Special Men: A LRP's Recollections

By Dennis Foley

A recipient of two Purple Hearts gives readers an inside view of US Army special forces through his own trial by fire during the Vietnam War.

Days before he was drafted in 1962, Dennis Foley volunteered to join the army in the hopes of someday getting into West Point. He was only eighteen years old. At basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, a presentation by two impressive, self-confident special forces sergeants made an indelible impression on him.

His career would come full circle. In 1972, wearing a green beret, Foley would be given command of his own A-Team. But between those two pivotal moments, his determination, loyalty, and mental and physical strength would be tested as never before, fighting in the jungles of Vietnam alongside the bravest men he would ever know.

In Special Men, Foley describes his experience at the 7th Army NCO Academy in Germany, where he learned more about leadership than at any other school he would later attend. He takes us moment-by-moment on his heart-pounding introduction to combat—a nighttime, amphibious ambush patrol with the South Vietnamese Navy. We see the shock set in upon realizing that conventional training left him unprepared for the guerrilla army he faced in Vietnam. And we share his sadness over fallen comrades and his own relief at surviving his injuries. This is an unvarnished account of horror and heroism and a tribute to the unselfish devotion to duty of the LRPs, Rangers, and Green Berets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504075855

Dennis Foley

Dennis Foley retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel after several tours in Southeast Asia. He served as a Long Range Patrol platoon leader, an Airborne Infantry company commander, a Ranger company commander, and a Special Forces “A” Detachment commander. He holds two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. In addition to his novels, he has written and produced for television and film. He lives in Whitefish, Montana.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I had the privilege of serving in three armies between 1962 and 1982: a post–World War II, atomic-age army; a Vietnam War army; and a post-Vietnam army. During that same span, the United States Army was a draft army for the first half of my years and a volunteer army for the second half.

Change was the only constant. The natural tendency for an organization to evolve and improve was sent into a tailspin by the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, and the Vietnam War. The army’s responses to these major world events took place during my first ten years in uniform.

My last ten were monopolized by the army’s efforts to eliminate the draft; forget about Vietnam; adjust to the drawdown in manpower; deal with the impact of drug, racial, and disciplinary problems; and the reoriented general mission to defend Europe against a mechanized/armored force in a nuclear environment.

During two decades of service I never served in a unit, or at a post or service school that was not in the process of being organized, reorganized, or disbanded. I never served in a unit whose mission was the same when I left it as it was when I arrived. And I never served in a unit where my immediate superior or subordinate was the same when I left as when I arrived. Alice’s Wonderland was sane, tame, and boring, by comparison.

I was just eighteen and only four days into basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when my platoon was called out of our aging World War II barracks for the third formation of the morning. A cadreman, a young acting corporal, formed up the platoon with an uncharacteristic smirk on his face. Once he was satisfied that we were all there, had handed out a moderate number of pushups for various infractions that we didn’t really understand, and once he had our attention, he told us that we were going to a briefing. He made sure that we understood it was a briefing we were not ready for, and one that the army was wasting time and money on.

He told us we were worthless, and that it was highly unlikely that we could hack it. In his opinion—formed in the six months he had been in the army—the army would be better off sending us to the regimental headquarters to police¹ the area.

We were joined by the other platoons, double-timed to a small battalion theater, and hustled into seats. My platoon was lucky to get seats in the front rows. None among us knew the subject of the briefing, and the late-June heat was almost unbearable in the tiny theater as we sat there waiting.

We waited for the longest time, reminded to sit still and be happy that we weren’t out in the sun. In only a few minutes we were getting sleepy and the fight to stay awake was on. Getting caught dozing off would be worth an easy twenty pushups.

Finally, from the back of the room someone yelled, On your feet! and we jumped up, having learned the multiple push-up penalties for anything less than an instant response. We couldn’t see them, but two sets of boots clumped down the aisle, approaching the chin-high stage.

Gentlemen, please take your seats, another voice said.

Gentlemen? It was the first time anyone had called us gentlemen since our arrival at the reception center on the other side of the post almost two weeks earlier. We’d not been in the army very long, but we knew something was up. And that something mounted the stage in the persona of two sergeants, one a sergeant first class and the other a master sergeant.²

Since our induction we had rarely seen NCOs of that rank. Our days had been controlled by privates first class (PFCs), acting corporals,³ and an occasional three-stripe sergeant. A couple of times a day we would stand a formation led by our field first sergeant⁴—himself a sergeant first class.

