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Well, I have a new hero to look up to, Captain Brett E. Crozier, former commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Although he is a Naval Academy graduate, I will overlook that and instead focus on why he is my hero.

Captain Crozier commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt a nuclear carrier. Most commanders of aircraft carriers go on to become admirals. It’s one of the definitive steppingstones to those ranks since the first aircraft carrier was commissioned in the 1930’s. That trend started then and has rightly been continued to the present day. Rightly because it is an awesome responsibility to command one of the nation’s ten carriers deployed all over the world as the military’s first responders to crisis, whether natural or man made. The technical and tactical knowledge required to lead such a ship are enormous and require decades of service and learning. Captain Crozier was commissioned 28 years ago, so he brought almost three decades of service and learning to his job. And the Navy threw all of that knowledge and expertise away because Captain Crozier decided that his sailors were more important than his career and his future almost assured promotion. That is selfless service and courage that should be emulated by all leaders and commanders in all of our services. It should be welcomed and rewarded rather than be punished by our civilian masters.

 Our civilian masters under obvious pressure from above to relieve Captain Crozier of his command, failed the true test of leadership by their actions against Captain Crozier. Where was the brave civilian leader who refused to take this action? Where was the brave admiral who stood up and resigned over this action? There were none and frankly they are all moral cowards and not fit to be in their positions. You can’t lead if you won’t stand up for what is right despite what it may cost you. Captain Crozier clearly understood that and did what was right to take care of his sailors. So far those above him, whether military or civilian, have utterly failed to embrace that concept with their own actions.

The Navy wants it to look like Captain Crozier went to the newspapers before he notified his superiors of the need for helping his crew. That was not true. Captain Crozier had been reporting the Covid-19 problem on board from the first cases. He made recommendations to mitigate the problem and save his crew from further contagion. He got the standard higher headquarters response of “we’ll get back to you, we need to staff and study this some more”. That’s the standard higher HQ dodge when everybody is afraid to make a decision in what has become a highly politicized command environment where the commander-in-chief has meddled in Navy court proceedings, overruled court findings and reinstated sailors convicted of felonies. The Navy leadership, military and civilians, were like rabbits staring at the wolf in the room who said Covid-19 is a hoax or is not a big problem. None of them were willing to take the necessary measures to help sailors at risk because that would be saying the wolf is not comprehending the magnitude of the problem and might actually be just wrong. To say all of this is disgraceful is a colossal understatement. It’s more criminal than disgraceful.

When Captain Crozier left his ship for the last time the other day, his sailors spontaneously accompanied him as he departed and cheered him to the echoes. Those sailors loved Captain Crozier as much as he loved them. They knew he cared more about them than he cared about himself. I’m sure if I had the chance to speak with Captain Crozier, he would tell me that send off was the best thing that ever happened in his life. He earned it and I salute him as a true leader and commander. In these perilous times, we need more Brett Croziers and we should reward rather than relieve them. We should honor them and like his sailors, cheer them to the echoes.

At the link below are some of my own experiences and views on the subject from last June’s Army Magazine about taking care of soldiers. The article starts on p.40.  It was a minor event and comes nowhere near what my hero Captain Brett Crozier did. I would like to think that I would have done the same thing he did. What courage! Captain Crozier was clearly ‘the man in the arena” and knew it and took action. He would have been aware of Theodore Roosevelt’s speech about the man in the arena. I’m sure it was posted somewhere on the ship for all to see.

https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=587523&pre=1

To continue the saga, I finished the Infantry Officer Basic Course (OBC) not with distinction but with a bump up in my academic efficiency report for completing a history project. Again, that and ten cents…., snackbar, coffee, etc. What I did learn in my history project was that all the cowboy movies about the Army in the west were untrue because the soldiers almost always had Winchester rifles blazing away at the Indians. Turns out that the Army never bought the Winchester for troop issue. Why, you ask? Because the only gunpowder available at the time was still black powder and the clouds of smoke generated by rapid fire quickly obscured the battlefield. The French invented smokeless powder about the time we were subduing the Indians, but the formula was a closely guarded state secret which they (the French, not the Indians) refused to share. Selfish bastards that they are. The movies do show them firing their Winchesters with smokeless powder, however. So, if you can’t trust Hollywood, who the hell can you trust? But, as usual, I digress.

I entered Jump School the week after OBC. I was in good physical condition so was not concerned about completing that course. Unfortunately, as some of you will recall, the asphalt path we ran on was sloped towards the jump towers to provide drainage. My right knee objected to that slanted path at the end of the first day of Ground Week. I did not think much of it and slathered it with Bengay and took two aspirin and drove on at bedtime which was the Army treatment standard for most ailments back in the day.

But it wasn’t enough. As I was favoring my right knee and was assigned as the permanent rope man (the fellow that has to pull the trolleys back to the tower on the steel cable after each jumper finishes his trolley slide to the berm after executing a hopefully satisfactory exit from the tower), my left knee started objecting to the favoritism shown to its partner, the right knee, and it too became red and swollen.

I became the permanent rope man by innocently answering a question from the cadre jumpmaster in the 34 foot tower. He asked where I had been because all of the other West Pointers had gone through jump school in August (Those would have been classmates going to branches other than infantry for the most part I believe.) I told him I’d been in OBC. He asked why the hell I had to go to OBC because didn’t West Point teach me all that stuff? I told him no, West Point doesn’t teach that stuff. He asked then what the hell does it teach you and I said I didn’t know other than how to be a general, I guess. He thought I was being flippant, but I was actually serious. I hadn’t been in the Army long enough to know what the value of my academy education was just yet. Anyhow, he assigned me to permanent rope man duties.

By Wednesday of Ground Week, both knees were the size of softballs and hurt like hell. I would get up at 0200 to soak in a hot tub to try to reduce the swelling and the pain each day. I would then take four aspirin and go back to jump school. I was limping on the runs but my peers would warn me when a cadre member was approaching while we were doing the morning run so I could straighten up. Several of the cadre knew I was injured and would check me out very closely during the run each day. I was limping while executing my rope man duties running back and forth with the trolley for each jumper but that was apparently acceptable. In the Airborne mentality, you just couldn’t limp during a run. I was passed on to the cadre in Tower Week as a rope man. After my conversation with the sergeant about the pros and cons of a West Point education, I only got to exit the tower for my training one other time for the rest of the course.

We got to Tower Week and I had spent the weekend nursing my knees and therefore not searching for the love of my life. By Monday the swelling had gone down a bit. I started Tower Week in hopes of melting into the crowd, but no, as soon as we had finished the run, I was called out to be the rope man again. I did rope man duties for the next two days but on the first rope man duty on Wednesday, I very deliberately tried to pull the airborne sergeant manning the tower out of the tower. I did that by not slowing down with the trolley as I approached the tower as was required while the jumpmaster sergeant was leaning out to grab it to hook up the next jumper. Instead I sprinted as fast as I could (and yes it hurt like hell) and slammed the trolley past the tower on the steel cable and pulled the sergeant almost completely out of the tower. The surprised look on his face was worth it all as he scrambled not to fall out and be dangling on his monkey strap (i.e., Jumpmaster Safety Strap, Webbing, Cotton, 3 inch, 1 Each, OD in Color by actual Army nomenclature) which attached him to the tower. If he had been dangling by his monkey strap, we both knew the other instructors would never let him live it down. He probably would have been nicknamed Sergeant Monkey Strap or just Monkey Strap for the rest of his airborne career. Either way, I wasn’t going to be rope man anymore. They could just eat my shorts; I wasn’t going to do it!

I needn’t have worried on that score. Almost Sergeant Monkey Strap says, “Lieutenant, did you just try to pull me out of the tower?” I said, “You’re goddamned right I did! I’m done with being the goddamned rope man!” Monkey Strap says, “Okay, LT, take it easy. Why don’t you go over to that bench there and sit down and take a break. Just take a break, sir and I’ll get another rope man. You just take it easy, sir.”

Now the cadre never called you sir. They either addressed you by your last name or by your student number plastered on the front and back of your helmet in big letters. I caught the significance on being called sir again. A juniorcadre NCO with clearly not enough to do, came over to where I was sitting and started screwing with me to stand up, beat my boots, do push ups etc. when the tower sergeant (Monkey Strap in case I’m not being clear enough) told the dip shit NCO to get the hell away from me and to mind his own explicative, explicative, explicative business. The NCO slunk away as directed. Clearly Monkey Strap also thought he was a dip shit, so I was not alone. From then on, I was left alone and finished Tower Week.

We went into Jump Week and I was still limping. The NCO’s who knew I was hurt only came by once during the runs down to Lawson Army Airfield and the jump aircraft waiting there. My buddies warned me and one time an NCO even announced himself as approaching so I could quit limping.

