On Memorial Day I think of my father who served in the military for 30 years thinking of you dad .

On Memorial Day I think of my father who served in the military for 30 years thinking of you dad .
Lt. Col. Herbert Navarro born in Dell Rio Texas February 11, 1926. Was one in a family of 13 children and grew up in San Antonio Texas. In 1941 when he was 15 years old he started working for Western Union as a bicycle delivery boy to help support his family. He told me his most difficult deliveries were military death notice telegrams to the families of soldiers fighting in World War II. In February 1944 he enlisted at the age of 18 in the U.S. Army. After boot camp he was given the assignment of being a POW guard for German prisoners relocated to Louisiana. At the end of World War II he went to college on the G.I. Bill as a ROTC cadet. He graduated in 1950 with a degree in physics and was sent to the Korean War as a second lieutenant in the US Army first Field artillery. After his tour in Korea he told me while he was in the Army he would see the planes flying above and thought he would rather be up in the sky than down here on the ground. He then proceeded to transfer into the Air Force in 1952. He was sent to flight navigation school and also received a bachelor degree in electrical engineering. In 1970 he did a tour in Vietnam developing night vision imagery systems on the gunship Puff the Magic Dragon. In 1972 our family was transferred to Torrejon Air Base Madrid, Spain. My father fluent in Spanish and now a Lt. Col. was put in charge of Combat Grande the installation of the defense radar for Spain. My father joined the Army as a Pfc. in 1944 and retired with 30 years of military service in 1974 at the age of 48. He was a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He was a master navigator with continuous flight status and qualified on the B- 25, C-119, B-47, B-52 and the KC-135.