It all seemed so picture-perfect. It was a typical fall evening in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, in 1965 when John Gouin, a twelve-year-old boy with big dreams came home from football practice and sat down at the dinner table with his mother. But when the front door slammed loudly shut, John and his mother anticipated the worst. His father was a man lost within his own anger. In his compelling memoir An Unforgettable Salute, Gouin chronicles his lifelong battle to please his alcoholic father, his attempts to stop the physical abuse, and his journey to psychological healing that eventually culminated in a heartwarming final exchange with his gravely ill father. After describing a childhood during which he was physically beaten and emotionally scarred, Gouin details his dream of playing in the NFL, which lasted until a devastating injury ended his football career. After struggling to find his calling, Gouin eventually joined the army, where he learned self-discipline and the leadership skills that later guided him to achieve professional success as a podiatric surgeon. An Unforgettable Salute is the true story of one man who rose from the silent side of abuse to achieve healing, happiness, success, and most of all, peace.

AN UNFORGETTABLE SALUTE

SKIRMISHES, BATTLEFIELDS, AND MAKING PEACE WITH MY FATHERBy JOHN R. GOUIN

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Col. John R. Gouin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-3979-0

Contents

Acknowledgments................................................xiiiIntroduction...................................................xviiChapter 1: Backwash (Iraq, September 2005).....................1Chapter 2: Saturday Night Fights...............................5Chapter 3: The Equalizer.......................................22Chapter 4: Fourth and Goal.....................................30Chapter 5: September 1974......................................39Chapter 6: Wooden Soldier......................................64Chapter 7: Big Man on Campus (Again!)..........................85Chapter 8: Rebuilding Burnt Bridges............................93Chapter 9: The Best Man........................................108Chapter 10: New Beginnings, Old Habits.........................118Chapter 11: The Final Salute...................................126Chapter 12: Burying the Past...................................136Epilogue.......................................................145About the Author...............................................147

Chapter One

Backwash (Iraq, September 2005)

This is a pain I mostly hide, but ties of blood, or seed endure, and even now I feel inside the hunger for his outstretched hand, a man's embrace to take me in, the need for just a word of praise. ~ Jimmy Carter

Strapped into the backseat of a Blackhawk helicopter, I could feel the arid heat from the backwash of the rotor blades blasting across my sweaty face. The temperature on any given day could run as high as 125 degrees; there was no escaping the heat. I felt like I was sitting under an enormous hair dryer, despite the fact that I was drenched in sweat from head to toe.

My body armor, which weighed nearly forty-five pounds, along with a Kevlar helmet, a CamelBak canteen, a basic load of ammunition, and assorted survival gear, intensified the heat. This was the military equivalent of wrapping a potato in tin foil and baking it. My eyes were already dry and itchy from the desert heat. The blast of wind from the rotor blades stirred the fine, powdery particles of sand into the helicopter, making my eyes even more red, raw, and irritated. My lips were cracking and my mouth was parched, but the thought of drinking water out of my CamelBak canteen, water that would be roughly the same temperature as the desert, barely crossed my mind. I had no appetite for hot water soup that day.

With a loaded weight of approximately twenty-two thousand pounds, the Blackhawk was surprisingly agile, flying at speeds of approximately 125 knots or 140 miles per hour. Its crew of four and one passenger kept constant vigil for enemy activity as they flew fifty to one hundred feet over the eternally shifting sea of sand below. The first time I saw one of these magnificent flying creatures, I was in awe. I stared at it like a high school kid checking out the latest Corvette. Yet the first thought that came to my mind was that the name of this awesome machine didn't quite match the sleek, powerful outer shell of this amazing creation.

The reference to the predator hawk was obvious, but a Blackhawk in flight brings to life more than nature. Rotors at the ready; the nonreflective, flat black skin, scaly and tough; a shape as sleek and aerodynamic as a heat-seeking Sidewinder missile—it looked more like an insect than a bird. It resembles nothing more than a well-groomed metal wasp. Watching one tragically downed in combat is to witness man's insignificance in the grand scheme of things; another insect squashed on history's windshield. Watching several in flight is to see the awesome wonder of man's modern marvel of a swarm in action.

There I was, inside that swarm, hitching a ride from one of those well-groomed metal wasps, feeling completely anonymous, inexplicably numb, and extremely vulnerable. At fifty-one years old, I didn't feel fully prepared to go to war, even though I had over twenty-eight years of military training, ranging from Special Forces Sniper School to the parachute training school at Fort Benning, Georgia. My infantry training as a private helped me understand the foundation of the entire military, including the mechanics of the foot soldier. No matter what kind of support he or she gets, eventually a private will have to kick in a door, walk out on point in a patrol, and secure the ground he or she just took from the bad guys.

Sometimes my sense of humor and easygoing personality suggested that I was a pushover; but when I said something, I said what I meant, and I stood by what I said. My previous military and civilian medical background made me a perfect asset for a new assignment with the 228th Combat Support Hospital and its home station in San Antonio, Texas. Now I was accompanying them on their deployment to Iraq.

The constant daily threat of surface-to-air missiles and small-arms fire kept me on my guard, wondering if my end would come from a shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade, better known as an RPG.

Despite the fiery images constantly played on TV for the anxious crowd back home, I found that the fighter pilot ratio of "99 percent boredom, 1 percent sheer terror" was true for the modern soldier as well. At this point, I wasn't sure which was worse.

Like most soldiers, during the boring times, I looked out over the barren Iraqi desert and reminisced about my family, my job as a respected podiatric surgeon, and the very comfortable civilian lifestyle I'd left back home. Some parts of my life had already started to disappear by now: the office pallor, the early signs of the middle-age spread, the mornings free of aches and pains. But other parts were still very real to me.

Like a phantom limb, I couldn't shake the expectation that each morning I'd rise to find myself at home, safe in my large California-style bed. In my memory, awakening to a blaring Bose stereo alarm clock was no longer an annoyance—not when compared to the sound of the morning Muslim call to prayer. I missed having my beautiful wife, Leslie, near me as I brushed the sleep from my eyes; I missed a good morning lick in the face from our twelve-pound cockapoo, Gus. It always took me a few moments to readjust to the nomadic, desert lifestyle I'd slowly grown accustomed to, a lifestyle that included the endless threat of unexpected violence from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and mortar and rocket attacks. True relaxation was impossible, and REM sleep was a thing of the past.

Even though I'd adjusted, I couldn't forget about my life back home—a life most people could only dream about. I lived in a two-story Mediterranean-style home with beige stucco, a dark red tiled roof, and a gorgeous view of the Gulf of Mexico. When I closed my eyes, I envisioned the cool, fresh water of our blue lagoon pool cascading from the rock waterfall. The lush, tropical backyard laced with palm trees, hibiscus, and bougainvillea plants was my refuge, my paradise, my home—and now over a half a world away. I had volunteered for Operation Iraqi Freedom and, on Christmas Day 2004, left behind a wonderful family, a beautiful home, and a lucrative medical practice. As the rest of the world opened presents and spent the day complaining about relatives while...