Family's military service comes full circle
as Taegu officer serves where dad fought
By Franklin Fisher, Taegu
bureau chief
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Mello |
TAEGU, South Korea — To walk his father’s walk, as Lt. Col.
Jeffrey A. Mello puts it, has been the road map for his life.
The long walk finally has led Mello to Korea, where his father,
Alvarinho Mello, fought a half-century ago.
Jeffrey Mello, 40, commands the Army’s 728th Military Police
Battalion, in Taegu. As a sergeant with Company K, 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry
Division, his father was wounded twice as an infantryman during the Korean War.
“He was a strong man, a very strong man, and he was very fair,
and I learned morals and ethics from him, and to a very great degree that’s why
I’m here today,” Jeffrey Mello said.
Mello’s deep respect for his father’s character, military
record and devotion to country, grew to have such a hold on the boy that it set the course
for his life as a man.
It led him to choose a military career, and his father’s branch,
the Army.
From his father he drew lessons about leadership and unit teamwork,
and he’s applied them during 18 years in the Army.
Alvarinho Souza Mello, entered the Army in October 1950, and arrived
in Korea in December 1951. His division saw fierce action against Chinese forces, and he
suffered wounds to the chest, ribs and head in May 1952, and again in June.
He left Korea in August 1952 and finished active service that
October. After a few years, he entered state law enforcement, patrolling the waterways off
such places as Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. He retired from the
Massachusetts Environmental Police as a deputy chief.
When Jeffrey Mello was a boy in Somerset, Mass., his father rarely
spoke of the combat he saw against the Chinese in Korea.
But he would tell of some things. Korea’s soaking rains and
frigid winters. And the time he hacked a foxhole out of frozen ground when his buddies
said it couldn’t be done.
“He was determined,” Jeffrey Mello said. “He stayed
with it and stayed with it and stayed with it and everybody said ‘Ah, you’re not
going to do it.’ And he said ‘I’m going to do it.’ ”
And he’d tell of the time his own unit abandoned him during a
patrol, a story that helped teach his son the importance of teamwork and about caring
enough for one’s troops to look out for their well-being.
On that occasion he was in the lead position when his unit halted
during a patrol. But with a Chinese attack believed imminent, the patrol got orders to
pull back. They did. Without him.
“They left him out there,” Jeffrey Mello said. “That
ain’t a grand and glorious thing, but it happens. He eventually made it through to
his unit.”
Such experiences of the soldier father pointed out lessons important
every day to the soldier son.
“That’s where ‘Take care of your men’ and
‘Everyone needs to know where everyone’s at’ came from,” Jeffrey Mello
said of rules to which he adheres as a unit commander.
Then came Operation Just Cause in December 1989, when U.S. troops
invaded Panama.
Jeffrey Mello was commanding officer of the 7th Military Police
Company, 7th Infantry Division, at Fort Ord, Calif. He was on leave visiting his parents
that New England winter when he learned he’d have to go.
“Mom, emotionally, didn’t want me to go, and family was
gathering around and I was relating to them about command and my organization,” he
said.
He could feel the loving concern for him that hung in the room. Then
he looked at his father. What followed was a crucial, almost breakthrough moment between
the two men, one that Mello to this day recalls with emotion.
“‘Dad, I gotta go.’ And he said, ‘I know you
do,’ and there was that communication in his eyes. The brown eyes seemed to say
‘I know where you are. I know you gotta go.’ There was that respect in his
eyes.”
It became clear his father also held great respect for his son.
“We understood each other and what it meant to soldier. It was
that mutual respect and that understanding of soldiering,” Jeffrey Mello said.
His father drove him to the airport.
Five years later, in July 1994, Jeffrey Mello’s father was dying
of lung cancer. Jeffrey Mello by then was stationed at Fort Devens, Mass. It meant a
chance to be together.
“I saw him suffering. He was hanging on because of the family.
And I went and told him, ‘Dad. It’s OK ... It’s OK ... The family is OK ...
And that night he died. I guess he understood me. It was OK. Otherwise he’d have
stayed as long as he could.”
On a wall in his office at Camp Henry, Jeffrey Mello displays his
father’s decorations and insignia, including his Purple Heart and Combat
Infantryman’s Badge.
For years, Jeffrey Mello had a conviction that he should serve the
Army in Korea.
“My military career wouldn’t be complete until I could make
it on over here. So, yes,” Jeffrey Mello said, “as far as conviction about being
here, longing, bringing closure, part of understanding my dad, wanting to walk his walk, I
have had a yearning. I’m living a dream.”
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