But those two sergeants on the stage were nothing like the sergeants we had all met in recruiting stations, induction centers, and the reception station. They were both tall, lean, and hard looking—yet they were younger than any NCOs we’d seen of comparable rank.

They radiated a sense of self-confidence that would have shown up on an X-ray. But most apparent were their uniforms: spit-shined paratrooper boots, bloused trousers with razor-sharp creases, highly polished brass, and badges that we would come to respect: parachute wings, the Ranger tab, and the Airborne tab over the Special Forces arrowhead patch. To us, they were truly men of iron.

They were there to recruit us into Airborne training and to set the hook for Special Forces. Before the briefing was over, we began to think of those men as much larger than we could ever be. As we listened to them tell us how difficult Airborne training was and how selective Special Forces was, we all were sure that the corporal was right. We were not made of the same stuff that those two soldiers were.

The two NCOs spoke with confidence and authority. Each word was carefully measured for its impact on us and each pause was well rehearsed to let the point that followed sink in.

They showed us a film about parachute training. We sat there in the dark watching soldiers—paratroopers—hurl themselves from aircraft at what seemed like incredible speeds and frightening heights.

No one spoke, and no one in the room missed any parachutes deploying from the pack trays of the jumpers, who seemed to us to be totally out of control as they exited the small doors of the large, silver C-119 Flying Boxcars.

A thought entered my mind for only a fleeting second, and then I quickly wished it away. Hell, I had never even been in an airplane. Stepping out of one at over twelve hundred feet above the ground was more than I could imagine, even though I was watching it happen in that steamy little theater.

The mass jumps were interspersed with scenes from training. It seemed every clip had one of three things in it: soldiers jumping from aircraft, soldiers running in formation, or soldiers practicing landings or exits. Nowhere in the film was there a moment where soldiers were sitting or listening or taking notes or relaxing.

It was very clear that anyone who volunteered for parachute training was in for a month of dawn-to-dusk PT, followed by an evening of spit shining and polishing.

While we were all impressed with the tales of derring-do and the promise of challenges and danger far beyond our imagination, not many of us were interested in falling out to the designated area to fill out the application forms to go to Airborne school at Fort Benning.

I walked out of that briefing unaware of how my life had been changed by the remote possibilities suggested by those two sergeants. Little did I know then that men like the two who had stood on that stage would be such a large part of my life—eventually finding a permanent place in my heart.

Joining the army or playing roulette with the draft had been a frequent topic of discussion among those in my high school class who had little or no hope of being accepted into a college. It was a subject of far less importance to us than it would become in the later half of the decade, after the large-scale commitment of American troops to Vietnam.

Our naïve notion of the gamble was that we could either volunteer and get military service out of the way, or leave it up to the Selective Service system to tell us when we would go. If we rolled the dice we could be pulled off a job, away from a new wife, or out of college with a simple letter from our local draft board. Our graduating class didn’t have the widespread deferments that would suddenly appear during the Vietnam years. For us, being a student or being married were not automatic exemptions. So for us it was a crap shoot.

For those of us who were the sons of army personnel, there was a significant likelihood that we would be drafted before our civilian classmates, whose fathers were members of the community.

Like so many of my peers, I knew that one way or the other, the army was going to get some of my time. So volunteering seemed to be a chance (although slimmer than I would admit) for me to get into college—West Point—but before I could take the West Point Preparatory School exam, I had to be on active duty.

So I volunteered, and while at the reception station at Fort Dix, New Jersey, I got my notice to report for my induction physical. I had guessed right. That summer the army was going to get me anyway.

During basic training I was unable to shake the image of the two Airborne sergeants standing proud and tall on that stage in the stifling hot theater. While we were all sweating profusely, they were calm and cool. Their words faded, but that image never did. Though I had grown up the son of a career army man, I had never been close enough to my father’s business to see images like those struck by the two Airborne recruiters.

I put all my extra energy into trying to convince my company cadre to let me take the West Point Prep School exam. At this point I have to explain that growing up as an army brat, moving frequently, and being a somewhat less than motivated student left me unprepared for college. I attended three high schools in my senior year alone, five in all since leaving junior high.

