2

TRAINING

Company C
4th Battalion, 47th Infantry
Fort Riley, Kansas 66442

17 May 1966

Subject: Commander’s Welcome
To: The “New Reliables” of Company C

1.   I am Lt. Larson, Commander of Company C, 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry, and on behalf of the officers and non commissioned officers of this company I welcome you to Fort Riley, Kansas, home of the 9th Infantry Division. In due time I’m sure that you will learn to like Fort Riley and call it your second home.

2.   The mission of the officers and NCO’s here in the company is to convert each and every one of you into a fighting soldier. The world situation as we see it today makes it absolutely necessary for you, each and every one of you, to become a good fighting man…

3.   The training which you will receive here will enable you to withstand the stress and strain that combat causes. During your instructions there may be something which you may have questions about. Don’t hesitate to ask that question, chances are there is someone else with the same question, but don’t wait on the other fellow. Your attitude toward any and all of your training should be one of “I want the very best, my life may depend on it.”

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Fran,

Sunday has come again. And with it a degree of relaxation… I’d give anything to sleep till 8 like I did at home… Here it’s 4:30 every day except Sunday and then it’s 6:30. They give us from 4:30 to 5:30 to make our beds, shave, and clean up. Everything has to be perfect for inspection. Every day we have inspection and then they rank each platoon (there are four in our company). If we do poorly we catch hell; if we do good, they demand better. You just can’t win. If our beds aren’t made correctly, we have to drag them into the parking lot at 1800hrs (you figure it out) and make it for all to see. That’s from the second floor, carrying your whole bed. Fortunately I haven’t had to do it. I make a good bunk. Surprise!

Love, Jim [Dennison]

 

Dear Mom, Dad, and Girls,

Got back from the field yesterday. What a really miserable week it was. Mud everywhere – on everything. It stuck to your boots and to your entrenching tool and anything else it touched. We went through a simulated POW camp and had to crawl up and down a muddy ditch on our bellies then our backs till we were thoroughly covered with sticky, black mud. Then they threw each one into a hole in the ground filled with mud and water. We spent 12 hours crawling in the mud and doing calisthenics, then had to escape and find our way back to base camp at night. Naturally it rained that night. But I came through everything pretty well… It’s about time for chow, so I’ll end here. I’ll write a longer letter tomorrow.

Love, John [Young]

While General Westmoreland and MACV put the finishing touches on the Mobile Afloat Force plan in Saigon, on February 1, 1966, the 9th Infantry Division was reactivated under the command of Major General George Eckhardt. The 9th, dubbed the “Old Reliables,” was a storied unit that had seen hard fighting in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and northern Europe during World War II. Chosen to serve as “Z Division” to implement Westmoreland’s offensive plan for the Mekong Delta, the 9th consisted of nine infantry battalions, a cavalry squadron, and the normal array of artillery and other supporting units. The military allotted a total of 24 weeks of training time to the division while at Fort Riley, including eight-week periods for both basic training and advanced individual training (AIT), and an additional eight weeks for both basic and advanced unit training. The 9th was on a strict schedule. It had to be ready to ship out to Vietnam by late December 1966 in order to coincide with the onset of the dry season in Vietnam, the time Westmoreland had chosen as the most favorable to introduce American troops into the volatile Mekong Delta.

Due to a shortage of men and equipment, the 9th was activated in bits and pieces. Division base elements, including divisional, brigade, and battalion headquarters, arrived at Fort Riley first, during January and February, with the new recruits for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd brigades scheduled to arrive in April, May, and June respectively. Apart from simple details of training regimen, creation of an entirely new divisional infrastructure in time of war posed critical challenges. A military already struggling to keep its ranks fully staffed had to cobble together several hundred officers and non-commissioned officers to form the professional leadership cadre of the 9th Infantry Division, gathering them from a number of sources, some reassigned from existing commands across the country and Europe, while others were fresh out of West Point or Officer Candidates School (OCS).

The eclectic leadership group, some of them hard-bitten veterans, others still wet behind the ears, gathered at Fort Riley during the first two months of 1966 and quickly realized that the training of the 9th Infantry would be quite different from the norm. Incoming draftees normally took their basic and advanced individual training under specialized training commands before being sent out individually to active units. In a scenario startling in its uniqueness, the leaders of the 9th Infantry were tasked with taking their charges through all levels of training, from basic individual to advanced unit training and then taking those same units into a year of battle in Vietnam. The officers of the 9th Infantry saw the task of forging a unit in training and then taking that same unit into battle, as a wonderful opportunity. It would be their unit. They would know the men intimately – understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and foibles. Not only would the experience weld those men into a cohesive group of soldiers but also it would form a strong bond between the units’ officers, non-commissioned officers, and the ranks, forging a common brotherhood of war unique in the Vietnam era.

A major problem quickly came to light as the leadership groups began to sort out their difficult tasks. The military had not been able to gather together enough experienced non-commissioned officers to do the job, especially at the lowest level of command, that of the squad leader. Normally a squad leader was a staff sergeant (E-6), who might have six to eight years of military experience. A squad leader’s task involved leading a ten-man squad, incorporating two fire teams each led by a sergeant (E-5), into battle – a task reputed to be one of the most difficult in the entire military. The squad was always at the sharp end of war, conducting assaults, clearing bunkers, manning defensive positions, and translating the orders of higher commands into violent reality; it was up to the squad leaders to make that violence happen and to make it effective. With no other alternative, the units of the 9th Division decided to identify the most qualified incoming trainees and to elevate many of the best among them to the position of squad leaders. Instead of years of training and experience, these civilians-turned-soldiers would have only a few months of training before being thrown into the crucible of battle. It was to be the new leading the new – putting the chosen young men who until recently had only been carefree surfers, schoolboys, and farm laborers into a position of almost unimaginable stress.

Captain Rollo Larson, an ex-enlisted man from Macon, Georgia who had graduated from OCS and had recently served in Korea, saw his chance to command a company in the 9th Division as a unique opportunity. He would be able to train a company and then take it into battle – something afforded very few officers. He had learned in his past postings that officers were best when they relied on their cadre of experienced NCOs, who were closer to the men and knew their needs and abilities better than anyone. After arriving at Fort Riley, Larson first reported to his superiors and then made his way to his own company orderly room. He immediately sent for Company First Sergeant Lynn Crockett. A few minutes later Crockett, who had joined the army to escape life in the cotton fields of Kentucky, entered the room – 6 feet 5 inches tall, muscular, and every inch a military man. Impressed at first sight, Larson introduced himself and said that his job as captain during training was to sign the morning reports, take the blame if anything went wrong, and to kick the butts that Crockett said needed kicking. It was Crockett’s job to teach the young men who would soon be arriving for training. Crockett looked at Larson for a moment, and then replied in his Kentucky drawl, “Sir, you and me are gonna get along just fine.”

Soon the young lieutenants who would serve as Charlie Company’s platoon leaders began to arrive at Fort Riley. Jack Benedick was the hard-working son of blue-collar parents from Omaha, Nebraska. He had excelled in numerous sports in high school and went to college as a sociology major. After graduation and marriage to his college sweetheart Nancy, Benedick tried to join first the Marines and then the navy as a pilot, but was rejected due to poor eyesight. He finally bit the bullet and joined the army, going to OCS before reporting to his first command at Fort Riley. Lynn Hunt was from Miami, Florida, where his father worked as a carpenter. Hunt’s prowess on his high school swim team netted two college scholarship offers, one from the University of Florida, the other from the United States Military Academy. At the time of his graduation from West Point in June 1966, Hunt and the rest of the senior cadets were herded into a vast auditorium where the yearly allocation of officers’ slots in the army were on offer. Wanting to lead an infantry platoon in combat, when his name was called Hunt stepped forward and chose the 9th Infantry Division, which he knew was headed to Vietnam. To his right he saw that his classmate John Hoskins, who was renowned among the cadets both for his boxing skills and his poetry, had also chosen the 9th Infantry Division.

While married officers like Jack Benedick could live off post, single officers initially were housed in an old World War I-era barracks in Camp Funston, furnished with a pipe-frame cot, a dilapidated desk, and a chair. After finding their quarters, the young officers went to the company orderly room to receive their assignments, but had to wait, because Captain Larson was away attending a meeting at battalion headquarters. The group introduced themselves and talked while awaiting Larson’s return, as Crockett went about his office work. When the captain returned, Crockett had simply had enough of the nattering and bellowed in his best parade ground voice, “Captain, will you get your goddamned lieutenants the hell out of my fucking office?” The startled newbie officers exited meekly, leaving the first sergeant and the captain to their business. Benedick, Hunt, and Hoskins realized that they did not know which end was up and went to Crockett for advice gleaned from the wisdom of years as an enlisted man. It was a command lesson that the young officers never forgot.

All across the country, from Fort Ord, California, to Fort Dix, New Jersey, young men called by the draft of May 1966 gathered to begin their military service. Representatives of the baby-boom generation, bushy-haired surfers, street-wise city toughs, muscle-bound factory laborers, and studious college boys assembled and traded their civilian clothes for often ill-fitting uniforms of olive drab. Given quick, and sometimes painful, haircuts that by design lessened their sense of individuality, the new recruits usually spent a few days getting yelled at by imposing NCOs and learning such military basics as standing at attention and the meaning of Kitchen Police (KP) duty.

Often wondering what on earth they had gotten themselves into, after only a few days the draftees gathered to receive their new, permanent assignments. The process, which for some was to mean life or death, was a moment of pure, bizarre randomness amid the system of military order. In some places the draftees were counted off by ones and twos, with all assigned the number one bound for Germany, while all twos were off to Fort Riley and eventually to Vietnam. In the case of Clarence Shires – who had been married but a divorce had affected his draft status – at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, things were done alphabetically. At Fort Benning, Georgia, they chose odd and even numbers, leaving John Bradfield, who had grown up on the tough east side of Cleveland, bound for the 9th Division. At Fort Polk, all of the draftees received random number assignments, with an NCO then reading off the numbers of those bound for Fort Riley. Henry Burleson, a very religious farm boy from Abilene, Texas who was number 35, was not quite sure what going to Fort Riley meant, but he was relieved to hear his number called. He was going somewhere, anywhere. After all, there was no way that Fort Riley could be worse than Fort Polk.

