THEY REMEMBER WAR  « Table of Contents

My father, Robert (Bob) Gentry, Sr. (1896-1978), was born in Maynardville, Tennessee, and spent most of his life in nearby Knoxville. Before his service in World War I, he worked for Southern Railway, excelled as a semi-pro baseball player, and played on the University of Tennessee basketball team. After the war he had careers in the grocery business and in advertising. He served on the Knoxville City Tax Commission and was a member of the Sons of the Revolution. During World War II he was an air raid warden. Over the years, he told me some of what he endured in World War I as a member of Park Battery, Second Corps Artillery Park, an artillery unit that served mainly with elements of the American First Army and the French Second Army.* These memories I recorded in a notebook and include them below. [Bolded insertions in his account are mine.]

Call to the Colors

We answered the call for soldiers, May 21, 1918.  A big group of us was sworn in and the town gave us a rousing send off. There were people cheering and bands playing “Over There” and we went off to war singing. It was a grand adventure. Of course we didn’t know what we were getting into. We were mad at the Huns. They’d sunk our ships and jumped on France. France and England needed a lot of help if the war was to be won.

We had less than a month of training at Camp Jackson [now Fort Jackson] before we shipped off to France. A lot of marching and drilling didn’t prepare us for what we were going to face. Our commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel Rogers, New York fella. He saluted with his left hand. Most of our outfit was from Tennessee and Kentucky.

At the Front

We hadn’t been at the front long before we got shelled. The first burst hit fairly close to us. I saw a Frenchman running to the rear. I said, “That Frenchman’s been over here four years; we better run too.” A bunch of us jumped out of our trench and ran like the dickens toward a rear trench. Then in came more shells blowing up around us. Nobody got hurt in our immediate area but there were probably casualties.

An American marine receives first aid in the Toul Sector of France, 1918. In the background a French soldier looks on. He appears to be smoking a cigarette. Photo from the National Archives and Records Administration.

At Camp Jackson they told us we were going to be mechanics repairing and maintaining vehicles. But when we got to France they made us a truck outfit. We hauled artillery parts for a while. Then our main job was hauling shells to our boys and to the French—wherever the big guns needed ammunition. There were times when we were constantly under fire. We hauled day and night, had to roll over bumps and wheel around bomb holes and craters. For a little while the night drives went pretty well, but the Germans caught on we were night-hauling and started shelling us. We had to watch out for everything, including planes. They’d swoop in low and try to hit us, even threw grenades out of the planes at us. We lost a truck and crew, blown to bits. One of our ammunition depots got blown up. When we got on those roads we had to keep going, hoping and praying we’d outrun Hun guns. My mother gave me a Pocket Gospel of St. John which I kept with me through thick and thin. It helped me to carry on.

One time we drove up to this bombed out place. Didn’t know where in the world we were. It was hazy from all the gun smoke. I could make out a man with a rifle on the ground. He was behind a sandbag or something. I asked him where we were. He didn’t say anything. I bent down to look at him. He was a dead German with a hole in his face. Soon realized we’d outrun our infantry and the Germans still held the town.* There was so much destruction and confusion I don’t think they knew we were there. We stayed low till we were told the Germans had gone. We were ordered to turn around and go back to our lines. I saw a sign “Beauclaire.” That was the town we were in.

Dead American Soldiers

The faces look as if they've been blanked out of the photo rather than damaged in combat. The insignia on the soldier’s arm in the foreground may be a mechanic’s patch.

Dead German soldiers covered with flies.

There’d been rumors of an armistice. We figured it was just talk because the Germans were hitting us almost daily. We had to keep at them and deal with mud and cooties. Sometimes you slogged around in muddy water up to your knees. Food and dead bodies attract rats. The trench rats were worst at night. Rats and cooties were almost as bad as the enemy.

I think some of our officers cared more about horses than they did the men. When I hear these Second World War boys gripe about their rations, I tell ‘em what we had. Breakfast: beans and pork. Lunch: pork and beans. Supper: pork and bean leftovers. (Laughs) Sometimes we got other food but I don’t remember it. During the fighting, there was little time or place to eat. To sit down and calmly eat three meals a day would’ve been a luxury. We had to keep moving in mud, mud, mud.   

One time I had to do my business. I was standing to wipe and heard the whistling. Didn’t have time to jerk up my pants. Shell hit the other end of the trench, killed some men. I saw a hand in the mud.

The last three photos above are taken from www.radiganneuhalfen.blogspot.com. They probably don’t point to victims of action my father was directly involved in, but are similar to the carnage he saw. For more on Neuhalfen’s sources about World War I see the endnote below.*

Impressed by the French

I liked the French and their language. I’ll never forget some of the French I learned. It’s a beautiful language. “Vous ne les laisserez pas passer, mes camarades,” (you shall not let them pass, my comrades) -- the French battle cry when they stopped the Germans at Verdun. They really appreciated our help. In some ways they were more civilized than we were, maybe too civilized for the catastrophe that fell on them. Once on furlough I was riding in a streetcar and right across from me was a pretty young woman. I must have stared too long at the skirt above her knee. She said, “Eeez good, eh?” I said, “Oui, oui, mademoiselle!” (Laughs) Another time a few of us doughboys were in a bar. This attractive woman picked me out and said [Dad mimics the French accent], “Will you buy me one champagne?” I did. Made my buddies jealous! (Laughs)

Aftermath

After the war, there was a big rumor we were going to be home for Christmas after we’d paraded in Washington, D.C. Instead, we spent two months hauling all kinds of debris off the Verdun battlefield: broken weapons, shell fragments, unexploded grenades, ragged clothing, broken equipment, skeletons--you name it, we hauled it off and took it a collecting place. Verdun was full of bones, like a vast graveyard. That duty was as bad as the fighting except we weren’t being shot at. After that we were assigned to Brest and worked there till we left in July of 1919. We did all kinds of labor at Brest: truck drivers, stevedores, pick and shovel men, garbage men, MP’s. I had some rank and they made me Corporal of the Guard. I remember Pat Fogarty got into it with this man from Boston. They’d been drinking. Pat grabbed a shovel, yelled, “I’m gonna chop this bastard’s head off.” I brought my rifle to port arms and got between them and talked Pat out of it. Pat Fogarty was the nicest fella in the world when he wasn’t drinking or mad.

War always takes a toll. Just about everyone I know who saw action in France had shell shock, some worse than others. I was bothered with it off and on for a long time after the war.* The man that used to walk by here shaking his head, Bill McCammon: he had shrapnel in his head. He called it “sharpnul.” He told me he had no place to go. He could’ve been staying in one of those caves in the woods. [Dad chokes up momentarily.]

Corporal Robert Bryan Gentry. Picture taken in France, ca. winter 1918-19. *

Veterans nowadays have benefits. We came back from war and got nothing but a little Red Cross help. I remember getting off the train and a smart aleck comes up to me and says, “Why’re you still wearing that uniform? The war’s over.” I cussed him out. It was all I could do to keep from hitting him. They finally gave us the bonus they promised us long after the war. It wasn’t a lot. Our boys had to camp out in Washington and yell for it before MacArthur drove ’em off. MacArthur did some great things, but he had a nasty way of getting too big for his britches. Truman was right to fire him.*  

I hope you never have to experience what I went through.  

[I’ve found only a few of Dad’s letters and postcards from France, and most of these are about his sightseeing when he was on leave after the war. Here is part of a letter from my father to his sister Reba Gentry in Knoxville, written on Red Cross stationary followed by two postcards]:

Nixeville, France

November 24, 1918

Dear Sister,

I received your and Ruth's and Reba's [this Reba is another relative] letters last night and I certainly was glad to hear from you. I am sorry to hear that the influenza is spreading so rapidly there, but I think that it will soon be checked. We haven't been bothered with it at all in this part of France.

We were told today that we could tell places where we have been and that is the reason you see Nixeville at the heading. You will be interested to know that I landed at Brest in the northwestern part of France. We went from Brest to Chateau-Thierry and got there about ten days after the Germans were run out. The Kaiser, it is said, was there before I got there. Ha! Ha! On my way from Brest to Chateau-Thierry I passed thru Paris and stayed there about 5 hours, seeing the Eiffel Tower, "La Hotel De Ville," Seine River, famous buildings and much of the great city. I also passed thru Versailles. We stopped in Versailles, saw the famous Palace of King Louis 14th, 15th and 16th, went thru it, saw the famous ball room, beautiful paintings, saw the balcony where Lafayette talked to the mob that came to kill the King & Queen. Words can not describe the beauty of the palace. It took 42,000 men 28 years to build it. It covers several acres of ground, would probably take an hour to walk around its premises. You will also be interested to know that as I passed thru Paris and all the time I was there the Germans were shooting into it. I could hear the shells burst. Fortunately they didn't hit near us.

I have been on three fronts the Soissons, the Toul and the Argonne. Thus you can see how much I have travelled and seen of France. I have been in three big drives the St. Mihiel, the Champagne and the Argonne. I was right in the thick of the last big Argonne drive [rest of this letter is lost, or it may have been withheld by Army censors]

[The following postcards (ca. early 1919) have no addressees. Apparently Dad sent them to his family in envelopes. The French captions are of scenes.]

Carte Postale  Paris—Le Parvis de Notre-Dame.

I went thru “Notre Dame” this afternoon. Built or completed in the thirteenth century. It is wonderful to see the inside. The Germans tried every way they could to shell it. The windows in the cathedral are made of various colors and [it] is the finest in the world. The art in the making of these windows is lost.

