9. Sergeant Tomas Fajardo, of ‘Maine’
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.