Hail and Farewell: A Vietnam Era Memoir

By Frank T. Jodaitis

Written in the first person and with a strong annotated historical and political background, "Hale and Farewell: A Vietnam Era Memoir" is a deeply personal and emotional journey of a patriotic soldier who served through the social maelstrom and political upheaval that accompanied the Vietnam Era. His ideals, ambitions, perseverance, traumatic heartbreaks, and abandonment carry the reader back in time in his deeply personal reflection of American history.

Commencing at the dawn of the Digital Age, Sexual Revolution, and the Assassination of JFK, this captivating memoir describes the impact of the American Indochina War on the lives of the author, his friends, and American Society in general. A coming of age story of engineering students, it covers their academic challenges, and ROTC training under the menacing cloud of the war in Southeast Asia. After graduation, Cadet Jodaitis prepared for assignment to Vietnam at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pennsylvania, the US Army Engineer Officers Basic Course at Fort Belvoir, VA and troop assignments in the 83rd Engineer Construction Battalion at Fort Riley, KS.

In August 1969 at the outset of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, LT Jodaitis was assigned to HQ Da Nang Support Command. Where he was identified as being highly imaginative and judicious, but he lacked tact, a tragic flaw in the Vietnam Era soldier-diplomat – zero defects U.S. Army. With each KEYSTONE retrograde phase he was moved to a new job closer to the DMZ and increasing enemy activity. Some of his superior officers considered him a renegade, others a valuable asset. His first move was to the 26th General Support Group staff near Hue and later the perimeter. Shortly before the Cambodian Incursion while the FSB Ripcord Battle raged in the A Shau Valley, he was moved to the 555th Maintenance Company at Camp Evans that was notorious for fragging. After the deactivation of the 555th he moved to the respected Nam Nomads, 57th Transportation Company, at Quang Tri. The Nomads serviced heavy artillery firebases and others along the DMZ and QL-1. Discharged in late August 1970, he returned to liberal anti-war Greater Boston.

His difficult adjustment to civilian life was aided by compulsory service in the U.S. Army Reserve and his request for transfer to a combat engineer battalion in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. That helped him realize the scope of the politicized war that the Global Elites had predestined the United States to lose. The memoir ends as President Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737443520

Book preview

DEDICATION

To the Patriots who fought to found the United States of America in Liberty and all those who have fought and sacrificed life and limb to defend, protect and preserve its Constitution. Especially the more than Fifty – Eight thousand whose names appear on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. and those who returned from Vietnam only to succumb to wounds, chemical agents, their personal phantoms and died by their own hands. Although their names do not appear on the Wall and number far more than twice those on the Memorial, they are also Vietnam casualties.

May God Bless and Keep them All.

Those Remembered in this Book

SSG Richard G. Armstrong, 12 DEC 1965

1LT Thomas Edward M. Gray Jr., 24 FEB 1967 [15E 85]

SGT John Thomas Carota USMC, 06 SEP 1967 [26E 6]

SP4 Charles M. Murphy, 04 DEC 1969

1LT Brian Joseph O’Callaghan, 16 JAN 1970 [14W 39]

SP4 Fred Carl Henricks, 17 JUN 1970 [9W 60]

Table of Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PROLOGUE

Chapter One

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

Chapter Two

GATEKEEPERS

Chapter Three

PATHS of GLORY

Chapter Four

THE OLD RELIABLE

Chapter Five

PRODIGALS RETURN

Chapter Six

1967: THE SUMMER OF LOVE

Chapter Seven

INTERMEZZO

Chapter Eight

TRAINING AT INDIANTOWN GAP, PA

Chapter Nine

FORT BELVIOR, VIRGINIA—EOBC

Chapter Ten

FORT RILEY KANSAS

Chapter Eleven

KENNEDY LAND

Chapter Twelve

WINDS OF CHANGE

Chapter Thirteen

GUNS and BUTTER

Chapter Fourteen

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

Chapter Fifteen

DOLDRUMS

Chapter Sixteen

DESTRUCTION COMMITTEE

Chapter Seventeen

PHU BAI—Twenty-sixth General Support Group

Chapter Eighteen

BRAVO SECTOR

Chapter Nineteen

TRIPLE NICKEL

Chapter Twenty

WELCOME YANK

Chapter Twenty-One

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Chapter Twenty-Two

DISINTEGRATION

Chapter Twenty-Three

NAM NOMADS—QUANG TRI

Chapter Twenty-Four

AMBULATORY

Chapter Twenty-Five

DEPOSITION & REFRAD

Chapter Twenty-Six

KENNEDY LAND—REVISITED

Chapter Twenty-Seven

NINETY-FOURTH

PLUTONIUM DIVISION

Chapter Twenty-Eight

BRAVO COMPANY 181st ENGINEERS

Chapter Twenty-Nine

BRAVO COMPANY 181st ENGINEERS—1972

Chapter Thirty

BRAVO & HHC CO, 181st ENGINEERS 1973–74

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people encouraged me to write about my experiences in the military. I have strived to make this memoir as accurate as possible, rather than a collection of embellished war story vignettes. The Before Vietnam Section is essentially a coming -of -age-story of my college and ROTC years. I used my collection of Worcester Polytechnic Institute Yearbooks and the Archives & Collections George C. Gordon Library as my references. Also helpful were discussions with classmates and men I worked with in Enfield, CT.

The Vietnam and After Sections are based upon my military records from the National Military Personnel Records Center. Thomas Puruleski verified my recollections of Bravo Sector. US Senator Lowell Weicker’s office provided access to the Court Martial records that illuminated what happened at Camp Evans. William H. Arens, John B. McKeon, Ned Salter and CWO William Page were helpful. US Army documents verified incidents. Numerous books and magazines provided insights into the global political issues. I used Shelby L. Stanton’s Vietnam Order of Battle and the entire US Marine Corps Operational Histories Series as references. Marines and Military Law in Vietnam: Trial by Fire explained a lot. MG Benjamin L. Harrison’s Hell on a Hilltop; America’s Last Major Battle In Vietnam provided the backstory of the FSB RIPCORD campaign and what was cloaked in military secrecy out in the A Shau Valley.

