THERE YOU HAVE IT. Almost a year spent to become an infantry officer and I became something else. But, more importantly, America was beginning to become something else during that year. Inasmuch as I had fallen off the face of the planet – we had almost no contact with the “real” world while in training – I had not been there to see it happen.

The change in America was subtle during 1966 while I was away. The Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1964, but its affect was only beginning to be felt. The United States was getting ready to begin a massive deployment of troops to Vietnam – I was among those – but its impact had not yet been felt in America because most of that early troop buildup consisted of volunteers like me. Nancy Sinatra was singing "These Boots Were Made For Walking" and the Orioles won the World Series.

The Baltimore Orioles won the world series? I was eleven years old when the St Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and took the name of the official State bird. They resided in the cellar of the league standings every year thereafter, until I left. I was an Infantry Officer Candidate when the World Series rolled around that year and I asked if anyone knew who was playing. We didn't get much in the way of outside news. I thought they were joking when they told me the Orioles. I've felt like a jinx ever since. Was it my fault they never amounted to anything until the year I left Baltimore?

Even more changes would come to America in the following year while I was stationed in Vietnam, even more cut off from news of the “real” world. More change came during the following three years while I was stationed in Hawaii, almost as remote from the “real” world as Vietnam. I suppose this is why I escaped the change that seems to have characterized the national psyche ever since. I will reserve those observations for my weekly opinion piece each Sunday.

Beginning next week, I will share my journal of the events in Vietnam. I served thirteen months in the war zone as a member of the Adjutant General's office of the 9th Infantry Division. My position gave me a broader view of the war than I might have had as an infantry platoon leader. I was able to travel throughout our division's tactical area of operations and mingle with unit commanders. During the first couple of months of my tour of duty, I supervised the processing of battle casualties and corresponding with their next of kin. Later, I was assigned to help manage and then took over the Awards and Decorations Branch where I investigated and processed recommendations to cite acts of valor. I was a platoon leader for the division's base camp defense force. I was the division's duty officer the night that the Tet Offensive of 1968 began.

Guilt at surviving the war without facing the hazards of the infantrymen I had trained with drove me to take unnecessary risks. That guilt remains with me to this day.

My objective over the coming weeks is to document the war as I saw it, to rebut the propaganda that antiwar factions in the media and at home propagated - propaganda that has filtered its way into lesson plans throughout American schools. If America is to overcome and cast off its guilt and self-loathing, then its citizens must come to understand the true nature of our actions in Vietnam. I am especially concerned that those veterans who returned from Vietnam and cloaked themselves in guilt and self-loathing to disappear chameleon-like among the anti-war protestors, will find peace within themselves.   

MY MOTHER HAD one pressing question that she needed answered: Why did I need a box of Kotex sanitary napkins? It was one of many items on the checklist that I had been given when I received my orders to report to Fort Benning for Infantry Officer Candidate School. I didn't know the answer and she made me promise to write with it as soon as I found out. 

My parents drove me to Fort Benning from our home north of Baltimore. There was an airline strike and tickets were hard to come by. We arrived in Columbus, Georgia, the evening before I was supposed to report, so we had a good meal and spent the night in a motel just outside the gates to the post. We drove to the OCS barracks the next morning with directions that were provided by the MP at the gate.

A soldier wearing a blue helmet and white cravat, both bearing the OCS logo met us outside. He greeted us politely and instructed us to say our goodbyes there at the car while I retrieved my duffel bag from the trunk. He then led me around the side of the building as my parents drove away.

There were other duffel bags lined up on a concrete patio outside the barracks and the soldier had me leave mine with them. He then instructed me to remove all brass insignia from my uniform and place them in a nearby box. “You won't need them anymore,” he said. “You're no longer an enlisted man. You're an Officer Candidate.”

