This concerns the time of my life between April 1970 and March 1971, “The War Year”. I write this not because I did anything special during that time or my experiences were outstanding and unusual, in fact, for the most part they were between average and dull. I write this because I have questions, questions that will never be answered, about my fathers experiences in WW II. He never spoke to me directly about it and now he is gone and I cannot ask him. But because I have the questions, I will write what I can remember of my year at war, in case one of my descendents should have questions I am not around to answer.

I shall begin before the beginning to explain how I came to be there. In 1968 my father was a medic in the US Army stationed in Aschafenburg Germany and I was graduating from Frankfurt American High School in Frankfurt. My father had a heart attack and was sent back to the states for a medical retirement. I chose to return to Northern Virginia were we had been during most of my high school years and started college at Northern Virginia Community College. I was living with my sister Barbara and her first husband Jack. I was doing OK in school and working part time at night in different 7-11 stores around the area, wherever they needed someone that night. The job went though a dry spell during March / April of 1969 so I dropped out of college and went to work at different jobs around the area. By sour on me. I headed back to Anniston, Alabama where my parents had settled, with the intention of joining the army. The day after I arrived at my parents house, my uncle called from Walter, Al. where my grandfather lived and said I had a letter there from the government. The next day my dad and I drove up and picked up the letter.

 It was a notice from the draft board telling me to report for a physical back in May. It had bounced around until finally going to my granddads house. Dad and I took it over to the local draft board but all they said was “don’t worry, give us a current address and we’ll pick you up next month”. I had just returned to Alabama with the intention of joining the army anyway, so that is what I did. Instead of waiting for the draft, I went ahead and enlisted. I came in “RA, Airborne, unassigned”, meaning I enlisted rather then being drafted, the only thing I asked for was Airborne training, and I didn’t care what MOS they put me in. They told me my test scores indicated I should be in Hawk Missile Maintenance, but I was assigned to the infantry as I had expected. I did take 6 extra hours of tests for Warrant Officer Flight Training to fly helicopters. I would have liked that and I passed the tests, then they told me my eyesight was too bad for the program. So, on 15 Sept 1969, I reported to Fort Benning, Ga. for Basic Training. I went to E Co, 8th Bn, 2nd Bde, out in the Harmony Church area. I remember my bunk was on top, 2nd from the end on the right as you came up the stairs of the old WW II 2 story barracks. I remember I broke my watch practicing the “Low Crawl” which at that time was a part of the PT. test. I remember having KP three days in a row. The first day I was leaving the Mess Hall after lunch on Sunday and a Drill Sergeant said “Hay You” come here, and I was in a grease trap until 10 o’clock that night. The next morning I was a little slower getting to formation than usual and ended up at the end of the squad line. They needed a detail that day so they took the last two men in each squad line and sent us to another unit to pull KP. Again I got back to the barracks after 10 o’clock. The fireguard told me to look at the new KP roster and sure enough I had to report at 3:30 the next morning for a full day of KP. I was really beat, after about 10 AM the next morning I was just a Zombie. I obviously lived through it but 3 days of KP is tough! I remember that! I remember having a hard time on the live fire assault course. The worse time was the practice run during the day when the Drill Sergeants could stand around giving us a hard time. During the live fire at night with the machine guns shooting over our heads it was actually a lot easier, no Drill Sergeants to stand over you yelling. I took my time and finished with a line that started after me. I remember we had a permanent party PFC cook that lived on our floor and always gave us a hard time. I remember walking around the top floor when it was my turn on fireguard. I could see HWY 27 from our windows and I would stand there watching the headlights of the cars going to & from, wishing I was going to or from some place instead of being stuck there where I was. Made me want my car back real bad! I don’t remember all the Drill Sergeants in the company, I think we had about eight of them. My platoon had a really good one named Osborne I think. He didn’t cuss us a lot like some of them and took more time to explain things to us. There were several young E-5 Drills that were just young and dumb and probably not intentionally cruel. There was one E-6 Drill Sergeant named Miranda that was just a poor human being. He always treated everyone badly, but I recall one time the company was in formation and his wife and daughter were behind the formation waiting to pick him up after work, He could see them back there but continued to rant and rave and cuss us so bad we were embarrassed his wife and daughter had to hear such things. I remember towards the end of basic they gave everyone a leadership survey. This as a rating given to you by your peers. If you scored high enough they included the rating in your movement orders. I was surprised I had a high rating noted on my orders. I think my esteem went up in my peers eyes when my girlfriend at that time came to visit me. My girlfriend was just OK looking but her two sisters that were GOOD LOOKING came with her. I know my fellow soldiers were wondering how in the world a skinny 4-eyed jerk me could have these lovely girls coming to see me!