I appreciate all the assistance I received from many others over the years. However, this is my book. I am responsible for its contents. It is my story.

PROLOGUE

"For the greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie –

deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth –

persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."

President John F. Kennedy

Yale University

11 June 1962

Hail and Farewell: A Vietnam Era Memoir describes how the Second Indochina War impacted my life and the lives of my friends, relatives, and American society in general. My military career began in 1963 during my freshman year at the all-male Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I was a cadet in the compulsory US Army ROTC program before hand held calculators and during the final years of the slide rule. The Class of 1967 was focused on academic survival. For most American citizens Vietnam was just a nebulous inconvenience on the far side of the earth. The majority of my classmates merely went through the motions of our basic ROTC classes and drills. They had no intension of volunteering for advanced ROTC that would begin in our junior year and end with a commission at graduation.

Hail and Farewell is written in chronological order and outlines the arduous road to my bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering including my occasional victories and the effects of the Vietnam War on my scholastic performance. It is not a scholarly work of history. However, historical events and political forces are so intertwined in the military arc of the story that those events are needed to provide the reader with some structure to evaluate how the home front and global events influenced the war in Vietnam and vice versa. Special effort was made not to interject undocumented hindsight into this work by providing an evaluation of meaningful historical and social events, when needed, after each chapter or as endnotes.

Hail and Farewell covers what it was like for those of us who served on the ground in the rear with the beer and the gear during the Paris Peace Talks. When the actual withdrawal of US Armed Forces from South Vietnam began and accelerated. While the peace talks dragged on, our home front support dwindled under the weight of the International Peace Movement, the Woodstock counter culture festival, the Black Power Movement, passive-aggressive troops, the October and November 1969 National Peace Moratoriums, the abolition of draft deferments and institution of the draft lottery, the Mai Lai Massacre, the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, the New York Townhouse bombing, Chicago Eight Trial, the Apollo 13 crisis, the Cambodian Incursion, that precipitated demonstrations and riots which swept colleges and cities across the United States climaxing at Kent State, a global anti-war biased media and a hostile US Congress. Most of us in Vietnam felt abandoned – on our own. Others felt vindicated by the global protests against the war and imagined just like Pollyanna that Peace and Love would conquer all.

No one under the age of fifty has any personal attachment to the era and its dynamics except those who lost a family member, close family friend, or have a parent who is a veteran. Some of us who served in Vietnam have chosen to suppress much of what occurred. The media and military of that era were not immune to turning out biased rhetoric or blatant disinformation.

Most Vietnam histories are miles wide and an inch deep. Hail and Farewell covers a decade in a narrower manner but is deep concerning the home front and support troops in Vietnam’s northern I Corps for twelve months beginning in August 1969. It was a year of active combat in the A Shau and Que Son Valleys as well as along the DMZ. The remaining warriors were supported by a dwindling and demoralized support command organization. As the KEYSTONE withdrawal program accelerated, many units were eliminated or downsized. Troops were fast shuffled from unit to unit in a three-month cycle. There were major morale problems. This book also addresses the army reserve system before the institution of the draft lottery system, during the lottery, and after its demise. It touches briefly on the prelude to the All Volunteer Army and the initial influx of women into the combat engineers. The US Forces described in this memoir bear little or no resemblance neither to those who won World War II, the Korean truce nor to our current force multiplier Global Force for Good created by the Military-Industrial-Academic-Intelligence complex.

Recent books associated with the fiftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War are dismissive of the service of the American support troops. Max Hastings states, Maybe two-thirds of the men who came home calling themselves veterans—entitled to wear the medal and talk about their PTSD troubles—had been exposed to no greater risk than a man might incur from ill-judged sex or ‘bad shit’ drugs.¹

Please read on. You are invited to judge for yourself if the support troops experienced any events that could possibly cause post-traumatic stress. Or did we simply enjoy a year in a tropical paradise frolicking with Asian beauties, waterskiing, surfing, having ill-judged sex, and taking bad-shit drugs as Hastings asserts.

Hail and Farewell is written in the vernacular of the period and by today’s standards may be politically offensive to some readers. Censoring the expressions, opinions, and attitudes of the era would invalidate the authenticity of this memoir.

---

1 Hastings, Max, VIETNAM: An Epic Tragedy, 1945- 1975 (Harper Perennial New York, 2018) pages 288-9

Chapter One

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

Looking forward to the upcoming 1963 Thanksgiving break, I hurried over to my one o’clock Friday afternoon Army ROTC class. After ROTC, I would be free until my Saturday morning classes. Tuesday at noon, we would get our first respite from the five and a half-day per week academic grind of the institute that we freshmen had been at since Labor Day. Our class met in the basement rifle range of the 1915 Alumni Gymnasium. Staff Sergeant (SSG) Vernon Johnson had us stand against the wall opposite the firing line. He explained the safety precautions we were to take, the proper way to hold and aim a rifle, and how the range would operate. Shortly after we began firing at the paper targets, SSG Johnson boomed Cease Fire, Cease Fire! which we immediately did. Standing in the doorway in the back corner of the range was Major Melvin Messer, and he looked grim. He motioned to SSG Johnson to come over to the doorway then whispered into Johnson’s ear. The sergeant’s face took on a stern and troubled look.

Johnson ordered, Clear your weapons, remove the bolts! After confirming that the weapons procedures had been stringently followed and securing the.22 caliber bolt-action rifles, he dismissed the class providing us no hint of why we were being released early. We all exited the range. Johnson double-timed down the corridor toward Salisbury Labs, where the army ROTC department was quartered.

We were puzzled and wondered what had happened. Was SSG Johnson in trouble with the major, or was it something else? We exited through the doorway beneath the main entrance to the gym and climbed the stairs. As we reached ground level, we saw that the quadrangle was full of students gathered around cars. The car doors and windows were wide open on that cold, windy lead-gray overcast day so more tech men could listen to the car radios.

What the heck is going on? someone asked.

The president has been shot in Dallas, was the reply.

How badly is he wounded?

The response was, They don’t know yet.

