And, slowly at first, American casualties began to mount. Familiar names began showing up among the dead—Jim Lee, with whom I had served in Gelnhausen; Alan Pasco, the first of my Pershing Rifles buddies to die in Vietnam, but not the last.
Still, few people in America knew or cared what was happening in that faraway country. Vietnam was strictly a back-burner issue. At the time, the United States had 252,000 Army troops in Europe and 49,000 in Korea, compared to the 16,300 in Vietnam. And there was no antiwar movement to speak of in 1963.
In spite of my misgivings, I was leaving the country still a true believer. I had experienced disappointment, not disillusionment. I remained convinced that it was right to help South Vietnam remain independent, and right to draw the line against communism anywhere in the world. The ends were justified, even if the means were flawed. In spite of what Secretary McNamara had found, the mission was simply bigger and tougher than we had anticipated. While I was at Hue working with the intelligence staff, an analyst had asked me, as a guy who had been in the field, what the job was going to take. I pulled a number out of thin air. “It’ll take,” I said, “half a million men to succeed.”
… … …
I was sitting in the airport in Nashville, Tennessee, thumbing through a magazine while waiting for an afternoon flight to Birmingham, when I noticed people clustering around a TV set in the lounge, staring in a strange silence. The date was November 22. Three weeks before, I had been in Vietnam on the day that that country’s president had been assassinated and the government overturned. This afternoon, the President of my country had been murdered. And while I had been off fighting for the freedom of foreigners, four little black girls had been killed by a bomb planted in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. I had returned home, it seemed, to a world turned upside down.
Five
Coming Home
ONE OF NORMAN ROCKWELL’S CLASSIC PAINTINGS IS CALLED HOMECOMING GI, a Saturday Evening Post cover that appeared just after World War II. The young soldier, duffel bag in hand, has just arrived back at the old neighborhood; his family runs out to greet him, including the dog; a pretty girl waits demurely around the corner; grinning neighbors lean out of doorways and windows; kids wave at him from up in a tree, welcoming home the conquering hero. That is not the way it was coming back from Vietnam in 1963.
As I stepped out of the Birmingham airport, one person was waiting for me. She looked beautiful and vaguely familiar. When two people have known each other for only a year, and are separated for another year, they are, even if man and wife, something of strangers. As I took Alma in my arms, the strangeness began to dissolve, though I am sure she was thinking, who is this guy? Do I really know him? We got into my old blue Beetle, another familiar sensation, and headed for her parents’ new home in a north Birmingham area called Tarrant City. It was dusk when we pulled up and parked behind the house. Alma urged me to go on ahead toward a large sliding glass door. My in-laws, for the moment, were keeping out of sight.
I had been preparing myself for this encounter for months. Behind the glass door I saw, in the soft light of a lamp, a playpen. I slid the door open, and a little eight-month-old person, clinging to the bars, stared up at me, wide-eyed, tousled curls piled on top of his head and dressed to kill in a red suit. I picked him up. “Hi, Mike,” I said. “I’m your pop!” He looked bewildered and kept gazing around for Alma. It happens in almost every man’s life. The eternal triangle. Now it was happening to Michael Powell.
I had a homecoming feast with Alma and her folks, R.C. and Mildred, while the baby continued to gape at me from his high chair. When it came time to put Mike to bed, the little tot was in for another shock. He had been sleeping with Mom. Now he was dispatched to a crib. The next morning, I came down to breakfast. Mike was happily cooing in the high chair, until he saw me. This guy is still here? When is he going? Maybe he’s never going? A disturbing thought. Over the next few days, he started to thaw. This big person fusses over me. He plays with me. Maybe he’s not so bad, though I certainly prefer Mom. And that is how it would remain for a time, until stranger and boy became father and son.