To many of the draftees, the trip to Fort Riley was their first time out of their home state and their first time to fly. Terry McBride kept a wary eye on the engine of his somewhat dilapidated military transport all the way to Kansas City, wondering if the oil leaking in a steady stream from around the engine cowling was important. Some of the newly minted soldiers, including Fred Kenney and Richard Rubio, were lucky enough to make the journey with lifetime neighbors and schoolmates, while others met for the first time aboard their aircraft. Drafted out of Las Vegas, Willie McTear had some trouble jamming his athletic frame into the tiny seat of the aircraft bound for Fort Riley, and was happy to find that his seatmate was a little fellow who did not take up much space. McTear wondered how on earth this little man with big glasses offsetting a tiny face and body was going to become a soldier. Interested not only by the man’s diminutive size but also by the opportunity to have an extended conversation with a white person, McTear asked his name – Ronald Schworer.

Ron was the eldest of the four children of Frank and June Schworer. Frank was a hard driving salesman, and the couple had a rocky, on-again, off-again relationship full of arguments, separations, and family turmoil. The bickering and constant stress took a high toll on the Schworer children, often leaving Ron in charge of his younger siblings. Caught amidst the constant family drama, Ron became more and more self reliant, and spent more and more of his time engrossed in books, perhaps as an escape. By the age of 12 Ron Schworer was already exhibiting a level of brilliance that stunned his teachers; he was something special, something unlike anything they had ever seen. One outlet for his imagination was as leader of the Lancaster, California Rocket Club. Such clubs were quite common in the heyday of the US space program, but Ron’s was different. While other clubs produced rockets that often only sputtered a bit and fell over, Ron’s efforts were so successful that they resulted in a visit by some very irate Air Force personnel. It seems Ron’s rockets were buzzing past their jets in flight. While the Air Force representatives were impressed with the teenager’s efforts, they brought his rocket club to a quick and unceremonious end.

His future in rocketry dashed, Ron threw himself into the world of mathematics, winning the coveted California High School Math League Championship two consecutive years and achieving a perfect score on the mathematics section of the SAT. As a junior in high school, Ron moved to be with his father in Las Vegas, where he became increasingly involved in something rather new to most Americans at the time – computers. In 1964 Ron graduated from Rancho High School early, and headed off to Mudd College in California – but the curriculum bored him, so he dropped out. Ron returned to Las Vegas and took a job teaching computer programming at a local junior college and then at the Nevada Test Site, home of much of the US atomic weapons program. To this day Ron Schworer’s computer work at the Nevada Test Site remains top secret.

Ron left the Nevada Test Site in late 1965 to become an entrepreneur, founding a company called Comptex designed to offer computer programming services to major corporations. Ron was the brains behind the outfit – the programmer ready to solve customer’s computer programming needs, while two of his friends worked to drum up business. Ron’s was a vision of the future – a vision of a nation dominated by computers. But it was a costly vision, one that had left him open to the draft. Now he found himself aboard an aircraft bound for Fort Riley, Kansas sitting next to Willie McTear. The two men could not have been more different, but somehow before the aircraft had touched down in Kansas City, Schworer and McTear had become fast friends.

Usually arriving late at night, with their occupants weary from their travels, busses full of frightened new recruits began to pull into Fort Riley during late May to disgorge the newest members of Charlie Company. Mike Cramer was happy to hear that he was about to get off the bus at a place called Custer Hill; maybe Kansas would not be so different from his native San Fernando Valley, California. Gathering his gear, Cramer emerged from the door only to face one of the most depressing moments of his life. Custer Hill was hardly a hill at all. In fact there were no hills to be seen, much less the beautiful mountains of home. Kansas seemed to be one big flat nothing. But Cramer was quickly shaken out of his moment of reflection, because the yelling had begun.

NCOs seemed to be everywhere, barking orders and trying to get the rookies into some semblance of a military formation. But one NCO in particular stood out. Bob French of Tampa, Florida, who had quit college to work at the post office only to find himself drafted a few weeks later, couldn’t help thinking that the huge first sergeant, who loomed over them all in his starched fatigues, veins in his neck bulging as his voice boomed, looked like God barking orders. As the young men scrambled into place, the mountain of a sergeant bawled, in a voice that seemed too loud to be human, “My name is Company First Sergeant Lynn Crockett, and the first guy that calls me ‘Davey’ is going to get my size 18 boot up his ass!” Finally the anxious men stood at attention, and Captain Rollo Larson strode forward. His calm and quiet voice stood out sharply after all of the screaming, making his short announcement all the more ominous. “We are here to make you young men into soldiers, and if you don’t learn your lessons, and learn them well, half of you are going to die.” Henry Burleson swallowed heavily and offered a quick prayer, asking, “Lord, what have I gotten myself into?”

After Larson’s departure, the military pandemonium began anew. Bellowing NCOs ordered the recruits to march and perform right-and left-face drills – tasks sadly beyond the limited martial experience of most of the men. Mercilessly the NCOs homed in on the fat and clumsy, ordering their hapless victims to drop onto the ground and do pushups. John Bradfield watched as the less fortunate of his new colleagues were driven to tears by their torment. Happy that it was them and not him, Bradfield made the mistake of cracking a smile. Almost immediately an NCO appeared and asked him what the hell he was smiling at, and ordered him to the ground for 50 pushups of his own. Big and athletic, Bradfield dropped and pounded out the pushups without difficulty before jumping back to his feet and smiling again. Enraged by the affront, the NCO shouted in semi-glee, “Oh, we have a smart one here! Drop and give me 50 more!”

Having gotten some of the worst of it that night due to his small size, Bill Geier dragged himself into the barracks where he met Idoluis Casares, a strapping, Hispanic draftee from Brownsville, Texas, who would be his bunkmate for the remainder of basic training. Although they were both dead tired, Geier and Casares were too excited to fall asleep quickly and stayed up chatting for a while, with Geier mentioning both his desire to become a medic and how much he already missed his family. For his part Casares could not believe that the baby-faced, diminutive Geier could be old enough to serve in the military. Casares rolled over and looked at Willie McTear, who was perched on a bunk nearby, motioned toward Geier, and said, “Can you believe that they are letting 16 year olds into the army?” McTear replied, “Goddamn the army,” before trailing off into a stream of less audible cursing. A few feet away, Terry McBride, a rough and tumble young man from Greenfield, California, who was used to getting into scrapes and fights, couldn’t help but smile as he got ready to go to sleep. As an aspiring boxer, he had been through much worse in his life, and as a product of Catholic schools, he was certain that these loudmouth NCOs could never match up with the verbal and physical torment meted out by the nuns of his youth.

The draftees of Charlie Company lived in a three-story barracks atop Custer Hill, to which they were confined for most of basic training, with company offices on the first floor and open bays for each platoon on the second and third floors, where the enlisted men slept in double-decked bunks, each man with his own foot and wall lockers. Most of the NCOs lived in a small suite of rooms located between the platoon bays in the middle of each floor. Before reveille each morning at 5am, each young soldier had to make certain that his own personal area was immaculate, with a properly made bunk, six pairs of socks folded neatly and lined up like babies in his footlocker, six t-shirts folded the exact same way (with the tab on the back showing), and boots spit shined (regardless of how muddy they had gotten the day before). The communal latrine, little more than a line of commodes perched on a tiled wall, had to shine, and the tile floors had to be so well polished that they reflected any incoming NCO’s face like a mirror. Regardless of the care they had taken to do everything properly, the trainees soon discovered that the NCOs would find some fault, perhaps their reflection in the floor was hazy or there was a mote of dust on a commode, and pushups and other punishments were the result.

After inspection, it was off to physical training (PT), a burst of morning exercise that ended with a trip across a row of monkey bars that had to be navigated successfully before the trainee could have breakfast. For some the morning exercises were a cinch, but for the small or out of shape the monkey bars posed great difficulty. Barely able even to get onto the monkey bars, Ron Schworer only went forward a short way before hanging limply, unable to continue. Some of the guys began to hoot and jeer at the sight of Ron just hanging there, until Willie McTear, who had negotiated the bars with ease, came back and yelled, “Get off him! If you want him, you are going to have to come through me, and I guarantee I will put you on your asses boys!” With that, McTear began to cheer Schworer on, with many of the once-hostile crowd joining in support.

Bill Varskafsky was newly married and had been drafted out of Bremerton, Washington, where he had been attending junior college. Used to the cool climate of the Pacific northwest, Varskafsky had been stunned by the 95 degree heat and high humidity of a Kansas summer. One night early in training Varskafsky tumbled out of his bunk certain that there was a nuclear attack underway, only to find out that it was, instead, only a typical Kansas summer thunderstorm. The next morning, with the thought stuck in his mind that Kansas had to be the asshole of the universe, an instructor ran up screaming that Varskafsky’s shirt was not tucked in correctly. Delighted to have found fresh quarry the instructor ordered Varskafsky, who was a bit out of shape at the time, to drop and pound out 50 pushups. Varskafsky thought, “50 pushups? Hell. I’ve never even done 20 pushups.” But down he went to begin paying the price for his unkempt attire. Although there was considerable huffing and puffing near the end, Varskafsky completed his task. The instructor looked down at him quizzically, and said, “I’ll be damned son. I didn’t think you would make it to 50.” Varskafsky replied, “Neither did I.”

