My Military Service

As a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant, 1959

  

 ROTC

 

When I started college at Syracuse University in the fall of 1955, I could sign up for either physical education or Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). Syracuse offered both Air Force ROTC and Army ROTC. There were two excellent reasons for me to choose ROTC: First, I never was very athletic, and the physical education classes didn't appeal to me; second, in 1955, there was Universal Military Training, which meant that all physically able males were supposed to serve either two years of active military service plus six years of inactive reserve service, or six months of active military service for training (ACDUTRA) followed by seven and one-half years of active reserve service. I knew that it would be much better to perform my service as an officer rather than in an enlisted status. Although I would have preferred to be in the Air Force ROTC, that service was looking for potential pilots, and my myopia disqualified me from the program. The initial ROTC commitment was for two years, the "basic" ROTC program. We were furnished with a homely brown wool uniform, consisting of a shirt, black tie, black shoes, greenish-brown pants, an "Eisenhower" jacket, a flat-folding cap, technically known as an "overseas" cap, but more commonly known as a "cunt cap," and a brown overcoat for winter wear. It was essentially an Army private's uniform. There was a shoulder patch and round brass insignia that identified us as ROTC students.

 

Every Tuesday and Thursday were drill days. ROTC students were required to wear uniforms on drill days and attend an hour of classroom instruction in military science and tactics, plus an hour of military drill. The drill was held on an athletic field in good weather and in a large field house in inclement weather. ROTC was a large program at Syracuse, and classes were held in a drab grey building devoted exclusively to the program. All of the instructors were active-duty Army officers, and the head of the program, a lieutenant colonel, was the Professor of Military Science and Tactics. The academic courses were monotonous but did not require any real class preparation, and I don't recall any homework or assignments.

 

The drill was more difficult. We were each furnished with a copy of the Army's drill manual, FM 22-5, which had instructions and how-to photographs on marching with and without a rifle. Drills were chaotic. Except for a few freshmen who had attended military high schools and a couple of first-year students who had served in the Army, most of us had no idea how to drill or march. Unlike soldiers in boot camp, who were taught by very experienced drill sergeants, our instructors were just upper-class ROTC students who had very little training themselves. The entire Army ROTC was called the battalion, and the top senior ROTC cadet became the battalion commander. The battalion was divided into five or six companies, which consisted of five platoons. The platoons were divided into five squads, each having six to ten members, depending on the total number of ROTC cadets. My squad leader, a sophomore chemistry major named Stan, was not proficient in drill himself. It was a struggle the first year to learn how to move correctly to the commands, but eventually, I could "dress, right, dress," "left face," "right face," "about-face," "present arms," "left turn, harch," "to the rear, harch," etc. [Note: for some reason, the word "march" was always pronounced "harch" in the Army.] In addition to the battalion staff, other seniors were company commanders or platoon leaders. Syracuse's star football hero, Jimmy Brown, was a company commander, but he frequently couldn't find his company and would wander about until some other senior led to the front of his company. Juniors and seniors were in the advanced ROTC and wore officers' uniforms. In the mid-1950s, the Army was switching from World War II-era style uniforms to a new style. The officers' Class A "pinks and greens," which were quite dashing, gave way to the all-green uniforms which, we were told, were supposed to more closely resemble a business suit.

 

Military protocol was followed on campus, and all of the ROTC students were continually saluting each other as they went from class to class across the campus. Only seniors became cadet officers. Instead of regular Army insignia of rank, cadets had silver circles or diamonds. A cadet second lieutenant had one dime-size circle; a first lieutenant had two, and a captain three. A major had one diamond, a lieutenant colonel had two, and a full colonel had three diamonds. There were no cadet generals. My freshman year squad leader, Stan, didn't elect to sign up for the advance ROTC in his junior year, and he would sometimes heckle me with a salute and a command when we passed on campus on a drill day.

 

At the start of my junior year, I signed up for the advanced ROTC. My mother was very upset, as she hated anything to do with war or the military. From my point of view, ROTC was an easy three credit hours each semester, and the advanced ROTC contract that we signed provided for payment of 90 cents per day during the school year. Juniors were issued brand new green officers' uniforms. Unlike the class that preceded us, which got new green uniforms like those issued to enlisted men, we were furnished with new high-quality officers' uniforms to be retained for our active duty service.

