A Soldiers Journal 1959-1969

By George W. Davenport Jr

Twenty-five years ago, I began keeping a daily Journal. Recovering from a divorce that left me in total consternation, I realized I needed to make some changes in my life. I was determined to help myself overcome the sadness and fears that had accompanied the divorce, and with some help, realized I needed to make significant changes in my priorities and behaviors.
To monitor the progress of these changes, my daily journal was a contemplation of each day’s activities. I paid attention to what I was doing each day, and why I was doing it (some of the time). These 25 years of journals are full of less than earth-shattering details, but they helped me become a less reactive and a more reflective man.

Keeping the journal has been beneficial, but has often made me wish I had started the effort earlier, particularly during the most formative period of my life, my time as a soldier. Accordingly, this book began to take shape; A Soldier’s Journal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796048520

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Copyright © 2019 by George W. Davenport Jr Class of 1963.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2019910688

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-7960-4854-4

                            Softcover                           978-1-7960-4853-7

                            eBook                                978-1-7960-4852-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/27/2019

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1    Context, before the Army (BTA)

Chapter 2    West Point (Plebe Year)

Chapter 3    A Cadet beyond the Area of Barracks

Chapter 4    Upperclassman at West Point

Chapter 5    June-Dec 1963

Chapter 6    Germany

Chapter 7    Vietnam

Chapter 8    Fort Jackson

Chapter 9    Epilogue

Dedication

This journal is dedicated to my wife Linda. She has helped me in more ways than I can acknowledge. She has nurtured my writing efforts, encouraged most of my forays into the fray, and sustains me every day.

It is also dedicated to my nuclear family; my parents who have passed away and to my brother, John and sisters Becky and Mary.

Finally, It is dedicated to my children; Bill, Michael, Heather, Christopher and Allen. They have helped make my dotage worthwhile.

Prologue

Twenty-five years ago, I began keeping a daily Journal. Recovering from a divorce that left me in total consternation, I realized I needed to make some changes in my life. I was determined to help myself overcome the sadness and fears that had accompanied the divorce, and with some help, realized I needed to make significant changes in my priorities and behaviors.

To monitor the progress of these changes, my daily journal was a contemplation of each day’s activities. I paid attention to what I was doing each day, and why I was doing it (some of the time). These 25 years of journals are full of less than earth-shattering details, but they helped me become a less reactive and a more reflective man.

Keeping the journal has been beneficial, but has often made me wish I had started the effort earlier, particularly during the most formative period of my life, my time as a soldier. Accordingly, this book began to take shape; A Soldier’s Journal.

Most boys need to belong to a group of other boys with whom we can enjoy ourselves and feel safe. Though this concept sounds simplistic, it explains much human behavior.

It explains the proliferation of gangs in modern society, where families are disintegrating, and the gang becomes a source of safety, especially for the male of the species. The result is more than 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs criminally active in the U.S. today.

This book is not a psychological treatise on gangs, or at least not in the pejorative use of the word. It is about my ten year affiliation with a group that shaped my frame of reference for the rest of my life, the US Army.

The army was my gang. Just like any gang, it has defined leadership roles, a sophisticated organizational structure, complex norms, codified rules and a territory to protect. It also uses violence to achieve its objectives, and part of this book is about my participation in a year of that violent history. Can you see it as a gang?

The Army was an unforgettable experience and fundamental to my growth as a man. I developed mentally, and psychologically, in this decade and would not exchange that experience for anything.

I also displayed some emotional characteristics that eventually led to some serious limitations on my military career. Simplistically, I was not psychologically prepared for the life of a soldier! I was a paradox in cadet gray and olive drab.

Even though the gang attracted me strongly, I never embraced its ethos of unquestioned obedience and adherence to its norms. I would be more than disingenuous if I denied the downsides to my experience, some of which I am still trying to understand. Perhaps you will observe one or two of them.

A caveat; this is not an expose of the army, our government, or any group that seeks our involvement. Paraphrasing Descartes, I challenge, therefore I am. Does this seem reasonable? Challenging almost everything, especially myself, is a long-standing habit of mine. More than once, this approach made life harder than it needed to be, but is representative of my approach to life.

Throughout my maturing years, I was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, the United States Military Academy and the US Army. After the Army, I worked for a conservative Corporation, Procter and Gamble.

These groups were not fond of members who challenge their customs and expectations, and a good shrink would have a field day with my connections with them. I joined each conservative institution with limited intention of letting them have too much influence on me, and sometimes reaped the consequences of such an approach.