We made five jumps out of C-123 aircraft which were two engine versions of a C-130. My jump log given to me upon graduation said we had jumped out of 4 C-130’s and one C-141 and never mentioned a C-123 but they were preprinted and had your name on it, so it was official. The C-123 has to have its doors removed in order to jump out of it. They cannot be opened in flight. The result was a deafening roar from the engines which were right outside the doors. Another result of the proximity of the engines to the door was the plane being noted for having a “dirty tail”. What that meant was the airflow past the door from the engines was so horrific that it took your parachute deployment bag and spun that rascal in circles while your chute was deploying which meant your parachute risers with twisted from your neck all the way to the canopy so you spent a considerable effort bicycling your legs while pulling on the your risers to untwist. You can’t pull on the risers to control the direction of the chute if the risers are twisted. This was critical when it was time to land and you needed to pull the appropriate risers to tilt your chute into the wind to reduce your rate and speed of drift. If you screwed that little maneuver up, you increased your rate of drift and usually got to execute a feet, ass and head parachute landing fall (PLF) landing rather than the approved ”balls of your feet, calves, thighs, buttocks and small of the back” PLF.

As I was doing this untwist dance on all five of my jumps, I landed on top of someone else’s parachute on every jump. The drill upon doing so is to run across the chute which is like trying to run in marshmallow and jump off the side. I dutifully did so five times but could never find out whose chute I landed on. Nobody would fess up for stealing the air from my parachute. Oh, I forgot to tell you that part. As you’re trying to run off the other fellow’s chute, your chute losses its air and starts coming down around your ears as it deflates. You have to “dash” off (although you can’t) before you get entangled in your chute and it doesn’t reopen once you finally jump off. All this sucks big time and takes most of the fun out of jumping.

On my fifth and final jump I landed for the fifth and final time in all my 69 total jumps on someone’s chute again. I was getting very proficient at this drill by this time so ran off the chute. I landed well away from the rest of my stick and was rolling up my chute to limp/run to the turn in point when a jeep came flying over the hill towards me. The NCO in the jeep in a frantic voice asked me where the guy was who had just landed out by me. I told him there was no one else nearby that I had seen coming down. He got a funny look on his face and told me to give him ten pushups. I told him I had made my final jump for jump school and was out of the pushup business. I probably added an explicative or two as I said it. He still had the funny look on his face and said, “Sir, I need you to do the ten pushups so I can see you are all right.” I told him of course I was all right and it was bullshit and I wasn’t going to do it. He said, “Sir, your chute never reinflated after you jumped off that other chute and you streamered in from what we saw. So please do the pushups.” Well, this was news to me. The jump landing hadn’t felt any different to me, so I just shrugged and did the ten pushups. The NCO got out of his jeep, collected my parachute kit bag for me and put it in the jeep. Then he told me to hop in because I deserved a ride back to the turn in point. According to him, I had streamered in the last two hundred feet of the jump. Again, it felt the same to me! I was an item of great interest to the airborne cadre at the turn in point, all of them asking me how I felt, etc. Several of them who had known about my knees being injured congratulated me for gutting it out. My chute not reinflating explained why I landed so far away from everybody else. They drifted on the wind for several hundred more yards away from me. I came straight down.

I was just glad to get a few days off after jump school before starting Ranger school the following week. We had been lucky on the weather and got in all five of our jumps by Wednesday afternoon. I could not contain or reduce the swelling and pain in my knees, so I went on sick call Thursday morning. As my luck would have it, I got a doc who was an embittered total asshole. We started off my “treatment” by him asking me if I had gone to West Point. I said I had. He then looked at my knees and said I had severe tendonitis in both knees. I asked him if I could get something to fix them and get a delay for Ranger school. I knew I couldn’t make the runs and road marches in Ranger school with my knees still the size of softballs. In response, he informed me that he had been drafted into the Army right out of med school and he was really pissed about it and would not help a West Point graduate since we had all chosen a “life of violence” and deserved whatever bad happened to us. That took me rather aback and I asked again to be deferred from Ranger school to recover first. His response was “You can’t make it though Ranger school with your knees this way but good luck next week in Ranger school anyway. I won’t help you.” He was a smug little shit and I didn’t know enough about the medical system to ask to see another doctor. I hope he got out of the Army, went into a very lucrative medical practice and got run over by a large bus while he was counting his loot after the first week.

I reported to Ranger school and gutted it out the first four days of City Week. On the fifth day, I could not walk at all. I was pretty much carried to sick call and was diagnosed with acute tendonitis in both knees and medically dropped from the course. I reported back to the school and the camp commandant, Colonel David Grange, Sr. asked me if I wanted to continue in the next class slated to start after the Christmas break. He said the Ranger Instructors (RI’s) all knew I was injured when I started and had reported that they would support me entering the next class. Colonel Grange said their remarks were very laudatory which was nice to hear. My first duty assignment unit, the 82d Airborne Division would have to approve my attendance, however but Colonel Grange said he would call them if I agreed. I readily agreed.

Colonel Grange’s call to the Division G1 was not successful. The G1 said the 82d was short infantry lieutenants and that I was required to report before the end of the year in late December. By this time it was the first week in December. Colonel Grange argued with the G1 but he would not relent. He said it was matter of utmost importance for me to report before the monthly readiness report was done for December. Imagine! A single lieutenant would make a difference to a division that was always kept at about 110% strength and would have a bearing on the whole division’s readiness report. It was all BS, but I was unwise to all that stuff at the time so believed what the G1 said. Colonel Grange apologized to me for his lack of success and said he would always have a slot for me at the school as long as he was commandant. I thought the world of Colonel Grange at the time and was able to serve with him again several times down the road when he was Lieutenant General Grange and one of the BCTP wisemen/gray beards. What a great soldier!

So, they had to find something to do with me for two weeks at Ranger school pending my Christmas leave and reporting in to the 82d. I was instructed to see the Senior TAC NCO for the school. I unfortunately cannot remember his name, but he was harder than woodpecker lips. If you were unlucky enough to draw his attention to you as a ranger student, it was going to be painful. He had and deserved a reputation for being a hard, hard man. So that’s who I went to see. I introduced myself and told him Colonel Grange said I was to help him out for the next two weeks. He eyed me askance and called me “ranger” which is what all the students were called in the school regardless of rank by the cadre. I politely informed him that he must address me either as lieutenant or sir and that I was no longer a ranger student and hence would not be addressed as “ranger” by him or anybody else. That put him into almost a state of shock. He slowly recovered and without saying anything, showed me to an empty office and mumbled something. I assumed that was where I would be working. I sat down at an empty desk and waited.

I waited all the remainder of that day without another word from the senior TAC NCO. The next morning the senior TAC NCO came into my office and deposited a very large cardboard box on my desk. He said “Lieutenant, these are the records for the last six or seven years of Ranger school. They have never been verified and I need you to go through all the records, add up the points for each patrol for each ranger student and make sure what we had was right.” I told him I’d certainly do that. I asked him what I was to do if I found an error. He said if the ranger should have graduated, I was to fill out a form to amend his official records and notify the individual or his unit by telephone if I could not reach the individual. I asked what to do if a ranger had actually failed and had been awarded his ranger tab by mistake and he looked at me for a minute and just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, he lucked out then, didn’t he?” There being no such thing as a calculator back then, it was going to be a long process of addition to go through several thousand student records. I pulled out the first of the class folders, a pencil and paper and started adding scores up.

A little later in the day I noticed that the old World War II office building we were in was getting bitterly cold. Benning was having a cold snap and the outside temperature was not getting much above 30 degrees during the day. I went down the hall and asked the senior TAC NCO if I could turn the heat up and he said we didn’t have any heat to turn up. He said we had an old coal furnace under the building, but it didn’t work. I took him at his word and went back to my math. Of note, back then there was a graduation category for Ranger school to graduate but without a ranger tab being awarded. Why they would ever have a such a category was beyond me, but it was in there. That is where I found the most math errors and quite a number of students should have been awarded their tab and were not. I started calling units and one unit responded with, “Why that SOB has been wearing a ranger tab since he got here!” I told him that was good because he had earned it.

When the duty day was over, the senior TAC NCO bid me goodnight and left. Out of curiosity I wandered around the back of the building and looked under it where the coal furnace would be located. I noted that there was a coal bin behind the building, and it contained coal which was pretty strange if the furnace didn’t work but I did notice that the coal was covered in dirt, dust and pine needles and had obviously been there awhile. I opened the door to the furnace and saw that the inside was stuffed with coal, twigs, leaves and all manner of debris and clearly hadn’t been opened in a long while. Some attempts had been made to light the debris based upon the partially burned fragments in the furnace. I made a note of that and headed back to the BOQ.

Early the next morning about an hour before the senior TAC NCO would come in, I revisited the furnace. I pulled out all the old crap that was in it and put in the newspaper I had brought with me. I made a loose pile of the paper and used the twigs I had taken out along with more from the pines behind the building and some pinecones, loosely topped it all with a few chunks of coal and lit the paper. I made sure the flue to the furnace stack was open before I lit the paper. I had looked into the furnace beforehand to make sure the stack was clear. I could see light from the sun coming down the stack when I looked. The paper, twigs and pinecones lit the coal satisfactorily and I fed more coal in slowly around the outside of the ignited coals making sure they touched and finished with a few more coal chunks sprinkled on top. I went up to my office and got back to work, leaving every 20 minutes or so to check the furnace and feed in more coal. I had learned all about Army coal furnaces from my dad when I was a kid and we vacationed up in Rhode Island at an old World War II Army post converted to MWR use. After an hour or two, the office building had warmed up considerably which brought the senior TAC NCO to my office.