Rather than stand around in the cold, I walked across the quad to my dorm, Daniels Hall. When I exited the stairwell onto the third floor, most of the room doors were open, and the radios were on. By the time I got to my room, it was known that John F. Kennedy had been pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas.

There wasn’t much conversation in any of the dorm rooms; no one seemed interested in any involved discussion. We just kept it brief. Then it was announced that a Dallas policeman, Officer J.D. Tippet, had been gunned down on a residential street in Dallas. Breaking news came over the radios and reverberated through the hushed dorm. The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald followed a cloud of speculation from the commentators. Some from our dorm floor left to see what was on television in the former dining hall in the bottom level of Sanford-Riley Hall. I went over to Riley. The old dining hall stretched almost the whole length of the dormitory and had a good-sized crowd. The lone TV mounted over the mantelpiece of the large fireplace. It was appropriately located at the north end of the academic gothic wood-paneled dining room. The TV news was as chaotic as the radio. The whole school seemed to be under some morbid spell. It must have affected a number of my classmates as many decided to break the attendance rules and cut their Saturday classes. They hastily made arrangements to go home for the weekend.

I was not going home but knew that I had to get away from the radios and the Riley Hall television. All the Friday night fraternity parties had been canceled except the party at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, SAE. All the freshmen who SAE had rushed were welcome at their house, Chapter Phi Alpha, for a party the Friday night after the school-wide fraternity Pledge Parties. SAE had made too many plans that could not be canceled, as the rumors went. Therefore, their party was on. I knew in a moment that I was SAE bound.

I arrived at eight o’clock, the official starting time. The place was already packed and rocking. They had a band in their first-floor dining room and another band playing in their basement party room. There were girls from Becker Jr. College, Worcester State, Clark University, and the four nursing schools in Worcester. It was probably the biggest frat blast I attended in all my years at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It was dubbed the Assassination Party, and the name stuck. It was not intended to be disrespectful to President Kennedy nor irreverent. But what else could you call it? It was our escape from a day when our seemingly placid rational Eisenhower world became unhinged. We didn’t know it then, but our social tranquility and trust in our federal government would slowly erode. The irrational events were going to continue and get worse. That night and that party was our exit from the craziness. I like to think the college president Harry P. Storke or someone in the administration allowed that party to happen, rather than not knowing about it. As I would later learn, the administration pretty much knew everything that happened on campus.

It didn’t take long before the SAE basement became claustrophobic with all the partiers, cigarette smoke, and body heat. I moved up to the first floor that was getting just as overwhelmed as the basement. I went upstairs to use the men’s room, and it was packed. So, I went downstairs and asked a girl to dance in the dining room. Everyone was perspiring as we were fast dancing. Soon I had to return to the upstairs men’s room. It was still packed, and the urinals, toilets, and sinks were all taken. The floor was awash with urine. The place made a bus terminal men’s room look clean. After using the facilities, such as they were, I went down to the first floor and looked at the ceiling of the dining room. Liquid oozed through the plaster and dripped off the ceiling directly below the men’s room.

I decided not to dance in the dining room and headed to the front veranda to get some air. I met a Becker girl and introduced myself, Hi, I’m Frank Jodaitis.

My name is Liz McBrady, she bubbled. Liz was a year older than me and would be graduating the next June. I stayed with her on the well-lit porch. She was a transfer student from Westbrook Junior College near Portland, Maine. At the end of the party, someone gave us a ride back to her dorm, Stobbs Hall. I didn’t think she would be interested in me—a mere freshman—so after our friendly evening together, we made out like the other couples on the front stairs of her dorm. I left thinking that I’d never see her again.

Saturday morning, I went to the Morgan Hall dining room alone as my roommate, John Turek, had gone home to East Hartford, Connecticut. There were now televisions in the Daniels and Morgan Hall student lounges to provide more news media access to the students. A few guys were watching the non-stop news commentary about the assassination. I watched long enough to get an update then returned to my room. There was plenty to do. I had an English essay assignment to complete by 8 a.m. Monday plus all the homework laid out in the course syllabuses for our Thanksgiving holiday. I chose to read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which was to be completed for the Monday after Thanksgiving.

I found the book to be interesting and disturbing. I still wonder whether Huxley’s book would have had as much impact on me had the Kennedy assassination not occurred immediately before I began to read it. As Huxley said, There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. By dinner, I had had enough of the Brave New World and needed a break. So, I decided to go over to the fraternity house I’d pledged.

The brothers who remained at school were gathered in the basement party room. Few, if any, were watching the television. The place was subdued. One of the upperclassmen that was of Latvian heritage bragged to me, Lithuanians can’t drink as well as Latvians. Contrary to my father’s advice, I got into a drinking contest with Ojars. We were drinking shots of vodka. After three shots, Ojars declared the contest over. Unfortunately for me, another brother offered a bottle of crème DeMint that I foolishly began to quaff until David Herrmann took the bottle away.

I proclaimed, I’m going back to my dorm.

Herrmann, a varsity wrestler, decreed, No you’re not!

You are going to spend the night at the house. He took me upstairs and put me to bed with a wastebasket on the floor near my head. Needless to say, Dave Herrmann was right, I needed that wastebasket. And my father was right about drinking contests.

The next morning, I was in terrible shape. My right eye was solid blood red. The left eye was bloodshot. I walked back to the Morgan Hall cafeteria and had a breakfast of milk and cake donuts. My stomach felt better, but I was still a hurting kid. On the way to the stairwell of Daniels Hall, I decided to check out the television in the student lounge.

Someone among the students gathered around the TV shared, They’re taking Oswald to the county jail. Shortly after that, Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television. Now, this whole thing was getting shockingly weird. After a few Holy shits! the group started to break up, and I silently left for my dorm room.