The first letter that I received from my mother contained a comment as to how impressed she was with the polite young soldier who greeted us. It made me laugh. If only she knew. The blue helmet marked that polite young soldier was a Senior Candidate. The lowest ranking commissioned officer in the Army is a second lieutenant. Senior Candidates were treated as “third lieutenants” and it was their mission to inflict the same pain upon us Junior Candidates as other Senior Candidates had inflicted upon them – and then some.

He led me to a room where a table and chair were arranged with a tray and silverware from the mess hall. A strip of white tape was placed six inches from the front edge of the seat. I was shown how to sit on just the front six inches at the position of attention: Back straight, knees together, and hands on lap.

I was shown how to eat a square meal. The fork or spoon was raised perpendicularly from the tray to mouth level and then returned to the tray along the reciprocal route. Chewing did not commence until the fork was returned to the proper position and the hands were back on the lap. The knife remained diagonally across the upper left corner of the tray when not in use.

The Senior Candidate also told me that each table in the mess hall had four seats, and that candidates had to remain standing behind their seats after arranging their trays and silverware properly until the fourth arrived. When he had his articles properly arranged, he would assume the position of attention and command, “Take – seats,” at which time the four sat down in unison.

Lastly, I was admonished to avoid “eyeballing” the candidate seated across from me although we were staring directly ahead. I learned later that this required focusing on a point behind the other candidate. If your eyes met, you began laughing. It was unavoidable.

He then took me into the hall way to demonstrate the proper method of “making way.” Whenever an officer entered a hallway in the barracks, the first officer candidate to see him would command, “Make – Way!” At this time, all officer candidates in that hallway had to stand at attention against the nearest wall, with a space just wide enough for a sheet of paper to pass between their shoulders, posteriors, and heels, and the wall, and remain their until the officer exited the hallway.

With this portion of my orientation complete, the Senior Candidate morphed from a polite young soldier into a bizarre imitation of Sergeant Snorkel from Beetle Bailey comics. It was unexpected. Indeed, up until that moment, I had never experienced harassment at any time during my previous four months of service, in either Basic Combat Training or Advanced Infantry Training. I was shunted into the mess hall where Dante's fourth circle of hell was being reenacted with other Senior Candidates afflicting other Junior Candidates with all manner of vexations.

The “real” officers, our cadre, arrived that evening and introduced themselves. We had a captain – the company commander, a first lieutenant – the company executive officer, and one second lieutenant assigned as “Tac” officer for each platoon. I was assigned to the second under Lieutenant John Robb.

We were assigned in pairs to our rooms where we each had a bunk, a wall locker, and a footlocker. All were typical for Army barracks. However, we were also given a desk, chair, and chest-of-drawers. There was a diagram explaining not only the placement of the furniture, but also the exact method of folding and placing all articles of clothing, etc. on display in that furniture. We later learned that the “Tac” officer would make the rounds every day, measuring everything with a ruler, and assigning demerits for every deviation from the standards shown in the diagram.

We had about three days to get everything in order. It took that long to have “Follow Me” patches sewn onto our left uniform shoulders and OCS decals affixed to just about everything else. We were also issued two pairs of brass OCS insignia that we wore on our uniform collars much like a second lieutenant wears his gold bars. We came to hate that insignia. It was constantly inspected by every passing member of the cadre who would issue demerits if it wasn't perfectly clean. Getting the Brasso polishing solution out of every nook and cranny was virtually impossible.

Everything had to be kept impeccably cleaned and polished. We spent hundreds of hours during that six months spit-shining everything, including the floors. It took a couple of weeks, but we built up a sheen on the floors that looked like a mirror. Of course, we never walked on them. We would take our boots off whenever we entered the barracks and carry them around our necks with the shoelaces tied together so that we could climb from one piece of furniture to another to avoid stepping on the floor. It was sometimes necessary where we could reach a foothold on the furniture, but we limited our path to just a couple tiles so we only had to polish those regularly. Of course, the “Tac” officer walked wherever he liked when he inspected and we had to re-polish and buff those tiles.