“Hey, lieutenant, do you feel heat?” I told him I did. He wondered where the hell it was coming from. I told him it was coming from the coal furnace. He wanted to know if the post engineers had come and finally fixed it because he sure as hell didn’t call them. I told him it wasn’t broken and just needed to be cleaned out and relit. He asked how I knew that shit? I told him I had done it; cleaned it out and relit it. He again asked how I knew that shit! I told him about my dad teaching me. He asked about my dad. I told him my dad was an infantry officer and was still in Vietnam finishing up his fourth combat tour. So, we chatted for a while. As he was getting ready to leave, he asked if I would fire the furnace up again the next morning because it sure was nice. I told him I’d be happy to do so and asked if he wanted to learn about the furnace and he said he definitely did for later after I moved on to Bragg. We did that together the next morning and he was pretty excited about it. You can teach old dog new tricks it seems. (Sure hope so since I’m an old dog now!)

For the uninitiated and in case you ever have to light a coal furnace in an old World War II building (good luck on finding one anymore, particularly with a coal furnace still intact!), the secret to the next day’s fire is to properly bank the coals in the furnace the night before and cut down the air flow so they pretty much smolder through the night but don’t go out. Putting fresh coal on top in the morning and leaving the furnace door open to get plenty of air will get you back in business in short order.

I finished my two and half weeks at the ranger school and was at the point where I was allowed to call the senior TAC NCO “Top” and lounge in his office when I took a smoke break. He was one hell of a soldier; the type you don’t run into very often. The end of the story is I finished up all the records and corrected the horrible ranger math which made several dozen fellows out in the Army very happy when they learned they had actually passed and earned the tab.

The old senior TAC NCO also had a farewell gift for me which I was unaware of. After my classmates who had been in that ranger class came to the 82d several months after I got there, one of them showed me his ranger school graduation orders. He pointed to my name prominently on the orders as a graduate with tab of ranger school and asked if I had come back to the class and he just hadn’t run in to me? I laughed and said, no, I had not come back, and I was not a graduate of ranger school. He said those orders could go into my records because they were official. He was somehow worried I would take advantage of those erroneous orders, but he needn’t have worried. We hadn’t known each other at the academy so he didn’t know me. I laughed when he showed me the orders because I knew exactly who put my name on that list. As I said, he was a hell of a soldier! He knew I wouldn’t take advantage of the orders but was sending me a message he thought I was okay in his book, tab or no tab. Or, probably more accurately, their record keeping at ranger school had all gone to hell again!

Next update in the saga (fairytale?); arriving at the 82d Airborne Division. Finally! I was officially sooomebody when that happened!

Sorry for the long delay in writing these. Been busy on a whole lot of things, some not so good but more on that later (or not!). Anyhow to continue where I left off over a year ago….

There is an old record I have somewhere that belonged to my grandfather of Army songs from the 1920’s and 1930’s. One of them is called “Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay in the Regular Army Oh!” The last stanza goes like this:

“So we’re marchin’ after Sittin’ Bull and that’s the way we go! Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army, oh!” sung with an Irish brogue. It’s tough not to love the Army when you grew up listening to music like that!

So this is the first post about marching forty miles a day, etc. and being in the real Army finally.

So as noted earlier, I had finally managed to get back to the Infantry and start my military education on my chosen branch at Fort Benning, Georgia. This started with the Infantry Officer’s Basic Course (OBC) where you learned tactics, supply, maintenance, leadership and all the other basic skills to be a successful rifle platoon leader. I thoroughly enjoyed the instruction but admit that I did not pay a lot of attention to the maintenance portion which was more pertinent to those other poor bastards who were going to mechanized infantry units. I was going to the 82d Airborne Division and I knew they didn’t have a lot of vehicles and no vehicles in an airborne rifle platoon. I was to pay for this inattention in spades less than a year later but more on that later.

There were only two things of note that happened during the basic course that I recall. The first of these was being reported absent from first formation one day. I was a platoon leader during the course so being reported absent was rather a big deal. The problem was that I was not absent and was indeed there. It all started with being engineered into be the daily driver for several of my classmates in the course with me who were all married. We all had just one car even if we were married. They asked me if I would drive each day to class so they could leave their cars for their wives. I agreed to do so. There were five of us including me. I lived in an apartment on the south side of Benning Road and all four of them lived in the Camelia apartments on the north side of the road nearby.

I’m a nut about punctuality believing that if you are on time to something, you are late. You should always be at a minimum five minutes early for any appointment, meeting, etc. I would pick up my first three classmates who were always standing by and ready to go, then we would head over to the last guy to be picked up, aaaaand, wait for him. This fellow was always late, and this was in part because his wife truly hated the army (or so he told us) although she was totally new to it. She would delay his departure each day as her way of punishing the army for taking her so far away from her home and family. Unfortunately, it also punished us if we were late for formation. And one day we almost were late.

After a lengthy wait, I finally went up and knocked on the door and told my classmate we were leaving in one minute. If he didn’t come, his wife could drive him to formation. He finally came out and we went as fast as we legally could to formation. We pulled in to the parking lot just as the company was forming up. We all jumped out of the car and started running to our respective platoons. As I approached the rear of my platoon, my platoon sergeant who was also a West Point classmate saw me running up but called the platoon to attention as I was about three steps away from my designated position. I had called out to him that I was there before he rendered his report to the first sergeant. I about had a kitten when he said, “Lieutenant Chamberlain is absent, all others are present and accounted for!” Upon the command of Post! from the first sergeant all platoon leaders were to come forward and take charge of their platoons from the platoon sergeant. As I marched around the platoon and got to the platoon sergeant, I asked him why in the hell he had reported me absent? He said, “You weren’t in ranks when I called the platoon to attention.” Well, no shit. I was three steps away and he could have waited the damn half second it would have taken for me to be in position before he called the platoon to attention. But, he didn’t.

After class I was summonsed to the company commander’s office for being absent from formation. I explained to the commander that I was not absent when the report was rendered, and my platoon sergeant knew that. He asked why I had been reported absent if that were the case and I gave him the answer my platoon sergeant gave me which was essentially too bad, how sad, sucks to be you and I called attention to catch you out because I could. I assumed the platoon sergeant was in a bad humor over something which motivated him to be a real prick that morning. Anyhow, none of that mattered. Technically I was absent if that was the rendered report.

The company commander told me that my punishment was to come in on Saturday as part of the schools weekly “punishment squad” and police cigarette butts for four hours. I politely informed him that as a commissioned officer it was inappropriate for me to pick up cigarette butts with the enlisted soldiers who were also getting punished for minor infractions. I suggested that I should be appointed to supervise those soldiers rather than being part of their detail. I said all this as respectfully and tactfully as I could, but the company commander just stared at me in response. I finally said, “Sir, did you hear me?” He continued to stare, and I could not imagine what was going through his head. Finally, he just said, “Get out of my office. Forget the whole thing!” I saluted, did an about face and marched out of his office, glad to get away!

My passengers were waiting for me out at the car and I fired up our daily late slug when I got in the car and told him I will wait a total of thirty seconds from the time we pulled up at his apartment before I started driving off. If he wasn’t in the car, his wife could bring him in. I told him straight up, thirty seconds and you’d better be in the car. If you’re not fully in, I’m still pulling out. Thirty seconds, goddamnit! He got it and for the remainder of the course was on time for pickup. His wife was decidedly unhappy that she could no longer dictate to the army when her husband would go to work. As a reminder to all who read this, those types of spouses are still out there so if you have a soldier who is not performing to their known abilities and he/she is married, look in to the homelife as your first point of investigation as to causes.

The second event I recall from OBC, was being accused of cheating on the land navigation course. About three or four days after we had done the land navigation course for record, I was ordered to report to the company commander at the end of classes. I reported as ordered and the company commander told me I had failed the land navigation course and had to retest on Saturday morning. I knew I had absolutely not failed that course and informed the commander of same. He fidgeted a bit and then finally said the land navigation course officer in charge (OIC) had informed the battalion commander that I had cheated on the course and the battalion commander wanted me to rerun the course. If I failed, he would take steps to punish me for cheating on the earlier run which meant a general officer Article 15 and the end of yours truly’s career before it even started! This was some serious shit!

But, I was not worried. I knew I hadn’t cheated, and I knew I could easily pass the course again even if it was eating up my Saturday to do it. I had big plans for that Saturday like washing my car and vainly searching for the girl of my dreams and the mother of my future children, all nine of them. I had run orienteering in intramurals as a cadet for two years so knew how to read a map and navigate. For those who have never heard of orienteering it’s a timed sport where they give you a map, a compass and a number of grid designations to find and record the number on a sign posted at that location. The army teaches you to use your compass to shoot an azimuth from a known point to the point you wish to get to, then using your pace count (how many steps you take with your normal stride to walk 100 meters) to count off the distance to that point while staying on the compass azimuth as you walk. That is a good technique for night navigation but not a good or efficient method for day navigation.

