019 23 min

Basil L. Plumley - Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley

9. Sergeant Tomas Fajardo, of ‘Maine’

Tomas Fajardo during a 2013 BBQ at Fort Sam Houston. US Army dot Mil

Sergeant Tomas Fajardo lived his entire life, except for his 20 years in the US Army, in his birthplace of San Antonio, Texas. As he often joked “I always told the guys when they asked me ‘where you from?’ that I’m from Maine … the ‘main’ part of Texas, San Antonio“. He enlisted in the Army during WWII, and counts himself lucky to have made it to retirement dinged and scarred, but still in one piece.

Fajardo’s most dramatic moment in uniform came when a mortar shell exploded nearby, rendering him deaf and blind for two months, before his sight and hearing started coming back. After WWII, it was on to Korea, where Fajardo served from 1950 to 1951. A decade and a half later, he was in Vietnam. There, he escaped traumatic injury but was exposed to Agent Orange, which left him with health problems for the rest of his life. After retirement, Fajardo spent much of his free time doing volunteer work, helping disabled veterans in nearby VA hospitals.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.