 

The highlight of advanced ROTC was the six weeks summer camp held between the junior and senior years. Syracuse University ROTC students were sent to summer camp at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina, one of several Army ROTC summer camps held throughout the United States. There were probably a couple of thousand cadets at the camp from many colleges. Cadets were housed in large open two-story barracks by platoons. The platoon leaders were all active-duty first lieutenants or captains, and the company commanders were full colonels. Cadets seemed to be randomly assigned to platoons, and I was the only Syracuse cadet in my platoon. Only four of us in our platoon were from northern colleges. The rest were from southern colleges such as the Citadel, Clemson, Wake Forrest, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, and the University of Virginia. We started with one Black cadet, Hadley, from Ohio, but the southerners made him so unwelcome that he requested a transfer and was reassigned to another platoon with several other Black cadets. Gus Henning, a cadet from Michigan, whose cot had been next to Hadley's cot (we slept in alphabetical order), had tried to be friendly with Hadley, and as a result, awoke on a Sunday morning (when we could sleep late) to find that some southern cadets had painted his scrotum with liquid black shoe polish. After Hadley left, the only northerners were me, Gus Henning, and a cadet from Cornell, whose name escapes me. In the photo below, I am directly behind Hadley. Gus Henning is to my right. I am behind Hadley.

   

The southerners had an entirely different outlook on the ROTC program from us northerners. Most of the southerners relished the idea of military service, and many hoped to make it a career. The top ten percent of the ROTC class in each college were designated Distinguished Military Students and became eligible to receive regular Army commissions instead of reserve commissions. That was a goal that made some cadets very competitive. Our platoon leader was a regular Army first lieutenant who had graduated from some land grant college in the south.

 

Fort Bragg in July was not a pleasant place. It was sweltering, humid, and buggy. Part of our routine was to check each other for ticks when we returned to the barracks from the field. If we saw a tick with its head burrowed under the skin, we would hold a cigarette close to it until the heat made it back out so that it could be safely removed. Spider bites were worse. There were tiny brown spiders. I had a spider bite on my left wrist that was not only painful and itchy for several days, but the bite marks were visible for several months.

 

Although much of summer camp was hellish, it was not hell. I got a helicopter ride and shot a 3.5 rocket launcher, or bazooka as it was commonly called. I learned to iron clothing and disassemble and assemble my M-1 rifle. I also learned a lot about the attitudes of my southern contemporaries.

 

One day in mid-July, our scheduled training was abruptly canceled. We were loaded into trucks and driven to a training field, where we were seated in bleachers. Colonel Sam Razor, the ROTC summer camp commander, told us that the Marines had just invaded Lebanon and possibly the United States might be engaged in a war there. He then advised us that the contract we had signed for the advanced ROTC program provided that in a national emergency, the Secretary of the Army could elect to commission us at the conclusion of summer camp and order us to immediate active duty. Fortunately, the invasion of Lebanon did not escalate into a war.

 

Toward the end of summer camp, all of the cadets went on a three or four-day bivouac to expose us to simulated warfare. I went to the morning sick call just before leaving to get medicine for some cold-like symptoms that I had, and the medic gave me several bottles of the elixir of Turpin hydrate with codeine to take with me on bivouac. When we were about to start our long march to the bivouac area, our platoon leader told the Cornell cadet, Gus Henning, and me that we were the "platoon fuck ups," and he was assigning us to carry the 81 mm. mortar and its very heavy base plate. We struggled with it for perhaps a mile when some full colonel on the camp commander's staff rode by in a jeep and spotted us. He said that the mortar was too heavy to be carried any distance and told us to put it in the following truck to take us to the bivouac area, which we happily did. A couple of hours later, when our platoon arrived, we were sitting under a tree with our mortar, playing cards, and smoking. Our platoon leader never mentioned it, and I believe he was reprimanded for ordering us to carry the mortar. The bivouac was otherwise uneventful, and I enjoyed my medicine, which was commonly known as "GI gin."

 

Shortly before the end of summer camp, the Cornell cadet, Gus Henning, and I were each summoned to the company commander's office, and each told the same thing by our colonel. He said that based upon the report of our platoon leader, we would not be recommended for a commission in one of the combat arms: infantry, artillery, or armor. For a cadet hoping to make a career in the military, such news would have been devastating; for us, it was great news.

