Single Harness©: Your Neighbor’S Memoir…You Just Never Know.

By Millard Avon Gregory

Single Harness Synopsis

First one went down smoothway too smoothand before I could say thatll do it Michael had already done it again for us all.

And then Marlboro and DR swiveled around and asked me to stand for the Presentation. I said what presentation, and even Michael asked me to stand for the Presentation. So I stood up and Michael pretty much came to attention behind the bar as hed been in on it from earlier that day.

Marlboro pulled out a piece of Delta Airlines stationary on which hed printed block letters by scratching the lines over and over, DR placed a paper bag on the bar, and Marlboro read from the sheet:

It is with the highest honor that we hereby present

The Inaugural General Spicer Medal
For SOA
wwwhbddwmg

With that, DR pulled a 10 Buck Knife in its leather sheath from the bag and they both presented it to me. The certificate is long gone, but the Buck Knife has been with me for 35 years or so and is in my briefcase as Im writing this. It is and always has beensince that evening at the Bahamianthe most valuable thing I own.

And in case you havent figured it out: SOA stood for Saving Our Ass, and the letters below meant: wherein we would have been dead ducks without Millard Gregory.
Id had the opportunity a few weeks before and luckily it had gone OK. Those Angels again.

Getting to that evening on Key Biscayne was impossible for a kid from rural southern Indianaexcept it happened.

It began at 6 years old in a giant State Park managed by my Granddad, to Scouting, to sports, to college, to being paid to skydive, to volunteering for the Army in 66 after my Junior year. And then those Angles took over.

Purely by the luck of the draw I met a Master Sergeant and a Captain involved in recruiting 18 men for intensive training aimed at Special Missions, and after spending most of 2 days with them they invited me to consider a different path.

Along the way cherry bombs rolled down the aisle of a beatnik joint, a boulder was placed in the top of a tree, indelible impression was made by both Spud and Squid Marlow, and a 63 Wheeler motor yacht was kept together by the worms holding hands.

And after all the training and the formation of our Teams and a good number of Missions we learned how, if you were so inclined, to turn a Dove into a Hawk: Show them pictures of what we saw being done in rooms where screams could not be heard, and in rooms where those in power wanted the screams to be heard by others for effect, all around the globe. Theyll get itIve seen it happenand theyll never really sleep
again.

Ever have the rain end exactly half way back your motorcoach? Or watch a home slide into the Pacific for what seemed to be a good reason in those days? Or break a Team Member out of a jail in Piedras Negras?

No? How about having that same Team Member save your life in a dirt alley bar a year or 2 later?

Then you may not have learned to ignore most any injury until you get back to secure care. You might not even have had to set your own arm with a rope and a treeand then complete a Mission.

If it all sounds dramatic, it wasnt. It was just what we did to have some fun and to keep going back. The focus, for 24 years, was simply the next Mission, and there was always a next one.

After hiking so many nights off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Grandfather Mountain area, and spending February weeks up in the Beartooth Wilderness with a horse and a pack horse, and logging 182 jumps with 114 of them at night, the toughest thing Ive done is to be the last of our 18 alive.

Good news is that theres a Plan: no grey rooms, no tubes and 24 hour beeps, but instead a fast trip to the Yellowstone Country, and a horse that will find his way back to the barn.

A cat caused me to write Single Harness, to surprise my Colonel with some of what we did between Missions (it didnt surprise him), and it is dedicated to the 17 and to all who have served.

The complete title is Single Harness, Your neighbors memoiryou just never know.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496900074

Millard Avon Gregory

Single Harness© is presented while maintaining certain confidentialities. The reasons are: 1. oaths preclude inviting questions; and: 2. while this is a memoir and dedicated to our people back then, it’s with the greatest respect for those currently serving and all who have served. I always think of Millard as a businessman's businessman. He's moved from one success to another. Now that I know a little more about his story, I have to be impressed. How does a guy regularly disappear to serve our country for weeks at a time AND still build a successful company? Over achiever would seem to be the word. His writing style is down home, just like he is, yet his story, if fully revealed, would make a new generation of James Bond books. Single Harness will give you a glimpse into a fascinating life well lived. B. Ashley Corporate CEO

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© 2014 MCT, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Cover Photography by Gary Crandall

Eye of the Storm

Gray Crane Studios

25 W. Broadway, Jackson, Wyoming

www.graycranestudios.com

[phone]

Picture on back cover is The Grand Teton National Park

Published by AuthorHouse 05/28/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0009-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0008-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0007-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905608

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

The Island and The Park photographs by the Author, © MCT, Inc.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Park

Chapter 2 Getting Ready to Go

Chapter 3 The Right Direction

Chapter 4 Getting Serious

Chapter 5 Florida’s nice this time of year

Chapter 6 Organization

Chapter 7 Back from the Garden Spots

Chapter 8 Celebrations

Chapter 9 Paying the Tab

Chapter 10 Nights

Chapter 11 A long life not expected

Chapter 12 Not quite the end

Post Script It all goes in there

About The Author

DEDICATION

To DR,

the Marlboro Man,

and the 17.

INTRODUCTION

The first thing for you to know is that nothing about the following story is unique. The places we came from were different, and all that went into who we were at that certain point in our lives may have been different, but the results were the same and our willingness and determination were identical.

You should also know that not one of us wanted anything other than to do our job in complete anonymity. And we wouldn’t have used that word, but we knew the concept and it fit us perfectly.

