Gary.C.Moore was born in Dallas, Texas December 24, 1943 when the Russians were crossing the Dneiper River. He lived until he was six years old in beautiful Wyoming, mountains, rivers, and antelope all over the place. When he was five, in war games between the 'Confederates' and 'Yankees', he always chose the Confederate side until one day an older kid told him that Texas and the Confederacy fought for slavery. He never played that game again. His family moved back to a dreary town in Texas. It has one blessing: very few distractions of its own. He went to the University of Texas Austin, a great school, off and on, often flunking out, until he was going to be drafted in 1966 whereupon, the thought of "involuntary servitude" being totally repulsive him, he Quixotically volunteered for three years. He was trained as an artillery field wireman at Fort Hood outside Killeen, Texas.

Gary in uniform with new puppy. He explains..."Some neighbors gave us the pooch named Genipra. I don't know how narrow streets are in England, but I almost got an Army truck stuck between cars on one of these streets on assignment to help a sargeant move from his house. I was VERY careful backing up, did not destroy anything, and told the people that sent me out, 'No way'."

His captain was an ex-green beret who told them horrible stories about our allies, the South Vietnamese (the real conflict was between those educated in French Catholic culture and the ignorant Buddhist peasantry which was considered as a nationalist identity by the North-- remember the Communists refused to accept the surrender of Saigon in1975 from anyone in the South Vietnamese government except General Big Minh, the ONLY Buddhist general in the South Vietnamese forces. Gary's groups were divided into two parts to be shipped to Vietnam. The first part left and they all died. American casualty lists from both the Korean War (36,000 killed) and the Vietnam War (50,000 killed) were highly underestimated, so these figures are old. At the very last day Gary's group got a change of orders, and by a bureaucratic blunder he ended up at Camp Darby ("Darby's Rangers" from WWII), ten miles outside of Pisa.

Me and my first wife after getting married in the Pisa town hall by the mayor. The Camp Darby authorities said they could not marry anybody, the Italians said at first it would have to be a Catholic wedding (to all intents and purposes Catholicism was still the state religion.)
A Baptist missionary in Genoa was forced to preach from his apartment balcony because he legally could not set up a Baptist church, but later said I could have a civil ceremony with the Mayor. She was a good woman, believed in me when she should not have, but was too dependent on masculine leadership. After our divorce (her idea), on her own, she did not have a good life.