In orienteering, you get all the same tools and data, but you plot your course based upon reading the actual terrain on the map. Running ridgelines and creek bottoms is a very efficient way of getting from point A to point B and beyond. So, in orienteering, you plot all your points and then make a route that is the most efficient way to get to all of them. You do not go after your points in the order given unless it saves time to do so. Just like army land navigation, orienteering is run against the clock. I had finished the record run on the land navigation test with about an hour and half left over using the orienteering method. I was the first one to complete the course which was part of my problem as it turned out and led to the allegation of cheating.

I drove out to the Yankee Road Land Navigation Course that Saturday and reported into the two NCO’s waiting for me. They were not happy to be out Saturday morning either and clearly blamed me, the cheating lieutenant for them having to be there. They were rather abrupt towards me and gave me the points I had to find. They informed me that they would be watching me. I wasn’t sure how they could do that but didn’t care. I love orienteering and it was a beautiful fall morning with a bit of a nip in the air which reminded me of a midget Japanese trampoline act I had once seen. (Get it? There was a small Nip in the air? Sorry, no longer PC but was huge in the Pacific in WW II. Guess you had to be there.) I plotted my points and made my route and took off at a steady jog.

There was one point that was most easily reached by going through the stream bed that was a prominent part of the broken terrain on the course. Yankee Road was a tough course because of the dense vegetation and many ravines which transected the course. As I was going down the stream bed, which was mostly dry in the fall, I made good time. Using my map, I could tell where I was in the stream bed based upon the fingers of ravines emptying into the bed, all of which were clearly defined on the map’s contour lines. I was about halfway through finding all my points and was doing well on time. I found the ravine I needed and proceeded to climb out of the stream bed towards the high ground. The point I needed was dead ahead and I saw it as I climbed. I remembered the point from my earlier run once I saw it again but thought nothing of it. When I got to the top, I paused and wrote down the number for the point. My next point was back near the main road, so I headed through the woods in that direction. After a couple of hundred meters I came upon a jeep parked in the woods facing the main road away from me. I walked towards the jeep and when I was close enough, I called out, “Sergeant, are you looking for me?”

I about gave that man a heart attack! He jumped up in his seat and jumped out of the jeep facing me. He blurted out, “Jesus Christ, LT! Where the hell did you come from?” I merely pointed back into the woods behind me towards the stream bed. He asked why I was back there and not coming from the road using an azimuth and my pace count. I explained to him how I used orienteering techniques to navigate the course and used the stream bed for that purpose. I showed him my route on my map. He was clearly amazed and asked me what number I had found for my last point. I showed him what I had written down and he was still doubtful. He asked me to describe the sign and I told him it was red with white letters and was on a tree below the bluff of the high ground and facing the stream bed. The sign was about 15 feet below the bluff and could not be seen from the top of the bluff. The bluff gave way to a sheer drop of about twenty feet into the stream bed and the tree was at the base of that drop.

The sergeant just shook his head and said, “Get into the jeep, sir. We’re done.” I told him I still had two points to find and he said, “No, sir. We’re done. Hop in, sir.” The change in his attitude from his earlier disrespect to respect for me was clearly evident. He explained to me on the drive back to the start point that nobody had ever found that point before which was why they thought I had cheated. I had gotten all my points correctly on the first run and had finished “too early” which was why they reported me for cheating. The NCO’s running the course had placed that sign deliberately in what they thought was an “unfindable” location as part of the age-old tradition of sergeants screwing with young lieutenants. It was correctly placed for the grid given in the test but the bluff abruptly dropping off had kept anyone from climbing down into the stream bed to search further. I had come out of the stream bed, saw the sign below the bluff and thought nothing of it. I did have to go about thirty meters before I could find a place suitable for climbing the bluff.

We arrived at the start point and my latest admirer informed his fellow NCO how I had found the unfindable point and used my map to illustrate the technique. His partner was suitably impressed and asked where I had learned to navigate like that? I told him about running orienteering at the academy and he said he had never heard of such a sport but thought that maybe all lieutenants should take it up and quit getting their platoons lost! He told me he was sure I would never get my platoon lost and he was correct as it turned out. (or my company, or my battalion or my brigade as it also turned out, proud to say.) The sergeants offered me coffee and we sat and BS’d for a while around the fire they had made. These were old NCO’s getting near retirement. One had a CIB with two stars from World War Two, Korea and Vietnam and the other had a CIB with one star from Korea a Vietnam. These were my kind of people and I was in no hurry to leave their company. I could find the love of my life/future wife some other Saturday morning. (I actually found her on a Sunday morning, and she drew the line at five instead of nine kids, thank God!!!)

They both shook my hand and congratulated me again for finding the “unfindable” point and said they guess they had to find a new location for it. I told them not to move it and that I would never tell anybody how to find it. They needed to figure that out on their own! After soliciting a solemn promise of silence from me they opined that they could leave it where it was since nobody else had found it in the last five years since it was put there.

On Monday morning I was summoned to the company commander’s office again. I duly reported as instructed and after reporting was actually asked to sit down! Usually I had my discussions with the CO at a position of attention in front of his desk, so this was novel. I sat down and the CO told me I had passed the land navigation course and that the battalion commander wanted to apologize for doubting me and for making me retake the course on my time off. Those words would have had real meaning if the battalion commander had delivered them in person but I guess he was just too doggone busy to tell a lowly lieutenant who he had threatened with a GO Article 15 for cheating that he was mistaken and sorry. Ah, well. It didn’t matter. I had enjoyed Saturday morning and the two NCO’s I got a chance to know a little better. The CO did congratulate me for setting a course record for all points correct in the shortest amount of time for the Yankee Road Land Navigation Course. My two new NCO friends had made a point of reporting that along with their report that I had definitely not cheated. That and ten cents could still get you a fairly good cup of coffee in the PX snack bar in those days, but I did appreciate the action of the NCO’s. Great soldiers!

So, forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army, Ho!

From the 1966 edition of the Standard College Dictionary: thumb-screw; an instrument of torture for compressing the thumb or thumbs.

President and Mrs. Bush came to Saudi Arabia to spend Thanksgiving 1990 with the troops. Unfortunately, my battalion was not chosen to host them. A very dapper brigadier who was the 18^th Airborne Corps chief of staff had come to the battalion to assess our suitability to host the event. He declared that our area was not “scenic enough”. We didn’t know what that really meant but did admire his Humvee with its NEW desert paint job and shined sidewalls on the tires. We also admired his pressed desert uniform, maroon beret and dare I mention it, his NEW Desert Boots! I did ask him where he got the boots since we were in fairly desperate need of boots at that point,and he very condescendingly told me you just order them from supply. Gee, I wish I had thought of that! It seemed that staff nugs way back in the rear could get the desert boots but line doggies could not. We had heard that song many a time already in the three months we had spent in Desert Shield up to then. I will have more on that in the book I’m working on, Task Force Striker in the Last Good War which I am writing for my guys who pester me at every battalion reunion to get it done. (Yes, Mark Faul, I’m working on it damnit!)

A sister battalion hosted the President and his wife, and we were allowed to select some soldiers to go over to that battalion to participate. All of them came back really pumped up from seeing the President and many of them got a chance to shake his hand. All of them somehow got to talk to Barbara Bush and could not say enough good things about her. Their visit so far from home to be with soldiers on that special day is a lasting tribute to them both. It was a tremendous boost to morale. I did not get a chance to see the President and Mrs. Bush.  I had been told I could attend but declined to do so because all of my soldiers could not also attend. It was much more important to me to spend Thanksgiving with my troops when we were all so far from home and our loved ones. They were (and still are) part of my family.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas were busy for us. The division commander, MG Barry McCaffrey had come to visit us which he did at least monthly and pulled me off to the side. He asked if my M113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APC’s) had their track shrouds mounted. (Track shrouds are a rubber skirt that hangs down over the road wheels of an APC that help it to swim and also aids traction in loose sand and light mud.) I told him they did. He said that he was glad to hear that and that my battalion may be called upon to do an assault river crossing up in Iraq. Our sister M113 battalion had not deployed with their track shrouds and could not swim their APC’s so we would be on our own if it happened. The rest of the infantry battalions in the division were equipped with Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles which didn’t swim well if at all. By this time, we were rehearsing with map exercises at the division command post for the attack into the Euphrates River Valley so I had a good idea of what water I may be tasked to cross. My battalion, Task Force Striker would lead the far western attack of the 24^th Infantry Division as part of the 197^th Infantry Brigade.