Carte Postale  Paris—La Madeleine (St. Madeleine’s Church)

“La Madeleine” is a pattern of Greek architecture. It is very beautiful on the inside. A shell of the long range gun hit the statue of St. John at the rear of the church. It is in the heart of the city. When I went inside it this morning there were at least a hundred French people for confession.

End Notes

* Dad’s account of his service is close to what is described about his unit in Knox County in the World War, 1917-1918-1919. The book was compiled and published by Knoxville Lithographing Company, Knoxville, TN, 1919. Managing editor: Captain Reese T. Amis. It has pictures and captions of all the Knox County men who were in the military during World War I, including many who died from combat and non-combat causes. There are a number of extant copies, including one in the New York Public Library. It can also be read online.

* Neuhalfen’s photo sources:

Corbis Images, Getty Images and the War Museum London.

Neuhalfen’s book sources:

Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War by Alan Kramer, 2007.

The Faces of World War I: The Great War in Words and Pictures by Max Arthur, 2007.

The Pity of War: Explaining World War I by Niall Ferguson, 1998.
The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War by Martin Gilbert, 2006.

* For details of my father’s shell shock, see the first part of my memoir below.

* In 1932 Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur used infantry, cavalry, and tanks to drive the bonus marchers out of their encampments. Major George Patton had a major role in this operation. Two marchers were killed by police bullets. Army bayonets and tear gas injured many marchers, and a baby died from the gas. MacArthur disobeyed President Hoover’s order not to pursue the marchers across the Anacostia River. The Army destroyed the marchers’ camps and routed most of them out of Washington. During the Korean War, MacArthur’s public disagreements with President Harry Truman’s war policies bordered on insubordination. Truman relieved him of command.

Sources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pande/AMEX89.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_General_Douglas_MacArthur

* To me, Dad’s expression in this photo is enigmatic. For details on his shell shock, see the beginning of my memoir next.

Robert (Bob) Gentry, Jr. grew up during World War II and recalls much about that time. His Memories of the "Cold" War follow his memoir about World War II. Gentry is co-creator and co-editor of this website. He is an educational facilitator and instructor in the Gainesvillle, FL chapter of the Institute for Learning in Retirement. For more information click on Gentry .

Memories of World War II

It was a typical Sunday outing for us in Knoxville, Tennessee: Dad driving the Chevy, Mama in the front seat, pre-schooler me in the back. Just driving around, seeing things we seldom saw or new things. Occasionally salesman Dad would stop to help a grocer with inventory and Mama would chat with the merchant's wife. If I'd been good, I'd get a treat, usually a "Co-Cola" in a 6 1/2  ounce glass bottle.That Sunday Dad stopped and helped Mr. Maskell at his store on McCalla Avenue. I don't recall whether Mama chatted with Mrs. Maskell or I got a treat.

Maybe we did, but terrible news wiped those nice things out of my mind. I just remember us sitting there in the Chevy, still, except  the announcer--like he was screaming in our faces "Japs"--"attack"--"Pearl Harbor"--other things I didn't understand. Dad turned the radio down and Mama touched his arm and he looked straight ahead and said, "Inez we're at war."

Indelible images of wartime: "Yella bellies stabbed us in the back," Dad said. Dad drinking a raw egg. Dad's shaky hands pouring coffee in his saucer, some spilling. Armistice Day on Gay Street: band playing Stars and Stripes Forever, drum majors and majorettes high-stepping, batons thrown in the air, caught just shy of the ground, row after row of soldiers and sailors marching with rifles, huge flag flapping in the breeze, Dad saluting, Mama and I hands on hearts. Kate Smith on the radio: how we loved to hear her sing God Bless America. Dad yelling--Mama coming in my room--"Your father had a bad dream. He's alright now."  Once when he was at work, Mama showed me his decorations and said, "He was under heavy shellfire in France."

I look up at him on the wall above my desk, in a glass frame my wife gave me one Christmas: His dented campaign hat, cord around the crown; uniform drab, wrinkled; his face unsmiling, eyes wide-bright-intense; lips closed-determined; his photo the centerpiece of other things (my wife arranged as part of her present to me): His service ribbon with four stars and five battle clasps; four major battles he endured in as many months:

Below the clasps Winged Victory hangs with spiked crown, sword in her right hand, shield in her left. Two faded epaulets of his service with the French Fifth Army frame a picture of a woman, about 20, looking girlish in a sailor suit; I look at a photo of Dad in baseball uniform, a semi-pro shortstop the St. Louis Cardinals were scouting before he volunteered for war; then at the Pocket Gospel of St. John his mother gave him before he went "Over There," burn spots on it--all these things I sometimes ponder. Who is the girl-woman in the sailor suit? His sweetheart on leave? Just a picture he liked and bought in France? What caused the burn spots on the Gospel? Shellfire? Other fire? All these items glassed-in, frozen in time, fragments of a story that will never be fully told!

It would be years before I learned that Pearl Harbor and the dark days of World War II had triggered in Dad flashbacks of his ordeal in World War I. These culminated in a nervous disorder that he toughed out with Mama's help, and they carried on as the responsible, loving parents they always were. Mama carried on by putting fat in jars and gathering tin cans and old newspapers, all for the war effort. I don't recall how we got those materials to the government. Maybe we put them out at curbside for a truck to pick up. If so, I would've had an important role hauling them out there in my red wagon. Or Dad may have loaded them in his Chevy and driven them to a local collection place.  

Dad carried on as an air raid warden and we were very proud of him. Air raid practice was called "Black-out." If a house had any light showing, Dad would knock on the door and tell them to "black it out, now." In my research on World War II air raid wardens, I found this notice. The helmet looks exactly like the one Dad wore. I don't recall seeing the notice then, but it would've been standard operating procedure for Dad to distribute copies of it to all the houses on our block.

We carried on with a Victory Garden in the large lot beside our house. Dad hired John, a black man, to plow it. I loved for spring to arrive when John would come clattering down the alley in his rickety wagon, pulled by a mule he called "Mule." John would harness Mule to the plow, shout "Yo, Mule," and off they'd go pushing and pulling and digging up earth and weeds and rocks. When they got to one end of the lot, John would shout "Whoa, Mule," turn the animal around, shout "Yo, Mule" and start plowing a new furrow toward the other end.

I felt "grown-up" following along after them, picking up rocks and weeds and hauling them off in my wagon. One time I asked John if I could work Mule a little way. He smiled and handed me the reins. I yelled "Yo, Mule" several times; Mule wouldn't budge. John laughed out loud, showing his one yellow tooth, and said, "Guess ole Mule jes do for me!" The large rocks made a nice border for our flower garden; the small ones I used to build forts for my lead soldiers. At harvest time we ate fresh vegetables and Mama and Dad would "put up" the rest. "Put up" meant canning and storing the vegetables on shelves Dad had made in our always cool basement.

I heard our boys a lot then: from my parents, relatives, other adults, and on the radio.  I remember Father Christopher Murray on the main altar of Immaculate Conception Church, near the big American flag, urging us "to pray for our boys who are doing so much for us." At the two side altars, many candles glowed in little glasses. Parishioners would often light candles and kneel down at the altar rail and say silent prayers. I usually said the "Hail Mary" for "our boys."

On car outings we saw Gold Stars in house windows. A gold star meant that a husband or son in a house had been killed in the war. One of these was on a window about three blocks east of our house. I don't recall the family. Gold Stars always made us feel sad.

Like most Americans then, we feared and hated the enemy. These feelings glared in war movies and in posters with slogans like Save a Can and Bomb Japan and Kick the Hell Out of Hitler. The posters I saw were mostly in the Post Office, a few on buildings and telephone poles.

The Japanese pictures always scared me the most. I believe now that it was partly a racial thing with me and many other Americans who weren't used to seeing real Orientals. The monstrous distortions of Japanese soldiers like this one probably intensified the hates and fears of many Americans.

 About 1943 I saw the poster on the left. I identified with both boys, even though I was closer in age to the little boy with the flag. A few years later, soon after the war, I would have been about the age of the older boy in this picture and still very emotional about the dreaded swastika and what it stood for.

I don't recall seeing the mother-and-infant poster (which I found on the internet). Back then the woman would probably have reminded me of my own mother, even though she was not as glamorous as the poster-mom. I might well have time-warped myself as the baby, even though I was 6 or 7. Perhaps subconsciously I might even have likened mother and babe to the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus and the enemy hands to the black fingers and claws of Satan. These and other threatening images scared me at first. But upbeat words from grown-ups like "we're gonna win this war," Catholic prayers for peace and victory, movies and news reels showing victorious Americans--all these things alleviated my fears.   

War Films

The films that made the greatest impression on me were Sergeant York, Wake Island, Bataan. and Mrs. Miniver. Made before the war, no doubt to inflame anti-German sentiment, Sergeant York was about a Tennessean and the war my Dad fought in, so I doubly liked it. I made no distinction between the Germans in the film and the "Krauts" of World War II. They were just the same to me: bad, bad Germans with "germs." The "German-germ" idea might have originated in my head. Dad still called Germans "Huns."

In Wake Island Brian Donlevy tells Macdonald Carey that Macdonald's wife was killed at Pearl Harbor. "Our job is to destroy destruction," Brian says and Macdonald takes off with one bomb left in his Wildcat and he spots a Jap ship and dives down and drops the bomb and blows the ship to bits. Jap Zero flies out of nowhere, shoots holes in Macdonald's window and his neck's bleeding, but he lands the plane safely and they pull him out and he dies and they bury him on a mound. So many Japs the Americans can't kill 'em all, and Brian Donlevy and a worker jump into a machine-gun nest and mow down Japs, but one throws a grenade at them and there's a big explosion and the screen goes black. Macdonald Carey was dead and now they got Brian Donlevy and I felt like I was gonna cry. But the screen lights up and a whole road full of our soldiers come marching with rifles and a voice says they're going to beat the enemy and they keep coming toward us, like they're marching off the screen into the theater, and I felt good again.

