Robert Gamboa recalls he hadn’t been home from Vietnam more than a couple of hours that July day in 1967.

He had seen “more combat than I cared to” and now he sat silently in his home wondering what to do next with his life.

Then came a knock at his door. Gamboa’s wife said a neighbor wanted to talk.

The elderly man, a World War I veteran who knew of Gamboa’s two tours of duty in Vietnam, said that he had kept an eye out on Gamboa’s kids.

A bewildered Gamboa thanked the man. Then the man silently saluted Gamboa and thanked him for his duty.

Gamboa says he has thought a lot about that moment, initially because he didn’t know how to process it.

But that moment has become emblematic of Gamboa’s life and, more specifically, his place in that life.

There was a silent connection that day between two veterans spanning four wars.

It’s a connection that only veterans seem able to innately feel.

It’s the understanding of combat. It’s the memories of one moment talking to a friend and the next moment seeing that friend killed in action.

It’s also the reason that I approached Gamboa several weeks ago.

My boss wanted to begin publishing a series of stories featuring area veterans.

The directive was simple: Find someone who knows veterans and who has a passion for ferreting out their stories.

I knew immediately that was Gamboa.

I have known Robert for nearly a decade now, and I described him to my boss as an amateur historian. What I suspected but only recently confirmed was that Gamboa’s love of history emanated from a desire to preserve the story of area veterans.

Today we see the first installment of that love in a new series that we are calling “Voices of Valor.”

Fittingly, it’s an insightful profile of well-known veterans activist Manuel “Manny” Sustaita and appears on Page 6A in today’s newspaper.

Every other week, Gamboa will tell the tale of a veteran. If you have suggestions for Robert about a veteran’s story, email him at voicesofvalor@wacotrib.com.

“This prospect is exciting,” Gamboa said last week. “It’s an opportunity to share their experiences — and they’re always different. While they always describe some factor that we’re all familiar with as veterans, there’s always something unique. There’s always something that kept them alive.”

Gamboa approaches this project with a reverence that veterans sense immediately. And he’s unafraid to embrace the poignancy of those moments when long-ago, often harrowing memories come spilling out.

He’s been doing this for a couple of years privately. This is now an opportunity for him to share some of his tales publicly.

They are of people like Frank Herrera, a World War II veteran who was a prisoner of war in Germany.

Several years ago, Gamboa began interviewing Herrera about the elder man’s war experiences. They were experiences the former POW shared with no one and he agreed to speak with Gamboa on condition that Gamboa never write about it.

As fate would have it, when Gamboa began working on the Voices of Valor project for us, the family of Herrera called to say their father was near death.

Gamboa went to visit the dying man and whispered to him, “I bring the love of the community.”

Herrera, unable to speak, acknowledged Gamboa’s words.

Then Robert asked for Herrera’s permission to finally tell the World War II veteran’s story.

Herrera agreed.

Last week, Herrera died at age 87. But the community whose love Gamboa brought will soon be told Herrera’s story.

That’s what Voices of Valor is all about.

Contact Editor Carlos Sanchez at 757-5703.