Christmas came and went, and we finally began our movement west to a new assembly area in preparation for taking the Tap Line Road up to our jump off positions for the attack in western Saudi Arabia. On 22 January 1991 I was called to my tactical operations center (TOC) to talk to General McCaffrey who was on the secure phone. General McCaffrey told me he needed my battalion to deploy immediately to the division jump TOC (DTAC for short) up on the Iraqi border which was in imminent danger of being attacked by the Iraqi’s. I was to leave my APC’s behind and could only take wheeled vehicles and as many troops and crew served weapons as I could stuff into my own trucks. My trucks were all uploaded with ammunition and other supplies like food and water at that point. General McCaffrey said they would get me a convoy clearance to move on the Tap Line Road where traffic flow and march discipline was being strictly enforced. If you didn’t have a convoy clearance number,  you couldn’t get onto the road. The MP’s were stationed all along the road and would turn back any vehicles without a convoy clearance number. The general told me to call him back when we were ready to move. I asked General McCaffrey why he was not passing his orders through my brigade commander rather than calling me direct. He said he would call my brigade commander next but wanted me to hear directly from him on my mission. I was to communicate directly with him and not go through brigade.

Thanks to some quick and hard work by the battalion and its leaders, the trucks were downloaded and the troops ready to mount them after an hour and a half. I called General McCaffrey and told him we were ready to go. He said they were having trouble getting my convoy clearance but were working it hard. He told me to stand by.  About an hour later General McCaffrey called to say they still could not get my clearance. By this time, it was getting on to late afternoon. He again told me to stand by.  I called my battalion XO in and told him to go down to the Tap Line Road and see what a convoy clearance number looked like. I specifically wanted the sequence of numbers and letters being used. As an example, two letters followed by a number, a letter again, two numbers and soon. He asked me why I wanted it and I told him to just go and to be quick.

The XO came back about forty minutes later with the sequencing of a clearance number. I took it and created a convoy clearance number with the same sequencing of numbers and letters. I told the XO to get all the vehicles marked with that number as quickly as he could. He looked totally mystified and asked me why and I told him to just get on with it which he did in record time. When he came back, he reminded me that the convoy clearance numbers we were using were not legal. I thanked him for his input and then I briefed all my company commanders and the scout platoon leader on our march route. When we halted for fuel, we might get caught with the bogus clearance number, but they were to press on to Raffa where the DTAC was located. I told the XO to wait thirty minutes after we left and then call brigade and tell them we had a convoy clearance number (which was true as far as it went!) and that we had departed enroute to Raffa. He was to ask them to pass that along to division. I did not call General McCaffrey and tell him I had created my own convoy clearance number and was moving out. That would have made him a party to my crime if it went badly for us and we got caught violating the march restrictions on the Tap Line Road.

The trip was about 250 miles along the Tap Line Road which was the only paved road in northern Saudi Arabia that ran east-west. It was a two-lane road with heavy equipment transporters (HET’s) flying by us coming back from dropping tanks and Bradley’s off further west. We were coming from the east and going west. The HET’s were driven by TCN’s (third country nationals that had come to Saudi Arabia for work from every third world nation in the world) who  drove like madmen. The side of the road was littered with wrecked HET’s which attested to their lack of common sense and poor driving skills. There was no speed limit as far as they were concerned. We were moving at a sedate forty miles and hour which was the posted speed limit. The HET in front of me had a Syrian T-72 Russian tank on it with its gun barrel point directly at us. We were glad when it finally pulled off the road at its destination. That Syrian T-72 was there because President Bush had formed the largest coalition of countries since the Second World War to fight Saddam Hussein and free Kuwait. The coalition numbered 34 countries and were a tribute to President Bush’s incredible leadership and statesmanship.

We drove on into the night and finally stopped for fuel. This was where the fun started. There was a young soldier with a clipboard standing by when we pulled in to refuel. He asked me if I was the convoy commander and I told him no, he was further back in the convoy. He went to every single vehicle and asked the same question and got the same answer. He had written down our convoy clearance number when we pulled in and I’m sure it wasn’t squaring with his list of convoys, hence his desire to talk to the convoy commander. He finally got to the last vehicle in the convoy which was our battalion chaplain’s vehicle. He asked the chaplain if he was the convoy commander to which he responded, “No, I’m the chaplain! The convoy commander is up front some place.” By the time the young soldier was making his way back to the head of the convoy we were pulling back on to the Tap Line Road and on our way. We arrived at the DTAC at first light on 23 January 1991. I remember the day well because it was my 40^th birthday. I knew my dad, a fellow infantryman, would have been proud of me for spending my birthday traveling to the front with my battalion.

I walked into the DTAC looking for Brigadier General Terry Scott who was our Assistant Division Commander for Maneuver (ADCM). In my last conversation with General McCaffrey he told me to report to General Scott if I ever got up there. General Scott was not in the DTAC but the assistant G3 who was the DTAC operations officer proceeded to give me instructions on what to do with my battalion. I had known this officer for a number of years in earlier assignments and had never been impressed. What he said was, “Here is what I want you to do…”and what he was directing made no tactical sense which was not a big surprise. As I said, I knew him. I told him I didn’t take orders from staff officers and thanked him very sarcastically for offering me coffee which he had failed to do. I had no sleep for over 24 hours at this point and my patience for dealing with clowns was minimal.  I started to walk out of the DTAC and he asked where I was going. I told him I was going out to make some goddamned coffee and to let me know when General Scott returned. I suggested rather strongly that he contact General Scott on the radio and let him know that Task Force Striker had arrived. That thought had apparently not occurred to him. As I said, I knew him.

About fifteen minutes later General Scott drove up and warmly welcomed us. You could see he was clearly relieved to have some combat troops on hand to secure the Iraqi border and protect the DTAC. What he told me to do with the battalion was directly opposite of what his operations officer was trying to direct.  If I had listened to the operations officer, we would have been doing cheetah flips to undo it all and comply with General Scott’s orders. We moved out but before we did, General Scott asked me how we had gotten up to the DTAC because the last word he had from General McCaffrey was that we still didn’t have a convoy clearance. I told him he didn’t want to know the answer to that question and later, much later I would explain it to him. He looked puzzled but let it go. We moved into our positions and proceeded to dig in. We put out wire and claymores and spent the next three weeks patrolling the border and even captured a few prisoners, the first prisoners captured in the division.

Eventually the rest of the brigade came forward about mid-February and we were relieved from division control and reverted back to brigade control. We shifted further to the west and conducted combat patrols into Iraq making contact with Iraqi forces several times. The task force engaged and destroyed with multiple launch rockets (MLRS) from the artillery an Iraqi air defense battery. As part of that strike which will be recounted in detail in the book, the Iraqi’s ammunition dump went up with a hell of a roar and flash that lit the horizon up. All the way up to the start of the ground war, we were patrolling into Iraq, going further and further each time. The purpose of the patrols was to ensure that no significant Iraqi forces would impede the ground attack once it started. The 24^th Division was scheduled to start it’s attack into the Euphrates River Valley on G+1; the day after G Day which was the start of the ground attack over in the Kuwait area. That was not to be, of course.

We had been out all night on another combat patrol in Iraq and had recrossed the border back into Saudi Arabia on the morning of G-Day. We had all been without sleep for over 24 hours at that point and were looking forward to food and some sleep before we started our ground attack the next day. The task force was all over the place with Delta Company in position inside Iraq and the other companies spread out covering our sector of the border. I was just getting ready to lay down for some sleep when my S3 came over and said we were to start our attack early. I asked how early and he said in about an hour and a half. I then asked where the line of departure (LD) was and he said 15 kilometers inside Iraq. When the division planners drew that LD line, they had drawn it straight across the map from where they were and unfortunately, our positions were well south of that. The Saudi-Iraq border dipped well to the south along our stretch of the line. I put out a guidons call to the task force. (I would broadcast “Guidons. Guidons this is Striker 6, over.” on the command net and all my subordinate units would answer in sequence which was the most efficient way to put out an order to the entire task force.)  Once all units had answered,  I gave instructions for them to form up in battle formation and prepare to move out in one hour. It would take us the other half hour we had left to get to the LD on time.

Task Force Striker had the lead for the brigade attack. We were the main effort which meant if we didn’t cross the LD on time, the whole brigade would be late and punctuality, although a social courtesy, is in fact a military necessity. We scrambled but we made it on time. We started north across the desert to our first objective which was an asphalt road going from nowhere to nowhere about 100 kilometers inside Iraq. It was called SCUD road because it was believed that the Iraqi’s built it in the middle of nowhere to move their SCUD missile mobile launchers around in a shell game to fool our intelligence gathering capabilities and reduce the chances of air attack. There were no roads going north and we were moving based on dead reckoning with a compass. GPS was in its infancy and provided only sporadic use when enough satellites could be acquired. We only had two GPS systems in the task force and they never worked at night when you needed them the most. There were not enough satellites in range during the night back then for some reason.

The brigade cavalry troop was to scout ahead of Task Force Striker to the first objective. They were coming in from their assembly area further east and would join us enroute after we crossed the LD which they did. I had previously asked my brigade commander what I was supposed to do if the cavalry troop stopped. I had every confidence based upon my knowledge of the troop commander who was a short, tubby, cocky and arrogant fellow that he would not press on all alone and unafraid in the dark when the time came. My brigade commander was very irritated by my question and said tersely that the cavalry troop would not stop. I told him if they did, I was going to pass through them and continue the attack.  He reiterated that they would not stop!