 

ACTIVE DUTY

 

During the second semester of my senior year, I received notice that I would be assigned to the Army's Adjutant General Corps. The Adjutant General's Corps was the branch of the Army that handled its administration and postal functions. I received written orders to report to the Adjutant General's School at Fort Benjamin Harrison near Indianapolis, Indiana, in mid-July to start my six months of active duty for training. I graduated from Syracuse University on June 1, 1959, and the Professor of Military Scient and Tactics pinned gold bars on my new summer uniform.

 

There were 40 newly commissioned second lieutenants assigned to Officers Basic Course #2. We were each assigned a private room in the bachelor officers' quarters and were delighted to learn that we had maid service. The first two or three days were spent at the offices' club pool and buying short-sleeved summer khaki uniforms. One of the lieutenants from Texas, Homer Lee Tumlinson, brought Air Force khakis, which were a lighter shade than the Army khakis, but no one seemed to mind his individuality. Fort Benjamin Harrison, or "Uncle Benny's Rest Home" as it was commonly referred to, was the home of the Adjutant General's Corps and the Finance Corps. It had a very laid-back atmosphere. Most physicians and dentists assigned to the post medical facility wore regulation uniforms but spiffed them with penny loafers or tassel loafers. The father of one lieutenant owned a jewelry company, and he had all of his brass gold plated. 

The first phase of our course consisted of a couple of months of classroom instruction about the Army in general and the function of the Adjutant General Corps in particular. The AG school was in a modern brick building. Each student officer had a large office-style desk, and enlisted men arranged our books on our desks each day. Most of the classwork consisted of listening to lectures and occasional quizzes. Our classes started at 8:00 am with a ten-minute break every hour. After an hour and one half lunch break, we usually had another three hours of class and were done for the day. At one point, one of the school's instructors asked for a show of hands of all in the class who had not been through an infiltration course. We all raised our hands, but we were never put through any outdoor training. I never wore a fatigue uniform or handled a weapon once during my six months at Ft. Benjamin Harrison.

At the conclusion of the basic course, we were given a choice to take advanced training in either military postal service or data processing. These courses were taught as a mixed class of officers and enlisted men. The instruction was designed to educate the enlisted men who would work in these fields, mostly 18 to 20-year-old recent high school graduates. The lieutenants, all recent college graduates, found the work very easy. The enlisted men had a real \incentive to succeed – they were threatened with a transfer to an infantry unit in Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri if they failed. In 1959 the Army used large punch-card data processing machines since the computer age had not yet arrived. At the conclusion of the course, I received the military occupational specialty (MOS) of a machine records unit officer.

At the conclusion of the formal instruction, we were given a couple of weeks' leave. Upon our return, we found that the Army had no actual plans for us. Typically, we would have been sent to different military posts for the remainder of our six months of active duty, but we were told that there were too many lieutenants and not enough funds to justify our reassignment so that we would just spend the rest of our time at Uncle Benny's Rest Home. For our morning's work, we were given an empty classroom and told to take correspondence courses. No one monitored our work, and we could choose our courses and work at whatever pace we chose. For many, it became a morning card game, and some married officers who lived off the post just didn't show up for several days at a time. We were encouraged to find something useful to do in the afternoon, but it was not required. I took photographs for the public information office and later filled in as Assistant Post Adjutant. That job entailed scribbling my name on about 100 different routine documents each afternoon.

 

One memorable occasion occurred while I was walking near the post medical facility. An enlisted man walking towards me saluted as we passed, and we suddenly recognized each other and stopped. It was Stan. He had graduated from Syracuse University the previous year and started working for a drug company as a chemist when he was drafted. The Army didn't need chemists that year, so he was assigned to be a clerk typist in the post pharmacy. Stan almost cried when he saw me, and it made all of the ROTC Mickey-Mouse drills worthwhile.

 

When we were not in class or otherwise engaged, we could leave the post and go wherever we wished. We were told just to sign out and put the letters "VOCO" next to our signatures. The VOCO stood for "verbal order, commanding officer." Lt. Josef Levi, an artist, signed himself out and went to Spain for a couple of days after learning that a particular type of art was inexpensively available at a bazaar near Madrid. One weekend Dick Bryan, who grew up in Nevada (and later became its Attorney General, Governor, and United States Senator), wanted to see New York City. I called Nedda and told her I was coming in for the weekend with a friend. Dick and I put on our Class A uniforms and drove to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where we boarded an Air Force Reserve flight to Mitchell Field, not too far from where Nedda lived with her parents in Queens. We spent the weekend there and flew back on Sunday night.