The Kotex? I know you hadn't forgotten my mother's question. Those were stapled to the bottom of wooden blocks that we placed under the legs of all the furniture. We also affixed them to the bottoms of our footlockers, so we wouldn't scuff the floor too badly when we slid them out from under our bunks. 

Read Jack's novel, Rebels on the Mountain, the tale of Nick Andrews, an Army spy, who has Fidel Castro in his sights but no orders to pull the trigger. The mafia as well as the American business community in Cuba will pay a fortune for Castro's assassination, but Nick has his career to consider, his friends to protect, and a romance to sort out in the chaos of a revolution.   

STAFF SERGEANT RAMBO had an epiphany during a war game in Germany. He was killed in action while serving as a squad leader. It wasn't a technical call. No umpire walked up and handed him a black card announcing that he was dead. It was sudden and unexpected. 

A sniper hiding in a tree killed Sergeant Rambo as his armored personnel carrier drove under it. Rambo was riding in the Track Commander's (TC) seat with his upper body protruding from a hatch on top of the vehicle, just behind the driver's hatch. He knew at that moment that he would die in Vietnam.

The Army gave him a stay of execution by sending him to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, before deploying him to the war in Vietnam. There he served as one of the cadre in my Advanced Infantry Training Company.

I don't remember making Sergeant Rambo's acquaintance until after we had graduated. It's strange when I reflect on the fact that I don't remember any of our training cadre from that school. I remember everyone from Basic Combat Training clearly, even their names. I remember all four members of my training squad, though I can't remember one of their names. The other three were Mort Beech, Bill Downey, and, of course, me. The fourth, as I mentioned earlier, was a Harvard Graduate. I wish I could remember his name. He is the only Ivy League graduate who I ever met who had an ounce of common sense.

Harvard (I'll call him that unless I can come up with something better) drove the sergeants crazy. He always did exactly as he was told. Think about that: “Exactly what he was told to do.” He was once told to put a crate of one pint milk cartons and a block of ice into a cooler. That's what he did, and he crushed the milk cartons under the weight of the ice. (He didn't do it gently.)

“Boy, what's the matter with you?” the sergeant screamed. “Don't you have any common sense.”

Harvard looked at the sergeant with all the guile of a cocker spaniel puppy.

I was prepared to observe, of course he doesn't. He's an Ivy League graduate. However, I learned that there was a method to his madness. Within a week or two, the sergeants never asked him to do anything. They were afraid of the consequences. In fact, the only consequence was that Harvard never had to do anything while the rest of us worked. I wish I could find even one other Ivy Leaguer that smart.

I digress. We graduated. The four of us were awarded Zippo lighters with the Army coat of arms and engraved to announce that we were the top squad in the training cycle. I had three weeks to wait before Infantry Officer Candidate School began, so I hung around Fort Jackson for one of them. I had already taken two weeks leave between Basic and Advanced Infantry Training, and could only take two more for the year.

There wasn't much to do. The Army was building a replica Vietnamese village at Fort Jackson for training purposes, and layabouts like me were regularly dispatched there to work on it. But, one morning I was called out of formation by Sergeant Rambo along with Harvard for a special detail. Rambo took us to the PX and bought us coffee and donuts. We sat around for an hour, smoking and drinking, and listening to Sergeant Rambo's premonitions of death in combat. Mostly, we were wondering why we were there.

An hour later, Sergeant Rambo glanced at his watch and said it was time to go. He drove us to a barracks building where he borrowed a floor polisher. We loaded it into his truck and he next drove to one of the laundries.

The PX system maintained a variety of shops on the base that were leased to civilians who operated them. This laundry was leased by a German woman who had married another soldier who was then deployed somewhere overseas. Sergeant Rambo had been looking after her in her husband's absence. The Inspector General was due to inspect her shop later that week and we were being loaned to her to help prepare for it.

We spent about three hours cleaning up her place and waxing the floors before Sergeant Rambo returned to pick us up. I remember I had a pleasant time with her. I was able to practice my German (I had been taking an Army correspondence course), and she treated us to homemade strudel (best I ever had).