Punishment pushups were a staple of the pre-breakfast routine at Fort Riley, usually doled out by NCOs but also sometimes by officers. One morning Lieutenant Charles “Duffy” Black, the company executive officer, was on hand for the ritualized calisthenics. Hailing from Peoria, Illinois, Black had always been something of a daredevil, having run away from home at the age of 16 to join the merchant marines. After traveling the world, Black wanted another challenge and enlisted in the army in 1962, before going to OCS. Having been an enlisted man himself, Black felt a close affinity for these new trainees under his command, and he decided to work with them, perhaps more closely than an officer of his rank should – he knew that the lives of these young men depended on it. Black had a soft side to his personality and was a very religious man, but at the outset of morning calisthenics Black had to be hard-core military through and through. Walking up to the trainees, who stood at attention, Black challenged them by stating that he was stronger and better than they were, and would prove it if any of them wanted to take him on in a pushup competition. In the back of the ranks Tim Fischer, a tough young draftee from outside Cleveland, Ohio, began to laugh. Black called him to the front and the two went to the ground facing each other and began. After what seemed like an eternity, with the men cheering Fischer on, Black began to tire and turned red in the face. Eventually Black gave up, while Fischer threw in a few one-armed pushups for good measure. Fischer, who had worked as a hod carrier on construction sites for years, then jumped up, not knowing what to expect. Black stood back, complimented Fischer, and shook his hand, while informing the men that from now on Fischer got to go to the front of the chow line every meal.

Much of basic training centered on seemingly endless marches and physical exercise, ranging from long runs in full gear to low crawling across either brick-hard dirt or through knee-deep mud, all in the excessive heat of a Kansas summer. Many, including Idoluis Casares who was overweight and a smoker, found the physical regimen to be excruciatingly difficult. But he kept at it, getting into the best shape of his life, finding himself in the odd position of being cheered on by the puny – but physically-fit – Bill Geier. Others, like John Young or Tim Fischer, saw physical training and marching drill as something like a competition and were determined to stand out. Many of the young men competed with each other to get into the best shape, and Charlie Company as a whole developed an esprit de corps in part by trying to outdo the other companies of the 4th of the 47th.

Regardless of the effort, though, there remained screw-ups – both individual and group. Sometimes men would fall out, exhausted, somebody would trip, another would turn the wrong way on the command of “left face”; it always seemed to be something. Even when the men thought that they had done well, their demanding NCOs often found hidden reasons for fault. When disciplining the entire group, the NCOs would sometimes order the men on long marches carrying their footlockers or wearing their gas masks – stern punishments in 100-degree plus heat. In cases of individual infractions, the NCOs would tell the offender to fall out and do the “dead bug,” which involved the trainee flopping to the ground on his back and flailing his arms and legs like a dying cockroach. Don Peterson, who, even though he was athletic, for some reason never could get the hang of marching, had to hit the dirt so many times that he became known throughout the company simply as “Bug.”

James Nall, seventh of 11 children in a poor black family from a still-segregated Fairfield, Alabama, was somewhat unsure of his new surroundings and all too prone to laughter – an unfortunate trait if one is trying to go unnoticed in a formation of men. Once, after Nall had let out an involuntary laugh at another trainee’s mistake, an NCO ran over shouting, “Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick, son! What the hell are you laughing at? Is there something funny going on here? Where is your mind? Have you lost it? Have you?” After calling the unit to a halt, the NCO bellowed “Nall, walk over to that tree and talk to it and see if it has your mind!” After a short arboreal conversation, the NCO ordered Nall back, warning him to be careful to carry his mind in his hands. Once back in formation, the NCO yelled, “Nall, get down on the ground [and] dig a hole and bury your mind in it. That way you won’t ever lose it again. Dig, son, dig!” During the entire performance, other men in the formation could not help themselves and broke into laughter – meaning that they had to walk to their own trees and find their minds as well.

Sergeant Daniel Kerr, who had been abandoned by his father as a teenager and joined the army for survival, was often the most expressive with his punishments. Not only did he yell and liberally dole out dead bugs and pushups, but also he liked to take men who had fallen out of runs or marches and make the others watch as he handed the guilty party an entrenching tool and made him dig his own grave, yelling, “If you can’t survive marching in basic training, how the hell are you going to survive Vietnam?” One of Kerr’s least popular punishments, though, involved making those who had violated the rules sleep with their steel pot helmets on. Just for good measure, Kerr would sneak into the platoon barracks at night while the men were asleep and go down the row of bunks thwacking the men on their heads with a swagger stick. He could tell by whether the sound of his blow produced a “bonk” or a “bink” whether the men still had their helmets on and had followed his orders.

Bob Ehlert was born on a ranch in Montana, but had been raised in Minnesota. He always remained true to his rural roots, even selling his first car, a ’56 Chevy, to raise money to buy feed for his horses. Drafted along with many of his high school classmates, Ehlert’s hopes were high. He was going to war with his buddies at his side. Instead, though, the Minnesota draftees were parceled out across the military, and Ehlert found himself reporting to a unit that was full of guys from California and the South. However, he was tough and knew that he could handle it, the same as his father and uncle had in World War II. But then came that first day at Fort Riley, when Crockett had bellowed, “Forget everything you know! Your ass belongs to the US Army now boys!” A few days later, as the instructors had gotten their intimidation and cursing down to an art form, Ehlert developed a horrible toothache. He didn’t want to, but he had to. He had to ask giant, imposing, frightening Company First Sergeant Crockett for permission to go on sick call. Crockett rose from behind his desk and, in a voice full of menace, said, “Son. I’ve heard that excuse before.” Ehlert, though, stood his ground, and Crockett replied “I’ll let you go, son, but you had better come back missing some teeth.” The next day Ehlert returned to Crockett’s office with a mouth full of bloody gauze, having lost two teeth. Crockett looked up from his papers, furrowed his brow at the sight, and nodded toward the door. He never said a word.

Without doubt, the obstacle and bayonet courses were the trainees’ least favorite part of basic training. Both involved climbing, slithering through mud, running, and sometimes crossing rope bridges. Even before his men went on the obstacle course for the first time, Sergeant First Class Pedro Blas, a tough career soldier from Guam, informed the trainees that the course would “make you or break you.” Jim Dennison, a trainee from the north side of Chicago whose father owned an Irish pub wrote home:

I think I told you I was going through the bayonet course that day, and man did I go through it. Under barbed wire, over brick walls, jump into fox holes, cross a river with 2 wires twice, up a steep cliff and a final attack on a dummy. And all in 2 inches of mud (it just happened to rain that day). When we finally got through it we were beat to hell. But wait. The captain is not satisfied with our esprit d’ corps. Do it a second time and scream more please. And away we went. I fell flat on my face in the mud toward the end of it and looked like a regular mud pie. I survived, though. That’s one thing the army teaches you – you can do a hell of a lot more than you think you can.

When not hard at work training, the men were often confined to their barracks, time they spent readying for the next round of inspections or just bored as hell. Dennison wrote:

Sunday has finally come again. And with it a degree of relaxation. The only trouble is that there isn’t a hell of a lot to do. We’re still restricted to the barracks for another week so we play 500 rummy or shoot the breeze. Fantastically exciting. It seems that we go from one end of the rope to the other here. During the week we have so much to do that we hardly have time to go to the john, and now we have so little to do that it’s silly.

Even just milling around the barracks, though, could be fraught with danger for the trainees. Caught off guard one afternoon, Jace Johnston, who had grown up poor on the near north side of Chicago, and three of his fellows were ordered to wax the floor of the bay until it shined. But the NCO who gave the order made a point of locking the wax in his office. When he returned to find a scuffed floor, he went ballistic in affected anger. A few days later, the NCO tried the same stunt, but this time one of the trainees went out of the third-floor window, shimmied along a handy ledge until he reached the NCO’s window, and liberated the wax. When the sergeant returned to find the floor shiny, he was maddened even further by the men’s ingenuity, yelling at them until he went hoarse.

As had their soldier progenitors down through the ages, the boys of Charlie Company often spent large chunks of their down time writing letters home to families and girlfriends, but even that seemingly innocuous pastime was not without its share of dangers. Stan Cockerell was from Hollywood, California where his father worked as a roofer and his mother toiled as a riveter in an aircraft factory. Small, at only 5 feet 6 inches, Cockerell was immensely tough, standing out on his high school football team. After graduation Cockerell had gone to a local junior college, but had given up his deferment to volunteer for the draft. Cockerell had driven himself to the induction station and later had mailed his keys to his parents so they could retrieve his car. But Stan didn’t like to write. In fact, he hated it. Weeks went by without another letter. Frantic about his fate, Cockerell’s mother contacted her local congressman, who contacted the brass at Fort Riley, who contacted Company First Sergeant Crockett. Shocked by his misfortune, Cockerell was summoned to Crockett’s office – a summons that trainees dreaded more than anything else. Crockett made a show of slamming his window shut before unloading on his terrified young guest. “What the hell were you thinking not writing to your mama? Each and every one of you needs to write to your mamas!” The tirade went on for what seemed like an eternity, complete with several asides about busybody congressmen. At the end of it all, Crockett informed Cockerell that he was to return to his office each and every week to write to his mama. Crockett was going to make damn sure that mama Cockerell was going to get her letters!

On one afternoon with nothing to do but nothing, Henry Burleson went outside for a smoke and made the cardinal sin of dropping his used cigarette butt on the ground – only to be seen by no less a personage than Lieutenant Black. Amazed by the affront to common decency, Black called Burleson to attention and gathered the men who happened to be around to witness the appropriate punishment. He ordered Burleson to prepare the body of the deceased cigarette for a decent burial. After cleaning the butt, Burleson then had to dig a hole and bury the cigarette with all due military honors. After completing his task, Black complimented Burleson and began to walk away, only to stop, turn around and ask if the cigarette was out when Burleson had buried it. Burleson answered that it was, but Black made him dig it up to double check. Sweating in the heat, Burleson confirmed that the cigarette was in fact dead before burying it again – at which point Larry Lukes, who had spent the last two years of his civilian life throwing hay bales in Nebraska, burst out in laughter. For his punishment he got a chance to help in the never-ending cigarette funeral. After turning to leave again, Black turned back around and asked the pair if the cigarette had been buried facing east-west or north-south. Not knowing, the pair had to dig up the cigarette again to confirm before mercifully committing the butt to its final rest.

