Ret. Brigadier General finds GTO and peace in Vietnam

The vietnam vet and his long-lost friend
The Marines called him GTO. Mike Neil thought of him as a son. Now, 40 years later, Neil returns to battle his demons – and find the boy.
By John Wilkens, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. June 14, 2009


People sometimes ask Mike Neil if he ever thinks about the Vietnam War.
“Every day,” says Neil, a retired Marine brigadier general.
It's not just the combat, the night ambushes and hours-long firefights in the jungles and rice paddies near Da Nang. It's not the Navy Cross he earned for taking out an enemy machine-gun nest.
Mostly what he remembers from his 13-month tour are the people left behind – the dead and the living.
Earlier this year, the ghosts called him back, as ghosts have been doing to military veterans for hundreds of years.
“Something felt unfinished,” Neil said.
He wanted to see some of the battlefields, leave laminated photos of two friends at the places where they were killed. And he wanted to find GTO.
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The vietnam vet and his long-lost friend