After we dropped off the floor polisher where we had borrowed it, Sergeant Rambo took us back to the PX for another round of coffee and donuts. There we were admonished to tell everyone that we had been working at the Vietnamese village that day.

In return for his kindness, I offered Sergeant Rambo the wisdom that I had learned from Sergeant Dunne in Basic Combat Training. Dunne was a fatalist. He told us, “If there is a bullet with your name on it, there's nothing you can do. It's fate, and there was no use worrying about it. However, we should do everything we could to avoid all those other bullets marked 'To Whom It May Concern'.”

Somehow, I don't think that Sergeant Rambo was comforted.

Read Jack's novel, Rebels on the Mountain, the tale of Nick Andrews, an Army spy, who has Fidel Castro in his sights but no orders to pull the trigger. The mafia as well as the American business community in Cuba will pay a fortune for Castro's assassination, but Nick has his career to consider, his friends to protect, and a romance to sort out in the chaos of a revolution.   

I WAS FORTUNATE to be assigned to a company in Advanced Infantry Training occupying newly constructed barracks at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. They were modern brick buildings with separate rooms for each squad of four trainees. It was a far cry from the old wooden barracks that we occupied in Basic Combat Training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, with thirty men sleeping on bunk beds in an open bay area. 

The other members of my squad included a graduate of Harvard with a degree in economics (I can't remember his name), Bill Downey, who had been with me on the train to Georgia, and Mort Beech, a college boy from Texas who belonged to one of those fraternities that only allowed Cadillacs to be parked in spaces visible to the public (especially coeds). Obviously, we weren't typical of the recruits that you'd find in the Army except during a time when the draft boards were scouring the countryside aggressively.

I quickly learned to play bridge in their company. Bill's parents were both Grand Masters of the game and he had been weaned on it. Our squad mates had played it extensively in their college fraternities. I, on the other hand, had been raised on gin gummy and poker. Bill taught me the rules. The Harvard grad taught me the odds. Mort taught me to cheat.

My first lesson in cheating came during a hand when Mort and I were partners sitting on the floor across from each other while Bill and Mr Ivy League sat on opposite ends of a bunk. They obviously held the better cards and looking for an appropriate contract while Mort and I sat passively waiting. As it became apparent that spades would be the trump suit, I felt a gentle tap on my leg. Looking down, I saw Mort's bare foot with three cards, all hearts, between his toes. I replaced them with three spades that I was holding. Thus, Mort had voided himself in hearts and on the first trick I led a heart and he was able to trump it. Our opponents grumbled at the bad distribution of cards that cost them their contract and awarded us the points. Bad card distribution plagued them the rest of the night and they never figured it out. I learned that the child of Grand Masters and Ivy Leaguers weren't as smart as they thought they were.

We played so much bridge during that eight weeks of AIT that we wore the spots off a deck of Kem plastic playing cards. Sergeants would walk over when we took breaks between classes to see if we were playing something more familiar to them, such as poker. They always wandered off mumbling when they found us playing bridge.

Not that it was all fun and games in AIT. We worked hard. We practiced the skills that we had learned in Basic until we mastered them. We were retested on our marksmanship with the M-14, and practiced close combat techniques until they became reflexive. We weren't taught how to fight. We were taught how to kill. There's no time for fighting on the battlefield.

There were other weapons to master. The M-60 machine gun was my favorite. We began learning how to fire a burst of six rounds and keep them all inside a one inch square target located 25 meters away. I sprayed the target until a sergeant got down beside me and whispered a secret. “The gun's trying to walk away from you, son,” he said.

He was right. It had a massive device in the stock to absorb the recoil that I had to control by holding the weapon tighter against my shoulder. It worked. On the next attempt, I placed all six rounds inside the one inch square target.

I went on to qualify as a sharpshooter on the M-60 and I am upset about it to this day. I should have fired “expert.” However, the temperature rose above training limits that day and we had to stop firing until it fell back. We played a few rubbers of bridge while we waited. When it did, heat rose in waves from the ground obscuring the targets at 800 meters that I had to hit to qualify as an expert. 