Next stop, Elmira Avenue in Queens for Christmas with Mom and Pop. While we were there, Mike came down with a hoarse, racking cough. We rushed him to the nearest military facility, the St. Albans Naval Hospital, near my parents’ home. The young Navy doctor who saw us seemed to have had about as much experience with babies as I did. He elevated what we thought was a cough to a crisis. Mike had an acute case of the croup, the doctor said, and he put Mike in a crib under an oxygen tent. He placed an emergency tracheotomy kit at Mike’s bedside and asked permission to use it if the baby stopped breathing normally. What did that mean? I wanted to know. He would have to incise the child’s throat and insert a tube, the doctor explained. They were going to cut open my little boy? The jungle warrior turned to jelly. Alma was distressed too, but managed to stay calm and ask intelligent questions. She explained to the doctor that the baby was still nursing; he had never seen a bottle. How would he be fed? The doctor suggested we go home and relax. We did the former, and I failed miserably at the latter. I could not sleep. We raced back to the hospital at the crack of dawn, and there, sitting up in the crib, guzzling milk from a bottle, sat little Mike, weaned, apparently free of the croup, and smiling.
I was standing on the open ramp of a cargo plane, at twelve hundred feet, eyes shut, wind buffeting me, a T-10 parachute on my back, the old terror gripping me once more. I had already jumped five times before during airborne training and had no desire to toy with gravity again. Yet off I went, into the wild blue yonder.
I had been assigned from Vietnam to Fort Benning, Georgia, to attend the Infantry Officers Advanced Course. However, the “career course,” as it was known, would not begin until August 1964, still almost eight months off. To fill part of the time, the Army had dispatched me to a one-month-long Pathfinder course, advanced airborne Ranger training.
On my arrival, I immediately set out to find a place for my family to live. I was entitled to government housing when the career course began in the summer. But until then, I needed to find something off-post, if Alma and the baby were to join me. Fort Bragg all over again. Plenty of housing available for white officers in the Columbus area. But I was limited to black neighborhoods, and nothing remotely comparable to the Johnsons’ home in Birmingham was available. After a discouraging start, I met a black real estate agent who offered me a house belonging to a Baptist minister in Phenix City, across the border in Alabama. I was wary. Phenix City was rough, a sin town that the National Guard had been sent in to clean out a few years before. The minister’s house was located on a back road, among a bunch of shacks. Still, the house itself was a solid brick rambler with a yard for the baby. I grabbed it for $85 a month, grateful to find anything suitable.
In the meantime, I roomed at the Fort Benning BOQ while I got the new place in shape for Alma and Mike. One night, exhausted and hungry, I locked up the house and headed back toward the post. As I approached a drive-in hamburger joint on Victory Drive, I thought, okay, I know they won’t serve me inside, so I’ll just park outside. I pulled in, and after a small eternity, a waitress came to my car window. “A hamburger, please,” I said.
She looked at me uneasily. “Are you Puerto Rican?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Are you an African student?” She seemed genuinely trying to be helpful.
“No,” I answered. “I’m a Negro. I’m an American. And I’m an Army officer.”
“Look, I’m from New Jersey,” the waitress said, “and I don’t understand any of this. But they won’t let me serve you. Why don’t you go behind the restaurant, and I’ll pass you a hamburger out the back window.”
Something snapped. “I’m not that hungry,” I said, burning rubber as I backed out. As I drove away, I could see the faces of the owner and his customers in the restaurant windows enjoying this little exercise in humiliation. My emotional reaction, or
at least revealing my emotions this way, was not my style. Ordinarily, I was not looking for trouble. I was not marching, demonstrating, or taking part in sit-ins. My eye was on an Army career for myself and a good life for my family. For me, the real world began on the post. I regarded military installations in the South as healthy cells in an otherwise sick body. If I hurried, I could get to the snack bar or the officers’ club before closing and be served, just like everyone else.
Pathfinders form an elite within an elite, paratroopers who jump in ahead of airborne and heliborne assault units to mark landing and drop zones. The Pathfinder course turned out to be incredibly demanding. My classmates were senior and master parachutists attached to airborne units, while I was a reluctant novice who had not jumped in five years. We started off with the daily dozen calisthenics, each exercise performed until the last man collapsed. We recovered with a five-mile run. And then the day began—classes in navigation, marking drop zones, using radio beacons, guiding in aircraft. And more jumping.