As soon as it started to get dark, my scout platoon which was leading the task force reported that the cavalry troop stopped. I called the troop commander and asked him why he was stopped. He gave me a very vague response about having to reorganize and consolidate which was a bullshit answer. I told him to keep moving and he said he could not but did not have a reason why he could not. I ordered my scout platoon to pass through the cavalry and keep moving north. I called the brigade commander and told him we were passing through the cavalry troop because they would not continue. I requested that the three artillery pieces that were part of the cavalry troop be attached to my task force since they were now being left behind. The brigade commander refused my request. He had refused all my earlier requests to have an artillery battery attached to my task force for immediate fire support, assuring me each time that I would get fire support when I needed it. As I had anticipated, that did not happen, and we fought the Republican Guard in the valley without artillery support but more on that later as I write the book.

We pressed on with the scouts leading all through the night. We reached SCUD Road at first light and cleared the zone with minimal contact. There was very little there other than an abandoned air defense radar as it turned out, but we did capture the first thirty or so Iraqi soldiers out of the over 1700 we would eventually capture in the Euphrates River Valley. As we waited for the brigade main body to close with us, we continued to clear all the enemy positions we found, which again were mostly abandoned. I was called back to the rear to meet with the brigade commander for a change of plan for the next stage of the attack.

The brigade commander told me that my task force would continue our attack going to the east and then turn north to the Euphrates River Valley. He was going to take the rest of the brigade and move due north and link up with us closer to the Euphrates. I asked why he was not going to follow us since part of our mission was to clear the way of any enemy forces. He said it would be faster if the main body went north and then linked up with us. He showed me his proposed route on the map and I tried to tactfully (not my usual demeanor, I know) point out that all the contour lines that came together on his route meant that vehicles could not get through there. Our maps were sketchy at best but this time they clearly showed a drop-off of several hundred feet on his route. He very rudely told me he knew how to read a map and that I was wrong.  I suggested that since we were going on diverging routes that I should have an artillery battery attached to me. He again refused and said I would get fire support when I needed it. He was tired of me asking that question but not nearly as tired as I was with his refusals.

We saddled up as it was starting to get dark and headed east. The scouts were in the lead and came to a wadi (Arabic for a canyon on deep gully) that was at least 150 feet deep with almost sheer sides. It was not on our maps. We stopped on the lip of this precipice as the scouts went ahead in the dark looking for a way through. About thirty minutes later the scout platoon leader came back and told me they had found a way through the wadi but there was only one way down and one way up the other side so the entire task force would have to file one vehicle at a time through the route. That move took several hours but all the vehicles safely transited the route. When my track started over the edge it was if we were on a roller coaster ride it was so steep. It was dark as hell and this just wasn’t fun! The wadi instantly got named the Wadi from Hell and it was.

After reassembling the task force on the east side of the wadi, we began to make our turn to the north. We had only gone about ten or fifteen kilometers when I got a very faint radio call from brigade. I could just barely hear the brigade commander and there was a lot of static. Finally, we heard that he wanted us to stop our forward movement immediately. When I asked why, he said they couldn’t get through on their route because there was a very deep drop off which wasn’t on their maps. (Yes, it was!) He was going to counter march the main body of the brigade and follow our route. I told him I would send my scouts back to guide them through the Wadi from Hell we had encountered.

I halted the task force and we went in to 360-degree perimeter for security. Those who could, tried to get some sleep. We had all been awake for over 48 hours at this point.  The scouts went back to the wadi and spent the rest of the night leading the brigade main body through the wadi. I laid down but couldn’t really sleep. I had too much on my mind and was thinking through the rest of our attack to the Euphrates River Valley. We had received no intelligence of any type on what enemy forces we had in front of us for the next two hundred plus miles to the valley, and zero intelligence on what was on our objective in the valley. That was to change rather dramatically in the next few hours. 

Just after first light I was instructed to report to the brigade commander with my executive officer at his command post. Usually, when a commander is told to bring his XO and report it’s because he is going to be relieved of command and his XO is to take over. I knew that was not the case, but it was a strange order all the same. When we got there, the brigade commander was all chipper and had clearly gotten some sleep. He promptly told me he had called me over because they had finally gotten some solid intelligence on Iraqi forces on my objective in the valley. He rather gleefully told me there were three mechanized battalions, two light infantry battalions, an artillery regiment and a division headquarters on my objective based upon the latest intelligence to include aerial reconnaissance. I asked him if he was going to give me any more combat power since we would be attacking a unit approximately six times bigger than Task force Striker. He said no. I asked for an artillery battery one more time. He again said no and sternly reminded me that I would get artillery support when I needed it! I saluted and started to leave when he called me back. He said he actually did have some “reinforcements” for me, a reporter from the Washington Post. I was to take him along and “show him a good time”.

The brigade commander sent his driver to get my “reinforcements” so we could depart and start our movement north. While we waited my XO pulled me aside and was quite concerned about what we had just heard about the enemy. He asked if I was going to change anything inside the task force or modify our scheme of maneuver.  He was very agitated about attacking a superior force. According to him,  I just said, “Fuck it. Let’s go.” But I don’t recall saying that. We had just received our “reinforcements” whose name was Tom Something I believe. I cannot remember his last name and he was only with us a short while. We went back to the task force and moved out immediately heading north trying to get as far as we could during daylight hours. We still had over 200 miles to go.

Our reporter, Tom, was a long-haired fellow who was clearly very liberal and somewhat of a hippy. He was also a White House correspondent. We didn’t have any time for amenities, so I stuffed him in my track and we moved out. A little later, he asked why he couldn’t sit in one of the two spring chairs my predecessor had installed on the right side of his M113 in lieu of the bench seat, instead of the box he was sitting on. I told him that was because my fire support officer (who was actually an E4 in this case because his captain wasn’t quite what I wanted) needed to sit there next to me to handle artillery support. He then asked me what was in the box he was sitting on and I told him 40mm grenades for our Mark 19 grenade launcher. Since I was smoking a cigarette and my RTO was making coffee on a propane stove, he took my answer rather hard and asked in a somewhat squeaky voice if the ammo was going to blow up if we kept cooking and smoking? I assured him it would not. I did tell him that if the track took a direct hit from a tank, it would burn, and the ammo would then blowup, but we would all be dead so wouldn’t care. Somehow, he didn’t find that very reassuring.

We didn’t get much of a chance to talk as we plowed on to the north. We had to finally stop to refuel all the vehicles for our last refuel before hitting the valley. Tom asked if he could talk to my crew while we were halted waiting our turn to refuel and I told him sure, go ahead. He asked them if they were upset to be going into combat and didn’t they resent being deployed for the war? He was a Vietnam era reporter and believed that the state of the draftee army at the very end of the Vietnam War was the same state as the army in Desert Storm. It was not the same army. My guys told him they had no problem being there and my track commander, SGT Mark Mann said he was glad to finally be in Iraq. Tom asked him why and he said, “Because the road home is through Iraq.” Tom asked him why he said that, and SGT Mann said, “Because the colonel told us that. He said we needed to go kick the shit out of these people to free Kuwait then we could go home.” Tom asked who the colonel was, and SGT Mann pointed at me and looked at Tom like he was the village idiot which in away he was. He had been thrown into our midst in the middle of what was some very serious business and had no idea as to who and what we were.

Tom asked me why I had told the troops that and I said, “Because that’s what President Bush told us. The war is over once Kuwait is liberated.”Tom was surprised. “You guys don’t like President Bush, do you? He’s the one that sent you here!” That’s when Tom said he was a White House correspondent and I could guess from his question what side of the political spectrum he was from. He clearly did not like the president. I assured him that we liked President Bush very much and in fact had given him a nick name. He asked what that was, and I told him Thumbscrew 6. He jumped on that and took it to have a negative connotation. I explained to him that it was a radio callsign and any callsign that ended in a 6 meant it was a commander speaking. I said as an example, my callsign was Striker 6.

He reflected briefly on that and stated that a thumbscrew is an instrument of torture, so I was calling the president a torturer? I told him no. We called President Bush that because every time Saddam tried to weasel out and not withdraw from Kuwait, President Bush would turn the thumbscrews tighter on Saddam and raise the ante. He did that in his measured responses through the UN and elsewhere, and by the build-up of overwhelming combat power in the theater during Desert Shield. When Desert Storm finally started, we had everything we needed to be successful with that overwhelming combat power (except an artillery battery for little old Task Force Striker that is. But President Bush didn’t make that decision because if he had, we would have gotten one!).

Tom was getting a real education from a wholly different perspective on the man he was covering for the Post in the White House. Tom did write an article about us calling President Bush Thumbscrew 6 which was very favorable towards the president, so we must have made an impact on him. And President Bush absolutely made a favorable impact on us. As I said earlier, he came all the way to Saudi Arabia to spend Thanksgiving with us. But he did so much more than that. He was the first president since FDR to engage in and win a war and that is because he absolutely knew what he was doing and how to do it. He built the coalition and got the UN to include the Russians and Chinese to support resolutions calling on Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait. He aroused the support of the American people, he provided the wherewithal for us to be successful in combat and he clearly defined the conditions for war termination. Once we achieved them, we came home as he promised. The road home was through Iraq.