Mario Lopez was from Calexico, California – a town with a population comprised mainly of farm workers. His mother died when he was very young, so Mario spent much of his time with his father and grandmother learning how to work the fields. At a young age Mario learned the importance of money – his grandmother keeping the family’s monetary haul safely stashed away in a small pouch that was tied around her neck that she hid inside her bra. When he was a sophomore in high school Lopez told his father that he wanted to drop and go to work full time. His father smiled and replied, “if that’s what you want mijo then that’s fine with me.” The next morning at 2am there was a tug at Mario’s arm. Time to go to work. The following day was so brutal, unloading trucks full of watermelons in 100-degree heat, that Mario wound up puking, doubled over in pain. The next morning at 2am, when his father called him to work, Mario responded that had thought it over and had decided to stay in school. His father smiled and replied, “if that’s what you want mijo then that’s fine with me.”

The migrant worker community provided prime draft fodder, and Mario Lopez was off to join the 9th Infantry Division in 1966. When he exited the bus at Fort Riley, Lopez was one of the very first to do pushups – because he had answered the bellowing sergeants in his native Spanish. Lopez quickly learned that every instructor had his favorite trick. Nearly everyone in Charlie Company smoked, and many rolled their own. One day, during a marching exercise, a sergeant called his charges to a halt and bellowed, “Smoke break!” Relieved and at ease some started smoking right away and others started rolling. As soon as everyone had taken a drag, though, the sergeant yelled, “Smoke break over!” Cigarettes everywhere were tamped out, and the sergeant flew into a feigned rage. Who were these men to be wasting all of this good tobacco? Time to drop for pushups! The next day when the sergeant called the march to a halt and yelled, “Smoke break!” Lopez and his buddies had wised up. There was not a lit cigarette to be seen. Once again the sergeant boiled over and started screaming, “Who the hell are you men? Are you too good to smoke during a perfectly good smoke break?” It was time to drop for pushups again. Lopez realized that he was in a no win situation.

In his good-natured way Lieutenant Black enjoyed ribbing Charlie Nelson, the Navajo Indian who was also the shortest man in the unit. Discovering Nelson’s background, Black boasted that he had some Indian heritage as well. On one company maneuver, Nelson was marching near the back of the column when he heard Black shout, “Nelson. Front and center!” Nelson reported while Black stood with his hands folded behind his back. While Nelson stood at attention, Black suddenly took one of his hands out from behind his back and dangled a lizard in front of Nelson’s face, presumably in an effort to startle him. Nelson calmly looked at the lizard and then back to Black and said, “Sir, can I see him?” Not knowing what to expect, Black handed Nelson the lizard. Nelson flipped the lizard onto its back, whispered some words into its ear while rubbing it on the stomach, and it fell asleep. Nelson then handed the dozing reptile back to Black and said, “You might be part Indian, but I’m a full-blooded Indian.”

Sometimes just having so many young men living together in such confined circumstances presented difficulties. John Bradfield very much looked forward to chow time, seemingly perpetually hungry due to the exertions of basic. Once, though, he suddenly was knocked out of the chow line and across the room, only to look back and see the rather smallish Forrest Ramos standing there with his fist raised. Bradfield immediately went on the offensive, and a brawl developed that landed both Bradfield and Ramos a stint in KP peeling potatoes. While working, Bradfield turned to Ramos: “Why the hell did you hit me man?” Ramos replied that another guy in the line had bet him that he wouldn’t do it. Ramos then said, “I sure wouldn’t have hit you if I’d known you were going to fight back so damn hard.” Bradfield smiled and replied, “Well, you are lucky someone broke it up, or I would have whipped your sorry ass.” With the obligatory testosterone-laced posing complete, the two became fast friends, each respecting the other’s toughness. Neither Bradfield, an African American, nor Ramos, a Hispanic, knew very much about the other’s culture and were often found in deep conversation about their varied upbringings. Ramos was especially smitten by soul music. Bradfield was one of the few draftees who had managed to bring a record player to the barracks, and during periods of off time guys from all walks of life would gather around his bunk to hear him play songs like “My Girl” and “Since I Lost My Baby” by the Temptations. One of the favorites for the men, though, was Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” which invariably drew a crowd, including Greenfield, Illinois native Steve Hopper – who always requested an encore because the song reminded him of home.

Only a year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, military training threw together, willy-nilly, young men from varied backgrounds into a potentially charged social situation. For many of the trainees, service in Charlie Company was the first time that they had meaningful and extended contact with people from other races. While there was, and would remain, a tendency for like to seek out like – blacks hanging out with blacks listening to soul music, Hispanics gathering with Hispanics where there were no language barriers – the men in the unit hung together remarkably well and did not tend to worry about whose skin was what color. After all, there were common enemies of much greater importance – first the screaming, taunting NCOs, then the Viet Cong. The shared difficulties and goals that would help weld the disparate elements of Charlie Company into one were an early focus point of the unit’s training. Understanding that race and ethnic differences were a problem best attacked head-on, immediately after his arrival at Fort Riley, Lieutenant Benedick gathered his charges in 2nd Platoon and told them that he did not see, nor would he accept others seeing, black soldiers, Hispanic soldiers, or white soldiers. All he saw were soldiers trying to accomplish a life-or-death mission. He saw them all as equals and would treat them as such, and expected the same from them, stressing that their very lives depended on it.

While Charlie Company was largely free from racial strife, the young soldiers learned much about themselves and each other through their interactions. Elijah Taylor, who hailed from highly segregated communities in Texas, found himself at ease one afternoon after his platoon had finished its assigned training regimen early. Unwilling to let the trainees off, the NCO in charge gathered the men into a circle and had them remove their belts. He then had one trainee from the group walk behind the circle and drop his belt behind another man, who in turn snatched up the belt and beat him with it as the two ran around the circle – in a kind of militarily violent “Duck Duck Goose.” Strong and fast, Taylor was sure that nobody would have the guts to challenge him – but then he heard the belt drop. Whirling around he snatched up the belt and within just a few steps caught up to the small white trainee who had dropped it and proceeded to “whoop him all the way around the field.” After his unfortunate victim had returned to the circle, he turned and said, “Taylor, you didn’t need to beat me like that.” Elijah responded, “Yes I did. Because in Texas we can’t beat white people,” at which the circle erupted into laughter. For days after, Taylor asked the NCOs if they were going to play the game again, and they always responded, “No. Nobody wants to play with you.”

Willie McTear’s training was eye opening in many respects. A veteran of Civil Rights marches in his native South, McTear paid close attention to the rise of black activism, especially taken with the writings of H. Rap Brown of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Having always heard from the dominant culture in his youth that blacks were inferior, McTear was quite unsure how his first sojourn among a large group of whites would unfold. Little by little, though, McTear became aware of something. These other trainees, whether white or black, were no better or smarter than him. He could outrun almost all of them, and performed better on tests than many as well. The tales of black inferiority had been just that, tales. He was no worse than any other man in the unit. The lesson gave McTear a critical boost to his self-esteem, but it carried even further. During training Ronald Schworer learned that his mother had died. After breaking the terrible news, Lieutenant Benedick had informed Schworer that his mother’s passing meant that he could get out of the service due to family hardship. McTear thought that Schworer, who still had tremendous problems with the physical portion of the training regimen, would jump at the chance. Instead Schworer told Benedick that he was going to complete his training and his service, because Charlie Company was his family now. Touched by Schworer’s dedication, McTear realized that his best friend was a white man – something he had never believed possible.

The mixing together of so many young men in such a stressful environment sometimes led to a letting off of steam in manners consistent with military prank-playing and buffoonery down through the ages. John Sclimenti, another of the California contingent who had been the popular vice-president of his high school class, was one of the many jokers of Charlie Company. His two favorite pranks were both nocturnal in nature. One involved himself and a co-conspirator sneaking into the platoon bay at night, removing a bunk and carrying both it and its somnolent passenger down to another platoon bay. The next morning the victim would arise bleary-eyed and rush to his footlocker to get ready for the day, only to find himself lost. Sclimenti’s other favorite prank was a variation on the same theme, in which he and his partners in crime would pile footlockers three high in the latrine and then perch the bunk and its sleeping cargo atop the pile, leaving the soldier to awake at reveille the next morning only to find himself 8 feet in the air.

In a unit so full of jokesters that even Sclimenti’s actions didn’t raise many eyebrows, one joker stood out from the rest – so much so that his trainee compatriots whispered that he must be trying his best to get out of the army. Lamous Elliott was constantly in trouble for offenses as mundane as habitually sliding down the banisters of the barracks in full view of the NCOs to nearly dropping his rifle on the captain’s feet during formation. Even when forced to do pushups as punishment, Elliott turned the scene to comedy by only pushing out one, and then (with arms and legs quivering in affected exhaustion) loudly stating in a put-on drawl, “Cap’n, I just can’ts takes no mo!” Elliott’s many contrived gaffes, though, soon reached the level of military art form. After receiving a short leave to return to Chicago for the birth of his first child, Elliott returned to Fort Riley with a steamer trunk full of clothes. As he readied for his crowning performance, Elliott announced to a growing throng of interested onlookers that since they were going to war, he might never have time to do this again. Atop his military issue underwear Elliott donned a woman’s silk night robe, an ensemble topped off with a pair of roller skates. To the amazement of everyone present, Elliott then burst into song and zoomed off down the hall where he disappeared into Company First Sergeant Crockett’s office. The now muffled song was followed by the sounds of furniture moving and Crockett’s voice bellowing, “What the hell are you doing?” As if by magic Elliott was no longer a member of Charlie Company.

After mastering the basics, including marching, physical fitness, and marksmanship, on August 8, 1966, the men of Charlie Company moved on to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) where they began to receive instruction in their individual areas of specialty and some rudimentary unit training. These men were not simply going to be soldiers; they were going to be riflemen, machine gunners, radio operators, and medics. The new level of importance dawned on Jace Johnston almost immediately when his NCO announced that he was now going to push them extra hard because his life was going to depend on how well they did their job in Vietnam as riflemen. After hearing the warning, John Bradfield turned to Tim Fischer and asked him where Vietnam was. Fischer replied that it was a far away country where the US was involved in a war, a country to which they would soon be going, and that they could all die there. At that point the two men agreed that it was time to stop training to be soldiers and time to start training to go to war.

