Vol. 114
A FINAL SALUTE TO
“THE COLONEL”
BY MARK YOST
My dad died on Oct. 11, 1973, when I was just 10 years old. Two decades later, I met Wyly Watson when I was dating his oldest daughter, Kate. I broke up with her two years later but as I’ve explained ever since, “I dumped the girl and kept the family.” More specifically, I kept “The Colonel,” as I called him for more than three decades. He became the dad I never had as an adult, and his death on Oct. 1, 2026, was as heartbreaking as that of my real father.
Charles Wyly Watson was a career Army officer whose voice would crack talking about the 60,000 British casualties on the first day of the World War I Battle of the Somme and get excited about the performance specifications of the World War II Rolls-Royce Merlin Engine.
But he was also a cultured man who could recite Shakespeare, hum along to almost any piece of classical music, and then tell you how, when he was thirteen years old, he fell in love with Debbie Reynolds watching the MGM musical, Two Weeks with Love. In short, he was a Renaissance man, learned in the art of war, as well as literature, music, ancient and modern history and, most importantly, life. He was the father figure I never really had, he made me a better father to my own son, George, and he made me a better man.
Wyly was born on the island of Oahu on Dec. 2, 1936. His parents were teachers in the native community that worked in the pineapple fields. Just shy of his fifth birthday, he would tell you, he watched Japanese planes fly over his house on their way to attack Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. It was a momentous event for the country and for Wyly personally, as his own military service would come to define so much of his life.
He graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., in 1958 and spent the next 20 years in Army Intelligence, tracking “radicals” in Greenwich Village, communists in West Germany, and two tours with the Fourth Infantry Division in Vietnam. He was proudest of his work with the POW/MIA office, discovering and returning remains of missing service members, many of them his fellow comrades from Vietnam.
As dedicated as Wyly was to the military, he was very much the nucleus at the center of the Watson clan. I hardly ever heard him swear or lose his temper. He and his wife of 65 years, Helen, shared a love of classical music, especially opera. When they were stationed in Germany in the 1970s, they piled the whole family into a VW microbus and dragged their three girls all over Europe, making them see those things that their classical educations had taught them were important: cathedrals, monuments, museums, as well as music and theater. (Mrs. Watson was famous for breaking into arias in churches across Europe to “test the acoustics.” After a few bars, Wyly would politely say, “All right, Helen, that’s enough.”)
 |
| Helen and Wyly Watson |
I was lucky enough to join the Watsons later in life on trips to Devon, England, the beaches of Normandy, and to their “country house” (the South Carolina euphemism for former plantation) on Wadmalaw Island outside Charleston. It was on these trips and at their home that I learned some of the Watson family lore over heated card games. I also learned what ferocious and jovial competitors they were – especially The Colonel, whose signature retort when you thought you had him cornered was “Not so fast, Snodgrass.”
 |
| Helen and Wyly Watson |
It was our mutual love of the military and history that first bonded The Colonel and me. I came by my love of the military almost from birth. My dad, Capt. George F. Yost, had been a “chest cutter” – combat surgeon – in Korea and spent the rest of his life working for the VA, taking care of the men that he loved and respected so much. I grew up not listening to Aesop’s fables or Dr. Seuss, but stories about Patton’s Third Army, Civil War campaigns, and the American Revolution. In short, The Colonel and I loved the same things and spoke the same language.
When I was posted in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal editorial page in the mid-1990s, I met Jacques Garain, a Belgian resistance fighter and veteran of the Belgian Fusiliers, the unit that had fought with Patton. I immediately knew that Wyly and Jacques had to meet. After some prodding, we flew to Belgium in 1999 and attended a Patton staff reunion, where Wyly met Jacques. A year later, Jacques came to the U.S., and I drove him to Charleston to spend a few days with the Watsons. When we pulled into the driveway, Jacques teared up. Hanging prominently from the second-floor balcony was a Belgian flag.
The Colonel very much influenced me when my son George and I made our own pilgrimages to Europe. In 2010, after parking the car at Sword Beach, George, then just twelve years old, stopped and said, “Just a minute, Dad.” He ran back to the car and got a Ziplock bag, one of five he’d brought to collect sand from each of the invasion beaches. When I told The Colonel that story, he beamed with pride. Partly because he revered that history, and partly because he thought of George in many ways as his own grandson.
When I told The Colonel that I was going to Vietnam in 2025, he told me about the orphanage in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) that he had helped when stationed there. He gave me a vague description of where it was, and some photos of a young Lt. Watson surrounded by smiling Vietnamese children. Amazingly, I found it, using his photos to match the architecture of the building, including the window frames. It’s now home to a school for the blind. I took pictures and showed them to The Colonel the last time I saw him. I think he loved that the building was still there and still being used to do some good.
 |
| Former Orphanage - Today |
As I look back on our friendship, I wonder about this officer and a gentleman who had such a profound impact on my life. More broadly, I wonder if our culture is still producing men like this. Two military men I know – Adm. John Christenson and Lt. Col. Tom Linn – are cut from the same cloth as The Colonel, but they’re just a half a generation younger. And like The Colonel, Linn and Christenson are the exception rather than the rule – at least in my experience.
Where are the Wyly Watsons today? Sadly, I can’t answer that. I can say that I will miss him and will feel his presence for the rest of my life.
_________________________
Mark Yost is the author of the Rick Crane Noir Series for Stay Thirsty Press and writes book reviews – mainly on military history – for The Wall Street Journal. He served in the U.S. Navy in the 1980s and his son George served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