At the end of Bataan Japs are jumping and crawling all over the place and it's foggy and Robert Taylor's shooting 'em right and left, but he's so tired he falls asleep on his machine gun and wakes up just in time to blast Japs who are almost on him and Robert keeps firing the gun and the picture ends and he's still firing, like he's shooting right at us.

Mrs. Miniver, a film about the German air blitz of England, shows the Miniver family in a bomb shelter and bombs bursting all around them, one hitting their house. I'll never forget the scene of the Miniver children awakened by the blasts, how terrified they are as their parents try desperately to calm them. Child me identified closely wth these kids and the scene frightened me. I recently saw this film again on the Turner Classic Movie channel and this time noted its propaganda parts.

Mock Killers/Real Killers

We lived on the corner of Woodbine Avenue and Milligan Street with a large elm tree in our backyard. I loved to climb it and jump off the lower limbs pretending I was a paratrooper. Higher up, I had a strong "look-out" limb to stand on and watch for Stukas and Zeroes. Under the tree I built forts and trenches for my soldiers and artillery and an airfield for my P-40 and B-17. One day my lifelong pal Bob Reese came over to play. (Bob lived in town then, and my Dad may have driven him to our house in the Park City area of east Knoxville). Bob and I decided we needed an ocean for our battle ships, so we dug out a big area and filled it with water. We had a great time moving troops and guns around, flying planes, sailing ships, and killing our imaginary enemies. By the time Mama threw open the back door we were a muddy mess; ordinarily dirty boys would've bothered her, but this time she was excited about real war "boys": "Boys," she exclaimed, "the Allies have invaded Europe!" Everybody got immensely happy. Bob Reese and I especially liked the news. Now we had a wonderful word for our backyard war: D-Day. 

Across Woodbine Avenue from our house stretched a forest neighborhood folks called the "Woodbine Woods." It had two big hills on which we kids played many a war game, circa 1942 to 1947. A spring sent clear water running down a stream we occasionally drank from but not when our destroyers and submarines muddied it up. We waged hide-and-seek warfare with cap pistols and mud dobs. Nobody wanted to be Japs or Nazis, so you always pretended the enemy were the kids you were fighting against, and they pretended you were enemy. If you shot a kid first, he was dead and had to leave the war, but soon he was running back trying to kill you (so much for rules of war). My Dad's helmet and gas mask protected me from mud grenades, but sometimes the rest of me got splattered. I liked to pretend I was Gary Cooper in Sergeant York when he outflanked a bunch of Huns, did "puck-puck" turkey calls, and picked off one Kraut after another. I tried a turkey-call attack but got killed, so I stopped the tactic. I still pretended I was Sergeant York but the gas mask canister hurt when I crawled so I took it off. The hose flopped in my face when I ran or jumped and a big kid yelled, "Hey, Gentry's got a prick floppin' in his face." That was the first time I heard prick. Kids can sure be mean, can't they?  

Our early toy wars were mild compared to the later ones we waged after the real war ended. Materiel got more sophisticated: mud-covered rock grenades, b-b guns, hedge apples, sparklers, bulldog firecrackers, sniper nests in trees and foxholes, camouflaged caves for ambush, ponchos from military surplus stores. I was the only kid who didn't have a b-b gun. My parents wouldn't let me have one till I was 12. They also forbade me to play with firecrackers, but I did anyway. Used allowance money to buy them from an older boy. The enemy was not just kids you were fighting against; they were yellow jackets (Japs), crows and catbirds (Stukas and Zeroes). One unlucky crow caught a barrage of b-b's and came tail-spinning down to cheers of "Got that Nazi!" Step on a yellow jacket hole, not know it, and out they'd zoom and sting you if you didn't run off fast enough. I liked to take a hedge apple, stick a bulldog firecracker in it, sneak up on an enemy hideout, light the grenade and toss it in there .Thought I was John Wayne in Back to Bataan. If a kid rushed out bitching and splattered with hedge apple goo, you had you a good kill. Bulldog crackers were very good for blowing up yellow jacket holes.

It's a miracle some of us weren't seriously hurt. There were a few minor casualties. I talk about them in "War Games and Wanton Boys Who Went to Church" (click on Fiction/Nonfiction in my Selected Writings on this website).  Another danger then: older boys hunting in the woods with .22 rifles. One guy nicknamed "Bear Dog" shot a cat and it sprang like it was trying to fly. I felt strange, kind of numb. I never found out why he did that. One boy said that he hated cats because they killed birds he was trying to hunt. Another boy said he called the cat a "sneaky Jap" as he pulled the trigger. My strange numbness at this cat murder--did it spring from a deep, maybe unconscious feeling about the peace of nature that had now been violated? I can only wonder.

Satan/Tojo/Hitler

Around this time it dawned on me that I would die someday and my body might rot and smell like the cat Bear Dog shot. That worried me a lot. The nuns took some edge off my worry by saying, "Your soul will live forever in Heaven if you follow Christ and His Church." But you had to be awfully careful because Satan was like Hitler and Tojo: out to destroy you. Satan was worse than Hitler and Tojo because he'd destroy your soul in Hell. Satan had all kinds of tricks to get you to cut Sunday mass, cuss a nun, skip church on holy days, eat meat on Friday, slug a priest, murder, kick butts for fun, play with your privates, look up a girl's dress, look up a boy's short pants, worship yourself, or do other God-awful things. Any of these made you a mortal sinner and you'd have to be super-sorry in confession and do the penance the priest gave you, like saying rosaries and making novenas and doing lots of make-up work for folks you hurt. If you didn't, when you died you'd land in Hell where all kinds of devils with fangs and horns and tails and long finger nails yelled and screamed at you and clawed you and chewed you and kicked you and forked you, then boiled you forever in eternal Hellfire. One kid who talked about Hell a lot and wanted to be a priest said they dumped you in doo-doo before they boiled you in the pot. I didn't believe him because he was a goody-goody and a tattle-tale (I later heard some older boys got fed up with him telling on them, grabbed him after school one day, and crammed him in a garbage can). 

Anyway, I tried mighty hard to do what the nuns and priests said. At times I really felt like I was being "super good." Other times I knew I wasn't and I worried about it till I got to playing and forgot about it. Worry about Hell would return from time to time, but I'd usually shake it off with a "Hail Mary" or a war game or two. It never dawned on me that all my hatreds of enemies real and imagined and all my fascination with fighting and war were contrary to the standard of a good Catholic boy.

Playing war was not the only fun I had growing up during World War II. I also enjoyed picking blackberries in the Woodbine Woods, fishing for minnows and "crawdads," hiking all the way to Oliver King's Lime Kiln on the railroad track near Cherry St. (from my house about 2 or 3 miles through the woods), roasting wienies and marshmallows, backyard birthday parties and "camping out," and other peaceful activities. But war was the most fun.

Legacy of World War II: My Perspective

Unless I had been some prodigy keenly perceptive of human absurdities, child me would not have known that you don't throw a hand grenade like a baseball, and if a heavy machine gun strafed your cockpit as it did Macdonald's Carey's in Wake Island,  you'd have little cockpit left and no head. This kind of nonsense continued to pop up in war movies well after World War II, even in some important films like From Here to Eternity. Remember Burt Lancaster grabbing a machine gun by the barrel and shooting down a Japanese plane? I missed Burt's asinine heroics the first time I saw the film. I wonder how many adult moviegoers missed it and other Hollywood war fantasies. I suspect many. I wouldn't learn about the realities of grenades and machine guns till Army basic training.

On April 12, 1945, I saw Dad cry over the death of FDR. "Roosevelt saved the South," he said. "Now we don't have him to end this war." Four months later two atomic bombs ended it. I was happy about the bomb and so was everyone I knew. We really didn't think much about the horrific destruction it caused. There was talk about winning the war in sports terms as if we'd won a bowl game or the World’s Series. However, seven years later in a school discussion on war, two nuns at my Knoxville Catholic High School expressed great regret over our use of atomic bombs and said there might have been better ways to end the war and spare many lives. I don't recall what alternatives they suggested if any. None of us students agreed with them. We believed what most Americans believed then and what most believe now: The bomb ended the war and saved thousands of American lives, maybe a million or more.

In later life, I gained German and Japanese friends. One Japanese woman I have corresponded with since 1978 when she was a guest professor at my college. During the "Cold" War I worked with a Russian woman and a Polish woman on cultural exchange projects. I came to question the use of the atomic bomb and the doctrine of unconditional surrender, and I mourned the terrible loss of life on all sides in World War II. At times I've wondered if the dropping of a warning A-bomb might have been a better, certainly less destructive way to get the Japanese to surrender. Admittedly, such wondering is second-guessing of American policy during a terrible, desperate time. Had I then been a policy-maker charged with deciding the use of this terrible weapon, I would probably have made the same decision that Truman did.

As much I've admired the ideal of "love your enemies" in Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and other saints, I myself have never internalized it. "Love your enemies" is effective when your enemy has a decent streak and you "turn the other cheek" and influence his or her conscience for the good as Gandhi did the British conscience (to Gandhi the British were "opponents," not enemies). However, under a ruthless, brutal leader like Hitler, Stalin or Mao, a Gandhi type would have been killed as soon as he tried to turn the other cheek. Over the centuries probably many such people have been murdered and disposed of, unknown to history.

