A Tough Education, Part 1

I was assigned to the 1st Battalion 28th Infantry Regiment in July 1970 for my Army Orientation Training (AOT) as a cadet. It was my chance to be a platoon leader in the real Army for five weeks and decide if I wanted to continue at West Point before I became obligated to stay and graduate with a commission. This decision to stay or go had to be made before the first academic class attendance in the upcoming academic year. Once that first class was attended, you were obligated. I could quit later before graduation but would have to enter the Army as an E4 to fulfill my service obligation. AOT was scheduled in the summer between “yearling” (sophomore) year and the beginning of “cow” (junior) year.

The 28th Infantry was one of the historical regiments of the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, that was formed in 1917 for the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) that went to France to fight the First World War. The 28th had been with the Big Red Once since that time. It was a storied regiment that had a very proud history. The regimental name was the Black Lions of Cantigny, their first real battle in World War One where it fought with great distinction.

The 1st Division had recently returned from six years of combat in Vietnam that spring. The division had fought with great valor and distinction in that war which was becoming increasingly unpopular with the American people by 1970. It was an honor and an education to serve with this division, albeit, briefly. The division was not altogether prepared to have upwards of fifty cadets descend upon it over the summer.

Our accommodations as cadets was in the old hospital area on main post of Fort Riley. These buildings dated from the First World War and were wooden clapboard affairs. As we went to enter the building, one could not help noticing a notice posted on the front door that said, “Building Condemned”! Once we entered, we understood the notice. Each of us was assigned to a room that contained a steel bunk, a small metal desk, metal desk chair and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The latrine was down the hall. Each room had a single window which we immediately opened.

I have a knack I’ll share now that will repeat itself throughout my writings. Anywhere I go in the Army, past or present, the weather will be the hottest it’s ever been in five hundred years or the coldest it’s ever been in a thousand years. Fort Riley in the summer of 1970 set a record for heat. When we arrived, it was about 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the rooms we were assigned were hotter than that. There was no air conditioning and a single floor fan was out in the hallway ineffectually blowing down the long hallway corridor. We stowed our gear after opening the windows and went back outside to draw our linen; two flat sheets, a pillow case and an OD blanket. We could not see the necessity of the blanket, but it was part of the issue and was on the pre-printed hand receipt we signed. If you didn’t take it, you would still owe a blanket when you cleared your hand receipt. Such is the Army supply system.

We went back inside and made our bunks. We stacked our field gear in a corner and hung our uniforms up on the bar provided which was suspended from the ceiling on commo wire. About an hour later our sponsors showed up to meet us and coordinate for our first duty day the following Monday morning. My sponsor was 1st Lieutenant Ernie Thompson who was a really good, down to earth guy. Ernie had not been to Vietnam yet and was awaiting orders to go. Although he drove a car to meet me, he sheepishly admitted that he was married and would have to leave the car with his wife each day. He said we would ride to and from the company on his motorcycle. I asked him what type of bike he had, and he said a Honda 90. For the uneducated, the Honda 90 had a 90cc engine which could take one person on a flat road at about 60 miles per hour. It could take two people on that same road at about 45 miles per hour and I was to learn the next morning that it could take those same two people up the steep road to Custer Hill where the company was located at about 25 miles per hour. All the other traffic was doing 40 miles per hour and honking and passing us in the dark. We were not popular on that road. The average lawn mower today has a bigger engine than Ernie’s motorcycle.

We learned that there were no eating establishments within walking distance of our accommodations except the Officer’s Club which was across the main road. The Club was a bit pricey on cadet pay for every meal on weekends but that’s what we had. For me and Danny Merritt it ended up not mattering. We were rarely off on a weekend to go to the Club as it turned out.

After Ernie and I slowly motored our way up to Custer Hill that Monday, I had my interview with the battalion commander who was most unwelcoming as noted in an earlier post. After being told to get out of his office, Ernie took me to the company where I was genuinely welcomed by the young company commander. I can’t remember his name, but he was a very good leader. I was assigned to a platoon and went to meet them.