My decade as a soldier was lived in the context of two families; my family of origin and the nuclear family I formed after I graduated. My experience as a soldier occurred within these families, and each had a powerful influence on the choices I made and the direction I followed.

However, I choose not to try and describe these influences in this book, and limit my descriptions of their roles as matters of fact in the journal. In reality, they were much more than just facts to be considered. I fear that if I did not set this boundary, this journal would be incomprehensible.

My idealistic view of the military was reframed over an extended period of living it myself, and continues with the history I read. The holy grails I pursued fell off their pedestals in the quagmire of Viet Nam and the wars of self-service that followed. I do not resent my time in the Army, nor do I idealize it as I once did, (or do I?)

The stories in this book are memories of specific events that illustrate the narrative, making it more than just a journal of dates and activities in the army. These "stories" are intended to bring the journal alive; adding emotion, often humor, to the experiences.

Recalling these stories, and writing this journal has been an enriching experience. The process has helped me understand myself a bit better, and accept what has happened to me with a mixture of pride, joy and disappointment. I hope that reading this Journal encourages you to tell your "stories".

The book is pure nostalgia. It is the way I choose to remember the army experiences and their significance in my life. It is a snapshot of the 1950’s and 60’s, a time in History that most people today will read with some disbelief. It was an era of unfettered growth for some, and disappointment for others.

Even as I recall some of these times, the war in Viet Nam recedes into a bygone era. After all, it happened around 50 years ago. You needed to be alive then with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson to comprehend the shifts in our culture, and how difficult it was to grasp them as they happened. It is all true, but is surely less than the whole truth. The whole truth is more than I know or can confess.

This brings me back to the beginning of the Prologue. I will describe my experiences in the army in the context of belonging, an underlying theme of much of my life. I wanted to belong to something larger than myself, and yet I refrained from letting it shape me too much. Sound conflicted?

Life has been both challenging and rewarding. Approaching the end of it, I walk toward it with friends. Most of these friends are military veterans, and their camaraderie gives me that sense of belonging I always sought and continue to seek.

Chapter 1

Context, before the Army (BTA)

It’s a small, jerry-built, house, in an unobtrusive neighborhood in East Ridge (called Mill Village by mother), bordering Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the family it is known simply as 507, and became a legend that belies its humble appearance. It has three small bedrooms, one of which is little more than a wide hall from the small back bedrooms to the tiny kitchen. It had one bathroom, no shower, and no discernable feature that could account for its significance in our lives.

I was the oldest of four children; a sister, Becky, another sister, Mary, and my brother John, who is the youngest. I blame some of my ignobleness on the role I took as the eldest in a family where primogeniture was still alive and well (although my surname is English, Ancestry.com said my DNA is 75% Scotch, Irish and Welsh). I tried hard to pay little attention to my younger siblings, especially my brother John, with whom I shared bunk beds in that wide hall. Life was seldom calm or peaceful, and contentiousness was the order of the day. This home shaped all of us.

My father tried to join the Army after Pearl Harbor, taking a bus to Atlanta to enlist without mother’s knowledge. She had two babies by then, and was overwhelmed with taking care of them. What might have happened had he become a soldier will never be known; he was rejected. The family never talked about the experience, but it affected him, and his family, profoundly. He idealized the army, and wanted me to go to West Point before I knew what it was.

1945 was a momentous year; the Germans were defeated in May, and as my fifth birthday approached, we moved to 507. I was not a child easy to describe, apparently bright, but also oppositional. We lived on the edge of the city of Chattanooga, and I soon joined a gang of neighborhood boys.

"Early childhood memories include a collection of boys that might be labeled a ‘gang’ today, except for our innocence perhaps. We had a clubhouse in one family’s basement, and were not beyond minor mischief. During the long summers, we built field fortifications in the nearby woods and play-acted the lives of its defenders.

We also had a motley collection of toy soldiers, including lead soldiers that I made from molds (Franco-Prussian war vintage, I believe; I still have them). These toys were marvelous entertainment for pre-television winter afternoons.

On rainy days, we stayed indoors, and drew endless pictures of aerial dogfights, with great details of airplanes, tracer rounds, flaming planes going down and the victorious Americans overcoming all enemies. This was what boys did in the late 1940’s".

Meanwhile, at nearby Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, school started and my environment expanded. The Catholic Church added a new dimension to my life, and the next 8 years were tumultuous ones.

In this school, the nuns ruled, set standards, and demanded compliance. At the same time, my father had no idea how to establish boundaries or expectations in 507. What could be a better environment