Beau Wise - Three Wise Men: A Navy SEAL, a Green Beret, and How Their Marine Brother Became a Wars Sole Survivor

You can hang out with us tonight, Jeremy said.

As the youngest, nothing made me happier than hearing those seven words. It was a crisp, fall 1989 night in southern Arkansas, where we grew up not far from a town called Hope, as then governor Bill Clinton would make famous a few short years later.

I hurriedly moved my mattress from my room to theirs and slid between their tall pine beds. Jeremy was fifteen years old, while the middle brother, Ben, was twelve. I was only five, which made both my brothers truly larger than life.

With a huge smile on my face as I pulled up my blanket and settled in between my two heroes, our mother, Mary, entered Jeremy and Bens room.

Are you camping out with the boys tonight, Beau? she said with a chuckle.

Jeremy and Ben had already fired up the Nintendo by then, so we each gave my mom a distracted nod before she told us to press Pause on Duck Hunt, which all three of us loved to play since the video game involved firing a plastic pistol.

It was time for our nightly military story. While Jeremy and Ben were obviously too old for bedtime stories, I was just reaching the age where I could comprehend the concept of service before self.

After Ben tossed aside the Nintendo gun and Jeremy cleared the finished homework scattered all over his bed, I listened to my brothers ask our mom questions about the Civil War. They especially loved hearing stories about Union and Confederate military leaders like Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Stonewall Jackson.

My mom was a walking encyclopedia on American conflicts, which greatly excited Ben, who always wanted to find out more about the Wise familys involvement in our nations wars.

Ben first asked about our grandfather John Morgan, who served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. Jeremy then asked about Great-Uncle Darwin, who fought in the bloody WWII battle of Guadalcanal.

Uncle Darwin was a U.S. Marine Corps Raider and Purple Heart recipient. While subsequently fighting the Japanese at Saipan, he was shot in the back of the head but initiallyand incrediblysurvived when the bullet ricocheted and glanced off the inside of his helmet.

Instead of going home, Uncle Darwin chose to stay with his unit and finish his combat tour. What he couldnt have realized is that the head wound would later become infected. The decision to stay and fight in the Pacific would ultimately cost him his life several years later.

He never, ever quit, said my mom to a wide-eyed Jeremy, who I could tell was enthralled by the notion of fighting until the end.

My personal favorite story was that of Great-Great-Uncle Lyon, a Marine Corps doughboy who fought in the harrowing Argonne Forest during World War I.

Uncle Lyon was one of the original Teufel Hunden, or Devil Dogs, the German nickname for the select few doughboys whooutnumbered and outgunnedassaulted heavily fortified positions in the legendary Battle of Belleau Wood.

These little stories loomed large for all of us, but especially Ben. His passion and pride in our family roots was something I would definitely share, but not until much later in life.

After Jeremy briefly shifted the conversation back to World War II and military leaders like Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, my mother told us it was time for bed. All of us knew that meant it was time to lower our heads in prayer.

Lord, please protect my three sons, said our mother, who also offered a prayer for our ten-year-old sister, Heather.