Unloved enemies are not necessarily hated enemies. My childish hatred of the Japanese and Germans was both a product of my immature imagination and something I learned from the adult world in wartime. I outgrew that feeling. In maturity I can honestly say that I have never hated anyone. But then I have not been tortured or suffered in a concentration camp or had loved ones killed in a terrorist attack. In such a situation I would probably hate the perpetrators intensely; I might never be able to forgive them. I can only hope that I would be able to call forth a spirit of forgiveness.

Most of us love only special people in our lives: parents, spouses, children, dear friends. This is personal love. It is not the universal love idealized in the five great world religions. If someone does me a bad turn in the relatively peaceful life that I've lived to date, I can summon neither personal love nor universal love for him or her. I dislike the person for doing the bad turn. But I am obliged to try to learn the reason for it and try to settle the matter fairly toward the end of mutual agreement. In the process I may learn that I did something that provoked the person, or the person may come to realize that he or she was unjust to me. In any case, my goal is justice and restoring civil, if not harmonious, relations between us. The Golden Rule, I believe, is largely about justice. It can also include mercy. But in my experience with the principle, I have never seen it reach the ideal love of a Jesus or the deep compassion of a Buddha.

World War II had downsides for me as I believe it did for many people of my generation. War games, war posters, war movies, and war episodes on radio shows like Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy--all these things tended to distort my sense of reality at a very impressionable age. You could get killed playing war, but you always lived to fight again. If you played it smart the next time, you could be a hero and kill other kids and they'd have to leave the action, if they played by the rules. But we broke rules more than we followed them and always with impunity. I believed that Americans were all good and innocent and pure and our enemies were nasty, evil monsters who'd started the war, so we had to kill them all and destroy their countries. My patriotism would become more sophisticated and humane as I matured. But it would take years for me to shed the unhealthy baggage of World War II.

The war was good for me in several important ways. Our soldiers, sailors and marines were fighting and dying all over the world, so it was up to us to work together and sacrifice on the home front. Sacrifice meant obeying ration laws and consuming much less sugar and meat (we got little beef to eat then) and butter and gasoline and other things necessary for the war effort. Kids could get toys but not a lot of the them. At St. Mary's School in Knoxville the nuns and priests also stressed sacrifice and a similar concept, mortification. If you craved something and couldn't get it, you should (in their words) "mortify yourself and offer it up." This meant giving up your craving and enduring your discomfort as a sacrificial prayer offering to God to help someone less fortunate than yourself.

As an adult, I developed a more impersonal, abstract sense of the divine. The lessons in sacrifice, mortification, and self discipline I learned during World War II remained and grew and helped to shape my character and life for the better.

Memories of the "Cold" War

Soon after the defeat of the Axis powers, the West and Communism started rattling their sabers at each other. This dangerous tension seemed to erupt almost overnight with amnesia about Russian-American relations during World War II: As if there had never been an Russian-American alliance that saw us shipping tons of supplies to Stalin to fight Hitler and Russians and Americans shaking hands at the Elbe River in conquered Germany. At first, Communism consisted of Soviet Russians, other Soviet peoples and Europeans behind the Iron Curtain. Then in 1949 it was the Soviets plus Iron Curtainers plus Chinese. Then in 1950 it was Soviets plus Iron Curtainers plus Chinese plus North Koreans. Then in the early 50's it was all the foreign communists plus a number of Americans like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

By 1950 "our boys" and their allies were fighting in Korea trying to beat back the Red tide. It would take three bloody years for the Korean War to end in an armistice/stalemate. Bob Baird, a neighbor and former football star we kids looked up to, came home from Marine service in Korea, limping from a leg wound. Years later he was still limping. Technically, we are still at war with North Korea and the Korean Peninsula is as dangerous as ever. The "Cold" War really isn't over.

During  the late 40's and early 50's, highly influential politicians like Senators James Eastland and Joseph McCarthy ranted and raved about the "communist threat" and the desperate need to defeat communists abroad and to hunt them down at home and root them out of American life. I believed these zealots then and so did everyone I knew. My parents had lived through the first Red Scare (1919-1920), and they took the second (1947-1957) in stride but not without considerable concern. "I don't know what all the hullabaloo is about McCarthy," Dad said. "If he's got the goods on communists, he ought to get a medal."

I was also strongly influenced by Catholicism and by movies like The Red Menace, The Steel Helmet, and I Was a Communist for the FBI. "Communists are evil atheists," my Catholic teachers said, and I believed them wholeheartedly. The Red Menace with its image of an octopus wrapping tentacles around a world globe is laughable propaganda today; but then I saw it as a sign that communism was spreading like wildfire abroad and using spies and agitators to attack the U. S. from within. From a 1950 pamphlet, this picture with Stalin's face in the octopus head is similar to the octopus image in The Red Menace:

The Steel Helmet with its story of American Army stragglers and a Korean boy holding off a communist force inspired me till I wondered how the main character, played by Gene Evans, got a bullet through his helmet and not a hole in his head. Bob Reese and I saw I Was a Communist for the FBI based on Matt Cvetic's real undercover work in the American Communist Party. Later, when Dad offered to take us to hear Cvetic speak at Knoxville's Fulton High School, we jumped at the chance. Cvetic convinced us that Communism was every bit as dangerous as Nazism. Communism had to be stopped. Bob and I would later become military volunteers: he in the Strategic Air Command, I in the Army Security Agency.  

As I got closer to graduation from the University of Tennessee and the end of my draft deferment, two Bobs started clashing in my mind. Gung-ho Bob idolized Sergeant Alvin York, General George Patton, Audie Murphy, Richard Bong, Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, Matt Cvetic, and other heroes (too many to list here). Prudent Bob was more interested in basketball and college courses.

Gung-ho Bob: Probably gonna be another war. Best way I can fight communism is to join the Marines or Army Paratroops.  

Prudent Bob: You really want shell shock like Dad got? Want to be a dead hero?

Gung-ho Bob: Freedom's not free. You gotta pay your dues, even if you die tryin'.

Around this time I saw the movie Battle Cry about a Marine unit training hard and fighting heroically on Tarawa and Saipan. The film thrilled Gung-ho Bob and Prudent Bob. Months later I was still singing its marching song, "Honey-Babe." Here's the first stanza: Lift your head and hold it high, honey/ Lift your head and hold it high, babe, babe/ Lift your head and hold it high/ The Fifth Marines are passing by, honey, oh baby mine!/ Gimme your left your right your left! Gimme your left your right your left!

After the two-year mandatory period, I quit Army ROTC and applied for the Marine Platoon Leader Program. Didn't tell my parents. Thought they might object and I wanted to surprise them. On every Marine test I did well and brought a smile to Gunny Sergeant's craggy face. Then came the duck walk, Gunny in my face, shouting "Down, lower! Lower, faster!" He shook his head. "Okay, that's enough!" Told him I hurt my right knee playing basketball, had it operated on two years ago, but it was fine now, just a little stiff sometimes. "Could tell by the pain on your face," Gunny said. Told him I was still playing college ball (actually, I'd reinjured the knee a few months before, and had finished the season on the bench). "Son, a Marine's gotta be tip-top in every way. Sorry!" Gung-ho Bob/ Prudent Bob stumbled out of the recruiting station crestfallen.

Prudent Bob: If the Marines don't want me, the Army can't have me. This knee will beat the draft.

Gung-ho Bob: And you'll be a lousy slacker, let Dad and Mother down.

Prudent Bob: They've never pushed me toward the military, and you know it.      

Gung-ho Bob: So you can't duck-walk to Marine speed. Military's got all kinds of  challenging jobs.

Prudent Bob: I don't want to be drafted.

Gung-ho Bob: Then get your butt down to the recruiting station. Army's giving volunteers choices.

Prudent Bob: That's a three-year hitch. Knee could get more messed up.

Gung-ho Bob: You got three choices: volunteer for 3 years, draftee for 2 years, or coward for life.

Prudent Bob: Third choice is your shitty opinion, nothing more.

Gung-ho Bob: Dad proved himself under fire. All you're proving is a rotten attitude. 

Prudent Bob: Dad's never said war is the highest test of manhood.

Gung-Bob: We're in a desperate struggle with communism. Gotta do your part.

Prudent Bob: Get the hell off my back!

Two months after graduation I volunteered for the Army Security Agency (ASA), a communications intelligence branch and Army arm of the National Security Agency (NSA). "Most ASA jobs require a security clearance, so your background will be investigated to see if you're cleared to handle sensitive material," the recruiter said. "After basic training, you'll be tested to determine which component of ASA you're best suited for." Army entrance tests were a breeze; I didn't have to duck-walk and said nothing about my knee.

By this time Knoxville's Ray Jenkins, a highly respected lawyer, had helped to ferret out the truth in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and Edward R. Murrow had defeated Joseph McCarthy's fanaticism with reason and humane insights. My family and I had finally seen McCarthy as the dangerous demagogue he had been all along. University courses had given me new insights into communism: how and why it appealed to many people. Like Nazism, Communism was totalitarian, but it differed considerably from the German ideology. Though it claimed to be "international," Communism was not a monolithic system. It consisted of different kinds, some at odds with each other. The "Cold" War was much more complicated than I had thought.