I never really got into the swing of high school, although I knew that my family expected me to go to college. Still I dragged my feet and found myself far below my classmates on the college-acceptability scale. All the while, I was sure that if I applied myself, I could make up for four years of bad study habits and low grades simply by joining the army and getting into the yearlong West Point Prep School, and then West Point.

Looking back, I am amazed at the response I got from the company cadre. They would have been well within their rights to recommend disapproval of my application. Had they, I’m sure I would never have seen the exam packet. But they didn’t. My company first sergeant and commanding officer recommended approval, and the CO certified that he and other battalion officers would proctor the exam.

I was called in by the first sergeant who explained that I would not miss any training just to take the exams. So I took them at night, after the regular training day was over.

I regret that I never recognized the sacrifice that the company officers were taking for me by proctoring the exams, often from midnight to three A.M. They didn’t have to do it, but they did, and it was one of the first of many small lessons in leadership.

But West Point never happened for me. I didn’t score high enough on the competitive exams and the army felt that they could use me best as an electronics technician. I was sent to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for a yearlong school in advanced electronics—radar repair.

That was a real shock to me. I had been so cocky about just taking the exams and waltzing right into West Point without having laid the groundwork of a good high-school education. Like most teenagers, I had no idea how difficult it would be to get into the military academy. And on reflection, I’m sure now that I never would have made it to graduation if by some fluke I had gained admission.

Basic training was no smaller a shock to my teenage system than it was for the other 220 of my classmates. For the most part, we came from the eastern seaboard and New England. Our cadre consisted of young and inexperienced infantry officers, veteran Korean War senior NCOs, and acting NCOs who hadn’t been in the army much longer than we had.

During the first few days at Fort Dix I was singled out as one of the few among us who had had some ROTC training. This changed my status and got me off to a good start in the army.

I had attended a high school that offered Junior ROTC. A young combat veteran by the name of Charles T. Hamner was the professor of military science and technology at the high school ROTC detachment. He hit that place like a flying brick. Before Hamner it had been a boys’ club that was all show and little go. Junior ROTC cadets wore ridiculously garish uniforms and did little in the way of studying military arts and sciences.

Hamner insisted that we learn the basic leadership and tactical skills that a mid-level NCO or a junior officer might master in the army. He immediately changed the curriculum to emphasize dismounted drill, leadership, map reading, customs and courtesies and military history.

He was also a stickler for treating subordinates with dignity and respect rather than the silly high-school hazing that had become a matter of course in the ROTC detachment. He treated each of us in a manner appropriate to our cadet rank. The higher our rank, the more he expected of us. It was a lesson taught, but for me not recognized for some years to come.

Though I only spent a short time in the detachment I learned a lot of the basic skills and customs of soldiering that the others had to absorb while trying to make it through basic training.

That high-school ROTC detachment made my first days in the army quite different than they might have been otherwise. I would get a chance to thank Captain Hamner a few years later, at the Rex Hotel in Saigon.

So, within hours of joining G Company, 5th Battalion, 2d Training Regiment, I became a trainee platoon sergeant. This was my first responsible job in the army.

We rarely saw our real platoon sergeant because he was assigned to us and to the post football team at the same time. The significance of additional duties like his would come to haunt me in the years to come. But while I was in that student company I enjoyed taking up most of the responsibilities normally shouldered by the platoon sergeant, as they were known in the days before they were called drill sergeants.

Within days of becoming a trainee platoon sergeant, I was spotted by the aging field first sergeant as being capable of moving the entire trainee company from point A to point B at double time and without causing traffic accidents. So, within the first week of basic training, I took on the added responsibility of being the trainee field first sergeant. This meant that the housekeeping, the scheduling, and the internal details of the operations of my trainee platoon fell to me. When the company assembled for training I would take the report (to determine if we had all the faces), move the company to the training areas, supervise the breaks and the police calls, and generally catch hell if the trainees were not where they were supposed to be.

It was a good deal for the company cadre. They were able to dump some of the easier and more boring tasks of running a basic-training company on me and get away with it.

For me, it was just the beginning of growing up. I had never before been responsible for the behavior and work of other men. It was also the beginning of overcoming a deep-seated shyness that I only realized I had when I had to step out in front of forty—or two hundred—trainees and give them instructions, information, or explanations. The classic fear of public speaking was damn near crippling for me. I got a knot in my gut each morning knowing that I would have to roll the company out, form them up, take the report, and then report to one of the cadremen or to the company commander.

