VETERANS PRESS: 50 Portraits of veterans and their stories No. 1

Thomas Poff grew up in St. Louis. His father had been a machine gunner in World War I, and the son remembers him fondly. "My dad was the gentlest man ever," he says. "We played catch and built stairways and rock walls." Tragically, Mr. Poff died of a ruptured artery at age 44, and Thomas had a difficult time with grief and anger. "Something inside of me just died. I wanted to hurt everything in the world."

Football became an outlet for his emotions. "When my dad died," he recalls, "I didn't have much humanity left in me; to be quite honest, I hated everybody. In football, I got to hurt people." The contact sport and its physical exertion helped Poff, but he still missed his father. Even today, he speaks highly of him. "I will never be a tenth of the man my dad was — never."

Football couldn't heal all of Poff's distress. After high school, he enlisted in the Marines. "My mom understood that I was a wild child," he says. "There are people out there who are wild. We can't help it."

Poff remembers basic training with a smile. "I was in great shape. Run 5 miles; eat breakfast; run 5 miles to digest. Then you go to exercise. Boot camp, yeah, I liked it."

His training served him well, and he eventually became part of a special unit: Force Recon. "I was picked," he says, "because I was the best of the best. I could run a six-minute mile with a rifle and a 50-pound pack on my back. I did 3 miles in 18 minutes flat. I'm proud of that."

His nickname, "Iceman," came about because of his dependability. "What had to be done, you called me," he asserts. "No matter where it was. It was my job. My captain one time said, 'I don't know how he does it; he must have ice in his veins.' That's how I got the name."

Thinking back on his days in Vietnam, he recalls the unpleasant surroundings. For example, he warns, "Bugs were a killer; never sleep next to a tree. Centipedes were 10 to 12 inches long. They could take a bite out of you the size of a nickel, and that's no lie." Ants posed an additional problem. If five or six of them bit, he says, it felt like getting hit by a bullet.

Weather in Southeast Asia also contributed to his misery. "Monsoon season wasn't all that great," Poff recalls. He and fellow Marines used condoms to cover the tops of their gun barrels, to keep them dry on the inside.

"I used an M14-7.62 round," he says. "That was a heavy rifle. Fully loaded it weighed 9.5 pounds." He preferred the M-14, which could function in any situation. "You can throw it in the mud, dripping mud and then empty the clip. If you threw an M16 in the mud, picked it up and pulled the trigger, all you'd hear is 'click.' President Johnson's people were too cheap to send a cleaning kit with each M-16."

As a sniper, Poff was often inserted into an area from a helicopter. "I jumped out first because I was in charge," he says.

But he recalls one specific mission when everything went bad.

"I was making sure it wasn't an ambush. I jumped and got about 20 feet from the door," he remembers.

"Something didn't feel right." But before he could yell "bush" to indicate an enemy ambush, he was hit.

"When I got hit, the guy behind me also got hit and pulled the trigger of his 12-gauge. I caught the 12 gauge and the sniper round — double whammy."

Amazingly, he survived both. "The doctors called it my refusal to die," he declares. 

But the recovery wasn't easy. "I came out of the Naval Hospital after four months in a coma, with bullets in the back of my head. A scar runs for 7 inches at the back of my skull."

Not everyone fared as well. "There were 116 men in my unit called The Devil Dogs, and 12 of us came back," Poff says. And now, he's the last one still living. 

Emotions almost overcome him when he remembers his comrades. "Friends I would die for, people who would stand behind me and take bullets to make sure I didn't. How many people are you going to find like that on the street? Or in life?"

Poff appreciates the military and the work they're doing now in the Middle East. "I have more respect for the people over there in that desert and in Afghanistan," he states. "I hurt when I hear one of them has died. It just tears a piece of me out because I know what it's like to lose a man in combat."

As he sits in his living room, the one-time "wild child" holds his head high. He points to his clock with its Marine Corps logo, and to his USMC cap with its sniper pin. "There will never be a day you will hear me say I am an ex-Marine. There are no ex-Marines," he declares. 

"There may be ex-Army, ex- Navy and ex-Air Force, but a Marine is always a Marine. Semper Fidelis!"

After a pause, Poff adds a final thought. "I have one poem that I want to put in your book. This is one that will make everybody, not veterans alone, think. Man spends so much of his life killing time, but in reality, it's time that is killing man."