To Everyone..........

  This is the article that appeared in the Atlanta Journal Thursday about Allan Callaway's memorial service in Decatur Georgia. It was a wonderful day for all of us from Delta Company, Blackhorse and Georgia.
  It was great seeing all my best friends and meeting the family of SSGT Callaway. A lot of pictures were taken that will be forwarded or posted on delta company's site as soon as we get them and we were on all three local TV channels seeing everyone makes Nashville seem so much closer.
 This was a great day for Georgia and the Cav. Thank you for coming Tim, Carb, Jerry, Nightmare, Rob, and of course my T.C. .......'TOP'.  A special thanks for Troopers from other Blackhorse Troops that attended too......Thanks everyone for coming to my state for this terrific event.
 
John   'peewee'

 
I

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[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 5/23/02 ]

 

Decatur Vietnam hero to be honored in stone

By KAREN HILL
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

He was one of maybe a dozen little boys growing up together in the same Decatur neighborhood in the 1950s, smiling in a team photo in their navy-and-white Cubs Little League outfits.

 

alt
Renee Hannans / AJC
Jake Pfeifer of the Mableton Marble Co. installs a Vietnam memorial honoring Allan Callaway, who was killed by a land mine in that war. The monument will be at the DeKalb County Courthouse.

Allan Callaway was a dark blond, brown-eyed kid, the son and little brother who delighted in all-out water warfare with the garden hoses on the front lawn.

He was a mechanic who built his own go-cart, faster than the ones that came from Sears, and later had no hesitation about tinkering with the innards of a U.S. Army tank to make it fire better.

He was an Eagle Scout and No. 1 graduate from Non-Commissioned Officers School.

And Callaway was the soldier platoon leader Tim Kerns remembers riding off to his death in the South Vietnamese plain near Cambodia with a wide grin and a jaunty thumb's-up.

Hours after that cheerful goodbye, on Feb. 21, 1969, Callaway stepped on a land mine strong enough to blow up a 52-ton tank.

Callaway, who was 24 when he died, will be honored today when the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association unveils a memorial in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in downtown Decatur. The group has put up such memorials to individual Atlantans throughout the metro area for Memorial Day annually since 1987.

Callaway was leading three tanks, his acting as an escort for the second, which was towing one that had been disabled by a mine. They were traveling from near the Cambodian border toward the town of Long Binh for repairs.

It was a clear morning and a smooth-running assignment, said John Van Nuss, who was driving the second tank, until Callaway stepped onto a road, packed with red clay reminiscent of his home, and detonated a buried mine.

"It was a total surprise and an accident. Nobody knew when these things would happen," Van Nuss said. "Every tree, anthill, pile of grass -- you never know."

Callaway, the son of former Decatur Mayor Pro Tem Roe Callaway and Lois Callaway, was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with a V Device and the Purple Heart.

Several of Callaway's friends insist that his final resting place is not, in fact, beneath the small, flat granite marker that bears his name in the northeast quadrant of Decatur Cemetery, just in front of his mother's grave and with a view of the Glenn Lake baseball field where he once pitched a Little League no-hitter.

Callaway's spirit, they say, is with them.

"It's been over 33 years, but Allan has always held a special place in my heart," Kerns said. "One of the residuals of war, sometimes sad and sometimes happy, is that we remember our fallen brothers -- some of us every day. So, in a very good sense, Allan is with us always."






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