Pathfinder teams needed to hit the ground close together. Consequently, rather than our going out of a doorway, one at a time, the pilot lowered the rear ramp of a twin-engine Caribou, and we were all supposed to jump rapidly off the back end. Jumps were usually made at night, adding another dollop of excitement. What body of water, rock outcropping, or cliff lurked below? In my case, night operations made little difference; I always jumped with my eyes shut anyway. And instead of making a macho leap into the unknown, I tended to shuffle to the rear and baby-step off the ramp. As a result, while others soared like eagles, I managed to bang my butt on the ramp and bounce out of the plane. Once free, however, I experienced the thrill that hooks people on parachuting, that magical sensation of floating to earth while the wind sighs in the chute above you. If only you did not have to jump first.
Near the end of the course, we were to parachute from a helicopter. First we marched cross-country all day long, until sufficiently exhausted. By the time we got to the helo, it had grown dark, the wind had come up, and it was pouring. We clambered aboard, the cold January rain pelting our faces, and jammed ourselves onto the cramped floor. I was the senior officer on board, but the jumpmaster was a hard-faced, highly experienced NCO. As the helo took off, I hollered over the roar of the engine for all the men to make sure their static lines, which automatically opened the chutes when we jumped, were hooked to the floor cable. In the dark, I could hear hands rummaging along the cable on the floor. The helo leveled off. The wind had whipped up to a point where the jump could be hazardous. I yelled for the men to recheck their hookups one last time. Then, like a fussy old woman, I started checking each line myself, pushing my way through the crowded bodies, running my hand along the cable and up to each man’s chute. To my alarm, one hook belonging to a sergeant was loose. I shoved the dangling line in his face, and he gasped. It was a triple failure. He was supposed to check his line. His buddy was supposed to check it. The jumpmaster was supposed to check it. This man would have stepped out the door of the helo and dropped like a rock. And he would have had only four seconds to pop his reserve parachute.
The weather worsened, and the jump had to be canceled. As we piled out at Lawson Army Airfield, the sergeant with the unhooked static line hugged me, practically blubbering his gratitude. The lesson about experts had been reaffirmed. Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard. Just as important, never neglect details, even to the point of being a pest. Moments of stress, confusion, and fatigue are exactly when mistakes happen. And when everyone else’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant. “Always check small things” was becoming another of my rules.
On graduation day, I added the Pathfinder insignia to my Combat Infantryman’s Badge, airborne wings, and Ranger tab, the equivalents, in my world, of degrees strung out after an academic’s name. And to my surprise, this ground-loving soldier graduated number one in the class.
I was proud of the honor, but I do not regret that I never again found myself in a situation where I had to jump.
I am a marginal swimmer at best, and here I was on a hunk of Canadian hardware sinking in the middle of a Georgia lake. With six months still to go before the Infantry Officers Advanced Course began, the Army again had to stash me somewhere. The answer was a deadly-sounding assignment, “test officer” with the Infantry Board, also located at Fort Benning. Our job was to test new weapons and equipment and decide if they were acceptable to the infantry, anything from a redesigned bayonet to a new machine gun. Each item was to be judged by three criteria—did the thing work, how available was it, and how much cost and effort were required to keep it working. The Army had acronymed these standards as RAM—Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability. My job was to design RAM standards and put an item through these paces.
I was entrusted with testing the Canadian-made XM571 Articulated Carrier, an awkward-looking vehicle, supposedly ideal for carrying troops over sand, snow, or water. Accompanying this iron horse was a Canadian liaison officer, Major Colin G. Forrest, a big, ruddy-faced Irishman who wore a regimental kilt. As descendants of ex-colonials with the same first name, Forrest and I hit it off immediately. With him was the manufacturer’s representative, a fellow I remember only as Bill. Both were eager to have the XM571 make a good showing. Canadian pride and profits were riding on the U.S. Army’s decision.
We had put this ugly duckling through her land trials, and except for a couple of unplanned rollovers she had done well. The last remaining hurdle was a swim test. I set it up for 11:00 A.M. on Victory Pond. The entire Infantry Board was invited to observe, including my boss, Lieutenant Colonel James Sudderth. To be on the safe side, I planned a rehearsal for 7:30 that morning. Bill, the manufacturer’s rep, and I, both wearing life jackets, boarded the vehicle and gave the driver the order to shove off. I was a little concerned that the XM571 rode so low in the water. We had about six inches of freeboard between us and the lake. And as we got a third of the way across, I realized we were losing even that margin. My feet felt wet, and I looked down to see water filling the bottom. I pointed this out to Bill, who waved aside my concern. No problem; the bilge pump would kick in any second now. And it did, with one slight glitch. The pump discharged twenty gallons a minute, but the water was coming in at about forty gallons a minute.
