I have a warm spot in my heart for those long-ago officers. Men like Major Barrett and Captains Miller, Blackstock, Watson, and even Louisell taught us to love soldiering and to care about and look after our troops. And they passed on to us the fun of the Army. Do the job right, but don’t take yourself too seriously. And we certainly did have fun. Our social life revolved around the O-club, which was perched on a hill overlooking the Kinzig River Valley. Every evening the lieutenants adjourned to the bar to drink Löwenbräu beer served by Friedl, the bartender, while the old captains held court, regaling us with war stories and passing on legends. Dinner was followed by more drinking, after which we staggered into our Volkswagens and careened rashly downhill to our quarters.
In those socially incorrect days, we played several drinking games, at which I excelled until I encountered “7-14-21.” In this game, we took turns rolling a cup of five dice, counting only aces. Whoever rolled the seventh ace ordered a twelve-ounce drink that Friedl concocted of straight bourbon, scotch, gin, brandy, and crème de menthe. As Friedl whipped this green concoction in a blender, the game continued. Whoever rolled the fourteenth ace paid for the drink. The game ended when the person who rolled the twenty-first ace was obliged to chugalug Friedl’s vile brew. One night, I hit twenty-one three times in a row. I, who am today a social sipper, fulfilled my obligation, downed the stuff, and on the third glass passed out. I was poured into bed only to be hauled out again at 2:00 A.M. for a surprise alert. I had to be strapped to the backseat of my jeep to hold me up. Fortunately for this near-brain-dead lieutenant, that was not a night the Russians chose to come roaring through the Fulda Gap.
For black GIs, especially those out of the South, Germany was a breath of freedom—they could go where they wanted, eat where they wanted, and date whom they wanted, just like other people. The dollar was strong, the beer good, and the German people friendly, since we were all that stood between them and the Red hordes. War, at least the Cold War in West Germany, was not hell.
You can serve thirty-five years in the Army and rise to the top, yet your first assignment always stands out as the most unforgettable, the one against which all future posts are measured. That is what Gelnhausen meant to me. It marked the beginning of lifelong friendships among my class of lieutenants. We needed each other to survive. We shielded each other from occasional assaults by senior officers. We covered each other’s mistakes and posteriors. And we competed against each other. Steve Stevens, Keith Bissell, Ike Smith, Hal Jordan, Tiger Johns, Walter Pritchard, Bill Stofft, Jim Lee, Joe Schwar, and others remain vivid in my memory. Joe and his wife, Pat, were to save the Powells four years later when my pregnant wife and I were practically left out in the street in a less than hospitable Southern city. Some decided the Army was not for them and left. A handful made general. We were a new officer generation, post-World War II, post-Korea. We would serve our apprenticeship in places like Gelnhausen, but we would undergo our baptism of fire halfway around the world in Southeast Asia, where some, like Pritchard and Lee, would die.
However memorable and valuable it was, I discovered a downside to the German experience. An unhealthy attitude had infected these garrison soldiers, a willingness to cut corners and make things look right rather than be right. Here is a small but telling illustration. The Army had installed a new equipment maintenance system for ordering parts. Nobody could figure it out. Rather than blowing the whistle, rather than saying this system stinks, it was easier to go to military junkyards and salvage the parts we needed. Then we would fudge the paperwork to make it look as if the cockamamie system had worked, thus perpetuating poor management practices. Senior officers went along with the game, and junior officers concluded that this was how it was played. This self-deception would be expanded, institutionalized, and exported, with tragic results, a few years later to Vietnam.
In November 1960, while I was overseas, a presidential election took place, the first in which I was old enough to vote. Not much of the campaign penetrated Gelnhausen; I didn’t see the famous televised Nixon-Kennedy debates. I did vote, however, and cast my absentee ballot for JFK. Not much searching analysis went into my choice. In those days, he and his party seemed to hold out a little more hope for a young man of my roots.