Again, the last president to do all of that successfully was President Roosevelt in World War Two. History will record that President George H. W. Bush was our greatest president in the second half of the Twentieth Century and even into the first two decades of the Twenty-first Century and perhaps beyond. He is the only one in that 70+ year period who knew how to fight and decisively win a war. As far as war went, he’d been there and done that, could walk the walk, talk the talk and had the tee shirt as we say. He absolutely knew what he was doing and that was our great good fortune in the Gulf War.

So, with his passing Task Force Striker bids a sad farewell to Thumbscrew 6. He was our revered commander-in-chief and touched each and every one of us in a positive way. We went to war for him confidently and successfully under his leadership and without hesitation. I’m not sure any other man could have done what he did at that time and place in history. For you see, ultimately, he set other men free when we liberated Kuwait. There is no higher accolade or reward for an American warrior than that.

Sir, you have passed over the river and are resting in the shade of the trees and we’ll see you there.

With the utmost respect,

Striker 6

I was going to do my next post about my first days in the 82d Airborne Division but a FB post by two stalwarts (Bill Macon and Bill Merrill) who were blessed to have me as their tactical officer when they were cadets at West Point has caused me to rewind. My wife Sherry, who has never failed to give me good advice over the last 43 years, also advised me to go back. Her motivation may have been for me to acknowledge that I had indeed met her while I was at the academy when she was dating my future 82d Airborne Division roommate. I’ll tell that story down the road about how we met again and have been together ever since, and how she is the mainstay of my life, even when she tells me to take the trash out!

My father came home from Vietnam in December 1967. He had commanded the 3d Battalion 60th Infantry Regiment (The Wild Bunch) in the 9th Infantry Division for nine months. He had been extended in command; battalion command in Vietnam was normally six months and then onto the staff somewhere to finish the one-year tour. It had been a long year for those of us back at Fort Riley. Early in that year, a neighbor two houses down from us was also a battalion commander and had been killed in combat. He had five daughters ranging in age from 5 to 17 years old and I went down to give them my condolences. I went to high school with the two oldest daughters. When I came up to the sidewalk to the house I saw all five girls sitting on the front porch step crying their hearts out. It was at that exact moment in my life that I understood the consequences of being a soldier. The hard part is not in the dying. The hard part is the grief that dying causes in those that loved you. That is irreparable pain that never fully goes away.

The loss of LTC William Cronin, our neighbor, was only the beginning of the harshness of that year. Our quarters were across the road from the main post chapel and there were literally one or more funerals a day conducted at that chapel followed by interment in the post cemetery which was within earshot of the quarters so the firing of the salute and the playing of Taps could be heard; solemn reminders daily of the cost of the war and the losses of families like the Cronin’s. As the “man of the house” due to being the only son and surrounded by three sisters and my mom, it was a very tough year. There wasn’t anything I could do about my dad being in Vietnam but somehow there was a subtle pressure to do something. It probably wasn’t there and was nonexistent other than in my teenage mind, but I felt it nonetheless.

It did not help that every evening on the news, in vivid color, was the war so far away brought to our living rooms. It showed the combat of the previous day and grimly detailed the American casualties and often the “body count” of enemy dead. The news coverage of the war at this point was favorable in tone but that was to change in a few short months after my dad came home when the Tet Offensive of 1968 started and American casualties were horrific. As we subsequently learned once the war was over, the enemy casualties were more than horrific. We won that battle on the ground and lost it in the commentary. A valuable lesson for those who paid attention. War without the support of the American people is a loser from the start.

My dad came home in late November 1967. We went to the Kansas City Airport to pick him up. As happened often back then, the plane was long delayed in arrival. We waited in the boarding area for several long hours. I was reading a book when some large men entered the boarding area and sat down to wait on a flight. One of them, a very large black man, sat next to me. I continued to read. He finally said, “Hey, kid, whatcha reading?” I responded that I was reading a book on the First World War. He asked if it was for a school report? I responded that no, I was reading it because I wanted to. He was silent for a moment and then said, “Hey, kid, don’t’cha know who we are?” He waved his very large hand towards the other fellows who had come in with him. I said no, I didn’t know who they were. He said, “We’re the Denver Broncos. Don’tcha want our autographs?” Since I did not (and still do not) follow sports, I had no idea who the Denver Broncos were, and he was dully shocked when I told him that. He was even more shocked when I went back to reading my book. He finally asked why I was at the airport. I told him we were waiting for my dad who was coming home from a year in Vietnam. He became very quiet and said, “That’s some bad shit going on over there. I’m glad your dad is safe.” I thanked him and said I was too!

Dad got home that night and after a few days to get adjusted, wanted to have a chat with me. He had sensed my restlessness once he got home. The last year had been a tough one while he was gone. The daily funerals out the back door did not help to calm anybody in the house or the neighborhood. The loss of LTC Cronin had really shaken up a lot of the wives and kids in our very close-knit Army family. Dad said he appreciated me “holding the fort down” in his absence. I told him I would never do so again if he went back to Vietnam. I also informed him that I intended to enlist in the Army the following month when I turned 17. There was not much he could say to that because he had lied about his age and enlisted when he was 16 in World War II. I had considered doing the same earlier that year but honored my obligation to him to take care of my mom and sisters while he was gone. There really wasn’t anything for me to do in that regard other than to be there. He said he’d have to think about that and we would talk again later.

A day or two went by and my dad asked to talk to me. We sat down, and he asked if I still wanted to go to West Point. I told him I preferred to enlist. He reminded me that I had told my grandfather who was Class of 1927 in my last conversation with him before he died that I intended to go to the academy. I had told him that, so I said yes, I still wanted to go to West Point. Dad suggested that even though I was only a junior in high school, we should start the application process so we would be prepared to actually get an appointment after my senior year. I agreed. He began writing the congressmen and senators from every state we had ever lived in seeking an appointment. We were an Army family going back to 1899 so had no real home state. By chance, Dad also wrote the congressmen and senators from Idaho where my grandfather had entered the academy from. None of us had ever been to Idaho!

Over the succeeding weeks we received very kind letters from all whom Dad wrote saying they regretted they had already given away their appointments to West point but would welcome a resubmission for perhaps next year’s appointment. It was not encouraging. I started thinking about enlisting again. I already knew I was going to volunteer for airborne school and go to the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Such were my plans as a dumb 16 not quite 17-year-old.

Then we got a letter from Congressman George Hansen from Idaho. He said he would welcome considering me for an appointment if I scored well enough on the Civil Service exam. I went down to the courthouse in Junction City, Kansas and took that exam that week. I hate to say this, but the village idiot probably could complete that exam successfully which explains somewhat the quality of some of the civil servants I have run into over the years. A week or two went by and we got another letter from Representative Hansen. He said I had scored the highest in the state on that exam but that he had given away his appointment for West Point for the Class of ’72 entering that summer. He kindly offered an office call with him once we arrived in the Washington area (my dad was on orders for the Pentagon again and I was going to attend my fourth high school in 2 ½ years) and in the interim had listed me as the First Alternate for the West Point slot. I was required in that letter to attend one of the regional West Point examination locations to take the entrance exams for the academy.

A word on the “entrance exams”; they weren’t really exams. There were no written tests other than the submission of your SAT scores. The rest of the “exams” were a physical to make sure you still had two eyes and two opposing teeth so you could tear open Minie ball cartridges and so forth, and a practical physical exam for measuring agility, strength, endurance, etc. (Okay, I’m kidding about the opposing teeth.) The real essence of the “exams” was an interview with an officer from the West Point Admissions Office. That individual would determine based upon that interview and your file of recommendation letters, SAT scores, high school achievements like scouting, sports, etc. whether or not you were of sufficient quality to enter the academy. As an historical note, prior to SAT’s, there really were entrance exams in general subjects like math, English, composition and general subjects to determine academic qualification to attend the academy. That was done primarily because the secondary school system (high school level) was generally unavailable across the country in the 19th century. The requirements in 1968 to attend West Point dating from the 1800’s were to pass the “entrance exams”, be at least 17 years old and to have an appointment from a congressman, senator or the president. That fact will play a significant part of this story.

I drove our Rambler station wagon from Fort Riley to Fort Leavenworth to take my exams. I was sixteen. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me to drive by myself over a hundred miles, but it surprises some people. The most direct route to Fort Leavenworth was by two lane roads through farm country. There were moments of high adventure trying to get the puny six-cylinder American Motors engine to generate enough speed to safely pass the farm vehicles and trucks on the road. I got there in once piece, needless to say.

On the second day of the exams, I was called to the admission officer’s presence to get my interview. It started off pleasantly enough as the captain leafed through my file. Suddenly he stopped, stared at me and asked if I was only a junior in high school. I respectfully assured him I was. He slapped my folder shut, leaned forward on his desk and is an exceptionally rude manner told me I was wasting his valuable time. He said as a junior I wasn’t eligible to attend the academy that year and I was to return home the very next day. I responded with a “yes, sir” and departed the interview.