In one of the few deviations from the standard training regimen to prepare the men for work in the Mekong Delta, the 9th Division spent extra time in swimming instruction and river-crossing techniques. Standard practice called for one of the unit’s stronger swimmers to cross the river first to tie off a rope on the far side. Others would cross using the rope as a guide, with the least capable swimmers using air mattresses, on which heavy equipment, such as machine guns, was floated across. Such crossings were always difficult for John Bradfield. The Cleveland native had never swum before and had an unnatural fear of water. On one occasion he lost his grip on the air mattress, panicked, and felt himself starting to drown. At that point a hand reached down and pulled him to safety – it was Richard Rubio. Another crossing method involved shuffling sideways across the river with the trainee grasping one taut rope in his hands while his feet were on another lower taut rope suspended 10 feet above the water. The exercise required the greatest concentration and delicate balance, resulting in many a splash down for the unfortunate. Making matters worse, Lieutenant Black delighted in appearing at the far side of the river where he would start shaking the bottom rope while asking the trainee who was suspended above the water, “Son, are you a true believer? You had better be a true believer!”

For many, the most memorable part of AIT was the simulated prisoner-of-war camp. Every trainee in Charlie Company served a stint in the POW camp, where conditions were as near as possible to what the soldiers could expect if they were captured in Vietnam. There were intense interrogation sessions, during which soldiers were shut into footlockers on which the NCOs proceeded to beat with baseball bats. Some were made to lie or sit in the mud, while others (who, the NCOs lied, were cooperating with their interrogators – a standard practice to sow dissension within the group) received much better treatment. The interrogations went on for hours, leaving Larry Lukes and Henry Burleson ready to make a change. Along with Butch Eakins, a country boy from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the group waited until no NCO was looking and slithered through a hole in the concertina wire. After they had escaped from the enclosure, the threesome waited until a nearby lieutenant had his back turned, stole his jeep, and drove back to their barracks. Expecting the descent of the rough hand of military justice, Lukes, Burleson, and Eakins were surprised when they were complimented for their ingenuity. After all, it was the first duty of any POW to attempt an escape.

It was during AIT that the men of Charlie Company first began to act together in units, with platoons maneuvering around the open countryside in coordinated fashion. Having that many men, many of whom were smokers, traipsing about the bone-dry Kansas grasslands of late summer, though, was a recipe for disaster. After one particularly long march to the geographic center of the middle of nowhere, the NCO told his platoon to rest, adding the ubiquitous “smoke ’em if you got ’em.” Doug Wilson, a Californian with two years of college to his credit, quickly took advantage of the opportunity and lit his smoke, tossing the used match over his shoulder. Almost immediately the grass all around his feet was aflame and men everywhere were grabbing their jackets and packs in an effort to beat out the spreading conflagration. Confounding the best efforts of his platoon, the fire spread until the entire battalion was brought in to beat the flames into submission. Through the smoke, Sergeant Crockett loomed, booming, “Wilson! Where is Wilson?” It was time for Doug Wilson to go and find his mind.

During late August Steve Moede sent a rather innocuous letter to his mother in California wondering in print whether or not training on the plains of Kansas was going to be all that useful in the jungles of Vietnam. Moede’s mother wrote back that if he was concerned he ought to write a letter to complain, and amazingly Moede did so, writing a letter to no less a personage than President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a letter signed by many other members of his platoon. Since some young men can’t keep a secret, the contents of the letter quickly became known within the battalion, and Bill Reynolds, a native of the Los Angeles area who was serving as one of the platoon’s squad leaders, found himself called in to face both Company First Sergeant Crockett and Captain Larson. With Larson taking something of a back seat in the meeting, Crockett boomed out a drill sergeant’s profanity-laced exposition of the meaning of patriotism and the proper place of enlisted men in the army. Where the hell did a young private get off writing to the president? Their training was fine and their asses belonged to the military. After the dressing down of a lifetime, Reynolds returned to the platoon and suggested that the letter “go away.” The remainder of the signers agreed and returned to their training, perhaps marking their final conversion from civilians to soldiers.

Much of AIT involved readying soldiers for performance in combat with their new weapons specialty. Most of Charlie Company trained with rifle squads, learning the basic art of infantry warfare. Each platoon, though, included an exception – the weapons squad, where soldiers now began to specialize as members of an M60 machine gun team or with a 90mm recoilless rifle. Within Charlie Company Sergeant Pedro Blas headed the training of one of the exceptions to the rule, the Mortar Platoon, where Richard Northcott, who used to love to race his hot rod on the streets of Encino, California, enjoyed the excitement of working with the 81mm mortar, a rifle company’s standard light fire support. The Mortar Platoon usually trained separately, learning how to carry, assemble, and use its weapons to lay down a protective screen of fire for the surrounding infantry platoons. Those selected to be radiotelephone operators (RTOs), were another breed apart. These men, including Bob French, were going to be the indispensable link between the men in the field, their command element, and the sources of supporting fire from artillery and the air. Knowing that they were going to be prime enemy targets in battle, the RTOs received very specific training in the use of their PRC 25 radios and were usually separate from their trainee brethren – always at the shoulder of their NCO or officer during maneuvers as they would be in battle.

The most distinctive specialty of all, though, was that of the medics, who were taken from Fort Riley to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where they underwent a ten-week course on military medicine at the US Army Medical Training Center. The select group included Robert Cara, Gary Maibach, the conscientious objector, Bill Geier, who had always hoped for the assignment, and Elijah Taylor, who had no clue why he was chosen. At Fort Sam, the group sat down in a meeting room, and in walked a tough old NCO who announced: “Gentlemen, you are about to embark on a course of training at the US Army Medical Training Center. We will so well equip you to render service to your injured fellow servicemen that when in the future you come upon a field of battle and carnage in Vietnam you will be able to march up to any individual who may have suffered a traumatic amputation of both legs, arms, or even his head that when you present him with your certificate of accomplishment from the US Army Medical Training Center he will have no alternative but to recover.”

The training received by Cara, Taylor, Geier, and Maibach, though, was somewhat less than what the impressive speech had implied. Not knowing whether the trainees were going to be hospital corpsmen or field medics, the course of study was rather chaotic. The instructors crammed in as much anatomy and physiology as they could before moving on to subjects as varied as triage, wound debridement, tourniquet use, and how to test for venereal disease. By the time the newly minted medics made their journey back to Fort Riley to join their units, Maibach thought that they had learned “just enough to be relatively dangerous.” Elijah Taylor and Robert Cara had become especially close during their time at Fort Sam, spending much of their study time with records playing in the background. Taylor learned to tolerate Cara’s favorites, including Paul Anka and Roy Orbison, but made damn sure that Cara got a chance to listen to the Temptations and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Once back with Charlie Company, the medics found themselves assigned to company headquarters, from which they were parceled out to platoons as needed for maneuvers and eventually for service in Vietnam. Rather like the Mortar Platoon, the specialists who served with headquarters, both the RTOs and medics, were often separated from their fellow draftees in the company for long stretches of time. Since they now worked together, these specialists often formed their own set of friendships. While Bill Geier retained his close relationship with Idoluis Casares, whom he had affectionately dubbed “Bear,” Geier also began to pal around with RTO Bob French. Geier loved to talk about his sister Jackie, the light of his young life. She often sent him letters and care packages from home, which always wound up with Bill sharing her written exploits, and cookies, with Bob. In turn, French liked to hold forth on his own sister, Ginger. After seeing her picture, Geier was immediately smitten and, with Bob’s permission and blessing, began to write to her. The correspondence went so well that Geier informed his parents of the budding relationship and that he could not wait to meet her in person, if he could only find a way to get to Florida.

During AIT, several of the young soldiers found themselves assigned the position of squad leader, an honor that conferred acting rank, but something meant for NCOs of much longer service. Some, like John Young, who was the battalion’s outstanding trainee, seemed natural gung-ho fits for such a position. Bill Reynolds realized that someone would have to be assigned to such positions and felt that it might as well be him, so worked hard to be ready when called. Tim Fischer believed that his selection was due simply to the fact that he knew how to march and was kind of mean, two characteristics required of an NCO. Dave Jarczewski, son of a steel worker from a suburb of Buffalo and one of the few northeasterners in the unit, didn’t much like the assignment, realizing that he was just a “pissbox” recruit like those who were going to be under his command. Why on earth would they listen to him? Although their new temporary rank came with some perks, with the Cleveland native son of Hungarian immigrants Frank Schwan noting that because of his exalted status he no longer had to do KP, the position of squad leader was one of great responsibility and authority. John Young described his new duties in a letter home to his parents:

I’m a squad leader of a rifle squad. I’m supposed to be a staff sergeant E-6, and I’ll make that pay grade in country [Vietnam]. There’s a total of ten men in a rifle squad. The squad is divided into two teams, Alfa and Bravo. Each team has a sergeant E-5 as its leader … a grenadier, who carries an M-79 grenade launcher, which looks like a big-barreled sawed-off shotgun; an automatic rifleman, who carries an M16 rifle which is always set on automatic fire; this means that you don’t have to pull the trigger once for each shot, you just hold the trigger down and it fires like a machinegun, the team is completed by a rifleman, also armed with an M16 set on semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull). The Bravo team is the same, save the addition of a second rifleman. In Vietnam, it is standard procedure to have 2 of the squad’s men armed with 12 gauge pump shotguns. I am responsible for everything my squad does and is. If they need ammo or toilet paper, mortar support or medical attention, I am supposed to get it.

Knowing that their tasks would be difficult, and that the lives of their men now depended on their skills, all the young squad leaders worked long and hard to get their jobs right. Tim Fischer was representative in that he kept a detailed diary of his squad’s individual strengths and weaknesses:

 

Caliari – obeys well, works with all the squad well, keeps going when it gets tough, helps others when they need help in something.