There I began to work on my English essay. Rather than write some intellectual crap as I had in the past essays, I decided to describe my visit to the Worcester Art Museum. I went there as assigned and was curious about the infamous Grecian urn touted by the upperclassmen. As I wound my way through the display areas, I encountered a college-age woman. She appeared to be a junior or senior art student, so I approached her and requested her help with my English assignment. She, in fact, was a fine arts student at Clark University and well into the nitty-gritty detail of art. Needless to say, most of what she tried to explain was Greek to me. She was quite willing to tell me about certain works of art and the techniques used by the artists. Still, my non-existent knowledge of art history—the works of Picasso, Dali, Monet, and the tools of the trade—brought our conversation to a grinding halt. Frustrated, I thanked her for her help and continued to wander the museum hoping to find something to write about until I found the lauded Grecian urn in a corner display case near the front entrance. There wasn’t anything wild about the urn, just some chariots and horses were visible. What was the big deal? Then I maneuvered myself into the corner behind the urn display case. There on the back was a phalanx of erect rampant penises among the soldiers marching in formation behind the chariot.

I worked on the paper all afternoon, describing the visit and my lack of success with getting help from the girl or having the guts to ask her for her phone number, all of which I summarized as having so much potential but no kinetic—we were studying potential and kinetic energy in physics at that time. I had to include something about a work of art, so I concluded my essay with one paragraph about the urn and dubbing it the Grecian Playboy Urn of the Month without going into any detail about the view from the corner.

Bill Moyers Lyndon B. Johnson’s press secretary, later wrote that during Sunday afternoon, while I was writing my art museum paper, major decisions were made that would impact the WPI students and people all over the world:

"Lyndon Baines Johnson has been President barely two days. This Sunday afternoon he has spent with his national-security advisers, being briefed on South Vietnam by the United States ambassador to Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge. Now the meetings are over, and the President, alone with an aide, is tilted back in the big chair behind the desk in the office he occupied for three years as Vice President. His feet are propped on the wastebasket and he is clinking the ice cubes in a pale-colored glass.

‘GOING TO HELL’

What did Lodge say? the aide asks.

He says it’s going to hell in a hand-basket out there.

What’s happening?

He says the army won’t fight. Says the people don’t know whose side to be on. If we don’t do something, he says, it’ll go under—any day.

So?

The President stares at his glass. So they’ll think with Kennedy dead we’ve lost heart. So they’ll think we’re yellow and don’t mean what we say.

Who?

The Chinese. The fellas in the Kremlin. They’ll be taking the measure of us. They’ll be wondering just how far they can go.

What are you going to do?

I’m going to give those fellas out there the money they want. This crowd today says a hundred or so million will make the difference.

What did you say?

I told them they got it—more if they need it. I told them I’m not going to let Vietnam go the way of China. I told them to go back and tell those generals in Saigon that Lyndon Johnson intends to stand by our word, but by God, I want something for my money. I want ’em to get off their butts and get out in those jungles and whip hell out of some Communists. And then I want ’em to leave me alone, because I’ve got some bigger things to do right here at home.

I hope they will, the aide replies.

The President swivels back and forth in the chair, silent again. He is looking at the far corner of the high ceiling. Finally, he answers: So do I. But right now I feel like one of those catfish down in your and Lady Bird’s country—down there around the old Taylor store.

How’s that?

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.²

After finding my way to one of the restaurants on Highland Street for Sunday supper, the only meal not served at the dorm, I returned to find the inrush of those who went home for the weekend. The big topic of discussion was whether we were going to have classes on Monday—the day of the Kennedy funeral. The rumor was that President Harry P. Storke, being a retired army lieutenant general, was all for having classes. Still, Massachusetts Governor John Volpe had called President Storke and ordered him to close down WPI on the day of the funeral. We all crowded into the Daniels student lounge, and the head counselor of all the dorms announced that classes were canceled in respect for John F. Kennedy’s funeral. We were all surprised—Tech never shutdown for storms or anything. Classes always were held, period.

Oblivious to the actions of our new President Lyndon B. Johnson, I had intended to finish my homework for our Monday classes. I did complete the essay with the help of Charlie Blake, who reviewed it and offered some improvements as well as a few laughs. Charlie liked it. I let my remaining work for Monday slide and watched parts of the Kennedy funeral. The most memorable thing was the constant drumming, the sounds of the horses’ hooves as they pulled the President’s caisson, and the funeral dirge.

I spent the afternoon and evening reading the remainder of Brave New World. Apparently, the press didn’t know about the Vietnam meetings. Everyone’s attention was on the funeral. What I did know was that the boundaries of what I considered reality had changed. Both the events of the assassination and the society of Brave New World had expanded my concept of reality. I had seen Frank Sinatra’s movie Suddenly, in which Sinatra’s character unsuccessfully attempted to kill the president. We also had a lecture at WPI by the man at the Worcester Center for Experimental Biology who led the R&D group that invented the birth control pill. The speaker lauded the pill and predicted that it would make life much better. June Cleaver would remain as she was, but perhaps there would not be anything to leave to the Beaver because he may not even be conceived. That would be up to June. However, both the pill and the Sinatra movie had been just amorphous fantasies to me. By the evening of November 26, they had both become very real.

The day after JFK’s funeral, Lyndon Johnson signed revised documents on Vietnam, the November 26, 1963, National Security Action Memorandum 273 (NSAM 273) reversing Kennedy’s military withdrawal orders that would have eliminated most of all the American forces from Vietnam by the end of 1964 and the beginning of Kennedy’s second term—had he lived. LBJ’s NSAM 273 launched Oplan 34A, the operations plan for a secret war against North Vietnam. Oplan 34A allowed LBJ to get elected in 1964 as he secretly prepared for the Vietnam War.

The American Vietnam War began its journey during December 1963 as a result of the changes of power caused by the assassinations of the Diems and Kennedy. However, my attention was on survival at Worcester Tech. There are many differing opinions on when the American war began in Vietnam. As far as I am concerned, this was the beginning—the war in which I would later serve.