My platoon which was supposed to have 44 soldiers assigned had 66 assigned. Of this 66, there was one E6 who was the platoon sergeant and one E4 who was my track driver and then 64 E5’s! The policy at the time was that all returning soldiers from Vietnam combat duty would be promoted to E5 as an incentive to remain in the Army. The Army already knew that it was to become a volunteer force with no draft in the next few years, so this was the first step to that end. Based upon those willing to reenlist from my platoon, I’m not sure it worked.

My platoon sergeant was a nice enough fellow but clearly did not have the respect of the troops. This was caused in part by his wife who would drive into the unit area each afternoon and loudly demand his departure even if we had not been released for the day. He would meekly go to the first sergeant as directed, again very loudly by his wife, and secure release. I realized I could count on him as long as his wife wasn’t around! She was a very large and loud lady, and everybody steered clear of her when she swooped into the troop area. Well, actually, when she lumbered into the troop area.

I was fortunate in having one of the 64 E5’s always step up when the platoon sergeant was whisked away. He also took charge when we went to the field to train; the platoon sergeant always having some physical excuse which precluded him from going to the field (I’m sure directed by his wife). I believe it was “jungle rot” of the toes which could be ginned up on short notice by putting gasoline on your toes. The trick was to mask the gasoline odor when you went to the medics and to make sure you used enough gas to make the skin red and swollen. This trick was used by about half the troops to get out of the field each time we went. My acting platoon sergeant made me wise to the technique and offered to give me “jungle rot” of the toes if I didn’t want to go to the field but I told him thanks, but no. I also told him I hadn’t been to Vietnam so couldn’t claim jungle rot. He thought on that a minute, shrugged his shoulders and said, “LT (pronounced El Tee), it don’t mean nuthin’. The medics won’t care if you were there or not”, and he turned around and walked away.

I settled in to the company and was assigned several additional duties to perform other than leading a platoon. The most important of these was as the training officer for the company. Technically cadets who are not yet commissioned are not allowed to perform such a duty, but I didn’t tell the company commander that. I did not tell him partially because my first visit with the training NCO and the training office showed that we were in total disarray in the training business. I had gotten the field manual on what is supposed to occur in the training office, what field manuals were to be on hand and what records were to be present in a company training office and found none of the above! The training NCO was new and floundering. He was particularly concerned about the CMMI (Command Maintenance and Materiel Inspection) the battalion commander kept telling the troops was imminent.

The battalion commander said he had a friend up at 5th Army Headquarters at Fort Sheridan, Illinois who was tipping him off that we were to get one of the unannounced, dreaded CMMI’s. The Army had just announced its Zero Defects concept which became much derided as being punitive in nature over the next two decades. The original concept was to strive to have Zero Defects in maintenance, administration and so on in a unit but did not expect there to be no defects at all. It morphed into the latter concept of no defects which is impossible to obtain in any unit with the plethora of requirements required in a modern army. I’m sure we could have obtained such a standard if all we had was rifles, cooking pots and a mule or two to care for.
Anyhow, Saturday was a work day back in 1970 and would continue to be one up to about 1980 or a little later. Ostensibly, the work day on Saturday was to be used to clean and inspect weapons and inspect barracks and the troops for haircuts, shined shoes, shaving and so on.

Since the battalion commander had a “friend” up at 5th Army, Saturday became a full work day as did Sunday. Every Saturday the battalion commander would tell the company commanders that his “friend” had said we would definitely get hit with a CMMI on the coming Monday so Sunday was a work day. I believe the “friend” had about the same level of positive regard we all had for the battalion commander and was jerking him (and therefore all of us) around. We never got the damned inspection but worked every Sunday except one while I was there.

There was some good news that came out of this preparation for an inspection. We were provided the Zero Defects inspection sheets for each of the commodity and functional areas in the command. I discovered what training records we were supposed to have and what field manuals and other references were to be on hand. We, of course, had none of it. We created all the training records and recorded known training for each soldier. That which we did not know of when a soldier joined from another unit could be conveniently listed as “Unkn. Date Joined day, month, year” which was not a defect! It was a defect if required training once he joined was not recorded. All this was manual entry on a DA whatever form with black, not blue, pen, of course.