For this I got: less sleep, lots of ass chewings, the chance to be last through the chow line, a little blue arm band with a staff sergeant’s chevron on it, and no time to myself. At the time the trade-off seemed to be a good deal. But I was so involved in the job that it never occurred to me that I might just be learning something about leadership and supervision.

Rarely was there a time that it was not brought to my attention—with emphasis—when I screwed something up in handling the routine field matters for the company.

The NCOs varied in their own grasp of leadership principles, but it is fair to say that even the worst of them had far more on the ball than I did.

A unique feature of basic training is its ability to isolate you from the world. As trainees, our schedule was filled with classes, work details, appointments, more work details, and just plain waiting in line for things.

We rarely, if ever, saw a newspaper, heard a news report, or even saw a television set. The dayroom was off-limits to us even though it had a TV, a pool table, magazines, newspapers, and places to read and write. Dayrooms were like the razors in our footlocker trays—they had to be there, they had to be spotlessly clean, but we were never allowed to use them.

Our only link with the outside world was the telephone, and that was a privilege that came rarely and for much too short a period of time. And even when we did get to a pay phone, we were under intense pressure from the others waiting in line to make our call and get the hell off the line as quickly as possible. As a result, the phones were only used to speak with girlfriends, wives and close family members—briefly.

In those few free moments we spent out on the small wooden steps of the platoon barracks at the end of the training day or on Sunday afternoons polishing brass, shining boots, and cleaning our M-1 rifles, the conversation was always the same—girls, sports, cars, girls, the army, and girls. I can’t ever recall any discussion about the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev, Vietnam, the attempt on Charles de Gaulle’s life, Linus Pauling’s Nobel Prize, or thalidomide.

We did wander into such worldly events as Sonny Liston knocking out Floyd Patterson for the championship, and Marilyn Monroe.

I remember that her death was appreciated from a point of total naïveté. We only knew her as a sex queen who had attacked so many taboos and had gotten away with it. We were totally unaware of her connection with the White House, and I believe that we all silently mourned the loss of the boyhood fantasies we held.

None of us was aware of the important role such fantasies would play for us in the years to come during the long, lonely nights of separation, when we would have drifted off into frightening speculation without those Marilyn-like images to fill our minds and our time.

Still, no matter what we talked about out there on our steps, it took us the entire eight weeks to get all of the lacquer off our issue belt buckles and collar brass insignia.⁵

While a few members of my trainee platoon volunteered for and were sent off to Airborne school, I was still certain that it was interesting—but not for me. I just couldn’t make that connection in my mind—me and jumping from airplanes. But in spite of my frequent discomfort as a trainee platoon sergeant, I was happy to graduate as the top trainee in my training cycle. The competition included all the trainees on post who graduated that week. I had no idea by what criteria they selected me for this honor, but I was flattered by the fuss that was made of it all.

For the recognition, I was given a trophy and a letter in my 201 file.⁶ I was to spend graduation day as the commanding general’s trainee aide.

That event was preceded by the NCOs in my company whisking me off to Wrightstown, New Jersey, to a favorite tailor. There, a set of my khakis was cut and tapered and formed to a closer fit on my six-foot, one-hundred-thirty-pound frame.

The next day the same khakis appeared back in my platoon barracks starched to a point I was unaware cotton could take. Suddenly, the NCOs who had spent eight weeks calling me a complete incompetent were now hovering around me like mother hens. They took care to get me to the barbershop, have my boots spit shined, make blousing cans for my trousers,⁷ polish my three items of brass insignia⁸, and coach me on all of the questions that the general might ask me.

Finally, the big day came. I was driven to the commanding general’s office where I was quickly briefed by his aide, a lieutenant. My job was to ride around with the general in his staff car all day and only respond to the general if he spoke to me.

I had never really seen a general before. Sure, when I was a kid at some parade on a Saturday morning, there was always a general sitting up on the reviewing stand as the troops passed by. But then all the focus was on the spectacle and the pomp.

That morning I climbed into the back of a black Chevy sedan with Major General Charles Beauchamp. Our day was a whirl of visits to firing ranges, classrooms, the reception station, the post hospital, and a basic training battalion graduation ceremony.

