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Tex was my now ex-Grandfather in law, and is my son's Great Grandfather, he was also my Father's (U.S. Custom's Service) hand to hand and special weapons instructor for the Department of the Treasury years ago. I believe he handled most of the local Federal Agencies training including the D.E.A., Customs, Border Patrol, and A.T.F. I had the pleasure of spending a few holiday dinners with Tex and his wife and enjoyed the hours of exciting war time combat stories. I have also had the opportunity to spend a few dinners at his home in Yuma, Arizona and saw his highly impressive medals and awards cabinet, which included one of his fingers which he retrieved and placed into his pocket during a beach landing when it was detached by an incoming bullet had been hit numerous times and his entire abdomen was mostly scare tissue from major wounds. I don't recall the exact amount of Purple Hearts he received but I think it was between 5 and 9. He had several other awards and crosses for commendable service and heroic activities he had performed while in combat. He always kept his Military Dress Uniform, which had one sleeve almost completely covered in service stripes, perfectly cleaned, always prepared, to include spit shined boots in a small area of his home devoted to his military career was always prepared for combat until the day he died. I remember the first time I actually met him (I married his only Grand daughter so yes I was scared shitless as I walked to his front door after hearing so much about this legendary soldier) Tex answered the door, he was a larger man standing about 6'7" and quite strong as he asked me who I was and reached out his hand, as I answered I shook hands with Tex and remember feeling the bones in hand almost crumbling and just before they were going to crack he released and politely welcomed me into his home with a joking smile, evidently I must have instinctively squeezed back to save my hand from being broken and he made some sort of comment regarding the importance of a firm handshake. He was a very talkative guy but for the most part was all about his business; killing people. I remember my Father would talk about some guy everyone called “Tex” years before when I was in High School. My dad whom was a high grade U.S. Customs Officer with 30+ years service and a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army Reserves had been a student of Tex Ferguson in hand to hand and weapons tactic training which they would partially conduct at the shooting range outside Yuma-he would tell me stories about this large man that has killed and could kill anyone with pretty much any metallic object from 30 feet distance, telling me that in a demonstration Tex would bury a standard screw drive into a wood post-hitting the same spot as he walked around talking, he also tied my Dad into a knot when demonstrating the tactics used for taking down an adversary, my Dad was a very strong man, lifted a lot of weights (Bench 250+) five foot seven inches tall; and about 235 lbs. I had never heard my Dad talk about anyone ever in his life like he talked about Tex Ferguson. Years later when I married into his family and I informed my dad about our new family members, he was surprised to hear that Tex was now a family member, then he basically said that there are few humans on this planet that were put here to kill, and could not be killed in combat, Tex was without a doubt one of those humans. Tex was also a former Texas Ranger before his military career. My son read his obituary to the large crowd during his burial ceremony. He was featured in the local newspaper (Yuma Daily Sun) as he read to the highly decorated and large crowd of friends, family and soldiers at his funeral. He was the highest ranked enlisted soldier to be alive until his death in 1998-he was Sergeant of the Army, he also officially accepted the commission of the M-14 by the U.S. Army.