I completed my two-year tour in Germany at the end of 1960. By then, I had succeeded Bill Louisell as Delta Company’s CO. I was the only lieutenant in the battalion commanding a company, a job usually held by a captain. My battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Bartholomees, asked me to extend. But I was homesick. I had a girl whom I had not seen for sixteen months. And I was ready for a change. Infantry Branch had assigned me to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, where I expected to have an opportunity to command another company. And Devens was just a few hours’ drive from New York City, which appealed to me. I bid a sentimental goodbye to the 48th Infantry. I had joined as a rookie, and I was leaving as a fairly seasoned pro.
Long afterward, I was telling my children about this period, and they perked up at only one story. One morning, during maneuvers, we had come upon a scout jeep from another unit parked on a narrow road near Giessen.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” one of my men shouted. “Come on over. Look who’s here.”
I walked over to the jeep, where a grimy, weary-looking sergeant saluted me and put out his hand. It was Elvis Presley. That their father had shaken the King’s hand astonished my kids. What impressed me at the time was that instead of seeking celebrity treatment, Elvis had done his two-year hitch, uncomplainingly, as an ordinary GI, even rising to the responsibility of an NCO.
Fort Devens is located near Ayer, Massachusetts, about thirty miles west of Boston, a post then maintained mostly through the tenacity of the Massachusetts congressional delegation. I reported to Devens in January 1961 in three feet of snow. The obsessive topic among the troops was the bitter cold. Puerto Rican GIs were especially vulnerable. We had one whom we called “Private TA-21,” in reference to the Army’s Table of Allowance at that time for clothing. Whenever Private TA-21 had to leave the barracks, he put on everything issued, and he was still miserable. Alas, he went AWOL, and the MPs found him weeks later sensibly basking in Santurce, Puerto Rico. Interestingly, on Saturday afternoon, after inspection, the same troops who had been shivering and griping all week could be seen in their lightest, sharpest civvies, hitchhiking to the fleshpots of Boston and New York.
I was assigned to the 1st Battle Group, 4th Infantry, 2d Infantry Brigade. The brigade commander was Brigadier General Joseph Stilwell, Jr., son of the legendary World War II general “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. Our Joe was known as “Cider Joe” or “Apple Juice Joe.” He took up parachuting in his fifties. Not content to risk his own neck, Stilwell cajoled the brigade chaplain into jumping, after a ten-minute lesson. The chaplain hit the ground and shattered like Waterford crystal, content never to jump again. Years later, long after Devens, Stilwell taught himself to fly a DC-3, or maybe did not learn all that well, since he disappeared on a flight from California to Hawaii. Those of us who knew him expect Cider Joe to show up someday, still in the pink, on the beach at Waikiki.
My first assignment at Devens was as liaison officer in the battle group headquarters, essentially a “gofer” for Major Richard D. Ellison, the group’s S-3 officer, in charge of operations and training. Ellison was a genial Irishman, a World War II and Korean War veteran several cuts above most of my recent superiors in Germany. Commanding the battle group was a straitlaced colonel, Robert Utley, and our deputy commander, Colonel Tom Gendron, added the desired spice. Gendron, a veteran of the legendary 1st Infantry Division, “the Big Red One,” lived, breathed, and slept his old outfit. He named his sons after 1st Infantry Division generals. Only at his wife’s insistence were his daughters spared that honor. “You ain’t got one,” Gendron liked to say, “unless you got a big red one.”
Between Cider Joe, Utley, and Gendron, ideas, good, bad, and ridiculous, bubbled up constantly. I learned from the adroit Dick Ellison how to push t
he smart proposals, derail the dumb ones, and strangle the most embarrassing in the cradle, all the while keeping our superiors happy. Dick and his wife, Joy, were a gregarious, fun-loving couple, and they practically adopted this lonely bachelor. Dick’s death in Vietnam a few years later robbed me of a beloved friend much too soon.
I eventually managed to escape the liaison job and became executive officer of Company A, making me second in command. Shortly afterward, the company commander was reassigned and I found myself in command of my second company since I had entered the Army, and while still a first lieutenant. My fellow company commanders and I were simultaneously competitors and partners. We passed along to each other tricks of the trade. If, for example, you found yourself short on sheets, you tried the hospital trash dump or the mortuary. They always had plenty, somewhat used but recoverable.