To Arms at Fort Jackson

As soon as we stepped off the bus into the company street, we were Company A, 19th Battalion, Second Infantry Training Regiment. In the next eight weeks at 4:45 a. m. they shouted us out of our bunks with "drop your cocks and grab your socks" and other rousing epithets. We started each day with torso turns, toe touches, jumping jacks, sit-ups, push-ups, and other field exercises. At meals NCO's paced back and forth like eagle-eyed fiends, yelling at anyone they thought a "slowpoke." These chow-hall tyrants seem bent on inducing acid reflex in us to, in the shout of one, "prepare ye for combat when the best ye can hope for is eat on the run." Once several of us weren't half through our "shit on a shingle" * when a bullnecked NCO barked, ”You're through! Outa here!" When the sergeant was out of earshot, one wag said, "Sumbitch did us a favor. Never liked that crap anyway." I didn't mind it, was hungry enough to eat all of it.

* aka SOS,GI-nickname for creamed chipped beef on toast

In training we rifle-shot targets, tossed live grenades at a bare field, swung off towers, scaled walls, hurdled obstacles, bayoneted "enemy" bags, crawled under barbed wire while a machine gun sprayed live rounds just above our heads and holes exploded nearby (one such burst caused ringing in my left ear off and on for years). Taken from The United States Army Training Center Infantry, a 1958 Ft. Jackson publication (published by The R. L. Bryan Company, Columbia, SC), the picture below shows trainees crawling under barbed wire during an infiltration course. In the far right a pit explosion.

We masked for the gas house, linked arm to shoulder, tottered nearly blind through fogs of real gas. We constantly disassembled and reassembled and super-cleaned our M-1 rifles; we slapped them to present arms to right shoulder to left shoulder arms; we snapped to "tench-hut" (attention) and "fawherd harch" (forward march). Err and they yelled at you. Screw up and they cursed you in your face, though our company commander and top NCO's never stooped so low. A few cursing squad leaders were the real assholes.

Sometimes recruit tempers flared, fights broke out, NCO's stopped them.  A cadre rule said if you and another guy got into it, you both had to put on gloves and headgear and slug it out under NCO supervision. One especially violent match involved a guy from Alabama and a freedom fighter from the Hungarian Revolution of '56 turned GI. When they finally tired of bloodying each other, it looked to me like a draw.

We drilled and drilled into marching robots with 30-inch steps, 120 beats a minute. Rhythm and precision sparked our pride, especially when Sergeant Anthony yelled, SOUND  OFF, and we burst into song:  Had a good home when you left, you're right/ Had a good home when you left, you're right/ Jodie was there when you left, you're right/ Jodie was there when you left, you're right/ Sound off, one-two! Sound off, three-four!/ Cadence count: one-two-three-four, one-two, three-four!

Gung-ho Bob: My God, this is fun.

Prudent Bob: Our kiddie wars in the Woodbine Woods prepared us well.

Gung-ho Bob: Soundin' off like in Battleground!

Prudent Bob: James Whitmore as the cigar-chomping Sarge, unforgettable!

Gung-ho Bob: Lt. Hobbs is like Whitmore. I'd follow Hobbs* into hell 'cause I know he'd get us back leaner and meaner 'n ever.  

Prudent Bob: He's a soldier's soldier, up through the ranks, Combat Infantry Badge.

Gung-ho Bob: Sgt. Anthony's* a good un, too. No commie's got a chance against guys like him and Hobbs.

Prudent Bob: Anthony likes our shot patterns.

Gung-ho Bob: Crackin' at a Sharpshooter rate.

Prudent Bob: Little better and we got Expert.

Gung-ho Bob: Let's chuck ASA, take advanced basic, go airborne.

Prudent Bob: We're locked into ASA.  

Gung-ho Bob: Hell, they'll change us if we ask 'em.

Prudent Bob: Get real!

Gung-ho Bob: C'mon!  Paratroops get the action. ASA's ass-sittin' stuff.

Prudent Bob: Since when did you become an ASA expert?

About midway in our training cycle, Lt. Hobbs called a special meeting: Men, you've been doing well. I know it's hot as hell, but battalion's got orders to take 12-mile hikes this week. We'll march at route step, relaxed pace, don't have to keep in step. Sgt. Anthony will provide extra water and salt tablets. We'll take allowed breaks, sneak in an extra one or two if we can. Let's show 'em we're the best in battalion!

For me even worse than the hellish heat of Jackson were enemies of mosquitoes and sand fleas and horse flies that bit and stung any bare skin the infernal pests could find. I think we did two, maybe three long marches. Suddenly no more! We heard that two guys died on 12-milers. We never learned exactly which units they were in. NCO's and officers were mum. There was so much talk about it in the ranks that it mostly had the ring of  truth, for example: "They were from New York, lived all their lives in air condition." "One guy's daddy's a big dog lawyer. Hear tell Army's gettin' their ass sued."  

The tragedies seemed confirmed when the Army relaxed training the rest of our cycle. We rode mostly in trucks. Some tactics ordinarily simulated hands-on were merely lectured on, like throat-cutting. Temperatures continued in the 90's. The terrific heat in the Ft. Jackson area that summer of 1958 may have set a record. I finished basic training in fine fettle, feeling mighty good that I'd taken the toughest the Army had thrown at me and my knee had held up. I proudly wore my Sharpshooter medal.

* Second Lieutenant Robert J. Hobbs, Jr., Company A Commanding Officer,

* Sergeant First Class John Anthony, Senior Field Non-Commissioned Officer

The Un-Army World of Ft. Devens

From hell-hot, bug-infested Ft. Jackson to the cool "ivory tower" of Ft. Devens, Massachusetts. From "dog-soldiering" with just about every form of humanity to test-taking with men who had either attended or graduated from Harvard, Yale, NYU, Brown, Williams College, and other elite institutions. Ft. Devens, then Orientation Center of the Army Security Agency and home of the 2nd Infantry "Dagger" Brigade, two separate branches that as far as I could tell had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

During the nearly three months I "soldiered" at Devens, I stood reveille, ate chow, cleaned the barracks (when it was my turn), got oriented about ASA, and took tests. ASA, I learned, was worldwide, its personnel stationed at locations wherever the United States had a military presence. ASA used Morse code operators, cryptographers, voice intercepters, and other technicians to monitor and interpret military communications of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and their allies and client states around the world. ASA was directly subordinate to the National Security Agency and all field stations had NSA technical experts on site.

The easy duty and our inaccurate sense of being part military and part civilian were undercut by frequent stabs of anxiety. If you washed out of ASA, you got MP school.   

Gung-ho Bob: I wouldn't mind MP's. They're kinda like the infantry.  

Prudent Bob: They chase deserters, round up drunks; they patrol off-limits joints, jerk GI's out of whore houses and do other "glorious" tasks.

Gung-ho Bob: Aw they do more 'n that. They go into war-torn areas, settle things down. MP's have done great in combat.

Prudent Bob: I didn't join the Army to be a cop.  

Gung-ho Bob: The whole military's cops. That's what they do: keep the peace.

I did best on the esperanto-like language test. One day they got us would-be voice-interpreters in a room and gave us a choice. I'd heard that duty was wonderful in Germany, so I wanted German but it wasn't on the list. Vietnamese and Chinese were and so was Russian. I thought about Russian but heard they sent Russian linguists everywhere. Czech and Polish were on the list (close to Germany.) I flipped a coin; Czech won. I had several weeks left at Devens before the next Czech language cycle started at the Army Language School in Monterey, California.

Except for the reveille NCO, nobody at Devens (that I know of) checked on us. We ate breakfast, cleaned the barracks, and unless something was scheduled for us in orientation, we had the day to ourselves. If a guy had "wheels," everyone instantly liked him. I hitched rides off post every chance I got. We shucked our Army fatigues, dressed in "civies," visited bars and cultural places in Boston and roadhouses in Lowell, MA and Nashua, NH. Always got back in time for reveille! Unlike Columbia, SC with its sleazy Red Rooster Bar and Courthouse lawn that told Dogs and Soldiers Keep Off, the New England I experienced consisted mostly of congenial, insightful folks who liked to discuss important ideas and to party. Heretofore, my reading had consisted mostly of school assignments done under teacher and parental pressures. Now I read challenging literature more for pleasure, no doubt influenced by intellectual guys who spent more off-duty time reading highbrow fiction and nonfiction than watching Bandstand and other pop stuff on the day room TV. I soon learned that an ASA unit is not the place to wear a marksmanship medal (or any other military medal). Two smart asses made cracks about mine. I quit wearing it lest I get more jibes that would likely inflame my temper.

All the ASA one-hitch men I met had chosen this branch as the lesser of two evils: volunteer for three years and get Army duty they could tolerate or be drafted into the infantry, artillery, or tank corps. My situation was different; hence my reason for showing the conflict between Gung-ho Bob and Prudent Bob. Simply put, a side of me liked the Army and wanted the challenges of a combat unit, a major reason that I was proud of my medal. The war culture I'd grown up in, my sense of adventure, the nagging notion that you really haven't lived life till you've lived it on the edge of kill or be killed--all these factors created Gung-ho Bob.

Graham Holding of Charlotte, NC was a friend of mine at Jackson and Devens, but after Devens I lost track of him.  Graham, if you're out there, give me a holler.