However, Henry Kissinger believes, By encouraging Diem’s overthrow, America cast its involvement in concrete. Ultimately, every revolutionary war is about governmental legitimacy; undermining it is the guerillas’ principal aim. Diem’s overthrow handed that objective to Hanoi for free … . Prior to the coup, there had always existed, at least in theory, the possibility that America would refuse to become involved in military operations. … Since the coup had been justified to facilitate a more effective prosecution of the war, withdrawal disappeared as an option.³

Thanksgiving break did not turn out to be what I had anticipated. Aside from trying unsuccessfully to lie about the origin of my bloodshot eyes, the pall of the assassination hung over my vacation. From official Washington to the average American of whatever political stripe, creed, race or religion, no one could avoid the shock, awe and grief of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the gunning down of Officer J.D. Tippet and Jack Ruby’s live on TV assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. The whole country was numbed by the horror that lasted through Thanksgiving and the Holiday season. It was only after the New Year that the British Invasion Rock Bands exorcised the nightmares of the American baby-boomer walking wounded.⁴

Thanksgiving break ended and the assassinations walking wounded returned to the Institute. Professor Roche returned my essay about the student artist and the Grecian urn. My grade was an A++. I should have known what our English professor’s preferred essay topics would be from the Wednesday after Labor Day. My section’s first college class was English 101. It was at 10 a.m., we were all seated in the classroom in Stratton Hall. Our apprehension was palpable.

The professor entered the room and, without saying a word, walked directly to front of the room. He stepped up on to the platform beneath the chalkboard and wrote, A loaf of Bread, A jug of wine and 69. After which, he announced from on high, My name is Roche. I’m a graduate of Harvard University at Fort Devens. Then we knew that Roche was a World War II veteran and a man with a sense of humor. We also instantaneously knew that high school was over. Such were the perks of an all-male college. They no longer exist in the United States except perhaps for some African American college thanks to Title IX.

Along with the sexual and psychological fixations of the English department, we were also exposed to their interpretations of the dark side of technology that was approached via discussion of Huxley’s books Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. Since then, I have always retained a skeptical and suspicious eye when it comes to how technology can be used to enslave society. One thing bothered me, which was neither answered nor discussed. Who was the Wizard of Oz in Huxley’s Brave New World? The boss, the man, or men behind the curtain, playing the organ? The head honcho of the Emerald City? There is some hint when Huxley uses the date reference in the year of our Ford, but that, as I recall, was not discussed in further detail. Too bad we didn’t read George Orwell’s 1984, which would have addressed that question.

Lyndon Johnson worked fast. By the time we returned from Thanksgiving break, he had determined that he wanted to set up his own commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He didn’t want Texas investigating it and—even more importantly—he did not want the House of Representatives nor the Senate doing it. He decided that Chief Justice Earl Warren would head the commission along with a group of six hand-picked members. Johnson called Warren into his office and convinced him against his better judgment to get involved with the extrajudicial body of the commission. Johnson claimed that if it wasn’t handled properly, a nuclear war with the USSR could result, and forty million Americans could lose their lives in less than a day. The mushroom cloud came over Earl Warren, and he agreed to Johnson’s version that a lone nut, Lee Harvey Oswald, assassinated President Kennedy. LBJ twisted Richard Russell’s arm by announcing his membership on the Warren Commission to the press, before calling Russell to inform him that Johnson had chosen him to serve with Warren. LBJ used similar tactics on the rest of the commission and put Alan Dulles on the commission to keep him informed of how well it was progressing with Johnson’s predetermined outcome of the investigation. Allen Dulles was fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs debacle. So, Dulles had plenty of time to ride herd on the other commission members who already had full-time jobs. LBJ found waving The Bomb or the illusion of possible nuclear war did the trick. And so, it was that the Warren Commission was established on November 29, 1963.⁵

December was a non-eventful month. We wound our way through the weeks before the Christmas break. There was no ROTC drill on Saturdays, so classes ended at 11 a.m. rather than noon. I got along well, I thought, with my fraternity big brother, a senior chemical engineer named George. He had very good grades, was good looking, played guitar, sang folk songs, and had plenty of girls flocking around him. The pledge master and I didn’t hit it off well. One night at our pledge meeting, the pledge master announced that every year the pledges had to pull a prank on the brothers who lived at the fraternity house.

We asked, What type of pranks have been pulled in the past?

He responded that his pledge class had taken all the silverware and put it in dishpans filled with water, which they placed outside the house. The brothers had a difficult time finding the flatware and using it as by morning, the utensils were a frozen lump in the dishpans.

As we left the house, there was some discussion of what we could do. There was a general consensus that we needed time to plan this caper. I offered that, that was exactly what the brothers expected. They probably figured we’d waste a week trying to cook up something. I proposed that we should go back to the house after midnight and steal the four-foot-wide eight-foot-high mahogany front door from the house. I only got three other pledges to go along with me. The others were too afraid to go for it. It was a harmless stunt. The vestibule had an internal door, so the house wouldn’t get too cold.

Anyway, we arrived after midnight and no one would go inside the foyer to help me pull out the hinge pins. There were three or four brothers in the dining room preparing for a test. They were concentrating on their project and were not in a direct line of sight to the front door. I carefully pulled out the pins and opened the door a crack. We had a hard time getting the door off its hinges.

Finally, I whispered to the pledges on the porch, Give the top of the door a good shove. which they did. It made a good amount of noise, but I caught the door. It was heavy, but we managed to twist it and get it onto the porch. We each grabbed a corner and hauled it down the stairs and into the street. We could see the brothers in the well-lit dining room still working on their project, oblivious to what had just happened.

By the time we got down the road a hundred feet, we decided to hoist the door over our heads. We began to run laughing like a bunch of loons and almost dropped the door as we rounded the corner by the WPI president and vice-presidents’ houses on to Drury Lane. We carried the door for about a half-mile and up the hill to Daniels Hall’s rear stairwell. Then we manhandled the door up the stairs to the unoccupied fourth-floor landing. Where we left it. None of us were foolish enough to stash it in our dorm rooms.

The next morning three brothers were standing in front of Daniels Hall. Dave Herrmann had a sly grin on his face and inquired, "Where is it?’’

What? I replied.

Dave responded, You know.

Frank, we all know that you’re the only pledge who could think up that stunt.

And, so ended our conversation.

At lunch, my co-conspirators and I went to see Mr. Sweeney, the Manager of Residential Halls. I asked him, We’d like permission to store something up on the vacant fourth floor.

Mr. Sweeney inquired, Exactly what do you want to store?

My reply, The front door to ATO.