 

I liked the Army. After living as a college student for four years, I enjoyed having a decent paycheck, maid service, congenial company, easy work, and the prestige of being an officer. Also, I had nothing better to do. I thought it would be great to extend my time on active duty and see some of the world. I asked the Commandant of the AG school if I could extend my tour of duty, indicating that I would be willing to accept a posting to any foreign military post, including Korea, but he told me that there were so many AG second lieutenants previously committed to a two-year tour of duty, or who had regular Army commissions, that I would need the backing of at least a United States senator to get an extension.

 

                   THE RESERVES

 

Under the Reserve Forces Act of 1955, I had an eight-year military reserve obligation which commenced with my commissioning on June 1, 1959. During the spring of 1960, I was assigned to an Army Reserve Postal Unit in Troy. It was the smaller of two postal units in Troy and was commanded by First Lieutenant Richard Hathaway. Lt. Hathaway was an older man, not too tall and with a wiry frame. He had served in an airborne ranger unit in World War II and Korea. He had been a sergeant in both wars and only reluctantly accepted a battlefield commission shortly before leaving active service in Korea. He loved the Army, and during our two-week summer camp at Camp Drum in Watertown, NY, he enjoyed the role of a soldier. On a night bivouac, he told his men that he would play the enemy and to be on the lookout for him. He would crawl up the hill in the dark and silently capture men half his age and twice his weight, pulling them out of their foxholes with his hand clasped over their mouths. Although hard liquor was not permitted on bivouac, Lt. Hathaway said that even the Army Military Police weren't permitted to search U.S. Post Office mail sacks, and on a day when the weather prediction was for a cold night, he took a mail sack into Watertown and brought back bottles of liquor, from which he offered his troops a shot at night to ward off the cold.

 

Shortly after entering law school that fall, I requested relief from attending weekly reserve meetings and was assigned to a "control group." Instead of weekly meetings, I took correspondence courses and was subject to being called to a two-week summer camp. After I got married, between my first and second year of law school, Nedda took over the correspondence courses for me so that I wasn't distracted from my law studies. Nedda would tell me all about the different weapons systems she had studied.

 

I spent the first summer camp at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, where I shared a room in the BOQ with an electrical engineer from Binghamton, NY, who worked for IBM designing the same type of IBM punch card data processing equipment used at Ft. Dix. Ironically, he was not permitted to touch the equipment since he did not have the proper machine records unit officer MOS, and the Army considered him a civil engineer. At the time, Ft. Dix was the headquarters of II Corps, which encompassed all Army reserve units and individual Army reservists in the northeast. Among the interesting things I learned from the head civilian bureaucrat who ran this section was that when the Korean War broke out, there was such chaos that privates were deciding which reserve officers to call to active duty. The unit would receive a list of officer ranks with specific MOS qualifications that the Army needed, and the privates, who were usually doing file maintenance, would look through the files and choose the reservists to send to war.

Following graduation from law school, I was assigned to the 364th General Hospital Unit in Albany. This was a large reserve unit that had no need for an Adjutant General officer, so I did a variety of training jobs. One summer, I was sent to Camp Drum in upstate New York and was put in charge of the ration breakdown warehouse, which provided the food for all the reserve and National Guard units for the two-week summer camp. It was the summer that I was learning to fly, and I supplied an Air National Guard unit from Connecticut with extra steaks for a barbeque in return for lessons flying the small, two-seat observation airplanes, known as the L-19 Bird Dog.

 

At the end of May 1967, my eight-year military obligation expired. I was considering extending my time in the reserves, but Viet Nam had started pressuring the Army to activate some reserve units. At my last meeting that May, I was told that an Army reserve general hospital somewhere in the United States would be activated the next day, but the unit's name had not yet been announced. Although I was scheduled to be promoted to the rank of captain at the next weekly meeting, I didn't want to take the chance of being activated, and I typed a letter resigning my commission. I also typed similar letters for two other officers. As it turned out, the Albany unit was not called to duty.

Now, many years later, I find that my military service entitles me to a 10% discount on purchases made at Lowes and a "Thank you for your military service" from the cashiers when I check out.