Coincidentally, that night I had been invited to Colonel McNeil’s quarters for dinner. Colonel McNeil had been a neighbor back at Fort Riley and I had dated his daughter before he was reassigned to Fort Leavenworth once he was promoted to colonel. Colonel McNeil had kindly written my very first letter of recommendation to attend the academy. He was a West Point graduate and I believe an armor officer. He asked me at the dinner how the entrance exams were going, and I told him about my interview and that I would be departing first thing in the morning. He said he was sorry to hear that but wished me a safe trip home.

As I had just finished packing my suitcase to leave early the next morning a young soldier who had apparently run to catch me before I left, breathlessly informed me that the captain from admissions asked me to please come see him and not to depart. The “please come see him” caught my attention and I dutifully put my suitcase down and followed the soldier back to the captain’s office. I was greeted with a big smile and a warm handshake by the captain and asked very politely to have a seat. I sat down wondering what the hell was going on. This was a full 180 degree change by this guy compared to our last conversation.

I sat down, and the captain said that I had apparently misunderstood him the previous day and that I was as eligible as any other candidate who had reported for the exams. Since he wasn’t speaking Chinese the previous day, I clearly had not misunderstood him. Words like “wasting my time” and “go home” are pretty definitive. He asked if I would please (there is that “p” word again) return to the examination process. He assured me the testing I had done earlier was excellent and if I finished with the same level of performance, I would have no problem passing all the entrance exams and getting his recommendation for acceptance. I had absolutely no idea what was going on with this captain but was more than willing to continue the event. I thanked him and went back to change clothes for athletic events scheduled that day.

At the end of all the testing, the captain sought me out before I departed to tell me I had his full endorsement for attendance and had passed with flying colors. All the other candidates were given pass or fail written results but not a personal chat with the captain. I had no idea why the captain was being so cordial towards me. I was not to learn the reason until two years later when on AOT at Fort Riley, Kansas I had a chance to drive over to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to see Colonel McNeil and his family. But that’s for later.

In late January 1968, we moved to Maryland and I started in my fourth high school. I didn’t know anyone, and it was shaping up to be a long semester. The courses I had taken in high school in Kansas didn’t match up completely with what was offered at the new school, so I was repeating some of what I had already done which was uninspiring and way behind in other courses. I did go meet with Congressman Hansen in his office in Washington and he offered me an appointment to any of the other four academies for that summer, but I told him I’d wait until next year for West Point. He promised I would get the appointment next year for the Class of ’73. My dad’s plan to try early to get an assured appointment after senior year had worked, it seemed.

Towards the end of May, the coach in gym class was calling for me as we came out of the locker rooms. I had just had a fight in the locker room (all the new kids have to be tested, you know), and I assumed I was in trouble (again) for fighting. Instead the coach handed me a note and said congratulations! I was taken aback and read the note. It was from my father and it said, “You have been accepted to West Point. Congratulations!” The kid I had the fight with was the first to come forward and congratulate me which was very nice of him. I guess I was finally accepted after the fight.

I went home after school and my dad had come home early from work at the Pentagon which he never did. He explained to me that Congressman Hansen’s office had called him and said the candidate who had the West Point appointment had changed his mind and was going to the Air Force Academy. I had forty-eight hours to accept or decline the appointment. I said I was going to accept it. My dad said he had friends who had gone to the academy who said I might not be able to hack the academics without finishing high school first. He said I may want to reconsider. I told him I was accepting the appointment. He then said something very important, “This is your decision and your mom and I will support whatever you decide. If you go, whether you decide to leave or not later is also your decision. And again, we’ll support you either way.” There was no pressure from my family to go or to stay once I went. That was important to me. I accepted the nomination that afternoon.

I’ve talked earlier about Beast which I enjoyed for the most part because I was finally learning to be a soldier, my lifelong ambition to that point. This, in spite of numerous examples of bad leadership during parts of Beast. We marched back from Buckner at the end of Beast Barracks, then joined our permanent companies in preparation to start the academic year. I was assigned to Company E, 3d Regiment, United States Corps of Cadets. It was to be my home for the next four years.

I was more than a bit nervous about math instruction. We had been issued about twenty paperback books called the “Green Death” and written by a former head of the math department. It was all calculus and I had been scheduled to take calculus in my final year of high school which never happened. I looked at the calculus book for the first day of class and it was all Chinese to me. I had absolutely no idea what all the math symbols meant. I’d never seen any of them before other that the plusses and minuses. My room mates had the same books, but their first homework assignment was in the first book. Mine was in the fifth or sixth book for some reason. I found out the next day why the difference in assignments.

My very first academic class at the academy was Plebe Math. I had looked up my section assignment and I was in the third section of math. I walked in to the math room and my peers were all talking excitedly about the math problems and zipping their slide rules back and forth in nervous anticipation of having fun solving the problems. I did not join any of those discussions and the first time I had ever seen a slide rule was the previous week when it was issued. I had no idea how to use a slide rule but found it handy to underline my perennially wrong answers on math exams. The instructor walked in to the classroom and said, “Take boards!”. Then rattled off the problems the even numbered and odd numbered boards were to solve. I was an odd numbered board and proceeded to write out each of the problems on my board. That’s as far as I could go. I had held onto my mostly unused piece of chalk hoping for divine inspiration but that was a no go. After the requisite time, the instructor announced, “Cease Work!” and we all put our chalk down.

The instructor walked around and looked at each board to determine who had gotten a problem right and could recite on it to the rest of us. He got to my board and asked if I was lost? I said very fervently, “Yes, sir!” He asked why I was in advanced calculus and I told him I didn’t know. He said in reference to being lost, “Don’t worry Cadet Chamberlain, if you are lost you will surely be found.” The term “found” did not escape my notice. We all knew that a cadet who fails academically is “found deficient” in an academic subject and either leaves the academy and is allowed to take a reentrance exam to be readmitted or is sent home for good pending the judgement of an academic board. I asked the instructor if he could help me, but he said no. If I had never taken calculus before, he couldn’t bridge that gap with additional instruction (AI). He said I would just have to gut it out until it was time to resection to a new math section more in keeping with my abilities, or lack thereof. It was a long four weeks until resection and I went deficient in math every day for the six days of the week we took math.

Now I wondered how I had ended up in the 3d Section of math with the rocket scientists. My math SAT scores were average and enough to get in to the academy but not nearly on par with those of my section mates. I was to discover the answer to that riddle two years later, when as I mentioned earlier, I went to see Colonel McNeil during AOT. Over dinner Colonel McNeil asked me how the first two years at the academy had gone and I told him about starting out in the 3d Section of Plebe Math. He was reflective for a moment and told me he had a pretty good idea how that happened.

Colonel McNeil asked me if I remembered being told to go home from the entrance exams and then being asked to stay and finish. I told him I did. He told me that he was the president of the Fort Leavenworth entrance exam board and the admissions captain was working for him. After I left his house that night, he said he had called the captain and instructed him to go into his office and get my file. Once he had my file he was to call Colonel McNeil. When he called, Colonel McNeil had the captain read to him the first letter of recommendation in my file which was from Colonel McNeil. He then asked the captain if he was questioning his judgement by writing that letter. I’m sure the young captain had an epiphany at that point as to whether I was qualified to take the entrance exams. Colonel McNeil said he was quite certain the admissions captain had arranged to have me placed in the 3d Section of math in an attempt to make me fail math and be dismissed, thus proving his point that I was unqualified. I was somewhat shocked at the time that anybody would do such a thing, but after 34 years of service and observation inside the Army, I am now not the least surprised.

So what happened next? How did I survive Plebe math after such a stunning start? Well, it wasn’t easy but I definitely got help along the way. First of all, when resection finally came in early October, I went from the 3d Section of math to the 38th Section which was the last section of Plebe math. We were the end of the line, the fellows with the lowest grades in our entire class in math at that point. Numerous math instructors were aware of my predicament and stood out in the hallway and applauded me and wished me luck as I went like a streaking comet to the very end of Thayer Hall. I believe I set a record in the Corps of Cadets for the single biggest drop in sections in one move. To say I gladly fled down the hallway is a true statement.

I got to the 38th Section and found that I was in the upper half of the section. There were ten poor bastards who had an even lower grade than I did! As we all stood there waiting for the instructor to come in, we were nervous. We need not have been. A major walked in wearing a Combat Infantryman’s Badge and announced that he was Ranger Major Schorr and if we would stay awake, he would get us through Plebe math. He then told us to take seats and actually started teaching, something I had not experienced in the 3d Section where you were supposed to know it all already. Major Schorr is my hero and I stayed awake; very awake!

This is the end of the beginning story of my sojourn to the military academy. The following post will be about my trials and travails at the end of my cadet career and how I became an officer in the Adjutant General Corps instead of the Infantry. The lesson from the above story is that sometimes you make enemies without ever knowing it and that people can be small and petty. The other lesson is that there are more good people than bad out there if you are fortunate enough to cross paths with them.