McGowan – has fair attitude toward work, will do anything when asked to do it, works good with the other men in squad and gets in and gets squad’s morale up.

McBride – has very poor attitude toward work and military service, has to be helped in doing certain things, once he is on a job, though, he will do his best.

Creagor – has to be helped with things quite often, works good but is very quiet and morale is very low, tries his best when doing something, I’m trying to get his morale up, the problem I think is that he has no friends and no one will lend him a hand when needed.

 

Fischer also kept a detailed list of “Dos and Don’ts” with which the squad leaders were supposed to keep their men up to speed:

 

Do be prepared for the unexpected…

Any stranger [can be] an enemy…

Be alert for snipers in all places [including] haystacks and wells.

When possible have villagers lead you into villages, rivers, etc…

Don’t discuss classified things over the telephone or radio.

Don’t drink water from unknown sources.

Don’t trust children.

Don’t shoot until you know you can kill.

Don’t relax anytime, especially after a mission.

Cultural Relations – Avoid use of slang while talking.

Try and use Vietnamese language.

Always use rank or Mr. or Mrs.

When in doubt, be courteous.

 

As the squad leaders wrestled with their newfound responsibilities, AIT came to an end, and the components of the 9th Division readied for their basic and advanced unit training. It was at the end of AIT that the men of Charlie Company finally received their military occupation specialty (MOS), most designated 11 Bravo or light weapons infantry (riflemen), some designated 11 Charlie or indirect fire infantry (mortars), and a few designated 91 Bravo or medics. Now specialized cogs in the military machine, the soldiers gathered in what became their favorite event of the year. The entire battalion hunkered down and for a few mad minutes fired everything it had – M16s, mortars, machine guns, and artillery – at a small hill about half a mile distant. After the spectacle everyone in Charlie Company knew that their unit was a powerful killing machine.

Unit training involved the components of the entire 2nd Brigade learning to function on their own as squads, platoons, and companies navigating in maneuvers across the countryside, laying ambushes, mounting assaults, and defending against both infantry and armor attacks all while accurately calling in artillery and air support. Once the smaller units became proficient in their tasks, they were combined in battalion- and even brigade-sized operations. During much of the fall and early winter at Fort Riley the draftees were on nearly endless maneuvers out in the wilds of the Kansas countryside, often for a week at a time. Unlike basic and AIT, since the soldiers were gone for such long stretches from their barracks, they had to carry everything that they would need, just like it was going to be in Vietnam. John Young wrote home about this new experience:

The gear we’re carrying on our backs is getting heavier and heavier. I’m now wearing and/or carrying 2 ammo pouches, a first aid pack, a canteen, a pack, a poncho, an entrenching tool (a small shovel), a mess kit, a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, a PRC 6 radio (walkie-talkie type), a compass, a protective (gas) mask, a bedroll (sleeping bag, tent half, tent poles, tent pins and tent rope), an extra set of fatigues, a winter work uniform, a change of socks and underwear, shaving gear, a flak jacket, and all this topped by that miserable steel helmet. All that stuff must weigh about 45–50 pounds, and I still have to find room for my rifle. Just walking with that load is fine, because you actually do get used to it, but running with all that is a different story entirely. About 50 yards running and you really do want to stop.

With many of the maneuvers involving an overnight stay under the stars, there were ample chances for mischief. Jimmie Salazar, who had at last finalized plans to marry his girlfriend Aurora, was adept at sneaking up beside men who were just ready to doze off after a hard day’s march and launching into a very believable impression of a rattlesnake, which always led to the victim leaping up and stumbling around while tangled in his sleeping bag. Each night the units in the field had to set up defensive perimeters, which involved the men, exhausted after a day’s march, digging foxholes and setting up a night watch rotation. Falling asleep on watch was a cardinal sin, but for tired young men, who were not overly worried about being attacked in Kansas, sleep was almost impossible to avoid. It was then that the “Phantom Shitter” would strike. Someone, perhaps multiple someones, would creep out of the unit perimeter on a regular basis and sneak around looking for those asleep while on guard duty. Once the phantom had located his snoozing quarry, he would leave a pile of freshly delivered human excrement on the lip of the victim’s foxhole – a telltale and quite embarrassing sign of the soldier’s failure.

As the training of all types progressed for the members of Charlie Company, real life continued. Most of the officers and senior NCOs were married and brought their wives and children to Fort Riley for the duration of their stay, wanting to spend every minute that they could with their loved ones before departing for the war zone. For some the strains of juggling home life with their military obligations placed an unbearable burden on their marriages. Although he hid it well from his men, Rollo Larson knew that his marriage was in trouble, with his wife unable to come to terms with the massive amount of time he had to devote to the training of his unit. The officers of Charlie Company had to be at Fort Riley from before sunup to after sundown every day, including most weekends. For others home life while at Fort Riley was cramped and busy, but workable. Jack Benedick and his wife Nancy rented a small apartment in Manhattan, Kansas, while Herb Lind, a Nebraska native, and his wife Becky were somewhat less fortunate and had to live in a trailer nearby. Both couples had only one car, meaning that the wives often found themselves stranded with no transportation while their husbands were on post. Only a few, including Daniel Kerr, who had gotten married during his last posting in Germany, lived on post. After a few weeks in Kansas, Kerr’s wife, Karin, had come to join him from Germany. Everything was new to her in America, so she often kept to herself. It was her first time away from Germany and she was carrying the couple’s first child. Kerr did the best he knew how to help but could not avoid his workload with the company. On the night of October 31, 1966, Kerr was in the company quarters when he received a frantic call from Karin. Something was wrong. Every few minutes children, dressed in outlandish costumes, came to the door demanding candy. What should she do? Kerr had forgotten to warn his startled bride about the American tradition of Halloween.

Chaplain Bernie Windmiller was a native of Gary, Indiana, who had been drafted in 1954 after the Korean armistice and served his stint in the military before going to Fuller Theological Seminary and becoming a minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. Called to further service, Windmiller returned to the military as a chaplain and served with a unit outside of Chicago for only a month before reporting to duty as one of the chaplains of the 2nd Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division. After moving his wife Esther into their apartment, Windmiller made his first appearance among the trainees. As he walked up to the unit, some of the soldiers were lounging around having conversations in salty soldier-speak. A nearby NCO exploded, shouting, “You fucking guys shut your goddamn mouths! The chaplain’s here!” Taking the military humor in his stride, Windmiller went about his duty of preparing the soldiers spiritually for what they would face in wartime, preparations that included everything from regular church services to personal counseling.

Immediately, Windmiller struck up a friendship with Duffy Black, who was both very religious and conscious of the danger the war would soon pose to those under his care. The two talked very nearly every evening about a wide range of subjects. One recurrent theme was love. Black very much admired the wonderful relationship shared by Windmiller and his wife Esther but worried that he might never find true love himself. Black knew that he would have difficulty letting go and trusting someone else so thoroughly. One day in early September, though, Black burst into Windmiller’s office on Custer Hill and told the chaplain that he was in love, and “his face beamed like that of a child who has just placed the last piece into a puzzle.” He had met and fallen in love with a beautiful girl named Ida, who happened to be the daughter of the postmaster of the 9th Infantry Division. Within weeks the young couple was coming to Windmiller for marriage counseling. The two were wed in the Custer Hill Chapel in late October 1966, with many of the men and officers of Charlie Company in attendance, and set up housekeeping on base, able to spend only a few months together before Duffy was scheduled to ship out to Vietnam.

After Don Peterson was drafted, his wife Jacque, who was newly pregnant, travelled to Biloxi, Mississippi to live with her mother and stepfather, a situation that their alcohol abuse made difficult. After basic training, Don received a short leave and met Jacque back in California, where the two decided that, regardless of the difficulty, they had to be together. After Don’s return to Fort Riley for AIT, Jacque packed the couple’s few things and made her way to Kansas. With little money to spare, Jacque and Don set up housekeeping in a three-bedroom home that they shared with two other married couples from Charlie Company, Don and Sue Deedrick and Steve and Karen Huntsman. Steve was from Saint George, Utah, and had worked on road crews in the desert heat before attending Brigham Young University. After falling in love with Karen, though, Steve dropped out of college and the couple married in December 1965, while Karen was still a 17-year-old high school senior. Now subject to the draft, Steve had to report to Fort Riley with all the others in Charlie Company, with Karen joining him there after a long train ride at the same time that Jacque Peterson arrived from California.

Even though the house was crowded, with the Deedricks and the Petersons sharing the sole upstairs bathroom, and their husbands gone for long stretches of training, the three young brides got along famously, “with stars in their eyes” as they worked the best they could to set up the perfect household. Often stranded in the house, since only the Petersons had a car and the boys usually used it to get to Fort Riley and back, the threesome chatted, drank coffee, and tried to have a hot meal waiting on the table when the fellas came home. Karen taught the group how to cook, specializing in Steve’s favorites, macaroni and cheese and divinity fudge for dessert. One constant worry, though, was the water. It simply didn’t taste right, so the girls mixed it with Goofy Grape for dinnertime drinks. During the days when the boys were away for longer periods, the girls often walked to do their shopping and got hooked on soap operas, especially Days of Our Lives.

In all it was great fun, and something of an adventure. Jacque took in ironing and hired out as a babysitter to make more money. When the boys were home, sometimes they would sit around drinking beer, which caused some conflict due to the Huntsmans’ Mormon beliefs, but any problems soon faded amid the general atmosphere of milking each minute for all it was worth before the boys had to ship out. As AIT gave way to unit training the mood in the house began to darken. Karen noticed that Steve was growing more and more silent, but, so new to the everyday rituals of being married, did not know what to do. After wondering for days if she had done something wrong, Karen finally got to the truth of the matter – Steve was petrified of going to Vietnam. The two talked, as did the other couples, about the war, but there was little that the wives could do to help other than offer their unflagging support. Usually, though, the couples tucked Vietnam away in their marital attics, not wanting to waste their precious time together talking of things they could not change. But as Christmas neared and it became clear that the unit would be shipping out soon, the war cast an ever-larger shadow over their lives. Each wife knew that there was a chance that her husband would never return. Each husband knew that he could leave his young wife a grieving widow.