The Collegiate Presidio of Monterey, California

Presidio, Spanish for "Fortress," sitting high on a hill, its cannon "defending" Monterey harbor. This earthwork was one of the first things I noticed, a lingering connection between the original site and the present site of the Presidio. History has swept over this fortress changing it from Spanish to Mexican and from Mexican to American. In 1946 it became home to the U. S. Army Language School; in 1963 it was renamed the Defense Language Institute, still under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Army. Through the years its faculty have been native-born speakers of the languages they teach, a number of them refugees from oppression in their homelands. My graduation booklet lists graduates in 16 languages. Among us were members from all four branches of the U. S. military and several women who took courses with their officer husbands. My list doesn't include any Bulgarian or Hungarian graduates, but I'm pretty sure those languages were taught then. The only African-American I recall graduated in the Russian class. Today the school teaches over 40 languages, all branches of the U. S. military are represented, and members of other Federal agencies and military services of other countries may also receive training at Monterey.

Czech is a West Slavic language of then Czechoslovakia, a country comprised of Czechs and Slovaks. In 1990 Vaclav Havel, the great playwright, was elected president. He tried to prevent the country's breakup, but a powerful Slovak independence movement prevailed, and in 1993 the nation split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The same year Havel was elected President of the Czech Republic. The languages Czech and Slovak differ considerably but are mutually intelligible. Known in English as "Bohemian" until the late 19th century, Czech is somewhat intelligible with Polish and Sorbian.

For 47 weeks twelve of us in Czech class 12-53 were immersed in this strange, inflected language. Five days a week, six hours a day we attended class. We had a short break in the morning, an hour for lunch, a short break in the afternoon. The first few weeks some instruction was in English to establish objectives and class contexts. We struggled with vowels, consonants, and diphthongs. Vowel-less words like vlk (wolf) and smrt (death) didn't seem real. Diacritical words like těžké dělostřelectvo (heavy artillery) twisted our tongues and strained our eyes. Rare was the night I didn't labor under the study lamp for less than two hours. I even studied dialogues at a downtown Monterey movie theater where I worked as an evening ticket-taker/usher during my last few months at Monterey (dialogues weren't classified info).  

Our instructors were refugees from the communist putsch of 1948 and strongly anti-Soviet. All taught well except one, who was lazy but funny and his jokes broke class routines nicely. I especially liked Pan (Mr.) Menšik, Pánové (Messrs.) Balcar and Galko, and Pani (Mrs.) Granvillova. Menšik, our department chairman, had been a high-ranking police official in Prague. I don't recall what the others did in their homeland, but all were multilingual, militarily knowledgeable, historically adept, and culturally keen. I can still see Balcar, dark hair thrown back, strutting like a general, pounding the podium, waving his hands and arms like a music conductor, a mountain of energy trying to get us to pronounce correctly and communicate clearly.

Eventually we students gained enough basic proficiency to dialogue, which became the chief method of instruction. Emphasis was on speaking and hearing the language; through homework study of printed dialogues we also gained reading ability. A dialogue between two students usually centered on a military topic. Some dialogues, while primarily military, also included cultural and historical details. We mastered military terms and phrases like kulomet (machine gun), pěchota (infantry), malty (mortars), houfnice (howitzer), letecký útok (air attack), vojska pohybu (troop movement), těžké zbraně firmy (heavy weapons company), 50 ráže zbraně stroje (50 caliber machine guns). We also learned about the culture and beauty of Prague (Praha), the health-giving waters of Karlovy Vary (Karlovy Dělat variace), the industrial enterprises of the Skoda Works (Skoda Práce), and other important locales.

Some instructors often spoke of Prague as jeden překrásný město (a beautiful city), and we sensed their nostalgia for their homeland. Late in our cycle, the faculty led us on a field trip to Los Angeles. There we broke bread with other Czech emigrés, learned more about their customs, enjoyed Czech singing and dancing. I was amazed at how many native-born Czechs now called America home and at how many native Americans were of Czech descent.

The ranking men in our class were Capt. Carlton Fortune, SFC Ansel Rymer, and Sgt. Abraham Stanton. The rest of us (except one) started the cycle as PFC's and graduated as SP4's (Specialist Fourth Class, equivalent in pay grade to a corporal). We related easily in class and during school breaks. Capt. Fortune and the NCO's mixed and mingled and occasionally joked with us lower enlisted types. Rymer and I took some ribbing for our Tennessee accents. I recall best Floyd (Kelly) Kellstrom; Dennis Boxell, my barracks cubicle mate; and Barnes Hickman. A former college football player, Kelly excelled as a singer. Off duty he entertained us with rousing renditions of songs from The Music Man, Guys and Dolls, and other Broadway hits. He was so good he got a role in one or more plays at Monterey's Wharf Theater.

Other Czech students not in my class whom I got to know pretty well at Monterey were Sid Hawlik and Jerry Stimpfle. Once Pan Galko invited Hawlik and me to go deer hunting. He supplied the rifles. It was a fun trip but we saw only one deer and it was out of range. I shot at it anyway. Czech students Steve Gallivan and Bob Monson and German student Pete Sears came to Monterey after me and we became good friends in Germany.

Colonel James Collins, the school commandant, and his cadre tried to keep us Army-minded with full inspections every Friday afternoon after class. We stood inspection in Class-A uniforms in the company street and at attention in the barracks. Our wall and foot lockers had to be impeccably regulation. To ease inspection hassles, on Thursday night we loaded dirty clothes and civilian things in our cars and kept the same military display in our lockers Friday after Friday. The Army either didn't catch on to this ruse or didn't care as long as the billets looked "squared away," probably the latter. Off duty, some guys sported high-styled clothes and shoes and motored around in sport cars. At times I had mixed feelings:

Gung-ho Bob: Can you believe this place? No wonder we're called "the Army Language Country Club."

Prudent Bob: Only because a few rich guys blow up the meaning of conspicuous consumption. Lot of us living hand to mouth! My Studebaker cost $26.

Gung-ho Bob: Damn thing barely chugs up hills. If there's war, this place wouldn't know what to do

Prudent Bob: Fort Ord'll protect us. We got combat vets in classes.  

Gung-ho Bob: No PT to keep 'em sharp! No weapons training!

Prudent Bob: Got basketball, softball. Aren't you proud of excelling in these?

Gung-ho Bob: We got it too made. Too many second helpings at chow! Too many class-break doughnuts! You're gaining weight.  

Prudent Bob: Speak for yourself!

Gung-ho Bob: Worst thing is being called "Monterey Marys." Damn legs* at Fort Ord started that.

Prudent Bob: Heard the term originated right here. Some retreads* thought a lot of one-hitch guys were homosexual and called them "Monterey Marys."

Gung-ho Bob: Some retreads are dumb asses.

Prudent Bob: Yeah. Well, the name caught on. It's okay as long as no one gets in my face about it.  

* Legs, slang for infantrymen.

Rebellion Among the "Marys"

Though we could dress in civies off duty, they had to be "appropriate dress" for evening chow, including sport coats. No jeans, no shorts. This rule caused much griping. Several months into our language cycle, another command came down from on high: "ties will be worn for the evening meal." Resistance was swift and loud. One-hitch troops started wearing huge, glaring clown ties; dizzy polka-dotted ties; Bugs Bunny ties; Howdy Doody ties; and other wild things. One resister said, "This tie rule is a classic example of how capitalism oppresses the proletariat. I'm gonna emboss a hammer and sickle on my tie and see how they come down on free speech." This apparent Marxist was more talk than walk. I don't recall seeing him after that. I was surprised to see his name among the Russian graduates. Prudent Bob wanted to rebel with a Three Stooge tie, but Gung-ho Bob talked him out of it with dire visions of court martial and disgrace. So I wore my same old thin Navy blue.  A__ ragged me about it.

A__ and C__ soon refused to wear any ties and were denied evening mess hall entrance. This may have been their first act of disobedience. For a while it looked as if they were getting away with turning their backs on approaching officers, shuffling in formation like Steppin Fetchit, mock-marching and pretending to play instruments á la the marchers in the Spirit of 1776. "If some jerk tells you to do something you don't wanna do, just refuse," A__ snarled, his lips curling upward in triumphant defiance. "Seems like you're asking for a court-martial," I replied. "Good. Let 'em!" he said.  A short time later, a career officer blurted, "Those damn bastards are making a mockery of the command structure around here. In World War II we would've shot 'em and buried their lousy asses."

I didn't see it but heard that A__ and C__ saluted an officer with heil-hitler straight arms. Suddenly the two rebels disappeared. One rumor said MP's jerked them out of bed on a moonless night, chained and slammed them in the Fort Ord Stockade. Another said CIC* agents took them to a vacant lot, shot them, tied cement blocks to their bodies, and dumped them in Monterey Bay. The latter tale may have come from a jokester, or from a zealous reader of Kafka's The Trial who projected Joseph K's fate onto A__ and C__.  The loud-tie rebellion was short-lived. An order from the commandant probably stopped it, but I don't remember such. 

* Counter Intelligence Corps (Its functions are now performed by the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.)

Other Monterey memories

• Off duty song and dance parties fueled with beer on nearby Carmel Beach when my Studebaker could make it over there (Just before leaving Monterey, I sold it to another GI for $17).

• In the latrine late one weekend night, groaning in an open stall.  He was trying to finish his business, his swollen, purple condition shockingly apparent. "What in the hell  happened to you?" I asked. "Fight downtown! Jerk called me a ' Monterey Mary.' Beatin' the shit outa him till he kicked me in the balls." I tried to persuade him to go the clinic but he wouldn't.

• Briefly chatting with Jim Garner, Dean Martin, Dennis Morgan, and other celebs at the "19th Hole" of the Bing Crosby Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach. "You look like a candidate for a screen test," Garner said. "Thanks, but the Army's got me locked in at Monterey," I said. Don't know whether Garner was serious or joking. Cocktails were in abundance; most of us joyously imbibing.

