Frank A. (Tony) Fiore, LTC US Army Ret.
Tony was born an Army brat at Ft. Riley, KS. His father was a West Point graduate, Cavalry officer and veteran of WII. He grew up in a military family and followed his father’s assignments to Ft. Knox, Germany and Spain.
After completing Basic Signal Officer training at Ft. Gordon Ga., Tony continued Airborne at Ft. Benning. His active duty assignments were with the XVIII Airborne Corps. Ft. Bragg; 24th Infantry Division Augsburg Germany, US Army MILGROUP Bogota Colombia, and with the 25th Infantry Division CuChi Republic of Viet Nam.
He served his first tour with the 50th Signal Bn. XVIII Airborne Corps.
In 1964 he was assigned to the Signal Bn. of the 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg Germany. He relearned German. He served as a Platoon leader. During that tour, the Army decided to assign Signal officers to Combat Brigades as the Signal Officer on the Brigade staff. Tony jumped at the chance and took initial Brigade Signal Officer training at Lingries, graduating at the top of his class. After graduation, he was assigned as the first Signal Officer in the 2nd Brigade 24th Infantry Division.
While this was neither Aviation nor Military Intelligence, it was out of the clutches of the Signal Corps and into true combat units.
When the Army discovered that Tony was fluent in Spanish, they sent him to Colombia to be the Signal Officer in the USMILGRP. The Signal Corps needed a Spanish fluent officer for their Colombia assignment. Two years into the Colombia assignment, the Signal Corps “discovered” that Tony would need to go to Viet Nam to be promotable and curtailed his Colombia tour with orders to Viet Nam.
Upon arrival in Saigon, he was assigned as the Signal Officer for the 2nd Brigade 25th Infantry Division in Cu Chi.
Upon his return to the US, Tony visited the Signal Branch in Washington, DC and requested assignment to a list of available openings at (Signal Attaché in Madrid; Foreign Area Specialist program in Latin America, COPECOMI in Panama) and was denied all of them.
Tony submitted his resignation and became a civilian in February, 1971.
He got his first civilian job with Air Signal, a paging company subsidiary of MCI and installed paging operations and equipment in the Bahamas, Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand and Argentina.
From there he went to work with TRT telecommunications negotiating telecommunications agreement with the governments in Central and South America.
The Defense Intelligence Agency needed someone with a military background who could freely travel around Latin America. Tony was offered the position and readily accepted. His dream of finally working for Military Intelligence was about to come true.
This was the most interesting and rewarding period of his career. Reporting directly to the assistant Director DIA, he was given orientation-training assignments with the DIA, CIA and FBI. His assignments in Latin America were the most interesting of all. This service enabled Tony to complete his 20 years of service, be promoted to LTC, and retire in 1989.
Today, Tony lives in South Florida where he voluntarily serves his community.