CPL BRIAN JAMES GAUTHIER

Bruce Anderson
bkandba4@aol.com
Friend
1555 Merrill St. #55
Santa Cruz, Ca 95062 US
Semper Fi, My Brother
Brian was an extraordinary human being. I remember first meeting him when we were in India Company,3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, at Camp Las Pulgas, in the 1st Marine Division, at Camp Pendleton, California, 1964. Brian had a profound sense of ethics, and an absolutely supereme quality of utterly serene self confidence completely devoid of any sense of self importance. You knew that he was a real human being. And you knew, if you were fortunate enough to be a member of his squad, that he would do all that was humanly possible to take care of you. When Brian died, I watched the fire-fight from the hill-side where my platoon spent four months of the six months we were in Vietnam. The ambush came out of nowhere, as they often did. Roughly a mile or so from where I watched, the squad that Brian was leading along a trail to set up a night ambush for the Viet Cong, was hit by a command-detonated mine, along the trail. A furious fire-fight followed. I watched, but I only learned the details later, while Brian though mortally wounded led his squad in setting up a perimeter, and called in an airstrike on the VC. Brian, bleeding to death, thought only of the people in his squad. The day following the ambush, I spoke with one of the people in his squad. "Brian said to tell his friends good-bye," he told me. He said, shortly after the mine went off, "I can feel my stomach filling with blood, I know I am dying." Brian was wonderful, he was remarkable beyond belief. I truly miss him. Bruce Anderson
Saturday, August 31, 2002