Posted by Thomas E Anthony on August 20, 2023:

Colonel Robert E. Lanigan is a personal hero, and my father-in-law. Colonel Lanigan was Commander, Division Artillery, in Kitzingen, Germany, when I met his daughter, Linda, at the officer's club. She and I were married in Kitzingen and he arranged for us to be escorted from the Catholic church in an Honest John rocket launcher, according to traditions of the artillery when the bride and groom ride off in a horse-drawn carriage. Colonel Lanigan, of Irish heritage, was born in New York State and continued to sing songs with his Irish lilt. In World War II he was S-3 of 10th Corps, and under orders from Eisenhower and Bradley, escorted German citizens through the Dachau death camp. He continued his career at Command and General Staff college and served as the field artillery instructor at the British Military Academy, Sandhurst, before Kitzingen. When Colonel Lanigan was assigned to Chief of Staff HALFSEE in Izmir, Turkey, and I was assigned to 1 Air Cavalry in Viet Nam, we all decided that Linda should stay with her parents while I went to war -- she was pregnant and needed the support of her parents, and the nearby Air Force hospital where our son, Thomas Jr, was born in 1967. I returned from Viet Nam via Saigon to Izmir to pick them up and to move to Fort Sill. Linda and I had another son, Michael, born 1973 in Vienna. Colonel Lanigan finished his career in Washington as the US Army Liaison to the US Congress. He is a hero to me, to his family and to his nation.

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