Doing our job right meant we were gone before anyone knew we’d been there and long before any thanks. We didn’t need thanks…we knew what had changed before anyone else, and we’d already be gone.

So what you’re about to read is nothing more than a few stories by one member of a special team, and about the easy part: back home. And it’s dedicated to all of us whose stories will never be told.

For the record, we always knew who the real heroes are, and it’s not the few given special training and access to most anything needed and the freedom to complete missions no matter how unlikely.

No, the real heroes are the soldiers who follow orders into a pitched battle knowing the odds are they won’t make it, but believing in their leaders and their country so deeply they will not stop.

Like Firefighters running into a burning building and Law Enforcement running toward shots being fired.

The Real Heroes.

CHAPTER 1

The Park

You know how summer mornings are damp and hot with the darkness still hanging around the woods. Inside his old log cabin my Granddad and I would finish an early breakfast and he’d give my hair a tussle, tell me to Be back by dark, and head to the outhouse.

It was 1951. I was 6.

And that whole State Park he managed was my playground. The lake and the woods and the valleys and the hills and the squirrels and rabbits and raccoons and deer and turtles and birds and bugs of all kinds.

I could take off down the shore through the pines and around the marsh that seemed to go on forever. I’ve been back and it didn’t, but it was scary fun in those early mornings. Deep throated bullfrogs, whippoorwills calling, and crickets chirping.

In some places you had to hold on to a limb or a root to keep from slipping in cause wet jeans were noisy and wouldn’t dry till noon.

It was a luxury I didn’t recapture till the Beartooth Wilderness some 40 years later.

Sure there were trails, but the few city folks who came for a picnic or to see the woods would walk a ways down a trail, pat themselves on the back for their bravery, and head back to their cars. You could watch them from up in the bushes, and the game was for them never to know you were there.

Forget what’s crawling on your leg and toss a rock or break a little twig. Anything to startle the quiet. Incredible how people who thought nothing of the traffic and crime where they lived could be so nervous in the country.

It was a good game that may even have served a purpose.

At 5 I’d followed him all those summer days, and at 6 I could be on my own. At that age, when you’re out by yourself and kill a copperhead that’s 2 or 3 feet longer than you are tall with a pocket knife and a rock you begin to think you can handle most anything.

The confusing part is feeling bad about it later, and it becomes the first of many things you don’t tell anyone about. You live with it.

CHAPTER 2

Getting Ready to Go

•   Order of the Arrow

Maybe because of The Park, Scouting became important to me. Didn’t know it would be…didn’t know anything about Scouting. But at 7 or so, at a PTA meeting, my mother volunteered my father to establish the first Cub Scout Pack in our little town of 800. He did it with great willingness and humor and before long there was a very active group.

He set up the first Boy Scout Troop in our town as well, and then the first Explorer Post. Each one happened just as I reached the age they required.

Merit Badges, a God and Country award, and some great times camping and at summer camp all seemed to lead up to being elected by our Explorers to the Order of the Arrow.

The Tap Out for the OA is a solemn and impressive night time ceremony, and the final part is being blindfolded and taken to a spot way out in the woods and left by yourself with a match and a blanket and told to build a fire and at some point the next morning find your way back. Fun all around.

I built a fire, rolled up my blanket to keep out the critters, and found my way back to the building the leaders were staying in within a couple hours. Spooked them good with a notched roll of thread on one of the back windows.

Went back out into the woods and watched them try to find what’d caused the ruckus. When they finally came to my site I was curled up in the blanket and had let the fire go out. I could hear them coming through the woods…trying not to use their flashlights to create the surprise…for a hundred yards or so as a head or an arm would catch a limb. They were hiding their glee particularly well.

Next morning I asked the OA Leader for a minute, and followed him out onto the porch of the mess hall. I told him I’d tic tacked them last night, and that I meant no disrespect to the OA or to the ceremony. He thanked me for telling him, gave me a shot on the arm, and then started laughing. Asked me how I found my way back so easy in that big woods and I told him about the Park and that the tough part was finding my blanket again in the dark.

We saw each other at Scout/Explorer events for the next year or two, and he always had some special situation or demonstration he’d ask me to volunteer for.

Last thing he asked me to lead was the Owa, Tagu, Siam ceremony. It’s chanted repeatedly late at night by a hundred or so very serious Scouts, with a bon fire raging and with proper bowing and reverence by all.

As each Scout finally, miraculously, spiritually, individually receives the true meaning of the ceremony, he walks down front to whisper it to an assistant and he can go back to his tent.

Then we were all back to High School or College, and moving on.

•   Doc Counsilman

Not much happened in high school…some baseball, dating, sock hops, going steady, and a record setting score on the SATs that shocked everyone on the planet…until late in my senior year when my best friend, who’d graduated the year before, died in a car wreck coming back from seeing his girlfriend the night before he was leaving for Air Force basic training.

I was accepted by Indiana University for a very good reason: in 1963 the rule was they had to accept in-State residents and at least give them a chance. I found three great things there:

1.   two part time jobs…1 in a traditional men’s clothing store where I learned about up-market apparel (went to the interview in jeans and a t-shirt, and in the 3 years I worked there the manager never explained why he hired me over all the Fraternity types applying), and the other as a night watchman at a four-apartment-building construction site walking around in the dark protecting tools and equipment carrying a shotgun they furnished;

2.   a terrific young