He reacted like the retired Army Master Sergeant that he was, The front door to ATO! With that, our cover was blown. A group of ATO brothers had been standing outside the door to Sweeney’s office. One of my fellow pledges disclosed the location of the purloined door, and the brothers left without a spoken word. Dave Herrmann later told me that four or five brothers walked out of the house before someone realized the front door was gone. He thought it was hilarious. Unfortunately, the pledge master, Dick Healer, did not. In fact, Healer never mentioned it in my presence, and with the exception of Dave Herrmann, none of the brothers acknowledged that it happened.

The last Saturday night before the Christmas break, I decided to go to ATO. I got there about 7:30 pm and found that the brothers were all in the basement party room watching skin flicks. A bit odd, I concluded, but what the hell. I’d never seen any pornographic movies before, so I got a beer and took a seat. The flicks were old, grainy 8-millimeter black and white silent movies, which looked like they had been taken in some three-decker in Worcester during the Roaring Twenties. The first flick tended to drag on.

I brashly voiced my opinion, Let’s get it on!

Whereupon I was, Hushed and given dubious looks as if I was the only uncouth guy in the room.

Smacked-in, I sat quietly nursing my beer among the brothers. It was kind of like a pornographic Quaker meeting. I decided to leave, but I didn’t want to go back to the dorm. I wondered what was going on down at Phi Sigma Kappa. When I arrived at Phi Sig, the few brothers in the house welcomed me. They said that most of the brothers and pledges are out Christmas Caroling in the neighborhood and would be back soon. And, sure enough, they all showed up with their sheet music, knit hats, scarfs, etc. and had a little Christmas Party. All of which I felt was appropriate. I really liked Phi Sig and had considered it to be a great group of guys. They were not as inhibited as the ATO’s, but were intellectuals. Where else would you find a guy with vidi, vici, veni written over his bunk bed?⁶

The word during rushing was that Phi Sig had the lowest academic average on campus and was an animal house. Granted some brothers had monikers such as The Bear, The Snake, Buffalo, and other critters but they were fun to be with. During my post-party walk back to the dorm, I mulled over the facts that I had had a great time as a guest at SAE and PSK but not so much at the house I pledged. There were some ATO brothers who I’d had some fun with in the Pershing Rifles, but I really didn’t understand fraternities at that time.

Finally, Christmas break arrived. I spent some of my time thinking about ATO and whether my decision to pledge that house was something to stick with or was it time to cut my losses and turn in my pledge pin. The primary reason I joined ATO was because they had the highest academic average. I’d only met a few brothers during rushing and didn’t know any of them well. I joined ATO for a lot of misguided reasons. After Christmas, I met with Dick Healer, the pledge master. I disclosed to Dick that I didn’t believe I was cut out to be an ATO as it was not a comfortable place for me. He agreed. So, I gave him my pledge pin and left.

In so doing, I gave up access to ATO’s files of past final exams, homework problems, class notes and laboratory reports, etc. However, I still had a lot of friends in fraternities, who allowed me to attend their open parties. Luckily, my social life was not seriously damaged. Academically, leaving did not make any appreciable difference. However, as time passed, it became obvious the advantages of having a band of brothers to help and protect you during your time at WPI and, in fact, for the rest of your life. The brothers could help you advance your professional career and the alumni association still depends heavily on the fraternities to organize class reunions and other events.

Early in January 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his War on Poverty. He launched his campaign to create a Great Society. The favorite radio station in the dorms, WORC, began to play some music by English bands. Soon, it seemed that all that was played on the radio was the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five.⁷ Worcester was cold, windy, and it seemed to snow every day. College finals were much more rigorous than high school, and I ran the gauntlet of four-hour examinations. My grade report showed all classes passed, but my quality point average was only 0.02 of a point above probation. First impressions are hard to reverse, and the professors took note of the academic performance of all the freshmen. Through the admissions process, the administration had already categorized the class of 67.

This manifested itself with a meeting scheduled by our freshman advisors. Mine was Assistant Professor Roger R. Borden, of the Mechanical Engineering Department. His office was in a corner of the basement of Higgins labs. It had windows just above ground level where one could view the legs of the students as they came and went from Higgins. Professor Borden fired up his pipe, kicked back and got right to the point.

He bluntly informed me, You do not have the aptitude or the ability to be an engineer. Then he drove his point home by affirming, You lack the ability and aptitude to even be a mediocre draftsman. In short, he was positive, You are wasting my time and the Institute’s resources in pursuit of an engineering degree. You should make new plans for your future. What those plans should be, oracle Borden offered no advice.

This was strangely reminiscent of my last week before high school graduation. When my guidance counselor, Mr. Ramacorti, pulled me out of my morning study hall and took me for a walk down to the high school boiler room. There he introduced me to Jimmy Driscoll, who I had known since second grade.

Ramacorti proceeded to tell me, You’ll never graduate from Worcester Polytech and you lack the talents necessary to even be an operating engineer like Jimmy Driscoll. Jimmy now ran the boilers at the high school. At that point, Ram directed me to, Go back to your study hall.

Milton High had its gatekeepers who barred certain doors and prodded kids toward the remaining destinies the gatekeepers determined based on clairvoyance, ego, or politics. Some actually had the kids’ best interests at heart.

Now, I would meet some of the WPI gatekeepers.

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2 Moyers, Bill, FLASHBACKS, Newsweek, February 10, 1975, 76.

3 Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994) 655.

4 Manchester, William, The Death of a President. November 20—November 25, 1963, (New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library, 1988) 532–533.

5 Caro, Robert, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 440–451.

6 I saw I conquered I came.

7 The Beatles recorded their first album for the American market, Aldus Huxley died of cancer riding an LSD high and C.S Lewis also expired on November 22, 1963. Quite a coincidence, or was it?

Chapter Two

GATEKEEPERS

Undaunted by my meeting with Professor Borden, I took on the second-semester courses, which were extensions of the first-semester work. All the freshmen had the same curriculum. Initially, I seemed to be doing better than the first semester, especially in Chemistry with Professor Kenneth Roettger, rather than Dr. Butler, Ph.D. I missed Professor Roche, but George—we called him Sol—Diamond was our young English professor. Sol was less passionate in his teaching style than Roche, but he had a sense of humor. However, as time went by, I began to have problems with Calculus 102. My Professor John P. van Alstyne had his own secret grading system using abstract letters such as p, q, and other letters scattered about the alphabet.