There, I mounted the reviewing stand with the general and stood at attention to his left. My uniform was starched, my boots gleamed, and on my left arm I wore a bright red arm band with two large stars embroidered on it. As I looked out into the crowd of a thousand new graduates, I became aware of how many of those eyes were on me—wondering who I was and what the hell I had done to deserve being singled out. I wasn’t aware of being different from the regimented, cookie-cutter soldiers that stood on that parade field, but the notion sank in somewhere and stayed with me as later I made decisions about being in the army. Nonetheless, at eighteen, it felt pretty good.

Planting the seeds didn’t end there. While waiting for further reassignment to Fort Monmouth, I was put on KP one morning in one of the huge, ten-thousand-man mess halls. There I was given a greasy job in a greasy kitchen cleaning grease off of trays that were still greasy when they got stacked back in the racks.

I recall making a trip outside where I found a long line of soldiers waiting for the next serving. They wandered in and out of the line, smoking, talking and killing time. Suddenly someone yelled, Attention! and as quickly a voice yelled back firmly, As you were.

I couldn’t see who had spoken but had to assume it was an officer. The strange thing was that the entire line stayed silent—all looking back toward the direction of the voice. I craned my neck to see what was going on.

There, just where the line snaked around the corner of the building, was a tall and very lean second lieutenant. He was talking to the soldiers in line, asking about their homes, their mail, and the food. He seemed to be genuinely interested in their answers, although I didn’t understand why. He wasn’t wearing the two-toned 2d Army shoulder patch with its distinctive large Arabic number 2 that most of the permanent party at Fort Dix wore. Instead, he wore a set of fatigues unlike any I had ever seen, tailored, starched to a point of visible stiffness, and well faded. This being back before the days of camouflage insignia, it was easy to see the gold bar on one collar and the crossed rifles of an infantry officer on the other. His cap was a Louisville pop-up,⁹ placed squarely on top of his white sidewall¹⁰ GI haircut. A shiny bar topped by a set of highly polished jump wings was pinned on the cap.

His shirt had a cloth set of wings over his pocket flap and a blue and white combat infantryman’s badge sewn above the wings. On his left shoulder was Fort Benning’s Follow Me patch with its upturned bayonet, topped with a blue arc reading AIRBORNE that was topped with a black and gold arc reading RANGER.

He seemed to be at home with the troops as he talked to them, casually but with a presence that I was unable to identify at the time. As he got closer to me, I noticed that there was a very faint outline of a circular patch on each upper sleeve. Later, I would discover that the patches had been the insignia worn by candidates at the officer candidate school.

That officer’s presence and ease with the troops went right into my mental file that held the images of those two NCOs at the Airborne school briefing.

The few weeks I was allowed between basic training and advanced individual training (AIT)¹¹ at Fort Monmouth gave me a chance to assess my summer’s experiences and think about the months ahead. It was on leave in Massachusetts that I discovered that the army wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I had expected it to be. For me, basic training had some strange quality about it that made it vaguely familiar, even homelike. Though I was moving again, and would continue to do so as long as I was in the Army, it wasn’t that upsetting to me. I didn’t realize that the constant reassignments that faced me in the army were only a reflection of the turbulence that I had grown up with.

It had seemed difficult as a boy, being bounced around from place to place and having to make disguised moves to find acceptance and quickly integrate into my new surroundings. My entire childhood was a series of new faces, new schools, new teachers, and new circles and cliques to break into. To a kid the ground was rarely solid and always promised change. But after those first few months in the army I was more at home than anyone else in my basic-training company.

By the time I entered the army I had lived in almost a dozen states, occupied Germany, and Japan. I don’t know of any other way to have had the experiences I had without being the son of a millionaire.

After ten weeks in uniform I didn’t know much about the army. But I did know about moving from post to post, assignment to assignment. While others were adjusting, with varying degrees of success, I was able to focus on the other parts of soldiering. I hardly regret being an army brat.

Chapter 2

For me Fort Monmouth was a strange transition from the screaming and hazing associated with basic training. First, Monmouth was a signal-corps post and not nearly as rough around the edges as Fort Dix. Added to the sudden release from round-me-clock restrictions, I was unprepared to venture into the world of electrons and cathode-ray tubes. I had no background in electronics and had no idea why the army had selected me to attend such a school. All I wanted to do was get a chance to retake the exam for West Point Prep School and get on with letting Uncle Sam pay for the college education that I couldn’t afford and no one else would offer me.