I learned a valuable lesson about competition at Devens: it does not have to be cutthroat. I came up with competitions for my company—not just in sports, but for best barracks, best day room, best weapons inspection, any performance that could be rated and rewarded. The more competitions, the more each individual GI or platoon had a chance to stand out. I was keenly aware of this need. I had discovered my own self-worth in uniform, and I intended to help my troops find theirs. I saw far less value in “Super Bowl” competitions requiring Olympic-class performers who spent all their time training. The event was secondary. The point was to build confidence and self-esteem among a lot of soldiers. The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.
The 2d Infantry Brigade was part of STRAC, the Strategic Army Corps, composed of elite units prepared to fight on any front on short notice. We used the acronym interchangeably as a noun and an adjective. STRAC was a state of being, a sharpness, a readiness, an esprit de corps. (“Sergeant, is the platoon STRAC?” “Yes, sir. We’re STRAC”) And, as often happens in the Army, we overdid it. Style overran substance. Being STRAC came to mean looking sharp more than being combat-ready. We had our field uniforms starched stiff as boards to achieve knife-edge creases. “Breaking starch” meant using a broom handle to open up the pants so that we could get our legs into our fatigues without ripping off our skin. We dressed for inspection at the last possible minute; we left the pants unbuttoned and the fly unzipped; we put on our boots last—all in the interest of dressing without wrinkling the uniform. The effort was pointless, since within an hour everybody’s uniform was a mass of wrinkles. But being STRAC meant breaking starch, and I broke starch with the best of them. It was tradition.
Breaking starch is an example of foolish tradition. Since Vietnam, the Army has tried to eliminate pointless practices. We have sought to make military life a little more like civilian life, with five-day work weeks and weekends free. Barracks today resemble junior college campuses rather than minimum-security prisons. We still hold inspections, but they are designed to assess the preparedness of a unit rather than to gig a soldier for having his canteen a quarter of an inch out of line.
I accept and support most of the sensible changes we have made, and the abandonment of the senseless, like breaking starch. At the same time, traditions and rituals remain essential to the military mystique. They instill a sense of belonging and importance in the lives of young soldiers. I have to confess my nostalgia for some of the lost practices of the past. Company commanders, for example, used to handle minor infractions and record them in a green-covered company punishment book: “Private Russo, AWOL, fined $50.” Today the company punishment book is gone. To carry out routine punishment, you have to read a Miranda-like statement, provide witnesses, make a lawyer available, and submit to review by higher authority. All that may have a nice civil rights ring. But it damages something vital in small army units, the sense of a family responsible for itself, of officers and noncoms, like wise parents, looking after the young people and yanking them back into line when they stray. Undeniably, occasional abuses occurred under the old system. But the benefits far outweighed the risks. Today’s situation is like dragging the family into domestic court every time there is a kitchen spat. The Army lost something valuable as the power to discipline drifted upward to higher headquarters and the lawyers.
Personnel and payroll used to be managed at the battalion level. But today, computers allow the Army to consolidate these tasks higher up. It is more cost-effective, but we pay a price in an impersonalized service. Officers are not as involved in the lives of their soldiers; they have a lesser role in advising and straightening out their problems. In some measure, we have depersonalized the human links that bind soldiers and their leaders together and make for high morale, that family feeling. I am sure that every ex-GI of a certain age remembers his company mess hall, a wooden building perched on cinder blocks, the kitchen at one end, picnic-style tables and benches on wooden floors, a rail in one corner separating the officers’ eating area, another corner reserved for sergeants, the garbage cans at the exit, and the mop rack outside. I know that today’s big, consolidated “dining facilities” make more economic sense than the old company mess halls. But the hum and clatter of a company mess hall is nostalgic music to me, and I miss the feeling of comradeship. Of course, I am mixing nostalgia with reality; and, intellectually, I know that today’s GI and today’s Army are superior. But I cannot help recalling those days through mists of fond memory, as all old soldiers do.