For some of the boys of Charlie Company, going through training and preparing to depart for a war zone was just the motivation they needed to pop the question. Tom Conroy, the son of a meat packer who had been drafted along with several of his friends from Lancaster, California, had met his sweetheart, Vivian, at a high school football game. The couple had dated for five years, and had often spoken of their future together, but had never quite made it to the altar. They were young, Vivian being only 18 at the time, and had an entire future to think of such matters. Tom’s draft notice had changed all of that. Who knew what their future held, and Vivian certainly did not want to wind up “an old maid.” So the couple got married after Tom completed basic training, and Vivian made her way to Fort Riley. Bill Reed, himself from a middle class Lancaster, California family, had also taken the plunge and gotten married during the very same leave period. Surprised that they now shared so much in common, the Reeds and the Conroys decided to share an apartment with a third married couple from the unit. The place was so cramped that one unlucky couple had to sleep in the pantry.

Gene Harvey was another of the California contingent of draftees, son of a Lockheed mechanic from Hollywood. Attending junior college and working on cars with his father in his spare time, Harvey had fallen for a girl named Deana. The two had dated and were quite serious, but the arrival of Gene’s draft notice had almost split them up. A few weeks at Fort Riley reminded the couple of what they had together and how quickly they could lose each other. Perhaps, too, Harvey had been affected by the example of Lieutenant Black. The day before Black’s wedding Harvey had asked him why he had decided to settle down. Black had replied simply, “Because I’m in love.” He hadn’t needed any other reason. Following Black’s example, Gene and Deana married in November 1966, and soon invited John Sclimenti, the noted unit jokester, and his girlfriend over for a Thanksgiving dinner with all of the trimmings. As the date of their departure for Vietnam drew nearer, Harvey and Conroy were very aware that they were preparing to leave behind new wives – women they had sworn to love and honor. Now, after so little time together, the brides would have to put their new lives on hold while their husbands risked their lives in foreign fields far from home. Harvey and Conroy knew that fighting in Vietnam would be difficult, but they both feared that their wives would have it worse.

Fred Kenney had been in the crowded platoon bay one afternoon after drills toward the end of basic training when he opened a letter from his wife Barbara that he had thought was just going to be full of the normal, mundane news and gossip that were staples of a long-distance relationship. Instead he leapt for joy when he learned that he was going to be a father, after which he went around poking the letter into the faces of whoever happened to be around, clapping them on the shoulder, and announcing his impending papahood. The news, though, was bittersweet because, unlike his other married friends, Fred could not afford to have Barbara move to be with him at Fort Riley. Instead she had to stay behind in California, where she first bunked in with her mother before moving in with Fred’s sister Mary Lou. It was difficult on the young couple, being apart at such an important time. While Fred felt somewhat jealous of his more fortunate married buddies, he never let it show. Instead he put his efforts into planning the couple’s future as parents, dreaming about where they might live, what they might do, and what kind of parents they would be when the war finally allowed them to live together. Back in California, Barbara pored over every word that Fred wrote, usually sharing the letters with the Kenney family. In Freddie’s absence, the old mixed group of friends and family became even closer, with Barbara a nearly constant fixture at the Kenney household. Together the friends plotted to throw Freddie the best party ever when he came home on leave before he left for Vietnam.

Although he did not have his wife close at hand, Fred continued to take solace in being in a unit with so many of his friends. Fred, Richard Rubio, Tim Johnson, Larry Lilley, and Kenny Frakes formed a tight-knit sub-unit of the California contingent in Charlie Company. Having heard stories about the five Sullivan brothers who had been killed in World War II aboard the USS Juneau, the Canoga and Lancaster High graduates were amazed when they had been allowed to serve together. The group also came to include Forrest Ramos, whom they had met on the train to Fort Riley and with whom they shared an interest because of Ramos’ time spent living in Los Angeles. The group was close in many ways, often passing around letters from home. Forrest Ramos particularly liked the letters from Richard Rubio’s cousin Patricia. She seemed quite nice, and to hear Rubio tell it, she was beautiful. Forrest asked his pal if it would be OK to write to her, and Rubio gave his assent, figuring, “What the heck. Nothing will come of it.”

The friends often plotted what kind of mischief they could get up to when they once again rejoined the civilian world and worked to cheer Fred on through the difficult times. Through it all, Fred remained especially close with Richard Rubio. The two did everything together, from helping each other through physical training to slopping through the brutal experience of the mock prisoner-of-war camp. Both were in awe of their young platoon leader, Lieutenant John Hoskins. A tough, true believer in the cause of Vietnam, Hoskins had immediately become close friends with his officer colleagues in Charlie Company and had taken a deep interest in both the training and lives of his men. Like Lieutenant Black before him, Hoskins had introduced himself to his trainees by issuing a challenge to a pushup contest. It was the small, but immensely strong Rubio who had taken the challenge, leaving Hoskins wondering how he had been beaten so easily. After the performance, Hoskins, who wrote poetry instead of frequenting the officers’ club during his off hours, took both Rubio and Kenney under his wing. Feeling an affinity for the young friends, Hoskins made Rubio his first RTO and always seemed to have Fred close by his side on maneuvers. For Fred Kenney the seemingly constant work, tempered by friendship and mentoring, made the prospect of leaving a wife and young child behind while fighting in a war zone somehow less daunting.

Although the work level remained high, as AIT gave way to unit training, the men of Charlie Company finally began to receive a bit more free time, and were even allowed to visit the surrounding towns of Manhattan and Junction City. Without much money, and often without transport, many of the men, as is so often the case in the military, just hung around the barracks listening to music, writing letters home, reading, or catching up on their labors. Fort Riley itself offered a few recreational options, including a ratty pool table located in the battalion area, movies, and an enlisted men’s beer garden. Beer was cheap and the yarns spun around the tables were usually good, making the beer garden especially popular. Tacoma, Washington, native Ron Vidovic, still smarting from a recent divorce and the resulting separation from his two children, was one of the top pool players in the unit, and often held forth against all comers while making small, usually successful, bets on the outcome. If an officer came by, though, all bets would suddenly cease, and Vidovic’s billiards talent would vanish as the interloper was allowed to win. Once the officer had lost interest and departed, Vidovic would return to business as usual. It was not as if the officers and NCOs had an aversion to gambling, though, since they could often be found during what little spare time they had on the weekends in their own group poker games. In part as an effort at information gathering for the other men, Jace Johnston often sat in on the NCOs’ poker games as a runner. Amid the smoke and conversation, Johnston picked up what he could before being sent away to acquire whatever the members of the group needed, from smokes to drinks. Nobody’s fool, Johnston would buy the goods from wherever he could find them, and then sell them to the thirsty officers at a profit.

On occasion drinking took place clandestinely in the barracks. After a short visit home, Willie McTear managed to smuggle a bottle of down-home moonshine into the platoon bay. Upon learning of their booze windfall, the other members of the platoon who happened to be present gathered around to gaze longingly at McTear’s liquid gold. Ready to share his good fortune with his pals, McTear, a seasoned alcohol veteran, first turned to Stan Cockerell, who had been keeping up a steady stream of letters home under Company First Sergeant Crockett’s tutelage. McTear knew that, as the youngest guy in Charlie Company, Cockerell was a drinking novice who was unprepared for the near lethal effects of real, homemade shine. The next morning found McTear and his buddies gloriously hung over, but Cockerell was exceptional in his distress. Pale, sweating profusely, and nearly incomprehensible, Cockerell had to be supported by his partners in crime to make it through morning inspection. A passing NCO, though, noticed Cockerell’s sorry condition, informed the group that they were an affront to the entire army, and placed everyone on KP until further notice.

For the soldiers of Charlie Company, though, the number one favorite pastime was going into the surrounding towns in search of girls. For Doug Wilson, Manhattan was the place to be, since, as a college town, it offered potential access to coeds. He and the other California guys, sure that their charms would be irresistible to the locals, went to the bars and dancehalls around Kansas State University, where they often sighted the quarry, but rarely had any luck – a sad state of affairs that the soldiers blamed on their nearly bald heads. They knew in their hearts that if they only had the bushy locks of their surfer days everything would have been different.

The more adventurous members of Charlie Company eventually found their way to 9th Street in Junction City. Known as the “Harlem of Kansas” the vibrant community around 9th Street boasted a strip of black-owned bars, pool halls, and the odd house of ill repute. Most of the white soldiers, ill at ease entering this side of a still-segregated Junction City on their own, usually first visited 9th Street with one of their African-American compatriots. Alan Richards, a country boy from rural Wisconsin, first went to 9th Street with a group of his buddies from the mortar platoon. Parched as they were after the rigors of basic training, the group huddled into a bar crowded with other soldiers. Eager to drink their fill as quickly as possible, Richards and his friends elbowed their way to the bar, but the pushing and shoving quickly led to a fully fledged barroom brawl. Amid flying punches and a rain of chairs, the platoon hung together in its first-ever combat, forming a wedge and making its way to the relative safety of the girls’ bathroom. When the front door burst open and the first MPs appeared, Richards and his friends, along with a scantily-clad female “performer,” made a hurried exit from the establishment through the bathroom window. Once outside they looked back as the building seemed to have sprung a leak, with frantic GIs flowing freely from all of the bar’s windows and doors. On another occasion, in the darkened upstairs rooms of a similar establishment, one soldier from Charlie Company successfully negotiated the price for an end to his virginity. With others who did not want to go to Vietnam and war as sexual innocents impatiently waiting their turn, the business transaction began. Within minutes, though, the whole affair came to an abrupt halt as an agitated, gun-wielding pimp entered the room, resulting in another hurried window exit before the MPs arrived.

