What 34th FIST character is named after...

[BlackenedX]

Wow thank you for clearing up the whole first name as well as last name thing I now know 100% who it is. It is...." drum roll" Tom Bladon the NHL player who played for the Philadelphia Flyers during the 1970's. He along with other key characters like Dupont, Kelly, Clarke, Schultz (and his nickname "the hammer"), Van Impe, Dornhoefer, and "Nero", who I'm pretty sure you got from "Shiro" are all from the 1973-4 team roster. Also I'm fairly sure you got other characters names from rosters of other years. By the way, here is the link that proves it all http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjcn8Ty49nY

Since I didn't know his first name applied to the letter swap i kept on googling "Bladon" which gave me a-million-and-one results. Now that the name was cleared up i just googled "Tam Bladon" and "Tom Bladon" was the first link...go figure

[z665almostevil]

For my Lit class in college we read The Things They Carried and found that Rat Kelly is named after a character "Bob “Rat” Kiley"

[DavidS]

No I understand its Bladon not Bladen but I was unaware that the one letter difference included his first name so i thought the "o" in Bladon would be an "e" in order to constitute that change.

My bad, I think I was distracted at the time. You're absolutely right, Bladen was a one letter change.
Sorry to take so long getting back, but I was out of town for awhile, and had some other stuff when I got back. Not to mention spending so much time keeping up with the Olympics. I had no idea curling was so slow and took so long.

[DavidS]

All right, you got it! Most of the characters in third platoon in the very beginning were named after members of the Stanley Cup winning Flyers of 1974-6. FIST SgtMaj Shiro was named after Fred Shiro, who was the coach of those teams. A few, eg Kerr and Linsman, joined the Flyers later. Charlie Bass was named after someone Dan served with, and who he greatly admired. Some others had nothing to do with the Flyers, but had different connections with either Dan or me. Eg, Claypoole, Dean, Doyle.