The retesting and selection for the prep school were still a long way off and I had to go through the motions. So I hit the books and learned a bit about electrons, troubleshooting, and army signal corps radar sets—mostly tactical radars, used in combat and combat-support units.

The classes were much more like those at a trade school. We moved about in small groups—still marching everywhere, but we weren’t double timing, and we were allowed long and frequent breaks. We could smoke in class and drink coffee while on the practical exercises. And, unlike basic training, we carried large notebooks filled with complicated schematics of the circuitry for everything from the first superheterodyne radios we built to the large tactical radar sets we repaired. It was almost college coursework with fatigue uniforms—almost.

The academic days were not long. We attended class from mid-morning to mid-afternoon with the rest of the day open for details, other administrative needs of the student company, physical training, and homework. Lots of free time for a trainee in advanced individual training is a delight to those who will quickly reach out and find ways to fill their time.

It didn’t take very long for the basic combat skills I had learned at Fort Dix to fade into a less than pleasant memory. At Fort Monmouth there was no need to get wet, dirty, greasy, or cold. It was nothing like Fort Dix.

Fort Monmouth had a totally unauthorized drill team/honor guard and marching band made up of students from the several courses taught there.

Not long after I was assigned to a student company and we began the yearlong course, I was called out to a recruiting pitch for the post band and honor guard.

I had no musical training or talent, so the band was of no interest to me. I was involved once in a small drill team in Junior ROTC and remembered just how much hard work and how many long hours were involved. Still, I listened to the pitch: Weekends free of duty when not performing somewhere … no details … no guard duty … a special mess hall and barracks … special uniforms … and privately owned cars permitted.

All this occurred in the days when unmarried soldiers were required to live in the barracks. In our case, it was a barracks full of more than 250 other students in a battalion of several other companies where privacy and exclusivity were at a real premium. The honor guard pitch started sounding a lot better.

After an interview by three experienced members of the honor guard, I was accepted on a probationary basis. I was expecting the probation to be based on my ability to learn the rifle drills and the marching. I was wrong.

I was assigned to a squad in the honor guard and spent ten times as many hours as I would have as a regular student polishing floors, starching and ironing my uniforms, spit shining boots, and endlessly practicing the intricate rifle routines.

My average day started at four A.M. and ended well after midnight. In addition to the course work and the homework, I had the honor guard work, which also included a moderately high level of hazing.

As probationary members of the honor guard we were at the beck and call of the more senior members of the detachment. We were required to run errands for them, like picking up their laundry, taking their footgear to the shoe repair, purchasing things for them at the post exchanges, and going on what they called runs.

A run was a late-night trip out the front gate to Eatontown, New Jersey, to pick up one (or a hundred) submarine sandwiches—the best I’ve ever eaten.

When called upon to make a run, the trick was to memorize the order and to get it right. This we had to do while all of the hungry upperclassmen were yelling out and changing their orders—pressing us to hurry up and get gone. The chore included keeping exact change separated for the money provided by those who placed their orders.

The whole process of taking the order, collecting the money, dressing, running out and getting the order, and returning with the right stuff was all done under intense pressure from the others to be fast. They wanted us to be out the door and back as fast as possible—or faster.

Additionally, attitude was a large component of the testing. If at any time we showed even the slightest resistance or resentment performing those menial tasks, we could count on soon being eliminated from the honor guard and being sent back to a student company.

The elimination process was easy. No one mentioned that your attitude was not up to par. Instead, you would be tested on the precision of your rifle drill and your marching. Most often it was done with another more experienced member of the honor guard. If he wanted to make it difficult or nearly impossible, it was an easy matter for him to be a little late throwing the ceremonial rifle to you or catching your throw. And that was enough to find you uncoordinated enough to be eliminated.

Back in ROTC I had taken a bit of hazing from a cadet officer named Doug Skunk Boots Terrel. Doug was a mover and a shaker in the ROTC detachment, starting a Ranger-type training course and never allowing anyone to whine, quit or complain.

Doug’s training helped me get through the hazing in basic training and in the honor guard. I became fairly proficient with the precision drills and began to enjoy the status that went along with being a member of the honor guard, performing for post activities and for regional parades and civic events. We were still students in the signal school from Monday to Friday and expected to keep up academically, but we were different, and that was beginning to be a pattern for me.