“Bill,” I pointed out, “we’re sinking.”
“Son of a bitch,” he concurred, “we are.”
We jumped out, paddling furiously, and watched the XM571 disappear from sight as a rescue boat came out to pick us up. Approaching the embankment, I looked up to see the thick, red-freckled legs of Major Forrest. The man was in a state of understandable agitation. This was not the sort of news he wanted to send back to Canada.
Fortunately, the lake was only about ten feet deep, and I soon had a wrecker and winch hauling this sinkable Molly Brown out of the drink. I checked my watch. Still two hours to go before the board would arrive. We waited impatiently for the water to drain, watching it spurt from every aperture in the carrier. We soon figured out the problem. The XM571’s earlier rollovers had cracked the chassis. We tried to start her. No luck. We kept trying. Coughing and sputtering, but no gratifying roar. I had the carrier towed to the demonstration site anyway, while I ran off to get myself into a set of dry fatigues.
What should I tell the Infantry Board? When the members arrived and we had all of them seated, I stood beside this product of Canadian enterprise and matter-of-factly described the tests it had gone through, including this morning’s failure. Just tell what happened. Don’t crawl. People want to share your confidence, however thin, not your turmoil, however real. Never let ’em see you sweat. We completed the demonstration, and, I should add, the XM571 never became part of the U.S. arsenal.
I stayed for almost five months with the Infantry Board. As the time neared for me to begin the career course, Lieutenant Colonel Sudderth asked if I would like to come back to the board afterward. In an Army of Rangers, Green
Berets, and airborne elites, reassignment as an Infantry Board testing officer somehow did not sing. Still, the board possessed one clear advantage: it meant that I could stay on at Benning after I finished the Infantry Officers Advanced Course. And I was becoming happily adapted to a stable home life. Yes, I told the colonel, I would be pleased to come back.
The Army has its own rites of passage. The career course at Benning was intended to prepare infantry captains to take over command of a company and to serve on a battalion staff. For all practical purposes, I had already completed this course, as a first lieutenant in a captain’s slot commanding companies in Germany and Fort Devens. And I had been a battalion commander in all but name in classrooms in the A Shau Valley where they fired live ammunition, not over your head as on the practice range, but at you. And I had also logged staff-level duty in Germany, Devens, and Vietnam. Still, the course was a required part of my professional development; and in beginning it, I could now bring my family into government housing on the post.
I was curious to meet my classmates. In a sense, this was the first career cut. Many infantry officers served their obligated two or three years, then were mustered out. At the advanced course, I was among four hundred captains, buddies and competitors likely to make the Army a career. We were divided into two classes of two hundred men each. In the other class was a true walk-on-water phenomenon, Pete Dawkins, West Point All-American running back, 1958 Heisman Trophy winner, and a Rhodes scholar to boot. And we had other burners, like Thomas Griffin, who would rise to three stars and become chief of staff of the NATO Southern Command. The competition inspired and intimidated in about equal doses.
During the course, the “prefix 5” designator was added to my military occupational specialty. In Army lingo, that meant I was now certified in the use of tactical nuclear weapons. I presumably knew when to employ them (though approval still had to come from well above my pay grade), how many enemy troops, civilians, and trees a particular atomic round would likely vaporize, how to shield our men during a nuclear exchange, the amount of radioactive fallout we could expect, and when it would be safe for our troops to pass through an affected area. We were not thinking in terms of Armageddon. A nuclear shell fired from a 203mm artillery piece, for example, yielded between .1 and 10 kilotons, compared to 15 kilotons for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Ours was not to question the wisdom of using these nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Nor did the likelihood of the enemy’s escalation figure into our calculations. The Navy and Air Force had gone nuclear. Was the Army supposed to use muskets and minié balls? Besides, the Red Army had tactical nukes. Long afterward, when I rose to the policymaking level, I would cast a far more skeptical eye at the battlefield use of nuclear weapons. But at this stage, I was just another unquestioning captain, learning my trade.
My American Journey Page 14