I, Soldier - part 2

My mom died when I was young, and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. So that also made me kind of a loner and self-contained. My hard work at school paid off, and I went to study at West Virginia University when I was 18. I decided I should study Russian as that seemed to be the most important foreign language at the time. I vividly remember hearing JFK’s speech on the radio where he said: ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. The first time in my life I can remember crying was the day he got shot. I was never very sensitive emotionally, but there were always a few things that would play a chord on my heart strings. I learned about Stoic philosophy early and life and found it useful. I particularly enjoyed Epictetus. I forget who said it, but the two quotes that always came to my mind in troubling times were: everything weak feels itself attacked if touched and don’t argue about what a good man is, just be one.

With my Russian degree complete, I applied to the Foreign Service through the State Department. As I had no overseas experience, I was rejected. My dad suggested joining the Army as an officer. He said the pay is good and you can write your own ticket. What sealed the deal was when mentioned that with my Russian knowledge, it would be easy to get a military intelligence job and likely a cushy billet in a place like Germany. My dad mentioned volunteering for occupation duty after WW2 just to enjoy the sights of Europe. I wish I had spoken to him sooner about it, so I could have done ROTC in college. I had read about West Point and the requirements seemed onerous. Fortunately, there was an alternative: Officer Candidate School or OCS.

In 1967, I was accepted into OCS and from there did basic, infantry, airborne, and officer training. I remember the first time a drill sergeant yelled at me. It was like someone threw a handful of nails at my face. Even for a 22-year-old college grad like me, Fort Benning was a hard job. Eventually, like the rest of the training platoon, I learned how to march, shoot, and salute. The obstacle courses were fun, but what I really liked was learning how to throw grenades and shoot machine guns. Earlier on, the long hair and beard I had grown in college got shaved off. It was sort of fun to watch it all hit the floor at the same time, like a sheep getting sheared. Infantry training was only a few weeks longer. It was mostly running around in the woods while practicing small unit tactics. The woods around Fort Benning weren’t too different from the kind I spent by boyhood romping around in, so I felt at home.

Airborne school was more interesting, though I questioned the need for all the running. Running can cause stress fractures, which make injury much more likely when landing during a parachute jump. The force of landing from a paratrooper jump is about the same as jumping down from a height of eight feet, which is very likely cause injury without careful technique or if there is a pre-existing stress fracture. Several trainees ended up getting medical discharges for exactly that reason, and it happens every training cycle. Oh well, such things were above my grade. I had no power to change them. This was about the time in my Army career where I decided the only person I could rely on for my safety was me. The first jump, sometimes called the Hollywood jump, is done without a combat load in the daytime, which makes it easier. To pass the course, I had to do four more jumps, including one at night and out of four different kinds of aircraft. All those jumps were with a full combat load, which means you must pull a strap on your leg to release your gear right before landing. Landing with 40 pounds of stuff strapped to your leg often causes permanent injuries. As was to happen many times in my Army career, through a combination of prudence and luck, I avoided injury.

Officer Candidate School was much easier. It was like being in elementary school again, at least from my perspective. That’s where I met Barry Delmar. He was the only black candidate in the class. As we were both soft-spoken bookworms, we became friends. Officers who came from this course were derisively called 90-day Wonders during WW2. Equivalent German officers got far more training before they were allowed to lead men into battle. Given the Army’s need for officers at the time, it was a sensible decision. I read somewhere there is not much of a difference in officer performance on basis of training, be it from West Point, OCS, or ROTC. All Army officers have a bachelor’s degree, aside from the occasional battlefield commission.

There was a time when Barry seemed a bit more down than usual, so I tried to cheer him up by telling him the story of Benjamin Davis. He was the first black cadet at West Point in about 70 years following the handful who came through right after the end of The Civil War. He was shunned by all the cadets; he ate and roomed alone for those four long years. Later, he became a fighter pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen and commanded the famous Redtail Squadron, which had a perfect combat record. Not a single one of the bombers they escorted got shot down. Davis later became a Lieutenant General in the Air Force. Delmar seemed to appreciate my encouragement. I got the feeling that he didn’t get a lot of that in his life.

The military had only been de-segregated 20 years prior, and it had been only three years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I could see a kind of sadness in his face, but also a fiery determination. We didn’t get much free time at OCS, but Barry and I made the most of it. We had both been lucky enough to grow up in places with good libraries and had spent a lot of time reading the classics and the encyclopedia. He didn’t talk much, except with me and I once asked how he had such a large vocabulary. He answered that he once decided to read the dictionary. It was clever because a dictionary is much shorter than an encyclopedia but contains the same information in condensed form. Later, I learned that Malcolm X read the dictionary in prison to become a better public speaker.

Barry told me he grew up in a town called Amity in Washington State. We exchanged addresses and promised to visit each other when we were out of the Army. It gave us both something to look forward to. After OCS graduation, we wished each other luck and went our separate ways. We both had a copy of a picture we took of ourselves and a few other classmates we were friends with.