My graduation booklet suggests an elaborate ceremony in the school Sports Arena on December 11, 1959, but I have absolutely no memory of it. Probably it bored me, and I could only think of getting home on a short leave. It was gratifying to spend almost a year of my hitch in school.

On the Front Line of the "Cold" War

Across the Atlantic on the USS Darby rocking and rolling on rough waters: Sgt. Rymer dealing poker cards; at mess I tried to keep pickled beets from polluting my "shit on a shingle"; guy staggering near the galley, outstretched hand grabbing air, barfing beets and SOS on my spit-shined boots. Docking at Bremerhaven; riding to Frankfurt in the back of a three-quarter ton truck; January day cold-gray, stopping at a light near Gutleut Kaserne, heavy-coated Germans crossing the intersection.

Gung-ho Bob: Don't even give us a glance.

Prudent Bob: Busy-minded. German work ethic.

Gung-ho Bob: Hell, we're protecting them from the Russian bear.

Prudent Bob: Expect 'em to serenade us with America the Beautiful?

Gung-ho Bob: Think we'd get at least a welcome nod to the "Cold" War.

Prudent Bob: It may be ending. Ike and Khrushchev have been pretty cozy.

Gung-ho Bob: Khrushchev visits the U.S., eats a hotdog, bullshits with politicians, pets an Iowa pig that looks like him--now he's "peace-loving"--crapola!

Prudent Bob: Gotta have an enemy, don't you?

Gung-ho Bob: "Only the dead have seen the end of war": Plato.

Prudent Bob: Like to think we've progressed since Plato.

Gung-ho Bob: Naive, naive!

The myth: intelligence work is exciting, dangerous, romantic, heroic. The reality: James Bond types are rare. So are Alan Turing* types. Much of the intelligence world drones on with humdrum activities, routine stuff, drudge work, boring but necessary, the world being what it is. You chip away at your actual or potential adversary by gathering details on him, categorizing them, analyzing them for any patterns that might reveal something really major and threatening that you hope you can successfully counter and if necessary neutralize as secretly as possible. Traditionally, many Americans have been terribly deficient in foreign languages and knowledge of foreign cultures, one major reason that relatively few native-born Americans have effectively infiltrated hostile foreign groups. Translations and cloak-and-dagger stuff have often been done for the U. S. by foreign hires, sometimes beneficially, other times not. In light of these situations, so many American-born soldier citizens manning foreign language stations and doing top secret work amid the tension and frequent crises of the "Cold" War was a relatively new, largely positive development in our nation's history.   

* English mathematician and scientist who developed ways of cracking the German Enigma code in World War II. He later created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer.

As a Czech linguist with the 318th ASA Battalion at Herzo Base near Herzogenaurach, West Germany, I was like a cipher in a massive NATO war machine engaged in constant preparation to counter and defeat any attack by the Warsaw Pact (comprised of forces from Russia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania). Herzo Base had outstations at Schneeberg (near Tirschenreuth), Mähring, Coburg, and Mount Hohenbogen (near Rimbach). At Herzo I tried to make English sense out of transcriptions of Czech radio traffic sent to us from the outstations. I also translated some print material, formerly code our technicians had deciphered and broken into Czech text. For several months I was one of a small detachment operating on Mount Hohenbogen. We lived in a gasthaus (guest house) at Rimbach owned by a congenial couple who served us ample U. S.-paid meals and off-duty beer (I don't recall whether we GI's or the Army paid for the beer). ASA worked 24/7, round the clock. I alternated between day and night shifts, usually an eight hour shift at Herzo, a longer one on Hohenbogen (exact hours I've forgotten).

The typical Hohenbogen shift had several of us working in a large communications van equipped with then state-of-art radio and recording equipment. We searched frequencies till we heard something military, then transcribed it, translated some of it if we had time, and sent it on to Herzo. Hot stuff had to be sent immediately. One carbine stayed in the van. By this time I'd qualified as a carbine expert and gotten another medal, but I didn't dare wear it for fear of being laughed at by my fellow one-hitchers. The joke was the weapon was to shoot game in case we got snowed in. After many months on the job, my inner conflict got pretty intense, for example:

Gung-ho Bob: All we get is trivia. Boring and triple boring!

Prudent Bob: Well, let's hope it adds up to something up the line.

Gung-ho Bob: We're just crumb pickers.

Prudent Bob: Probably a reason for that: Pearl Harbor!

Gung-ho Bob: Yeah, I hear ye.

Prudent Bob: Military doesn't want to miss a thing that might point toward war.  

Gung-ho Bob: Good point. But it'd be nice to see a little of "the big picture."

Prudent Bob: I wonder if anyone really sees the big picture or even a substantial part of it. Most have only the need to know their own duties.

Gung-ho Bob: If the President doesn't have the big picture, we're in big trouble.

Prudent Bob: The President has only what people choose to give him. 

"Hot Stuff"?

I recall picking up information that turned the poker face of my NSA superior to one of raised eyebrows and bright eyes. I guess it was "hot stuff," but it didn't seem that important to me. Since a good deal of ASA doings, even those of 50 years ago, are (incredibly) still classified, I'm mum about this. The declassified material I've read recently is woefully dull and sleep-inducing. The government doesn't appear to be releasing anything about ASA that spy buffs or mainstream readers would find the least bit interesting.

Full Alert and Scuttlebutt

Even though NATO played two important war games while I was in Germany, I saw no indication that Herzo Base was directly involved in them. The only Herzo full alert I remember occurred one morning. We stumbled around trying to get field gear we rarely used into some kind of intelligible order. Then we staggered out with our loads and milled around in the company street till the "Old Man" (company commander) and "First Shirt" (first sergeant) yelled us into hasty formation and then into assigned three quarters (¾ ton trucks) or deuce-and-a-halfs (2 ½ ton trucks). The CO and First Sergeant led us in jeeps (¼ ton vehicles) a short distance to a rendezvous point where we stopped and sat. Several hours later we were still sitting there, and for the umpteenth time the CO was barking into his walky-talky trying to find out what in the hell we were supposed to do. To break stupefying boredom, some of us jokingly sucked our thumbs and got quite giddy. The supply sergeant glared at us cross-eyed and snapped, "Now cut that out!" Finally we were ordered back to the company and resumed our work routines. (This supply sergeant once told some of us: "When commie mortars let up in Korea and the gooks charged us, we enjoyed bashing in their heads. It was relaxation after hunkerin' in a bunker not knowing if the next shell had your name on it.")   

What prompted this seemingly absurd alert? Scuttlebutt: an outstation picked up "hot stuff," but it was really a bunch of Czech soldiers horsing around after a military exercise and somebody in our chain of command thought their intent belligerent. If it really happened this way, the Czechs compare to President Reagan. One time he thought he was off microphone, but he was really on when he started joking about nuking the Soviets. Wars can start from terribly irresponsible, downright dumb jokes. 

Whose Call Sign Was It?

We heard it days, we heard it nights, we heard it at no particular time, we heard it so much that one early morning it sent me dosing only to awake moments later to its mind-numbing repetition. The voice of this call sign was usually male, occasionally female. After saying the sign over and over again, sometimes for an hour or more, the person started voicing a long list of ciphers. Of course we transcribed it all, filled tapes with it till the voice finally stopped. We sent the tapes up the line, up into to what to us GI's was the mysteriously amorphous realm of the NSA. (For a detailed, incisive study of NSA, see James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Doubleday, 2001.)

In recent years, scuttlebutt among a few old "Cold" Warriors has attributed the call sign to Vladimir Kazan-Komarek, a native-born Czech who headed a travel agency in Cambridge, MA in the 60's. In late 1966 he was kidnapped by communist agents, imprisoned in Prague, and accused of running an American-sponsored spy network in Czechoslovakia. Several months of heavy American pressure on Soviet and Czech authorities resulted in Kazan-Komarek's release in early 1967. In the early 70's he twice disappeared, had puzzling medical emergencies, and moved to Estepona, Spain. In 1972 Spanish authorities concluded that the remains of a badly decomposed body were those of Kazan-Komarek, and he died of natural causes. People close to him, however, believed he was either a murder victim or a suicide. For more on this strange case see Igor Lukes, "Kazan-Komarek, Vladimir Joseph (1924–1972)" http://www.historyandtheheadlines.abc-clio.com.

The Kazan-Komarek case is one of many shocking examples of the heat of the "Cold" War. While I was serving in Germany, the Russians shot down U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and televised parts of his trial for a world audience. At the Bay of Pigs the American-sponsored invasion of Cuba failed in the deaths or capture of numerous anti-Castro insurgents. Both situations had heavy CIA involvement, revealed dangerous miscalculation and aggressive bungling by U. S. policy makers, and were seen by much of the world as military and moral victories for Khrushchev and Castro.

At the time, these crises and Warsaw Pact war games really didn't bother me, nor did I ever get any idea they troubled my fellow one-hitchers. Off duty, we were largely a merry bunch: drinking beer, dating German women, playing sports, taking leaves around Europe, getting good deals at the Army Post Exchange (PX) and on the German economy (the dollar was worth 4 marks; after two years of scrimping and saving, I went to Bamberg and bought a new Volkswagen).

ASA GI's and Germans socializing in Kellerbar, a gasthaus in the town of Bischofsgruen at the foot of Mt. Schneeberg, 1961. Left to right Steve Gallivan (looking up); Bob Monson; Sandy Patterson; two men unidentified; Iris from Berlin, who later married Patterson ; behind her an unidentified man; Doris Hoffmann , Monson's first wife (now deceased); Ken Myers; Erika Landgraf, later married to Gallivan.

