Mike Caron lives in Liberty.

As a kid, I’d think of river pirates whenever the Androscoggin came into view.

Reading “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” triggered that fantasy. Another Tom, this one from Maine, transformed those make-believe river pirates into real-life “river patriots.”

Tommy McMahon’s memorial rests just below the Great Falls in Auburn’s Veterans Park. Tommy is one of three Mainers who earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Myself and my kid brother, Dave Caron, were in school with Tommy and his big brother Mike. Dave and I enlisted in 1966. Tommy joined a year later.

On March 19, 1969, in the middle of my combat tour, Tommy died rescuing his wounded buddies.

Another Mainer, Brian Buker, earned his Medal of Honor while serving in B-55 “Mike Force,” the same Special Forces Mobile Strike Force unit where I first experienced combat. Brian was from Benton, on the banks of the Kennebec River. On his first Vietnam tour, Brian wasn’t yet a Green Beret. By his second deployment he was SF qualified.

On April 5, 1970, Sgt. Buker died eliminating two machine gun bunkers to save his men.

Special Forces MSG Gary Gordon was from Lincoln, on the Penobscot River. Gray earned his Medal of Honor in Somalia. His story is better known due to the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” The details of all three stories are easily found on the internet. For more, visit the Maine Military Historical Society in Augusta.

I learned about Special Forces MSG Ray Caron of Lewiston, who recently died, from a friend in a private group of SF vets who get together once a month for breakfast. At first, I wondered whether Ray was my older cousin. I hadn’t seen him since my “river pirate” days.

This Raymond, however, was several years behind me at Lewiston High. We were in Vietnam at about the same time — he as a Marine — but our paths never crossed.

This Raymond Caron was born in 1950. Ray grew up on Webster Street. In 1969, he was wounded in Operation Pipestone Canyon, the first of the two Purple Hearts he earned. After Vietnam, he was assigned to Marine One, the elite Marine helicopter squadron that securely transports presidents, vice presidents and visiting heads of state.

In the 1970s, Ray joined the Army. He volunteered for Ranger school, then became a Green Beret. He was assigned to my old 5th Group.

By then, our war was over. The War on Terror was the top mission. Ray attended Special Forces scuba school in Key West. Then he volunteered for a highly classified project codenamed Blue Light. Blue Light was soon replaced by the much larger specially trained and equipped “Delta Force.” By now virtually every American knows about Delta.

Later, Ray Caron served with 1st Special Forces Group’s detachment in South Korea. He trained Korean SF in unconventional warfare. He taught their elite forces how to conduct missions deep behind enemy lines. His actual missions are still classified.

Ray returned to Special Forces scuba as an instructor and worked until one of his old war wounds required surgery. After recovering, he returned to South Korea with the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade, another highly classified unit that gathered information about military activities across the DMZ. Ray was a “clandestine human intelligence” agent targeting the North Korean military. It was a high-risk assignment.  

Back at Fort Bragg, Ray Caron earned a degree from a local college in golf course management. He returned to Korea, where he managed the course at Army Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu. That facility was named for a Ho Chunk (Winnebago) Indian who won his Medal of Honor during the Korean War. In 1998, Ray moved to Thailand. He and his wife, Lan, spent the next several decades helping American expatriates obtain their VA benefits.

A new exhibit about Mainers in Special Forces in the Augusta military history museum honors Brian Buker and Gary Gordon, as well as our 5th Group commander, Col. Bob Rheault from Owls Head. I hope to persuade my SF friends who curate that display that Ray Caron, my latest “river patriot,” deserves a spot there too.