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."