About a year after high school, I enlisted in the USMC during July 1959.  After Boot Camp I was assigned to the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean, then to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, with the Second Marine Recon Battalion.  I was also part of the Marine boxing team for a short time.  I was honorably discharged in 1963, then re-enlisted in April 1965 for duty in Vietnam.  I volunteered for First Force Recon Company and was a member of the Special Landing Force in Vietnam for a total of six major operations.

In July 1966 I was seriously wounded during Operation Hastings and spent about a year in the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.  In September 1966, I married my girlfriend who came from California and in 1967 was retired from the Marine Corps as a result of the wounds received in Vietnam.  I worked for the post office and then attended Long Beach State University and received a degree in engineering.  I worked with various city building departments, in private engineering firms and with the federal government.

In 1994 I met up with my good high school buddy John Brenner, who now lived in California and was the Western United States District Manager for the Disaster Assistance branch of the Small Business Administration.  I spent several years working for him and then was able to roll all of my federal employment together for a retirement.  After a few more years working as a consulting engineer, I fully retired in 2004.

We now live in the country with my wife’s horses and a couple of dogs.  I started a local unit of “Clovis Young Marines”, which is a youth group and now spend all of my time split between this organization, my grandkids and my family.

My entire history is on my web site, (copy & paste this link to your web browser) Mydutybook.com, and on our unit web site, (copy & paste this link to your web browser) clovisyoungmarines.org.

Anyone who comes to central California can look me up in Clovis.

Sincerely,

George Tom Dillon, USMC (Retired)

12208 East Sierra Avenue

Clovis, CA 93619

(559) 298-9719