The other thing I discovered both in the motor pool as I prepared my platoon for a CMMI and in the training room is that you don’t actually have to have the right parts or references on hand as long as the right parts and references are on valid order or requisition. As long as that was true and could be documented, it was not a defect. As much as I hated this endless preparation, I must admit I learned valuable lessons about the Army inspection system that was stand me in good stead for the next thirty years.

A short aside, this concept of being properly on order or requisition only works if the inspector is trained and knows the regulations pertinent to his or her area of inspection. When I was commanding a brigade combat team we got lucky and were the first unit to be inspected by a new corps inspection team that was very much unannounced and definitely a Zero Defects drill in the worst sense.

As an example, the map inspector said we failed his inspection because we did not have the right maps on hand for world wide deployment. I said, yes, we know that, but they are all on order. He said yes, they were on order but had been on order too long. I said the requisitions are still valid, we checked. He said yes, but it is taking too long and we should have done something about it. I then asked what that might have been. He said we should have called the corps map office. I asked if he wasn’t the NCOIC of the corps map office and wasn’t it his office which was supposed to provide the maps? He said he was and yes, they do provide the maps. I said so we should have called you? He said yes. I said, okay I’m asking you now, do you have our maps? He said no, we can’t help you but you still fail because you don’t have the maps on hand. And I said, but you can’t get them for us but we still fail? He said that’s right. I looked over at the corps commander who was sitting beside me for the outbrief and he gruffly told me not to argue with his inspectors!

You can’t fix stupid sometimes, but I have noticed over the years that when an inspection team is pulled together from inside a division or corps, the “experts” provided by subordinate units to be on the team and therefore a loss to the unit while they are out inspecting, is the village idiot or his twin brother. He or she is rarely qualified to inspect others and is the most least missed from the unit! Commanders (or leaders in the civilian world) who wish to make up inspection teams internally need to closely evaluate the quality and competences of that team or they will create both ill will and even completely negate any good effects from the inspection. Standing inspection teams comprised truly of experts are invaluable if their agenda is to make the unit better and they teach while they also inspect. Many things can be fixed on the spot and an entry of “On the spot correction” is much more helpful than “No Go” or “Failed”. Enough said on that and back to AOT.

Morale in the battalion was low with the seven-day workweek grind seemingly to go on perpetually. The AWOL rate and indiscipline rate both went up. As they went up, the battalion commander tried to crack down even harder on the troops. Which of course, caused the AWOL and indiscipline rates to go up even higher. The battalion commander had not commanded in combat and was trying very hard, too hard, to make up for that shortfall when compared to his peers who had successfully commanded in combat.

In those days, there was no central selection board for battalion command and division commanders selected their battalion commanders. Our battalion commander had not been selected for combat command for whatever reason or reasons. He had served in combat but not at the battalion level. Life in the battalion was just hard. It did not help that the other battalions on Custer Hill took great glee in making comments to us about working all day Saturday and Sunday and they would take care of our wives and girlfriends and so on with the usual soldier banter which is often barbed. They of course were off duty and in civies headed to town while all of us were in fatigues grinding on.

Along about the third week of this, one of the new lieutenants to the company, LT X, came knocking on my room window at 0230 Sunday morning. I finally woke up to the noise and asked him what he wanted. He had loaned me his motorcycle to get to and from the company because he also had a car, but he wanted his motorcycle back. I asked why the hell he wanted it back at 0230 in the middle of the night. He said because he was leaving. He was leaving the Army that very night! I told him I thought that was a very bad idea, but he persisted that he wanted his bike back. I gave him the keys to the bike and the helmet and heard him trying to load it on his trailer for several hours which much cursing and loud thuds. I reset my alarm clock to get up earlier because I would have to hitchhike up to Custer Hill. I wasn’t sure how much traffic would be going that way at 0530 but didn’t have any other options.