The other unusual feature of the honor guard detachment was the preoccupation with appearance. Every member of the unit was expected to wash, starch, and iron his own fatigue uniforms, polish his own brass, and shine his own boots and black helmet.

There were other students on post who had figured out a way to send out everything to places off post that would take care of all those little details of soldiering, but their standards would not make it in the honor guard.

A member of the unit inspected every soldier every morning. The inspections sometimes took as long as five minutes. You were gigged if you had a fingerprint on your black helmet liner, so you put it on with your fingers touching only the inside of the sweatband.

You were gigged if you had even the smallest piece of thread sticking out of any part of your uniform, so you learned to go over every seam, buttonhole, and hem with cigarette lighters to burn away any thread rather than pull it out and create more.

You were gigged if you had any unintentional creases in your shirt or trousers, so you learned never to bend your knees, squat down, or cross your legs.

You were gigged if your boots were not glass-like, so you would spend as much as an hour each night on each boot.

You were also gigged if your hair was too long or you missed a few whiskers.

All of this seemed to be important at the time. I would come to recognize how really superficial it was, and how little the ironed-in creases in the shirt backs had to do with real soldiering. But much like fraternities, we were largely unsupervised and set standards for ourselves.

Soon I was advanced to squad leader. I had done well enough at passing a large number of inspections without being gigged so I was given the task of inspecting the others. The goal was never to allow a member of the honor guard out of the building without making sure that he met our most exacting standards.

Along with the job came a semiprivate cadre room out of the platoon bay. The significance of the room was no small matter in a platoon bay with only chin-high dividers separating each pair of soldiers.

In the cadre rooms we were allowed such luxuries as throw rugs, small hi-fi systems (before stereo was available), and even a second wall locker to hold our personal things and civilian clothes.

So while others tried to take care of all the housekeeping chores sitting on their bunks or footlockers, my roommate and I were able to spread out in our ten-by-twelve room and take care of our chores in leisure—listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary.

My status as an acting squad leader was a bit heady for an eighteen-year-old with only a few months in the army behind him. I liked the responsibility of answering for myself and a squad of eight others. It was a little like the extra load that had been put on me in basic training. I liked the pressure and I liked the distinction of being a leader. And I sure was enjoying the recognition and the privileges that went along with the job. It all seemed so important to me at the time.

The academic year was taxing. The size of my class dwindled dramatically at each major exam. I don’t know if they were failing because of the difficulty of the tasks, or boredom. The sequence of training after getting us familiar with the basics of electronics was to keep introducing newer and larger radar sets for us to master and then repair.

Rumor had it that dropouts were simply put on miscellaneous details for several weeks, until the army could reclassify them into some other job. The threat that was always held over our heads was that dropouts would be sent to pole climbers school. The thought of spending the rest of our time in the army scrambling up and down splinter-filled telephone poles was a motivator.

Somewhere in mid-course I began to lose motivation, thinking that I didn’t need the electronics education to make it through West Point—so why kill myself? My grades dropped a little too much and I was informed that I was invited to a mandatory study hall that was held each Saturday. That turned my grades around—I was not going to lose my weekends off. On working weekends we performed as a precision drill team all over New Jersey and New York. But I was counting the days until I could reapply for the exam for West Point Prep School.

I think that a benchmark might help in understanding the mindset at this point—1962. We were feeling the early influences and optimism of Camelot. John F. Kennedy was still alive and criticisms of his administration and his lifestyle were neither focused nor coordinated. The army was undergoing the final changes from a World War II force to a new and uncertain force preparing to enter a nuclear world facing a single enemy, the USSR.

Vietnam was a word in the news now and then. But down at squad level—even in a signal-corps school—it was not yet a threat. We were all aware that there were Special Forces teams in Vietnam, but we were equally aware that since John Kennedy had personally blessed the Green Berets, there were military missions and advisory teams in virtually every country with which we had a mutual defense pact. From PFC level, it just wasn’t a big deal.

A more frequent topic of conversation was the Cuban Missile Crisis—passed, but not forgotten. The Bay of Pigs seemed so far away, and as we understood it, only peripherally connected to the U.S. anyway. That translated to us as not much chance of signal-corps PFCs being involved.

After pestering the clerks in the personnel section about resubmitting my request to take the West Point Prep exam, I was finally allowed to submit the paperwork. I was required to take another physical and submit it with the request.

It never occurred to me at age nineteen that