Today in SF History: December 16

Today in Special Forces History:

1971: SGT Brian Buker awarded MOH for action on on 5 April 1970. Buker died in the act and so was, like most MOH recipients, a posthumous awardee. He was 21 years old, and came from Maine.

One nexus of our daily life in the 10th Special Forces Group at Ft. Devens, MA, was the clean, warm swimming pool named after Buker. We swam, on my team, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at about three PM. Seeing Buker's name on the sign for the pool every day made me look him up, which in those pre-internet days took some doing. For you, it's a mere click away here. (Note that that site misspells his first name... it's Brian, not Bryan). 

When the Army handed most of Devens over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Buker Pool was one of the first buildings destroyed. No idea why

source: The Special Forces Regimental History Calendar, 1993. Special Forces Historical Society Research Organization, Seminole, FL, 1993. (privately printed)

The SFHS in turn credits the Office of Command Historian, USASOC, Fort Bragg, NC. 

The same information, uncredited, is online here. 

Many online sources and SF-community sources are being used to expand these posts. The online sources will be linked in the text.