My tour as commander of A Company was short. I was sent off to become adjutant of a new unit, the 1st Battalion, 2d Infantry. Once again, I was a first lieutenant in a captain’s job. A battalion adjutant handles personnel, promotions, assignments, discipline, mail, and “morale and welfare.” My new commander was Lieutenant Colonel William C. Abernathy, a teetotaling Baptist from Arkansas and a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University who never uttered an expletive stronger than “golly.” I was going to have to clean up my act.
Lieutenant Colonel Abernathy was no swashbuckler, but he was a solid performer who gave troop morale top priority. He expected a promotion to private first class to be handled with the same importance as a promotion to colonel. The men were to be paid on time. Soldiers freezing their butts off in the field were to have hot coffee and soup available. Any sign that a GI was not being properly looked after meant trouble right up the chain of command. Abernathy did not pamper the troops; he worked them hard and disciplined them, which was another way of caring.
One day, the colonel informed me that I was to set up a system of “Welcome Baby” letters. My mystification must have shown in my face. Every soldier whose wife had a baby, Abernathy explained, was to receive a personal letter from the battalion commander congratulating the parents. A second letter would go to the baby, welcoming the tot into the battalion. Abernathy demanded that I get these letters out the very day the child was born.
How was I supposed to know which men were about to become fathers? I could picture the battalion, massed on the parade ground: “Every man whose wife is pregnant, take one step forward! All right. When’s she due?” I suspect my bachelor status also had something to do with my lack of enthusiasm. In any case, I dragged my feet in setting up this stork-alert system. Abernathy called me on the carpet. “Gee whiz, Colin,” he said. “I’m disappointed you haven’t done this yet.” I would rather have had Red Barrett blister me with four-letter words than hear Abernathy’s pained reprimand. I returned to my office and immediately added population reporting to my duties.
To my surprise, once we had the system in place, we started getting positive feedback. The soldiers were impressed by Abernathy’s thoughtfulness. Mothers wrote us that they appreciated being considered part of their husband’s Army life. The babies were not talking yet, but I imagine, somewhere out there, a thirty-five-year-old woman is wondering how a letter making her a member of the ist Battalion, 2d Infantry, got into her baby book.
Another lesson learned and filed. Find ways to reach down and touch everyone in a unit. Make individuals feel important and part of something la
rger than themselves. Abernathy had found a way to demonstrate caring in a fundamentally rough business. And this he achieved at a time when the Army’s attitude was, if we had wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one.
I still chafed at the adjutant’s job and wanted to be commanding troops. I kept nagging Abernathy for another company until, one day, he said something curious. “You’ve already commanded two companies, even if only for short periods. You’re working now in a captain’s slot for the third time in less than three years in the Army. At this rate, it’s not likely anyone is going to assign you back to company level.” He seemed to be saying I had already cleared the bar at that height. I still hoped for another company, but he was right.
In the summer of 1961, in the words of my relatives, I was “goin’ home” for the first time. For all the professional challenge, Devens was not as exciting as manning the Cold War ramparts in West Germany. I was looking for an adventure; and so I scraped together $182 round-trip air fare (I was earning $290 a month at the time) for my first trip to Jamaica. Before leaving, I spent time with the family, poring over genealogical data explaining who was related to whom so that I’d be spared any social blunders.
Could two parts of the same planet differ more than Fort Devens and Jamaica? I was suddenly drenched in sunlight, surrounded by lush flowers, and enveloped by aunts, uncles, and cousins who took me in as if they had known me all my life. In applying for my Army commission, I had had to list relatives living abroad; my answer totaled twenty-eight Jamaicans within the first degree of kindred. I did, however, commit one gaffe on this visit. I failed to bring the presents expected from a “rich” relative arriving from the bountiful U.S.A. Nevertheless, I found myself shuttled from town to town, house to house, aunt to uncle, like a prize catch.
My American Journey Page 8