By the time training had come to an end and the men of Charlie Company were making ready to spend two weeks at home before the unit shipped out to Vietnam, civilians had been transformed into soldiers. After the first live-fire event of basic training, Jim Dennison had gone off to be by himself, wondering if he would ever have the guts to kill somebody. By December, though, he realized that he had gone from being a Christian doubter of the morality of war to being a trained killer. Regardless of the moral implications of his discovery, he took solace in the knowledge that he would be able to get the job done in battle and not let his friends down.

The men had become much more than trained soldiers; along the way they had become brothers. The bonds of camaraderie were especially apparent to the older, more experienced officers and NCOs. Company First Sergeant Crockett looked upon Charlie Company with great pride, knowing that his boys would no doubt bitch and complain, in the best army fashion, about everything in Vietnam from the heat to the mosquitoes. But he also knew that the unit was ready. The men would do their jobs and could count on each other as the officers and NCOs could count on them. Lost in the moment, the men were in the main unaware of the closeness of the bonds that they had developed with one another. They all had a vague sense of accomplishment, with Richard Rubio speaking for all in stating that the training had “made us better than we knew we could be.” The true depth of their camaraderie, though, would only become apparent when the boys of Charlie Company lost the first of their brothers to combat.

In mid-December 1966, the soldiers of Charlie Company fanned back out across the nation for two weeks of leave with their families and sweethearts. For most it was great just to be home again. Certainly they were different, having grown and put on more muscle during their training. After modeling their uniforms for their curious siblings, the young men soaked up what they could of civilian life, going to movies, going on dates, and drinking too much beer. But just below the surface there was a mounting tension. Nobody really wanted to talk about it, but in a few short days the boys of Charlie Company would be off to Vietnam: many would never return. Mothers cried silently in their rooms at night, siblings sat more closely together, and stone-faced fathers grappled with unfamiliar emotions, even though their soldier sons had told them that everything would be fine. With the invulnerability of youth, these men were convinced that it would not be them who died in Vietnam. Each of the sons and brothers of Charlie Company dealt with the difficulties presented by imminent departure for Vietnam in his own way. Ron Vidovic told his grandmother the truth, but, fearing it would break her heart, he did not tell his mother that he was headed to Vietnam; instead he lied that he was going to receive a stateside assignment. Henry Burleson gratefully accepted a New Testament from his weeping mother, as his father patted him on the back and told him how proud he was that he was going to do his duty for his country. Burleson promised to read the Bible each day and to stay safe. Back at his home in Encino, Richard Northcott did his best to ignore his mother’s tendency to shake slightly in the few moments that they had alone together during his leave. In Calexico, California Mario Lopez knew by the tears in his father’s eyes that he was saying goodbye to a new man – a respectful and proud soldier. That look of pride Mario never forgot.

For some in the unit, leaving for Vietnam brought out other emotions. Things got a bit heated during Terry McBride’s visit home when two of his World War II veteran relatives told him that they had better not hear him whining about that little war that he was off to. McBride lashed out, promising to survive the fighting just to come back and show them what was what. Ronnie Gann returned home to Los Angeles only to discover that his father, who evidently did not believe that Ronnie was going to return from Vietnam, had sold his car. When Bill Varskafsky returned to Washington for his leave, he discovered that his pregnant wife had horrified his mother by trotting out all of the paperwork for his military life insurance forms to demonstrate how well off she would be if Bill did not make it home.

For some families the occasion of having their soldier boy back home for a short period called for a party, partly in an effort to keep the blues of his imminent departure at bay. In Canoga Park, Barbara and the Kenneys threw an epic bash for Fred’s return home, involving a visit to the beach and, of course, motorcycle riding. During his short stay Fred was able to pamper his wife just a bit and marveled at the opportunity to place his hand on her abdomen and feel the baby kick. He was thrilled with the idea of being a father, and the two spent time picking out baby names and making plans for life together upon his return. In Maywood, Illinois, the Geiers put out the red carpet for Bill’s leave. His mother, Bernice, was so pleased that he had indeed become a medic that she nearly burst with pride. The night before his departure, the family held a big neighborhood party in the basement, playing all of Bill’s favorite 45s, ending up in a group Conga line that went on until folks nearly passed out from exhaustion. As the festivities drew to a close, at the urging of his siblings, Bill donned his Class A uniform and posed for a picture in front of the adoring crowd.

Many within Charlie Company saw their leave as the perfect time to make a major life change. Bob French had already set the standard by getting married to his sweetheart between basic training and AIT, a sweetheart he now had to drive back to Tampa, Florida, with her crying on and off the whole way. He didn’t know she was pregnant. Larry Lukes, who had led the escape from the POW camp, had fallen in love with a girl from Nebraska during training, and the couple wed during his leave in December, in part to allow her to collect his life insurance if he died in Vietnam. Jimmie Salazar finally gave Aurora the big wedding she wanted, not knowing that he was leaving her pregnant as he departed for Vietnam.

At the conclusion of training, Don Peterson boarded a train in Fort Riley bound for Montgomery, Alabama, to take Jacque to live with her mother and stepfather while he was in Vietnam. In order to board, Jacque had to lie and say that she was only seven months pregnant, since the train conductor evidently wanted no part of helping to deliver a baby on the journey south. After two grueling days of travel, the couple got off in Montgomery, where Jacque’s parents met them, and a few days later she went into labor. The delivery was long and difficult, eventually resulting in 9-pound baby James being delivered by C-section. In those days hospitals, especially air force hospitals like the one in which James was born, did not allow fathers and babies into the same room. The dad could only gaze at the child through the glass of the big nursery room window. Don was able to visit Jacque, but whenever the nurse brought James into the room, he had to leave. Suffering from postpartum depression, and wanting to have both her husband and baby in the room at the same time, by the third day of the regimen Jacque had had enough. She began crying hysterically while holding James, and a nurse rushed in and asked how she could be of help. Jacque replied, “Go and get my husband.” The nurse went to take the crib away, but Jacque held on, still crying, and said again, “Go get my husband.” Finally the elderly nurse just shook her head, left the crib and its occupant behind and summoned Don to the room. For an hour and a half, Don got to hold and play with James, and even got the opportunity to change a diaper. With both of them together, Jacque was able to notice that James was the spitting image of his father, who bragged about how well this big baby was going to be able to play football one day. He would take him out in the backyard of the house that they were going to buy together and teach him how to throw and catch. All too soon, though, the nurse returned, and Don had to leave to get ready to return to Fort Riley the next day.

The following morning, Don and Jacque’s stepfather Deloy returned to the hospital to say goodbye. The two were amazed to find Jacque up and dressed. Don had to say goodbye to James in the hospital, but she was determined to accompany her husband to the train depot for his send-off. With Deloy hovering in the background, Don and Jacque spent an hour together talking on the platform while waiting for the train to arrive. Jacque had never once laid down the law to Don, but she did now, saying through her tears, “Don’t run out and be any kind of hero. Keep your head down. We need you.” As the train pulled into the station, Deloy slipped Don a bottle of booze to help dull the pain of the trip back to Fort Riley, and Don held Jacque in a long embrace promising in a whisper that he would be good before jumping onto the train car at the very last minute. As the train pulled away, Jacque was overwhelmed by it all – alone with a new baby as her husband went to war. She just sat there on the platform and sobbed. Deloy, a crusty old air force NCO, didn’t quite know how to react, so he just sat beside his stepdaughter, who buried her head into his chest and cried for half an hour. Deloy promised his stepdaughter that he would put in for a transfer to Vietnam to try to keep close to Don. On the train, Don looked up through his own tears and was surprised to see James Nall, who was returning to Fort Riley from his own leave. The two quickly worked their way through the bottle of booze while Don showed off his only picture of James and bragged about the exploits that he and his son would have in future days.

The men returned to Fort Riley to find a massive train backed into a vast open area in Camp Funston, ready for its human cargo. On January 7, 1967, as if by some script, the men boarded the westbound train in a snowstorm. Tim Fischer thought that it was a wonderful irony: here they were headed to one of the hottest places in the world, “and here it’s as cold as a well-digger’s ass.” Standing next to Fischer was Bobby Jindra; the two had become close during training after Fischer had learned that Jindra had gone to a rival high school in Wickliffe near Cleveland. The two often hung around with Ken Idle, who was drafted from Wickliffe along with Jindra, but had wound up in Bravo Company. For his part, Jindra had planned to go to college and major in electrical engineering but instead had fallen in love and gotten married to his sweetheart, Dolly, who, along with their young daughter Jacque, had lived with him during training at Fort Riley. The young family had often invited Fischer over for dinner. Hanging in each other’s arms, with little Jacque clutched between them as the snow came pelting down, through tears Bobby wondered aloud if he would ever see them again. The normally gruff and rough Fischer patted Bobby on the back and assured him that he would come home safe and sound to play with little Jacque. He continued to comfort his friend as the two went to find their seats.

Becky Lind finally found her husband Herb, who was overloaded with his duties as commander of the departure, since many of the other officers and NCOs had left earlier on an aircraft as part of an advance party to ready the division infrastructure for the arrival of the men in Vietnam. The two shared a quick embrace; as a military wife Becky was used to seeing her husband leave, just not to war. Then she returned to her car, only to find that the engine had died even as the snow began to pile higher. Aboard the train Larry Lukes sat disconsolate; his new family had been scheduled to see him off but had not turned up. Just as the train began to pull away, and the music of the Salvation Army Band began to pick up in tempo, he caught sight of them running through the snow. He waved, but they never saw him as the train departed.

The emotions of the men of Charlie Company ran the gamut from talkative excitement, to mute depression, to tearful agony as the train picked up speed. Doug Wilson, who had decided to keep a diary of his Vietnam experiences, simply wrote, “Well here I am on a train on my way to California. We finally are on our way. We left about 1500 to the music of the Salvation Army Band. We leave behind only a blizzard and head ourselves toward the waters of the Pacific.” As Wilson scribbled in his diary, a few cars away Lynn Hunt sat among the officers, thinking. He knew that this was a good unit, and that the officers and men were dependable. But he couldn’t help wonder how Charlie Company would react in battle. Then it struck him. In the entire battalion, only its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Tutwiler, who was a veteran of both World War II and Korea, had ever been shot at before.