Our happiness, however, occurred amid a twilight world of betrayals, disappearances, kidnappings, lies, murders (many still unsolved), dirty tricks--all the terrible things that fueled the ever-widening "Cold" War. The stark reality of that time in West Germany and West Berlin was that all Americans, particularly American military and especially American intelligence operatives, were vulnerable. It would have been relatively easy for communist agents to stalk an ASA guy on one of his jolly leaves, kidnap him, and grill, even torture him for information. Even in some duty locales security was lax or non-existent, or so it seemed to me. Though the Second Armored Cavalry regularly patrolled around the border, they operated at considerable distance from our site at Hohenbogen. I don't recall any guards around our site. One carbine among intellectual soldiers, most of whom ignored it, would have been useless against a sudden assault by commie commandos. At the time, though, such danger either never occurred to me, or notions of it bubbled up from my subconscious only to be burst by the joys of off-duty life.

It's only in retrospect and after considerable study that I've gained more insight into the dangers and violence of that "Cold" War time. Like today's ominous signs of war between the Koreas that would probably draw the U. S. in, the strong possibility of all out war between the superpowers always existed then, and it almost erupted over Berlin and Cuba. My hitch ended before the Berlin Wall went up, but Peter Sears (who had been stationed at Herzo Base and at Schneeberg) was in West Berlin then and recently said this about the situation:

"Hey, you [German] linguists, we might just be telling you guys to put on your civvies and start walking." That is what some guys said they heard. The joke came off the fact that the only people assured U.S. assistance for getting out of Berlin, should it ignite, were women and children and muckety-mucks.  Fortunately, I was worrying about the Russians, figuring the propaganda and war machinery of the West was enough to keep the Russian battalions at bay. What I didn't consider is that the East Germans were doing all they could to push the Russians to allow them, the East Germans, to take over Berlin. This was after the Wall went up. I learned this in a book I recently read called "The Berlin Wall,"sent on to me by Bill Semmes, with whom I was stationed there. I am glad I was naive enough to be fairly relaxed. We were more concerned about being tailed by M.I. Still, when you went through on the train to Berlin, you truly sensed the massive power of the Russians.

Looking back on them, I believe these near-war crises of the early 60's intensified fears, hardened attitudes, increased weaponry and war thinking on both sides of the "Cold" War that led to America's agony in Vietnam and the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. By 1979 after Vietnam had bloodied the nose of its former ally China and forced the Red giant to withdraw from Vietnamese soil, China posted over a million troops on its border with the USSR and was fully prepared for war against the Soviet Union. Then it finally struck home to many Americans what much of the world had long perceived: monolithic communism was a gross illusion.

The Cold War, then, was never really "cold," and to misname it so egregiously does enormous damage to the truth. The long period of the "Cold" War has seen both sides develop a full arsenal of hydrogen bombs and chemical and biological weapons, the testings of which have infected and killed many. While intermittent efforts to reduce these weapons have met with meager success, the grave dangers to world peace have lessened little. During the "Cold" War every conventional weapon has been used in terrible wars and millions have been slaughtered. To say that the "Cold" War is over now is to ignore the terrific tensions and actual skirmishes between the Koreas, ignore the heated rhetoric and largely ineffective negotiations between the U. S. and North Korea, ignore the increasingly frightful rivalry between the United States and Communist China.

In the Army Reserve

I finished my enlisted hitch with the rank of Specialist 5 (equivalent in pay grade to a buck sergeant). After almost two years as a sales rep for a major oil company (worst job I ever had), I resigned and worked a few odd jobs. Prodded by Gung-ho Bob and financial necessity, I joined an Army Reserve intelligence unit in Knoxville, TN. A few months later I enrolled in graduate school at the Univ. of Tennessee as an English major. During a 4½ year period I served in Army Reserve units in Tennessee and Georgia, trained in counter-intelligence, and did active duty stints at Ft. Campbell and Ft. Bragg. During this time I also got my M.A. and taught two years at Georgia State University in Atlanta. I advanced to Specialist 6 (equivalent to a staff sergeant), got a direct commission, eventually attained the rank of first lieutenant, and got qualified in German. For a while, uncertain about a life career, nagged again by Gung-ho Bob, I thought hard about returning to full-time Army service with hopes of another tour in Germany. But fortunately I settled on a career in academia, and it proved to be most fulfilling. After years of concentration on English as a community college teacher and a freelance writer, I've forgotten most of my Czech and my German is rusty and fading.

Special Memories From My Army Days in Europe

• Pete Sears (now Peter Sears, prize-winning poet who recently came close to winning Poet Laureate of Oregon) reading some his poetry at Herzo Base. Years later, I told him I still remembered one of his lines, Tonight we lie in a brownstone attic, washed by the moon into cool panic. Some of Peter's poetry is reviewed and featured on this website.

• Sears the arranger of and a major figure in Herzo barracks quiz games on literature and history (sort of like today's Jeopardy show.) Loser bought the beer. At the time I had less background in liberaI arts than my fellow players, but mostly held my own. A sign of the reading level of this group: One guy tried to rain on my enthusiasm for Hemingway: "Some of us have outgrown Hemingway," he sneered. I sneered back at him.

• The German-American Discussion Club at Herzo Base where I interacted with studious young Germans, including a lovely woman. We became close friends, spent wonderful times together, and talked seriously of marriage. But I still had a lot of growing up to do.

• Double dating with John Mitchell. For a time, John's German woman friend was chaperoned by her uncle. Once with tears in his eyes, he told us about fighting the Russians who sent a frauen [women's] battalion against the German lines. Wir hatten keine Wahl als sie zu schiessen, he said. (We had no choice but to shoot them.)

• The influence of Othello Oatman, an African-American and my first roommate at Herzo (where troops lived in rooms for two or more). He convinced me that my gradualist approach to racial integration put me on the wrong side of history. Martin Luther King, Jr. would later condemn "gradualism," a view that most Southern white moderates held then. Interestingly, Oatman, from the northeast, and Jess Easley, a white man from Mississippi, became good friends at Herzo. (I'm not sure of the spelling of Jess' last name)

• Visiting Dachau with its manicured lawn, a few pictures of emaciated inmates, and two or three ovens. It looked sanitized. I expected to see more indications of Holocaust horror. I understand they later expanded it to show more evidence of the atrocities that happened there.

• Playing company basketball with Pete Sears and Lawrence (Hook) Dietemann, two of the best ball handlers I ever played with.

• A really bad thing I saw in the Army was good food (even on one occasion steaks) thrown in the garbage because a stupid Army reg said if the mess hall didn't use all its rations that day, the remainder had to be thrown out. Once at Herzo, I saw a German base employee digging in a garbage can for meat that had just been dumped there. Sad!

• Unforgettable leave experiences: visiting Frankfurt's Old Sachsenhausen and enjoying quaffs of apfelwein (apple wine); touring Germany's Franconian Switzerland and delighting in its famous nectar, kirschwein (cherry wine); seeing the Passion Play at Oberammergau (quite grim) and Richard Wagner's home and library at Bayreuth (what a reader Wagner was); eating real Wiener Schnitzel and real Strudel in cafes on Vienna's Ringstrasse amid the endearing strains of Strauss and Mozart; seeing a wonderful performance of Carmen at the Paris Opera House; people-watching from an outdoor table at Le Cafe De La Paix. Sit long enough at an outdoor cafe in Vienna or Paris and the world walks right by you.    

• Drinking beer, having laughs and insightful discussions with Steve Gallivan and Bob Monson. Both men married German women. Bob's first wife died of cancer. For a number of years he's been married to lovely wife Pat. Gallivan is fluent in Czech and German and regularly listens to Prague radio. Monson and I kid him, "Gallivan, you're still a spook at heart." Steve and wife Erika live in Gainesville and Sue and I get together with them occasionally for Metcasts at a local theatre and often for dinner. Erika is an excellent hostess and cook.

In 2008 Sue and I took a train trip to Oregon and visited Bob and Pat Monson and Pete Sears. One of the highlights was hearing Sears read his poetry at Annie Bloom's Bookstore in Portland. Another was visiting Bob Reese (mentioned earlier in this memoir), my friend since 1942, and his wife Irene in Albany, Oregon. In 2011 Bob Monson and Pat came from Oregon for a five-day visit with the Gallivans and us. A great time was had by all. Significantly, Gallivan, Monson, Sears, and I all had rewarding careers in education. I suspect a number of other former ASAers also went into education.  

Afterword

Around 1971 Gung-ho Bob died. The reasons for this would require many more words here, and I've already written a longer memoir than I intended. Suffice it to say that over the years I have developed what I hope is a unified mind about war and peace. At times I've been something of a peace activist, not in the streets or on television, but with my pen and e-mails, writing with alarm and protest about what I see as a United States taking on more and more trappings of a corporate military state. President Eisenhower warned us about the dangers of "the military-industrial complex." Unfortunately, this dangerous "complex" operates today in an America engaged in what appears to be a permanent state of war.

It's been said (metaphorically) by wise minds that in war the devil fights on both sides. Perhaps the best you can hope for in any war that you feel you must fight is to come out of it with your mind and body intact and less evil than your enemy.

I think it would be good at Veterans' Day and Memorial Day celebrations to have moments of silence and reflect on peaceful alternatives to our increasing proclivity to wage war as a solution to crucial world problems. I would hope, however, that such reflections not include the wrong idea of peace-at-any-price.

My special thanks to Steve Gallivan for his close reading of this memoir and for providing the Kellerbar picture and some important details.