Some background on my erstwhile departing lieutenant. He had come straight from a week at the Woodstock Festival to New York City and enlisted, beads, shoulder length hair and all. He said he did so because he was completely out of money and his head due to drugs and he knew the Army would put him on a bus to Fort Benning. He was an Army brat and his family was down that way. When he got to Benning he surprised himself by doing very well in Basic and AIT and put in for OCS. He had several years of college and was promptly sent to OCS. He surprised himself again by graduating high in his class at OCS and given a Regular Army commission which was highly coveted. He had done exceptionally well in the company and was a damned good officer and troop leader. When he came to pick up his motorcycle and was clearly falling down drunk, I did not believe he was actually going AWOL.

I hitched a ride to the company with some of my soldiers who came by on their way back from their 12-hour pass into Junction City (1800 Saturday to 0600 Sunday). They saw me on the side of the road thumbing and gave me a ride because they said I was a good “fuckin” El Tee. I was the only sober person in that car so was glad when it careened to a stop in front of the company. The boys piled out at a dead run to get into uniform before first formation. As I stood in front of the platoon thirty minutes later, I think I was the only sober one there too.

I noticed that my friend, LT X was not at the formation. I went to the company commander and told him what had transpired just four hours earlier. He laughed and said Lt X was probably sleeping it off.

We worked all day Sunday and the training office was in good shape. We were ready for the CMMI which never came, but we had fixed things, so it was not wasted effort. It could however, have been done during normal duty hours rather than on three successive weekends. On Monday morning formation, LT X was still not present for duty.

The company commander sent the company executive officer over to LT X’s BOQ room to check on him. He came back and reported the room was mostly empty except for trash and LT X had not been seen by the BOQ staff since Saturday evening once we were finally released by the battalion commander and told we were coming back Sunday again. I guess that’s what pushed LT X over the edge. He was clearly gone. The company commander went down to battalion to tell the CO that he thought LT X might be AWOL.

The roar out of battalion HQ was almost loud enough to hear at the company. The company commander called from battalion and instructed both me and the company exec to report to battalion. Upon arrival we were both summoned into the presence who was not a happy man. He asked the exec about the BOQ room then turned on me and very rudely asked for my story on the motorcycle pickup. I told him. He was silent for a moment and then told me LT X’s AWOL was my sole responsibility and I solely was to blame. He said I should have called him at his quarters immediately upon LT X coming to my window. The fact that where the cadets were staying had no telephone and I most certainly did not have his home phone number apparently did not enter into his deliberations. With much profanity he said he was going to charge me as an accessory to the AWOL. For the second time since my arrival I was told to get the fuck out of his office. I was beginning to believe we were not friends at that point and probably would not become so in the foreseeable future.

The company commander told me as I was leaving to wait for him at his office back at the company. The exec stayed behind with him and I walked back alone. I was uncertain if I could actually be charged as an accessory and was trying to figure out how many demerits and punishment tours getting slugged as an “accessory to AWOL while on AOT” would entail.

After only a few minutes, the company commander came in and smiled at me which provided some relief. He said in his quiet way that I could not be charged as an accessory because I had not helped LT X to go AWOL and had promptly reported the possibility of him being AWOL at the very first formation. He told the battalion commander that I had so reported, but that he as the company commander assumed LT X was sleeping it off and waited until Monday. I’m sure he got a few choice words from the battalion commander for that decision. The company commander was actually correct in not reporting LT X AWOL on Sunday because Sunday was not a duty day. He did advise me that if at all possible, I was to avoid being seen by the battalion commander until I departed in two more weeks. I told him I would very much like not being seen by that officer, if at all possible. He laughed and told me to go back to work which I did.

Unfortunately, with my typical luck I was to be four square in the battalion commander’s sight one more time before my time was up. As a trailer for the next post, the battalion commander almost gets murdered and it’s my fault according to him. Sometimes life is very much stranger than fiction!