I guess it's a “guy-thing,” the thrill of shooting high-powered weapons. That thrill was ramped up a notch when we trained on the M-79 40mm grenade launcher and the 3.5 inch rocket launcher commonly known as the bazooka. I still get goose bumps at the memory. 

Read Jack's novel, Rebels on the Mountain, the tale of Nick Andrews, an Army spy, who has Fidel Castro in his sights but no orders to pull the trigger. The mafia as well as the American business community in Cuba will pay a fortune for Castro's assassination, but Nick has his career to consider, his friends to protect, and a romance to sort out in the chaos of a revolution.   

CLOSE COMBAT TRAINING during Basic Combat Training was limited. No one could even hope to learn to defend themselves on a battlefield without a rifle in just eight weeks, even if they practiced nothing else during that time. However, we were given a “taste” of it. 

The truth is that those of us who went on to Advanced Infantry Training didn't receive enough either. Even with six months additional close combat training during Infantry Officer Candidate School, I felt I needed still more.

Hand-to-hand training during the era of the Vietnam War focused primarily on defense and poking your enemy in the eyes or the groin. Don't laugh. It's a good beginning. I passed the most basic advice onto my youngest son when he was being tormented by a bully who loved to shove others. I taught him to simply step back with one foot and turn his body away when the young devil ran at him. I was fortunate to see the fruits of this labor when the attack came while I happened to be standing nearby. My son stepped back as instructed and the bully fell on his face. He looked around confusedly for a moment and then went searching for someone else to shove.

We practiced hand-to-hand combat training in a sawdust pit surrounded by a shin high wall of sandbags. A wooden platform in the center served as a podium for the instructor. We paired off with not attempt to match us by height or weight. At one hundred seventy-five pounds, I was rarely outclassed in the match up on weight. However, at only five feet, eight inches, I often had to spar with men who had a greater reach. Fortunately, my father had been a professional prize fighter in his younger days and I knew how to duck and weave effectively. No, he hadn't taught me to fight. I learned while dodging his blows. My father used his fists for punishment.

Bayonet training was an entirely different experience. Communist countries manufactured infantry rifles with bayonets permanently affixed to the barrel. They folded back when not needed for close combat. They had dull edges to prevent soldiers from hurting themselves when the bayonet was folded back. Thus, they were only useful for stabbing someone. Our bayonets had edges that we could slash with as well as stab. I have never seen a knife as sharp as a bayonet. It is seriously sharp.

Fortunately, we practiced with our bayonets safely encased in scabbards during Basic Combat Training (that would change in more advanced classes). The Army didn't want anyone complaining to mommy who would likely sic their congressman on us. But, trainers demonstrated with bare blades. I once saw one pass through the hand of a sergeant during a demonstration. It seemed to pass through flesh and bone as easily as it passed through air.

Soldiers also use their rifles as clubs. We were taught the vertical and horizontal butt strokes. (I'll leave that to your imagination.) Practicing these techniques with rifles could result in serious injury or death. Thus, the Army substituted pugil sticks. You may have seen these on game shows, like American Gladiator. They have thick wooden shafts, about the length of a rifle with a bayonet, and heavy padding on both ends. There's another pad in the center between the handholds. We were dressed in helmets and gauntlets and turned loose on each other. It was fun for those of us who mastered the necessary skills. Not so much for anyone else.

Our instructors impressed us with their skills in every manner of close combat. Indeed, as I have noted elsewhere in this series of postings about Basic Combat Training, I was impressed by the professionalism of every one of them. However, it still makes me smile to remember that every one of them began every class with the exhortation to pay careful attention - “This is the most important training that you will receive. This is the class that will keep you alive in combat.”

Of course, they were all important. Although, after one day of close combat training, we asked our platoon sergeant what he thought. He smiled as though remembering some distant memory and then advised, “If you run out of ammunition, go find more ammunition.”