I asked him, Where does a q minus fit into your grading scheme?

He informed me, It’s my way of grading and none of your concern.

Van A offered us extra help, which I took him up on. He asked me what I needed help with, and I told him. He took out a piece of paper and began to recite verbatim his classroom lecture again.

I was sitting beside him and asked, Can you explain it to me in another way—perhaps metaphorically, as my father had done? I mean, I fully grasp the concept of a little strip, dx.

He looked over his shoulder at me and blurted out, What are you stupid?

If my Dad could do it, why couldn’t van A?

I am not stupid, nor was I being a wise ass. I got the impression that van A was a bully. Nevertheless, van A was praised by many of his students, perhaps out of fear. There are many of van A’s students who were mathematical savants. After van A took them under his wing, they flew to great heights. I would come to learn that authority figures who were highly respected were either truly quality people or, like J. Edgar Hoover, devious vengeful egomaniacs. The ego guys needed to be stroked with gushing praises of their brilliance. If you were not among the elite, no amount of stroking and bootlicking would get you beyond loser.

Van Alstyne, van A, joined the WPI faculty in 1961, intending to stay for a year before moving on to a position at another college. Van A enjoyed the freedom to teach the way he wanted to, so he decided to stay at WPI. He was the self-appointed math gatekeeper. He loved students who were math wizards because I assume, he did not have to teach them anything. If abstract theoretical mathematics was your long suit, the van was your man. If not, the van A could not be bothered with you.

Van A, as he was called, offered all students the opportunity to stay after the normal hour class during exams to continue their work. Sounds good, however cutting class was not allowed at Worcester Tech. We had ROTC directly after van A’s tests, so I went to ROTC rather than take the extra time. Those who stayed may have read the ROTC Cadet Manual that allowed two cuts per semester. I assume those who stayed gained stature in van A’s eyes—plus, higher grades as they had another full hour to work on his test. Van A’s tests probably required two hours for the average student to complete. Could it be he was really interested in identifying the students who could successfully complete his tests in one hour?

He was not interested in those who struggled with Calculus. The strugglers in his mind, I believe, did not belong at WPI. Van A would go to the ends of the earth, I was told by some math majors, to help those brilliant moldable math students who met his criteria. The Class of 1967 dedicated its Yearbook to John van Alstyne.

I later found out that van A apparently had a low opinion of ROTC and those who liked it. It was in the latter half of the semester that van A revealed to us that he had taught army cadets at Hamilton College during World War II. He painfully related that many of the men he taught mathematics to were lost in combat in Europe and in the Pacific theater of operations. Hamilton College, van A’s alma mater, lost ­fifty-two alumni in the Second World War—about half were from classes that were there while van A, class of 1944, was a student or teacher. There were also two hundred army specialized training program (ASTP) soldiers at Hamilton in 1943–1944 studying how to speak and comprehend French and German. They also had intense instruction in locale. Essentially, geography and the unique attributes of the cities and countries where the language they were studying was spoken. The ASTP students, many who already had bachelor’s degrees or higher, some from Ivy League Universities like Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, were segregated during their academic studies from the normal Hamiltonians, like van A, who were admitted through the traditional little ivy college process of Hamilton College.

It is reasonable to assume that van A was acquainted with the World War II army specialized training program. The classes were comprised of the smartest men the army could find in their specific field of study regardless of their pedigree. The army had to quickly turn out men for the war in the European Theater of Operations as the preservation of the United Kingdom was the top priority. D-Day was fast approaching. The ASTPs were predominantly immigrants or children of immigrants who already spoke the languages they were studying or similar languages such as Yiddish. They were mostly headed for some type of intelligence work or combat arms. By D-Day, the ASTP men had left Hamilton College. Survivor’s guilt has many forms. Whether van A had any survivor’s guilt is a matter of conjecture. However, he didn’t display any affection for Army ROTC or those who liked it at WPI.

In 1950, Hamilton College printed a book ASTP Hamiltonians 1944 containing group photos of the ASTP men who studied at Hamilton. It also had brief outlines of their education, activities, instructors, and a forward by the college president. One man was killed in action. His name was Sanford Stuart Lavine. Sgt. Lavine was not included among the fifty-two Hamilton alumni recognized as having fallen during World War II. Seventeen of the two hundred initial ASTP’s, were not accounted for. Perhaps they were combat losses.

The navy had a longer planning horizon, as their war was a second priority—the defeat of Japan. The war in the Pacific required fleets of technically challenging ships. It would take years to build the fleets and would require more technically talented officers and personnel to man them. The navy established its V-12 program at predominately private technical colleges and universities. The V-12 program was intended to "provide a continuing supply of officer candidates in various special fields required by the US Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The army ASTPs were mostly at Land Grant colleges and universities.⁸

Right after Pearl Harbor, WPI went into an accelerated academic program, and defense-engineering courses were offered at night and during the summer of 1942. US Army Signal Corps trainees were housed on campus. In 1943, an all-engineering navy V-12 program was established at WPI. It used the same format of instruction and nose-to-the-grindstone, five and a half-day per week schedule, as the army programs. Many of the students were transferred into WPI from other colleges or the fleet to fill in for Tech students who left to serve in the armed forces. The V-12 program was terminated in June 1946, but most of its policies remained in some form at WPI until at least 1970.

Some of the reasons for retaining the V-12 accelerated curriculum, aside from bureaucratic inertia, were the Cold War and the onset of the Space Race. WPI had two college presidents who were retired admirals: Admiral Ralph Earle (1925–1939) who referred to the students as his shipmates and his Annapolis (USNA) classmate Admiral Wat Tyler Cluverius (1939–1955). Both men’s leadership qualities had a lasting positive impact on the Institute. Admiral Earle accomplished the construction of an addition to the Salisbury Laboratories (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering) and he planned the building of the Alden Memorial and Higgins Laboratories—the third Mechanical Engineering building. After the death of Admiral Earle, Admiral Cluverius completed the construction of Alden Memorial along with its Earle Bridge and the Higgins Labs. Admiral Cluverius also constructed Kaven Hall, which finally, after ninety years gave the Civil Department its own home.