I graduated Basic Training and spent a week or ten days on leave enroute to Infantry AIT at Ft Gordon, Ga. I was assigned to B-7-3 I think, B Co, 7th Bn, 3rd Bde. It was an all Airborne volunteer company, about 220 of us. We lost a few volunteers along the way but about 201-207 of us went on to jump school together. I don’t remember a lot about the training at Fort Gordon. I do remember we had inspections every Saturday morning and if you didn’t pass inspection you would not get that all important pass to go off post. Not a lot to do off post because you still had to come back at night, but it was important to get away from the military for awhile, even if it was only to walk around and look at closed car lots. It was at this time that I had a tattoo put on my arm. Why? Who knows. I made sure I was sober so I couldn’t blame it on being drunk, went to a tattoo parlor, picked out a design I hadn’t seen anyone else with and had it put on my forearm. Cost me ten dollars plus $2.50 to put my initials under it - then I went out and got drunk. We still had WW II barracks and this was December thru February. The barracks had coal or oil furnishers but they did not have any insulation. We crammed newspapers into the cracks around the windows to help stop the wind coming through but it was still extremely cold at night. I used both blankets at night, one of them doubled and also took my heavy dress overcoat and put it between the blankets. You wore your socks to bed and sometimes your long underwear and fatigues too. It was still awfully cold some nights. Water left in your canteen would freeze solid while inside your locker. Getting up in the morning and putting your feet on the floor was always an experience. I kept a small transistor radio, which I think we were authorized to have, and would listen to it at night which I’m sure was not authorized. I kept it turned down low and under my pillow so the only way I could hear it was with my ear pressing down on the pillow and no one else especially the CQ Drill Sergeant would know it was there. “Rainy Night in Georgia” was a popular and appropriate song at the time. The Mess Hall would often fix soup for us in addition to the regular meals when we were in the field. It was generally made from the previous days leftovers and always seem to contain a lot of the flabby skin of chicken necks. It wasn’t real good to eat but we would still stand in line to fill out canteen cups so the hot soup would warm our hands. We would just pour it out when it was time to return to training.

Jump School! The PT wasn’t that hard on me tho I was marginal on pull-ups. The runs were easy for me. I did have a really difficult time on the 34 foot towers. The straps of the harness had turned the inside of my thighs black and blue down to my knees. I would have a good jump until I hid then end of the risers and the straps snapped up tight then my body position went to hell. I did finally qualify, probably from the kindness of the grader. Also on one cheek of my ass was a perfect bruise of the outline of a hand. You could actually see the imprint of each finger as the jumpmaster had “helped” me out the door. Normally the 3rd week of jump school you made your five qualifying jumps. Because of bad weather it took two full weeks to get our five jumps. The worst thing would be to get in the airplane and over the DZ but not jump because the winds were too high. With 600-800 men starting jump school every week, falling behind schedule really created a space problem. We received our orders during the last week. Up to that time I did not know for sure that I would go to Viet Nam although I assumed that being Infantry it was pretty automatic. We stood in formation and one of the TAC sergeants read off our names and where we were going, then you’d run up to get a copy from him. Most of the Infantry did get called for Viet Nam tho there were some for the 82nd, Germany, or Korea. I wanted to go on to Viet Nam because I figured that if I went anywhere else it would only be for a short time before it was on to Viet Nam. This proved basically true from men I met later to which it had happened. Viet Nam was what was happening at the time and I was a young man with nothing better to do then to go check it out. I remember I hurt my parents feelings while I was on leave. Someone asked me why I wanted to go to Viet Nam and I answered something to the effect “why not, I have nothing to stay here for”. Young people often do not think past themselves, and I try to remember this when my own children say hasty things. I had several weeks leave between Jump School and reporting to Ft. Lewis , Washington for shipment to the Nam. I spent most of the time at my parents house in Anniston and a couple days in California where both my sisters were living at that time with their 1st husbands. Not much to say about Ft. Lewis itself. I was there for 3 days on the way to Viet Nam and 2 days coming back. It rained every day on the way and it was still raining when I came back. At the time I reported in there were too many infantry guys at the receiving station in Viet Nam, so they said all you infantry guys with orders for Viet Nam in the next three days will go to Korea instead. That pleased some folks of course, but I was all set for Viet Nam. My mind was ready for Viet Nam, all my relatives knew I was going to Viet Nam, now I would have to write and say “Guess what happened on my way to the Nam! Also, the thought, as before, that if I went to Korea now six months later I’d probably get orders for Nam anyway. This also proved true for some of the guys that on to Korea. The joke, I guess, was somewhat on the guys that didn’t want to go to Nam and did not report on time. If they had reported on time they would have been sent on to Korea, but by coming in after those 3 days they went straight on to the Nam. They had told us what was to happen and during processing I looked on down the line and saw that at one point the clerk asked your MOS and if you said infantry she marked a “K” on your records and anything else she marked a “V”. When it came my turn I said “Hold on, I’m in a mindset for Viet Nam and I want to go on and do it now”. She said “Sorry, policy is for three days all infantry except Viet Nam volunteers go to Korea”. “No Problem”, says I, “I’ll volunteer right now, I just never thought it would be necessary for a infantry guy to put it in writing”. She said “No, it doesn’t work that way”. I remember she was a cute red-haired girl and I held up the line for about three minutes just talking her into letting me go on to Viet Nam. I finally succeeded and she put a “V” on my records with the parting comment that in two months I’d be cussing her. I made it a point not to, tho she was right about me feeling like doing it. It was a quiet planeful of GIs on the ride over. We had very short stops in Alaska and Japan along the way.