I don’t know when the swimming requirement for graduation was instituted. Basic swimming was required until at least 1970, but it was a watered-down version of the vigorous navy V-12 requirements. The Americans with Disabilities Act and/or Title IX most likely put an end to the test. I remember our first gym class. We were required to get naked and report to the swimming pool. Each man had to dive in and swim the length of the pool, then turn around and swim back. Most of us passed the test. Some could not complete the test, and a few just refused to swim. Many students just wiped their swimming test failures from their mind. However, Athena Pappas, the registrar, informed them early in their senior year that they had to pass the swimming test to graduate. They had had two years of Physical Education classes to learn to swim with Coach Grant. The diehards just went to gym class and forgot about having flunked their swimming test.

Grant kidded that it seemed as though, Some of those guys walked on the bottom of the pool in order to graduate. I guess they bobbed up and down and thrashed around a lot during their final exam in the pool.

Contrived in response to the launching of Sputnik, the National Defense Student Loan Fund (NDSLF) was a system of subsidized loans to students. The title of the law is, of course, an attempt to find justification for it under the defense powers given to Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. However, public opinion polls indicated that in 1957 only the news media and political Washington were alarmed by Sputnik, not the general public.⁹ The NDSLF opened the door for the federal government to gain control over higher education in the United States.

It is true that, like WPI, the USSR and the other European technical schools were also brutally rigorous. Jack Barsky, in his book Deep Under Cover: My Secret Life & Tangled Alliances as A KGB Spy in America, describes the Iron Curtain technical university experience as follows:

Once classes began, the workload was overwhelming. We had science coming at us from every angle—through lectures, seminars, and labs, along with copious amounts of assigned reading and seemingly endless series of lab reports to submit. Knowing that the students admitted to the program were drawn from the top 10 percent in the nation [East Germany], the elite faculty had put together a curriculum that amounted to a full-frontal scientific assault. The demands of this chemistry boot camp were so high, in fact, that one quarter of the freshman chemistry majors would resign by the end of the year.¹⁰

WPI was basically the same as Barsky’s Alma Mater, which illuminated my other problem.

My other nemesis was Physics 102. My professor was Dr. Ralph Heller, who had been dubbed the Red Vector by students many years before the arrival of the class of 1967. The red-haired and freckled-skinned Vector studied at the University of Zurich (1933–1937). He came to the United States, where he received his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1940. A bogus rumor had it that Dr. Heller left Austria to avoid the Nazis and that his family was gassed during the Holocaust. His WPI obituary states that he had two sisters one lived in Connecticut and the other in New York state. I don’t know if the Nazis were after him, but he certainly was smart to leave. Dr. Heller taught the V-12s at WPI during World War II. The Red Vector lived in one of the few faculty dorm rooms above the library in Alden Memorial, which looks like a church. Alden housed the college auditorium, the three-manual Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, and bell tower Carillion. On the left side of the stage, there was a plaque listing the forty-three Tech Men who gave their lives during World War II. Over two thousand Tech men served in WWII.

Dr. Heller took his meals in the dining hall with the students. He genuinely devoted his life to teaching physics. He wore double-breasted suits that were in style before World War II and conducted himself in a refined and formal manner. The freshmen found great amusement in the Vector’s mannerisms. He always dusted his chair off and placed a napkin on the seat cushion before he sat down to eat. Vector ate hot dogs in a roll with a knife and fork, cutting the roll and hot dog into small slices and eating it, as one would do with a steak. Vector had more idiosyncrasies, but why belabor the point.

In the 1964 Peddler, the WPI Yearbook, page 56, mentioned the Vector from the viewpoint of a soon-to-be-graduating Physics major senior: All the turbulence of past strife has subsided. Only the last impression of his college days snuggles into his brain. Then from the east, a thin, red human form stealthily approached. Suddenly all the crystal facets of thought and reverie are unmercifully shattered: ‘hellooooooooo’. Page 57 was a full-page photo of the Vector walking across the quadrangle heading toward the Olin Hall of Physics. The Class of 1968 dedicated its Yearbook to Ralph Heller, Ph.D.

The Vector was devoted to his profession. I had him for my first class on Saturday mornings. We were required to hand in all written homework on the assigned day. One Saturday, before an hour exam, the Vector collected our homework. That night he appeared in the open doorway of my dorm room and walked in. I was getting dressed to go to a frat party like most of the guys on the floor

Where are you going? Dr. Heller implored.

To a frat party. I acknowledged. He handed me my corrected homework from that morning.

There is a physics test on Monday morning. You should be studying. He said and then left.

His obituary states that he held extra help classes for his students, which he very well may have. Still, I do not recall him inviting me to attend. I can say he went the extra mile to correct my homework and get it to me well before the test.

As expected, the Monday morning test was a buster. The following Saturday morning, I arrived at Physics class just before it was to begin. The Red Vector was standing in the hall by our classroom door with the blue test booklets in hand.

He greeted me, Oh, Mister Yodaitis, you got first prize. For a second, my heart took a jump, and I thought I might have done better than I thought. Vector said, You got a fifteen. Then, as one of my classmates approached, he added, Excuse me, Mr. Yodaitis, Mr. Koziol got first prize. He got a ten. The maximum on the test was theoretically one hundred.

The entire freshman class took the same exam on Mondays at the time as their usual Olin Hall mass lecture. The first was at 8 a.m. and the second immediately after at 9 a.m. This provided consistency. However, each professor graded his own students, which made the results less than scientifically rigorous when the search for the bottom third was undertaken using the bell curve. The Vector was a veteran teacher of the V-12 program at WPI. The V-12 professors excelled at weeding out students which caused the navy to create probation. Midshipmen on probation were confined to quarters on weekends and required to study all weekend. Vector probably expected me to confine myself to study, not party. Vector was also a highly respected professor but not as